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The narrator expresses confusion about the chronology of events. The time it snowed and the time he squashed the bunnies may not have been the same night. Either way, the narrator and Georgie sleep in the truck, awakening with the rising sun. He remarks on the beauty of the scene, saying that he understands how someone drowning might feel as if a thirst were being quenched or a slave might befriend his master. He sees blossoms revealed on the drive-in speakers and observes an elk and coyote in the nearby pasture.
When the narrator and Georgie return to the hospital that afternoon, it is as if no time has passed. Everything is the same as always. The familiar sounds of "the Lord is my shepherd" from Psalm 23 and the Lord’s Prayer from Matthew 6:9–13 echo through the hospital intercom, part of its daily Catholic routine.
The hospital releases Weber at suppertime with only an eyepatch to show for his previous night’s emergency. He complains that the pills they gave him make everything taste bad, to which Nurse responds that it could have been worse. She says it is a miracle that his injury didn’t leave him either blind or dead.
Weber smiles when he recognizes the narrator. He confesses that his wife stabbed him in the eye because he had been peeping on the sunbathing woman who lives next door. When Weber shakes Georgie’s hand, Georgie does not remember him.
The narrator flashes back to an incident from that morning. As he and Georgie drove back into town, they picked up a hitchhiker named Hardee. They thought Hardee looked awful, but Hardee felt the same about them. The narrator remembers Hardee, whom he had taken in for the summer after finding him on his doorstep.
Hardee tells them that he’s been living in Texas, working on a bee farm. When asked if the bees stung him, Hardee says they don’t sting as often as one might think. The bees live in harmony with their keepers, seeing them as just another part of their everyday lives.
The narrator asks what happened to Hardee’s hair since it’s all been cut off. Hardee tells them that his head is shaved because he’s been drafted into the armed services. He is now Absent Without Leave (AWOL) and is trying to escape to Canada. Georgie volunteers to drive him there. Briefly, the narrator reflects on how that history has been erased.
Then, Hardee asks Georgie what he does for a job. Georgie replies, “I save lives.”
