The prologue is presented as a stored memory deposit belonging to Harp Oletsky, recounting his sixth birthday. Harp's father takes him to a town gathering known as a jack drive, where the community has trapped hundreds of wild jackrabbits inside a fenced pen. The rabbits have been destroying rangeland and wheat crops, and the town is paying a penny bounty per hide to exterminate them.

Harp, frightened and unwilling, tries to run, but his father holds him in place. The townspeople, including the O'Malleys, Waldowkos, Zalewskis, and Mrs. Haage, descend on the pen with clubs, ax handles, hammers, and planks, beating the rabbits to death. Harp is overwhelmed by the violence, the smell, the sounds, and the gore. His father instructs him to aim for skulls and spines as the quickest kill, then joins the slaughter himself.

Harp watches his mother and baby sister Lada from a distance, and envies the girls outside the fence who are permitted to look away. He hides his face and weeps. When the killing ends and women begin hanging the carcasses to dry, Harp's father dismisses the boy's horror, claiming no one enjoyed it though Harp senses many did. His father then forces a club into his hands and orders him to finish off a still-living rabbit. The chapter closes with the declaration that from that day forward, Harp is always afraid, establishing a foundational trauma.