Chapter Summary of Blood County, by Doris Piserchia (writing as Curt Selby)
(continued)

Ch. 37. The garlic-eating Widow Witt comes down from the mountain to tell Clint (who is trying not to breathe) that six of the Ricco kids have been turned into Lamprous. "Their two little brothers," however, "never woke up after their grandpap dreened their veins. Them two stayed dead." She also mentions that Sam Steiner is sleeping in her chicken coop. Clint advises her to "sprinkle that garlic with a flair" and she returns home. Clint walks up to the mansion and using a heavy club, tames Baron by beating him severely. When he returns to the cabin, Sugie tells him that "our lady from up north is in more trouble." Someone placed Sweck Brewster's body behind Portia's archery target and one of her arrows pierced his heart.

Ch. 38. The townspeople debate what life is going to be like without Duquieu, who was in charge for as long as anyone can remember. Jared, his heir apparent, is "runnin' around like a hound with foam on its mouth." Sugie assures everyone (as Clint has repeatedly assured him) that the crops won't die, and argues that the town's first priority should be rounding up and killing the stray Lamprous.

Ch. 39. Portia wanders in the woods and encounters Jared. She keeps him at a distance with her bow. He says to tell Clint he's going to kill him. Portia has heard that "Jared" is dead but doesn't believe that this is Jared. (She's still not getting it. Skipping ahead: she never does.)

Ch. 40. Speaking of not getting it: in this chapter Clint continues to defend Jared to Coley. Coley says, "He ain't the Jared you knew and maybe never was. You had to have a close friend, like everybody, and he was there." She reveals another aspect of Duquieu's comparative gentility: "Anyone caught sneakin' on his property at night was his, and any woman caught out durin' a full moon was his, but I don't recollect other kind of hurting he did."

Ch. 41 Senior Ricco, Sam Steiner, and the Ricco kids attack haven number one during the night with picks, axes, and gunpowder. By morning, they've knocked a large hole in the roof. The townspeople attempt to flee through the door, but Steiner shoots several of them and tells them to stay inside. Following Jared's orders, he gives them an hour to fill several bottles with blood. They watch while the Lamprous dine and pour out the excess blood on the ground. Soon afterward, Senior Ricco realizes to his annoyance that his son Junior has escaped in the confusion: "He wasn't all that fine a son and I feel I owe him. He used to kick my tail blue."

Ch. 42 Clint visits the cave where Jared used to hide as a child. He yells a warning into the darkness that he's going to "get" Jared for ordering the raid on the haven. He tells him to stay away from Baron, who is showing whip marks. Clint then climbs into his tree to sleep, dreaming about the time Jared first discovered that Clint had the mark of Duquieu on his head.

Ch. 43 The Anderson brothers, Swen and Tom (turned into Lamprous by the Ricco kids), join Steiner and the "Lamprou gang" in a raid on haven number three, which is now packed with extra townspeople who survived the attack on the first haven. Someone inside shoots Swen with an arrow and knicks his heart. He screams in pain, driving everyone crazy, until Tom "leads him out of sight and shoves him down a mountainside." The Ricco kids blow a hole in the roof, and the townspeople are filling blood bottles when Clint arrives on Baron. He kills Tom Anderson with a wooden sword and throws the rest of the weapons into the haven, arming the townspeople. The Lamprous scatter.

Ch. 44. Coley is missing from haven number three. Clint orders Sid, the general store manager, to form squads to hunt for her. Sid is perplexed that Clint is suddenly riding Baron, hunting Lamprous, and staying outside the havens at night.

Ch. 45 Portia tries to leave Blood again and is stopped by the "border guards," July West and his equally ugly brother August. When she returns to Sugie's cabin, she notices the hay bales behind her archery target are once again askew. Sugie hops over to them and discovers Senior Ricco's sleeping body. They haul the mewing, slothlike Lamprou into the trees (Portia wondering why he doesn't wake up) and then travel to the Ricco place, where they find Junior hanging by the neck. He has killed all six of his children and "didn't have the heart to kill his pap" and thus left him for Portia to kill accidently, as she did with Sweck Brewster. Sugie sends Portia up to Widow Witt's and takes off to find Clint.

Ch. 46. Swen Anderson recovers from being thrown down a mountainside but not from his heart ailment. Hobbling around in intense pain, he interrupts Sam's raid on haven number four to ask Sid, who is inside the haven and the closest thing the town has to a doctor, to listen to his heart. The bargaining between Swen and Sid, two villagers who have known each other for years but no longer trust each other, is very funny. Swen tells the kvetching Sam to get lost, but before Sid will examine the ailing Swede's heart, he insists that Swen be staked down to the ground by several villagers. As the final stake is going in the ground, Swen panics and pulls them all out. The townspeople rush back into the haven, and Swen tells Sid that the next time he sees him he's going to "dreen" him.

Ch. 47. Sugie has taken too long doing his chores and Jared enters the cabin in the fading light. Knowing his time has come, Sugie chastises the Lamprou for his lifelong abuse of Clint. In his fear and panic, the old man recognizes familiar chest pains, and begins heaving furniture at Jared to bring on a heart attack. He keels over dead, thwarting Jared's plan to turn him into a Lamprou. Jared is angry and savagely beats the corpse, thinking: "Death isn't ugly enough. It must be added to."

Ch. 48. Clint plants boxes of gunpowder in Jared's cave just after sundown, then hides and sleeps, waiting for his half-brother to return. Near dawn, when Clint is sure Jared is in the cave, he ignites the gunpowder. The cave "erupts like a volcano," but Clint is disappointed to see that Jared is blown into the river, where he is "crying in hoarse coughing sounds" but still alive.

Ch. 49. Unable to tolerate Widow Witt's garlic smell anymore, Portia heads down the mountain, ignoring the widow's warning that "only a dimwit goes out of doors this time of night." As she walks, she wonders if there is anything for her to return to in Newark, reflecting that she feels "really alive for the first time in years or maybe all her life." Back at Sugie's cabin, she is horrified to discover the corpse of Clint's cat hanging from a pillar on the front porch. She freezes as she sees Charlie, Sam, and a man "all bent over and gasping" walking slowly up the hill towards her. Mysterious penultimate sentence: "It all came together in one terrible revelation and she knew at least part of her destiny."

Ch. 50. Riding Baron, Clint chases Jared, who is running on foot through a dense fog. The fleeing Lamprou climbs into a tree, which Clint promptly sets on fire. Jared climbs from the smallest branches onto a large, thick reed and makes his escape.

Ch. 51. Sam Steiner and Swen Anderson attack haven number five. Jared's instructions have changed: now he wants the gang to make as many Lamprous as possible. When the roof blows open, the townspeople rush out the door. Swen punches people in the face to immobilize as many as he can before biting them; Sam just tears out their throats and throws them to the ground. After their work is done and they've left, Clint comes on the scene, and throws wooden swords into the chests and backs of the fallen.

Ch. 52. Jared has turned Coley into a Lamprou after abducting her from haven number three, intending to use her death and demonic rebirth "as a knife to twist in Clint's guts." Coley makes a wooden sword and begs Clint to kill her with it before she succumbs to "starvation and badness." Crying, Clint demurs at first, but she finally convinces him. He stabs her quickly and forcefully when she isn't expecting it. Laying her on the ground, he pins a brooch from Duquieu's treasure trove to her blouse, matching the ring Jared gave her for her wedding: "Now she belonged to both of them."

Ch. 53 After setting fire to Baron's stable and trying (unsuccessfully) to shoot the horse, Charlie Steiner climbs up in the tree where he saw Clint mysteriously disappear the previous morning. As he is clambering over a limb, he awakens Clint in his hiding place. Clint throws him to the ground and chases him up to the mansion. Inside the house, Charlie thinks he's given Clint the slip but the older Lamprou stealthily grabs him from behind and locks him in Duquieu's sleeping cage, to be dealt with later. [We learn that Clinton kept the lock after Duquieu's death, which explains why Jared has been sleeping in a cave--he wasn't safe in the mansion.]

Ch. 54 Sam and Swen, hiding in the mansion, jump on Clint, throw his wooden swords across the room, and try to remove his steel vest so they can shoot him with arrows. Clint breaks free and recovers the swords, only to realize that the spot where they're lying is a trap. A heavy net drops on him, equipped with spikes that pierce his arm and leg. A gloating Jared appears, disfigured and bleeding from the explosion and fire, and tells Sam and Swen to drag Clint under a chandelier. The lamp contains another of Duquieu's death traps: a steel-penetrating, catapult-driven spike. As Sam and Swen struggle to pull the net into position, Clint accuses Jared of killing Sugie and Coley. Jared braggingly owns up to both murders, saying he'd been planning to kill Coley since he discovered Duquieu's mark on Clint's head. Ultimately Clint is saved by Jared's vanity and sadism: instead of launching the catapult immediately, he orders Sam and Swen to remove Clint's vest so Clint will be "chopped up and scattered all over the floor." Just then, the sound of an angry mob can be heard outside the mansion: the entire village has come up the mountain to deal with Jared. Swen lets go of the net, and Clint rolls to one side as Jared launches the catapult. The spike misses Clint. The townspeople enter the mansion armed with wooden swords, bows, and clubs, and immediately kill Sam and Swen. Forcing Clint to watch, they pull the spike from the floor, reload the catapult, lay Jared out beneath it, and kill him. Clint pleads with the townspeople to kill him and Charlie and "rid yourselves of the Lamprou curse forever." Sid says no: "With you blessin' the fields with your presence in this house, we'll go on thrivin' like our pappies done for centuries." Clint says he won't do it, and Sid says "Sure you will, sir, after you're all healed of your wounds." July West adds: "And after you see who we have waitin' for you."

Ch. 55 Clint sits astride Baron, outside the mansion. Sid leads Portia from the crowd, saying that the townspeople had to choose between saving her and saving Coley ("because Jared wouldn't stand for both women disappearin'"). As Clint lifts the "trembling but willing" Portia into the saddle, he says, "You saved the right one." Sid says: "She don't know but half of what's goin' on. I reckon you'll fill her in." July West lifts the tarp from a covered object on the ground, revealing a crate full of newly-collected blood, and asks if he can put it in the mansion's refrigerator for Clint. Last paragraph of the book:

"Clinton thought of Duquieu, remembered his comments about how longevity affected good intentions. He wanted to say no in a loud voice. No to everything. The sight of the crate made his stomach lurch. 'Yes,' he said."

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