Two days after Black Sunday, Harp Oletsky's neighbor Otto Goerentz comes for supper, having lost two ewes and his crops to the storm. Sensing Otto's family has nothing to eat, Harp insists on giving him a box of food, including turkey and slightly rotting carrots, both men managing the awkward shame of the exchange. Otto mentions the botched electrocution of the Lucky Rabbit's Foot Killer; Harp, whose sister Lada was among the victims, feels only sickness, not righteous joy.

Harp pulls Otto aside to show him two inexplicable wonders: his mother's hand-sewn scarecrow, untouched by the storm, and his winter wheat field, which has impossibly broken dormancy and is greening up during the driest month on record. Otto offers weak explanations like underground springs but acknowledges Harp may be the only farmer in three counties to harvest a bumper crop. He jokingly suggests the Oletsky family curse may be lifting and advises Harp to stay quiet about his luck.

Dell sneaks up on them, mocking Harp's belief that God intervened, pointedly invoking Lada's death. Harp snaps at her not to mock God, then immediately regrets it, knowing they both wonder why God spared them but not Lada. Dell storms off, punching the scarecrow as she passes. Otto observes Dell has her mother's strong moods, surprising Harp.

Walking his rows at dusk, Harp wonders aloud what is keeping his wheat alive. He reflects on his family's history: his brother Frank returned a war hero from France in 1919 only to shoot himself eight months later, a truth Harp refuses to forget despite his parents' preferred lie. Harp recalls his single childhood visit to a prairie witch's Vault with his father, where something unknown was deposited—he refuses ever to make another deposit. He concludes that the Oletskys were never cursed; like his neighbors who have endured terrible losses, they are simply alive.