Part 4, pages 219-258 Summary

After a short summer, a cloudy autumn comes to Skagit Valley Washington. The narrator claims that he has borne witness to the second coming of Jesus Christ. The son of God, he affirms, has returned to the world encased in a plaster cast, dead as a boot, stretched out flat in the Zillers' pantry.

Now speaking in the first person, it is clear that the narrator is, and always has been, Marx Marvelous. The narrator confesses as much and apologizes if his personality has intruded overmuch on the narrative. Marx, as narrator, describes the experience of returning from his two week vacation to find Amanda in his bed with Plucky, not to mention the unmistakable mummified Corpse of Jesus Christ lying in the pantry.

Marx, regretting that Plucky isn't there to speak for himself, tells the story of how...