The morning after the storm, Harp Oletsky climbs out of the cellar to survey a transformed landscape. The scarecrow remains upright but is half-emptied of its straw, a loose cow cries in the distance, the wheat is flattened or torn away, and dust blows across the ruins of his house. Harp recognizes that his miraculous run of luck is over and he is once again a zero-yield farmer, though he takes consolation in the shared experience of weather.

As the sun rises, Harp feels a strange shift in the air, like the return of sandhill cranes. He realizes his memories, once deposited and erased through the Antidote's vault, are flooding back into him.

His first restored memory is of being five years old at a jackrabbit drive near the Loup River, where the townspeople clubbed rabbits to death as pests. His father, Papa, had promised understanding would come with age but then erased the memory by surrendering the slip to the Antidote. Harp now recognizes the violence he participated in and the lie of necessity used to justify it.

Harp feels his father's voice within him telling him he can put the club down. He releases the cycle of defensive, inherited violence. He wonders what memories are returning to others throughout Uz and what consequences this widespread restoration of the past will bring, concluding that the people are "full of days again."