Chapter 14

14. Bompie and the Car. Cody writes an entry about the first Bompie story Sophie tells aboard The Wanderer. Bompie lived on a farm when he was young, and his family had little money. One day, they traded two mules for a car, and Bompie agreed to go into town to pick it up. As he was driving home it was pouring rain, and he got to a creek that he had to cross—but there was no bridge. So he drove the car into the creek, but the streaming wall of water flipped the car over. Bompie managed to get out, but he lost the car, watching it float all the way downstream. When he finally got home, Sophie says, his father whipped him, and his mother gave him an apple pie because she was happy that he was alive. Brian doubts that Sophie is telling the truth, because he thinks there’s no way she’s ever actually met Bompie.

Sophie’s stories about Bompie—which we learn later are not totally her inventions, but rather tales of Bompie’s life which he wrote down in a series of letters to her—will often involve Bompie somehow falling into a body of water, then being whipped by his father and given pie by his mother. Sophie is clearly fascinated by Bompie’s life, and perhaps sees more than just excitement and adventurousness in Bompie’s often dangerous encounters with water: she seems to find some deep meaning in them, and to feel that they have a powerful significance to her own life.