The following summary is about the last chapter from Sherman Alexie’s novel “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” from 2007.

Junior first describes the beautiful pine trees on the reservation. He starts to remember climbing a giant pine tree with his best friend Rowdy when they were ten years old. He describes that they spend a hot summer day together. Instead of playing video games, watching TV or reading books, which was what they usually used to do, they were sitting on the floor of Junior’s room and were”dreaming about airconditioning” (comp. p. 223, ll. 14 & 15).

After that, Junior describes how he and Rowdy got to climb the pine tree nearby Turtle Lake. It was Rowdy’s idea to cool down and swim in Turtle Lake because it was so hot. So they went there, even though Junior was afraid of Turtle Lake after his father told him a story in which a horse drown in Turtle Lake. The horse was carried away and burned. But it was found laying on the riverside of Turtle Lake after the lake caught fire one day.

But when Junior and Rowdy arrived at Turtle Lake, Junior saw the giant pine tree, which he describes to be as high as a skyscraper. Junior also says, that he fell in love with it. Rowdy then decides to climb that tree. When they reached as far as they could – they didn’t arrive at the very top yet but the branches got too thin to climb any further – they sat down. They could overlook the whole reservation.

Then he transitions from not believing in surviving climbing the pine tree into not believing in surviving his first year at Reardan. From that, he moves on and starts thinking of Penelope, whom he wrote love letters, Gordy, who wants to visit the reservation, and Roger, who gave Junior his basketball shirt and said that he is going to be a star one day.

At that point, Rowdy knocks on Junior’s door. Junior invites him to come inside. They have a talk about the things that happend, after Junior transferred to Reardan high school, such as Rowdy being responsible for punching Junior in the face. They walk to the courts and play basketball and Junior tries to convince Rowdy to transfe är as well. But Rowdy still wants to stay on the reservation. He also says that he thinks that Junior is an “old-time nomad” (comp. p. 232, ll. 29 – 31), who will keep on discovering the world. Junior needs to promise Rowdy to send him postcards.

In the end, Junior and Rowdy keep on playing basketball without keeping score.