The Antidote is rescued from her Uz jail cell by Sheriff's wife Dottie Iscoe and her sons Jed and Red, who came searching for their cat. Disoriented and hollow from her bankruptcy, the Antidote learns from Dottie that Black Sunday was the worst dust storm in living memory, killing many across the southern Plains. She glimpses the surviving Iscoe children and reluctantly accepts a ride into town from Red.

On the drive, the Antidote remembers why she was in the cell: Sheriff Iscoe had forced her, as he often does without payment, to take a deposit from a drunken doctor from the State Asylum—the same doctor who testified against Clemson Louis Dew, the alleged Lucky Rabbit's Foot Killer. She recalls the routine of Vick Iscoe dragging frightened people, often unarrested and bruised, to Cell 8 to dump dangerous memories into her earhorn.

To wound Vick, the Antidote tells Red detailed truths about his father's cruelties, breaking the boy until he sobs, then offers to take the memory back as a deposit. Red refuses and orders her out. She reflects, addressing her lost son, on her guilt for hurting Red out of rage.

Back in her boardinghouse room above the Country Jentleman saloon, run by the Swede Rasmussen, she cleans her enchanted emerald earhorn, a gift from her teacher Kettle. She finds a real rabbit's foot among broken vase shards—a chilling prank or threat. She recounts the Lucky Rabbit's Foot Killer case: seven women murdered, including marginalized victims Luz Arrow, Enesta Risingsun, and Lada Oletsky, and how the Sheriff arrested the gentle, slow-witted vagrant Clemson Louis Dew on flimsy evidence, securing a death sentence likely to aid his reelection.

Sleepless and terrified of losing memories of her son, the Antidote wonders if all prairie witches went bankrupt in the storm, fearing a coming "run on witches." She telegrams her friend Cherry Le Foy (Madame Quicksand) the coded message MY AQUIFER IS EMPTY. Late at night, her drunk customer Grayson pounds on her door demanding service, and she contemplates fleeing town.