As Grange Master, Harp Oletsky addresses the Founder's Day crowd, building on Pare Lorentz's documentary The Plow That Broke the Plains. He acknowledges the film's argument that settlers caused the Dust Bowl by destroying native grasses, but pushes further, arguing the documentary 'starts in the middle of the story.' He links soil erosion to the original theft of Indigenous land, naming the Pawnee, Ponca, Omaha, Otoe, Missouria, Lakota, Dakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho among those displaced.

Harp connects the violence of American settler-colonialism to the 'plow of empire' that broke his own family in German-occupied Poland. He argues that private property fails because dust crosses property lines, and urges his neighbors to accept responsibility, search their homes for deposit slips, and consider restitution rather than waiting for government action. He asks plainly, 'Does it feel right to live as we do?'

The crowd grows hostile. Grayson reminds everyone Harp's fields were the only ones spared on Black Sunday. A strange humming rises from the audience. Asphodel and her teammates circulate Cleo's photographs of the future, but neighbors—including Wayne Yeager, who served with Harp's dead brother—accuse Harp of treason and Bolshevism. The Edmonson brothers dump Allfrey's prints; townspeople stomp and shred the photographs of restored prairie, buffalo, and clear skies.

Four Grangers block the only exit. Accusations fly that Cleo faked the photos, that Antonina is a fraud, and that Iscoe has fled. Outside, a cloud—or crowd—is forming, and a cannon-like sound is heard. The pregnant cat winds around Harp's legs, and he hears a voice in his mind: Farmer, run. As he bends toward the cat, a bullet strikes the wall where his head had been an instant before.