Harp Oletsky takes the Grange Hall stage as Grange president to deliver his Founder's Day address. He begins with familiar history—Polish settlers from Krakow claiming Kinkaid lands in 1904, Uz's incorporation twenty-five years ago—while noting how many residents have been lost since the previous year's celebration.

Harp then reveals the hidden 'Founder's Pact,' an ugly agreement of exclusion, followed by a second pact to forget. Drawing on memories recovered from his late father's Vault deposit, he tells the assembled neighbors that Uz sits on Pawnee land, and that the Homestead, Dawes, and Kinkaid Acts displaced Native peoples to enrich white settlers. He frames the dust storms and soil collapse as moral consequences of forgotten crimes.

Most damningly, Harp confesses his father's personal guilt: his papa spread a rumor to scare settlers away from western lands, a rumor that led to a man's murder and possibly other violence. Harp admits his own cradle was built of stolen Pawnee timber.

The crowd reacts with hostility and heckling. Mr. Unger insists everything the Founders did was legal; another voice protests that returning land would leave them with nothing. Otto signals alarm, and Harp's niece calms him. Harp argues there is room between 'everything' and 'nothing,' suggesting outreach to the Pawnee reservation in Oklahoma. He stumbles through his closing, hands shaking, pleading that there must be another way.