Summary

Sam drives home unsure of what she is going to say to Emmett about what she has read in her father’s journal. When she gets home Emmett is not there but he has left a flea bomb in the middle of the room. Sam is furious. She thinks he left this flea bomb as a reenactment of war—like leaving a grenade and running. She thinks that Emmett has lost his mind.

In the house she gathers food, a cooler, a space blanket. She drives to Cawood’s Pond at the Bottom. She sits in her car and watches the swamp. Before it gets dark she hikes down to the swamp deep in the forest. She can no longer see her car. She finds a smooth spot under an oak tree. She sits and imagines she is in Vietnam...