Page 232
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
After Blackman's death, Davenport theatricalizes the scene, the driver holds a poised complicity, and Prankster's panic turns into a willful southward escape fantasy.
The page fractures the aftermath into performance, containment, and flight. Davenport turns poison into playacting, the circle compresses toward legal and social entrapment, and Prankster's movement into the woods becomes both animal panic and deliberate route-making.
The death sours into a wager - 'shall we take bets on how far the thick crust of his blood can crawl' - while Davenport claims 'visitors rights' and the circle compresses to 'all compact flesh with no judgement of radius' that entraps him as the police close in 'toward mutual oblivion.' Against that staged surrender, Prankster crashes into the woods 'blinder eyed like a bull,' his panic hardening into a willed route: 'Mexico. Yes!'