Over the following years, Ingram witnesses many more deaths. The company moves him to a smaller single-bed room. He loses interest in fiction and reads only engine repair manuals. The perpetual darkness and toxic fog damage his health, causing chest pain and constant headaches. He forgets his past, his only escape being masturbation while thinking of Sinema, a girl he met in Houston.

One day, Sinema’s father, Pa, arrives at the fields with new workers. Ingram clutches the knife Pa gave him when he left Houston, but Pa doesn’t recognize him. Later, an angry man attacks Ingram in the lunch line. Pa intervenes, subduing the attacker, and shares his meal with Ingram. Observing that Ingram has aged beyond his years, Pa urges him to leave the fields now that he has a marketable skill. Pa opens up about his difficult life, providing for his eight daughters, and losing his frail son who was crushed by circumstances.

When Ingram begins performing preventative maintenance on engines, a supervisor fires him. Moments later, a massive explosion occurs. Ingram dives under a table as the blast scorches his body. Pa is also critically injured in the blast. Ingram loses consciousness, experiencing the sensation of the gray creature eating him headfirst. Weeks later, he wakes in an Austin hospital.

Ingram wakes in an Austin hospital sharing a room with severely burned men. A nurse named Abigail shouts at Ingram because his hearing was damaged in the blast. She explains a phosphorus explosion killed 97 men and that a hero named Jelly rescued survivors. A doctor checks Ingram’s healing nerves by asking him to report pain, which Ingram does calmly despite feeling intense agony.

For days, Ingram lies in bed, feeling emotionally numb, without thoughts or dreams. A man in a red suit visits, claiming someone is always watching over him. Ingram considers this the most untrue thing he has ever heard, but the visit breaks his apathy. He begins remembering and thinking again, inventing his own ending to Moby-Dick where the crew mutinies and sails home safely.

During a sponge bath, Abigail offers to masturbate Ingram. He instinctively pushes her away, feeling strongly that he does not want her to do that. Two people from the oil company and Erica, his state-appointed lawyer, arrive to discuss restitution. She explains the company owes him substantial compensation for pain and suffering. Over subsequent visits, Erica questions him about his suffering. When he describes his pain poetically, she calls him a poet and brings him The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. He falls in love with poetry and decides never to read fiction again.

Erica delivers an envelope to Ingram containing his back pay in cash—enough to buy a truck. The next day, Ingram finds Sinema crying in the cafeteria. She embraces him tightly.

Sinema tells Ingram that Pa is hospitalized with severe injuries, including the loss of his hands in the blast. She feels guilty that Pa went to the oil fields for her sake and that she is the only family member present. Ingram recounts how Pa protected him in the fields. Days later, Pa dies.

When Ingram mentions buying a truck with his back pay, Sinema explains she can no longer afford to finish her education with the money left for Pa. She describes a world splitting between those moving forward to a better future and those falling behind. Impulsively, Ingram proposes marriage, offering to support her with his engine repair skills and explaining his understanding of sex and procreation. Sinema gently refuses, citing that he is white and she is Black, and that they are on different paths.

She tells him his real responsibility is finding his mother, not pursuing her. When Ingram protests that he has no family, Sinema scolds him for not considering whether his mother is suffering or needs him. She tells him he must live in reality, not fantasy, and that “[r]eality is what you make real” (250-51). Their serious conversation ends with laughter.

Sinema’s words give Ingram a new purpose: finding and caring for his mother. Though thoughts of returning home bring anxiety about the gray creature, he commits to the journey. On his last hospital day, he sees his grown, scarred body in a mirror for the first time and is discharged.

In Sinema’s kitchen, she and Ingram count Ingram’s money—totaling $2,000. She teaches him budgeting, and he makes a list of needs. Ingram buys new clothes and distinctive snakeskin cowboy boots. Following directions west, he finds Pete’s Filling Station, where a broken yellow truck sits among wrecked vehicles.

Pete, a Black man who owns the station, offers to sell the truck for $100 if Ingram can fix it. Ingram inspects the engine and determines he can repair it. When Ingram offers to help pump gas, Pete refuses, explaining he cannot have a white boy visibly working for a Black man’s business. Instead, Pete mentors Ingram in brake repair. Ingram proves a quick learner and begins working on customer vehicles, improving business flow.

Each night, Ingram works on his truck while Pete reads nearby. Pete shares his philosophy about his late father’s business and the changing world, where gasoline vehicles and roads are being phased out. He sees Ingram as part of a generation that will preserve old skills. Ingram works tirelessly, sleeping in the truck’s cab when exhausted, longing for the day it will be running.

With his truck running, Ingram drives Sinema to Houston. They stop at the diner where he met Marion, but no one remembers her. Using a map, they locate Draper Road near Liberty, Texas, where Ingram grew up. At Miss Maw’s house, Sinema gives Ingram a dictionary. He gives her the knife he received from Pa. The emotional exchange ends with Sinema reassuring him they are friends who will meet again.

Ingram drives through Houston past landmarks from his journey and sleeps in his truck. The next morning, he finds his childhood home collapsed into ruins. The shed where his father made him sleep still stands, but his mother’s blanket is gone. At Liberty’s town hall, a records clerk reveals his full name: Ingram Kessler. His father is Phillip, his mother is Sarah, and he had an older brother, Albert, who died of pneumonia when Ingram was six. The records show his father lives in Liberty.

Ingram finds Phillip drunk outside a bar. He takes him to a motel, demanding information about his mother. Phillip only rants about hardships. When Ingram confronts him about his weakness, Phillip calls him a devil and accuses him of causing Albert’s death by stealing his dying brother’s breath. This unlocks Ingram’s repressed memories: a happy early childhood with his beloved brother, Albert’s illness, the gray creature of death taking Albert, and his father banishing him to the shed.

Ingram gets his father drunk until he passes out, and then finishes the bottle himself. Intoxicated, he experiences vivid flashbacks of Albert. The next morning, his memories of Albert are clear and peaceful, and the gray creature’s haunting presence is gone. He cries for the first time as a young man, mourning his brother. Ingram wakes his father, puts him in the truck, and says they are going to find his mother. They drive east toward Beaumont.