1922

Wilf puts most of the money from the mortgage into a bank account but takes $200 with him. He buys supplies from the store and the lumberyard as well as groceries, then returns home. He decides to put the remaining money in the same hatbox in the closet where Arlette had kept hers. When he reaches inside, a rat bites him. It falls to the floor, and Wilf steps on it and kills it. He is convinced that it is the same rat that attacked Achelois.

Wilf picks up the rat, disposes of it in the ash bucket by the fireplace, then goes to the barn and checks the pipe. He is convinced that the rats must have gotten through the concrete, only to see that it is still sealed. He then realizes that he is naked, having taken off his clothes to bathe before being bitten.

Wilf returns to the bedroom to clean up the spot where he killed the rat. He becomes convinced that he can hear more rats moving in the walls. However, after a moment of panic, he realizes that it is just the sound of sleet hitting the roof. He finds a bottle of pain pills and takes some, then manages to fall asleep.

When Wilf wakes up, his hand is swollen and painful. He wraps it tightly, then struggles to start a fire. He knows he should see a doctor but can’t crank the car to start it on his own. He also realizes that it snowed heavily all night. As his hand continues to swell, forcing him to loosen the bandages, he takes three more pain pills and sits by the fire.

In the present, Wilf writes about the events of his son’s life after he left the farm, and how Henry traveled from Nebraska to Nevada with Shannon. Some of this Wilf learned from reading newspapers between 1922 and 1930, but he is also adamant that Arlette told him about these events, sometimes even presaging things before they happened. He notes that the reader likely doesn’t believe him, but this is his “confession,” and everything in it is true.

Wilf falls asleep by the fire. When he wakes up later, he hears more “scuttering.” At first, he thinks it is sleeting again, but then he realizes that the sound is coming from the porch. The latch on the door lifts up on its own, the door opens, and Arlette is standing in the doorway. The burlap sack is still on the top of her head, and she has a “knowing grin” (97). She is carried by the rats, who move her into the home, many of them looking to Arlette, their “queen,” with admiration. Wilf backs away, falling onto a wooden chest. The rats crawl up his body and onto his chest. Arlette leans over him, “whispering secrets that only a dead woman could know” (99). Wilf begs Arlette to leave him alone, promising to take her place in Hell if she does.

Arlette whispers about Henry’s activities to Wilf. After robbing the bank, Henry moves into a small shack near Omaha. He takes trips into Omaha, checking out St. Eusebia. He waits in an alley near a candy store for some of the girls. He pulls one, Victoria Stevenson, aside and offers her a cigarette. Victoria correctly guesses who Henry is and agrees to give a note to Shannon. In it, Henry tells Shannon that he will wait for her behind St. Eusebia every night for two weeks if she wants to join him. A few days later, Victoria returns with a note from Shannon. She promises to meet Henry the following night.

After getting Shannon’s note, Henry robs the bank in Omaha. He gets $800 but has to shoot the guard in the leg to escape. In 1925, Wilf met with the guard, Charles Griner. He had to have his leg amputated because of an infection. Wilf tried to apologize for what Henry did, but Griner insisted that he never should have approached Henry, then apologized to Wilf for Henry’s death.

Henry steals a car, then goes to St. Eusebia that night. He picks up Shannon, and they begin heading west. Wilf notes that they became known as the “Sweetheart Bandits,” gaining national news coverage. In the hills of Nebraska, one of the tires on the car goes flat. When Henry gets out to change it, two men come up to them with a shotgun and rob him. He and Shannon go to a farm nearby, and Henry robs a farmer of his car and all the money he has. They then continue to travel west, robbing several more banks along the way. When they rob one in Ogden, Utah, Henry shoots a man in the chest, then Shannon pushes him down the bank steps so they can escape.

In late November, Henry and Shannon arrive in Deeth, Nevada. They stop to eat at a diner, but the owner recognizes them. He pulls a gun on them and, when Henry tries to negotiate with him, the gun misfires. Henry grabs the gun, checks the bullets, and laughs about how old and rusted they are. He turns to leave with Shannon, but the owner fires again. He shoots Shannon in the lower back.

Henry drives with Shannon toward Elko. However, they never make it there, as Henry crashes the car into a ditch. He helps Shannon walk down the road toward an abandoned shack. He starts a fire for her, but Shannon dies in the night.

Wilf vividly remembers Arlette whispering all of this to him. He has since checked on the story, meeting with several people involved with the crimes. He is adamant that the end of Henry’s story had not happened yet; Arlette whispered it to him as a premonition. Wilf “begged” Arlette to kill him, but she refused, enacting her “revenge” by keeping him alive.

A while later—Wilf is unsure if it is one day or multiple times—Sheriff Jones comes to the door. He finds Wilf ranting about Shannon, Henry, and Arlette. Wilf begs him to go help Shannon and Henry, believing that it is not too late. He also confesses to Arlette’s murder, bringing him great relief, but Sheriff Jones is unsurprised to know she is dead. He drives Wilf to the hospital.

When Wilf wakes up, it is December 2. The doctor amputated his left arm to stop the infection, which saved his life.

Wilf explains why he was never arrested for murder. When he spoke with Sheriff Jones, instead of directly saying that he killed Arlette, he phrased it as a rhetorical question: “I killed her, didn’t I?” (111). Because Sheriff Jones already knew Arlette was dead, he assumed that Wilf was just delirious instead of confessing. Wilf credits his mother, who passed on the habit of speaking in rhetorical questions, for his survival.

Sheriff Jones comes to Wilf’s hospital room and apologizes for his loss. He tells Wilf that his reason for coming to the farm was that Arlette’s body had been found. A farmer near Lyme Biska saw coyotes off the road and investigated. He found the remains of a woman, with hair that was close to Arlette’s and pieces of her dress still on her. Sheriff Jones surmises that Arlette was robbed while hitchhiking, then killed.

When Wilf returns to the farm, all his animals are dead except for Achelois. He feeds her lovingly, commenting on the fact that his only remaining livestock is of no use to him since she can’t produce milk. Wilf thinks of how Harlan never once came to check on his farm, even through the sounds of his animals dying, though Wilf doesn’t blame him.

In mid-December, Sheriff Jones returns to the farm to inform Wilf that they found the bodies of Shannon and Henry. Shannon died of a gunshot wound, and Henry died by suicide. Even though he knew it was coming, Wilf is devastated by the news.

On December 18, Henry’s body is brought back. At the train depot, reporters take pictures of him and post new headlines about Henry and Shannon’s crime spree. Back at the funeral home, Wilf is devastated by the sight of Henry’s body: rats had eaten through his eyes, nose, and part of his mouth, leaving him with a “grim grin.” On December 24, Wilf holds his funeral. Arlette sits in the pew with Wilf and whispers to him, taunting him about how things turned out.

Wilf buys a bottle of whisky and returns to the farm. In the night, a storm hits, and it collapses part of the house’s roof as well as part of the barn’s. He brings Achelois, who survived again, into the house, thinking of them both as the only “survivors” of the events. When he counts his money on Christmas morning, he does not have anywhere near enough to fix the damage. However, he decides he is done with farming anyway.

Wilf realizes that, with Arlette officially declared dead, he now has the rights to the 100 acres she inherited. He goes to Harlan to try to sell the land, offering him a price significantly lower than it’s worth. To his surprise, Harlan declines. His wife left him, blaming him for Shannon’s death because he sent her away. He is adamant that Wilf’s land is cursed, and he wants nothing to do with it.

On December 31, Wilf goes to the bank to try to sell his land and the 100 acres to Stoppenhauser. Stoppenhauser refuses to buy it. Wilf becomes angry, accusing Stoppenhauser of having made a deal with Farrington. Security drags Wilf from the bank.

Back at home, Wilf finds Achelois lying in the yard. She ran from the porch, falling and breaking two legs. When Wilf goes in to get his gun, he finds three rats sitting there. He realizes that they scared Achelois and made her run from the porch. He angrily shoots the one in the middle, then the other two flee. He returns outside and kills Achelois.

Wilf notes that Achelois’s death marked the end of 1922 and the end of his story. Farrington refused to buy the farm, too, until Wilf’s buildings were completely destroyed and he could buy it for next to nothing. Wilf finds comfort in the fact that crop prices dropped significantly the following year and then only got worse by the mid-1920s; Harlan lost his own farm in 1925, as did most Midwestern farmers.

In the two years after 1922, Wilf spent the money he got for his land largely by drinking alcohol and visiting the places where Henry and Shannon went. He bought a pistol at the same pawn shop Henry did. He felt most connected to Henry while sitting in the alley two blocks from St. Eusebia, where Henry talked to Victoria.

Wilf has held two jobs since moving to Omaha. First, he worked in a clothing factory for a couple of years, teaching himself how to sew to get a better job. However, when he couldn’t stop seeing rats in the dark, he quit. For the last four years, he has worked as Omaha’s librarian, forging references to get the job. The rats eventually appeared there, too, showing up among the shelves. When he took out an Encyclopedia for a customer, a rat appeared in its empty slot. Wilf was convinced it was the same rat that bit Achelois. That was a week ago, and Wilf walked out immediately after and never went back.

Now, Wilf can feel the rats beginning to bite him. He hears shuffling feet in the hall, moving slowly toward his room. He knows that it is three corpses: Arlette, Shannon, and Henry. Wilf is adamant that he won’t let the rats or the corpses kill him. As the rats continue biting, becoming more aggressive, he searches for the gun. He fails to find it before the rats overwhelm him, writing the final line, “Oh make them stop biting m —“ (129)

A news article from the Omaha World-Herald dated three days later reports on Wilf’s death by suicide. There was no report of a gunshot, and the gun itself was unloaded. The security guard who found his body reports that he had “bitten himself” repeatedly, including chewing through his own wrists. The paper he was writing on is chewed into small pieces, similar to how a rat shreds paper to make its nest.