Chapter Two opens with Buck awakening in the dark morning with his body stretched out over the wooden bed of a newly-painted railroad baggage truck parked at the Aven depot. Buck's sleep is interrupted by thoughts of his family and the life he's abandoned to pursue his teenage dreams of business conquest in Aven. The first three pages of this chapter give important details concerning the novel's most important characters in Buck's world: His mother, his father and his younger brothers Jeff and Hearn.
