The Antidote

The chapter opens with two letters. In the first, Roy Stryker complains of the negatives that Cleo has sent him and also of the dates she has assigned to the images. In the second letter, Cleo replies by informing Stryker that she is quitting her job with the Historical Society, then goes on to explain the images captured by the Graflex camera she bought from the pawn shop: The camera takes photos of scenes that occurred either in the past or in the future. Cleo does not know whether it depicts a fixed, unchangeable future or a possible future. She now spends her time in the root cellar darkroom. Here, she develops a photo of a cottonwood tree: When it develops, it depicts the Sheriff with the dead body of Mink Petrusev. When Dell enters the root cellar, Cleo reveals to her what the camera is doing, then shows Dell the photos she has developed. Upon seeing the photo of the sheriff under the cottonwood tree, Dell reveals what she has learned from the Antidote about the sheriff’s framing of Dew for the murders of several women. She also reveals the counterfeit memories she and the Antidote have been giving to the people of Uz. Cleo wants to use the photograph to prove Dew’s innocence.

Cleo and Dell reveal the photographs to the Antidote and Harp. The Antidote and Dell explain to Harp the deposit the sheriff has made about framing Dew; they also explain their practice of making counterfeits. The four discuss what action they might take to reveal the sheriff’s actions. The election for sheriff is scheduled to take place on Founder’s Day, at which Harp, as Grange Master, is scheduled to deliver a speech. They decide that they will exhibit Cleo’s photographs under the guise of celebrating Uz for Founder’s Day, then reveal the incriminating images before the polls open.

When Valeria arrives to play basketball, Dell instructs her not to tell anyone about the Antidote and Cleo Allfrey living at Harp’s. After playing, the girls kiss, and Dell admits that she is in love with Val.

That night, Harp reads his speech aloud to Dell; she praises him, then asks for stories about her mother. That night, Dell dreams of her mother.

After the three women go to bed, Harp stays up wondering why he alone has been chosen to have a successful wheat crop.

Fearful for her safety, Cleo sends a telegraph to her family, letting them know the location of Harp’s farm and informing them that she has hidden photographs and negatives in his root cellar.

Unable to sleep that night, she goes to the kitchen. She sees Harp outside, talking to the scarecrow. Harp asks Cleo whether she notices anything strange about the light over the field, and though she does not, Cleo offers to photograph it.

As the Antidote and Dell sort through the counterfeit deposits, Dell asks the Antidote what she should call her, now that she is no longer taking deposits. The Antidote tells Dell her real name, then tells her how she became a prairie witch.

The Antidote recalls the aftermath of the roller skating escapade. As punishment for taunting a new girl, she is sentenced to 10 days in the straitjacket, alone in the attic. A nurse visits twice a day, and after the second day, Toni convinces her to take her out of the jacket. On the third day, Toni’s labor begins.

She gives birth to a son and recalls him being placed on her chest, alive, then recalls nursing him. She falls asleep then—certain later that she was drugged—and when she wakes is told the baby has died. Toni is drugged again, and when she wakes, she sneaks out of the Home. As she walks, the sky turns green as if a tornado is forming. Toni runs to the next town.

Dell tells the Antidote that she believes the story she has told.

Founder’s Day arrives. Harp considers that knowing his father’s story provides him with an opportunity to right past wrongs. He thinks about how Founder’s Day itself is a lie, leaving out the truth about how the land was stolen from the Pawnees.

As they arrive at the event, Dell helps Cleo set up the photographs, and Urna appears. Harp apologizes for not having seen her recently. Then, his speech begins. He opens by introducing Cleo.

As the event is about to begin, the mayor approaches, introducing himself to Cleo. She feels nervous, knowing he seeks to convey to her that he is in charge and that she is an African American woman and an outsider. Cleo unveils the display of photographs, worried about the town’s reaction. But the reception is positive as the crowd marvels over the images.

Cleo notices a large cat who has entered the hall and watches as it heads directly toward the Antidote, who now goes by her given name, Antonina.

Antonina greets the sheriff’s wife’s cat, whom she has not seen since her time in the jail. She marvels at the photographs on display: happy, joyful, and peaceful scenes of life, nearly all of them depicting the native Pawnee on the land. Around her, members of Uz exclaim over the beauty of the scenes as well, as Cleo explains that she is unsure how, exactly, the camera is able to capture such scenes from the past.

Antonina looks up to see the sheriff looking at her.

The cat explains that it left Uz by hitching a ride to Oklahoma in the bed of a truck. When the driver of the truck purposefully struck a turtle in the road, the cat left the truck to help the turtle. The cat then felt something calling it back home to Uz, the “unfinished business with the man who drowned [her] babies” (148).

Dell observes her teammates, surprised at how different they look dressed up and out of their uniforms. Harp has instructed her to quietly observe and not to talk too much, as she tends to do. She waits for a cue from her uncle.

Harp begins his speech, immediately pointing to Sheriff Iscoe’s reelection campaign, which hinges on the guilt of Clemson Dew. Harp cues Dell to reveal the photographs of Mink’s body, then explains how the sheriff framed Dew by planting the rabbits’ feet. Antonina takes the stage then, reading Dell’s transcript of the sheriff’s confession to framing Dew. From the audience, Deputy Percival then confesses to finding a box of rabbits’ feet in the sheriff’s possession. The audience slowly rallies against the sheriff, calling for justice for Dew.

The sheriff himself is not in the audience.

Antonina waits for the crowd to challenge what Harp has said, but their plan appears to be working.

Harp goes on to reveal the Founder’s Pact, which he learned of from his father’s deposit to the vault. He emphasizes the moral wrongness of stealing the land from the Pawnee and of the rumor started by his father. He insists that the town of Uz must give back what its people have stolen. The audience challenges Harp, and he suggests that they might, with conversation and discussion, come to some kind of a compromise.

In the audience, Dell feels the mood around her change as her uncle speaks. She feels proud of him, but also afraid.

Harp continues with his speech: He emphasizes that the people of Uz have done damage to the land through their farming techniques, stripping the land of its top soil. He suggests that taking the land from the Pawnee people—who were knowledgeable of how to manage the land—has led to the town’s downfall. He pleads with his audience to work with him to find a solution on how to proceed in the future.

The crowd grows angry, noting that Harp has enjoyed a successful crop. A fight breaks out: tables are toppled and the photographs torn down. Harp feels the cat against his leg and swears he hears the cat telling him to run. He moves just as a bullet strikes the place where he had just been standing.

Men rush the stage to grab Antonina, shouting about their deposits. Dell and her teammates rush to her aid, and Antonina is able to flee. Cleo runs for Harp’s truck. One of the sheriff’s sons, Red Iscoe, grabs Dell.

Antonina escapes the men and follows the cat as it crawls out of a window. Outside, Cleo helps her up, and they rush into Harp’s truck. But when Antonina sees the Iscoe brothers pulling Dell into a brown car, she rushes off to help her.

Suddenly, thunder strikes, and it begins to rain. All of the people stop suddenly, amazed by the rain. Dell frees herself and rushes into Harp’s truck, the cat sitting in its bed.

As a second shot is fired, Harp jumps from the stage and crawls on the floor. No one sees him as he crawls under a table, where he then blacks out. When he regains consciousness, the room is empty. He joins the crowd of his neighbors outside as they laugh and cheer in the rain.

Cleo and Dell yell for Harp to enter the truck. They drive back to Harp’s farm; Harp apologizes for the way the plan unfolded.

When they arrive, the cat leaps from the truck bed and sits beneath the scarecrow. Sheriff Iscoe appears, brandishing a gun. Cleo pulls out her camera and runs off through the wheat. The sheriff races after her. They tussle, and Cleo drops the camera; the sheriff shoots the camera with the gun, destroying it. He then places the gun against Cleo’s spine and marches her back to the group.

As the sheriff approaches the group, the cat lunges at him and attacks. The sheriff fires the gun at the cat, striking its ear, but the cat is undeterred and lunges at the sheriff again.

Sheriff Iscoe and Antonina argue, with Sheriff Iscoe insisting she should go with him to the jail so that he can force the townspeople to deposit the secret they have learned about him. Antonina insists that there are too many people who now know of his efforts to frame Dew for him to escape. She urges the sheriff to leave town.

The scarecrow is able to send the hat flying off of its head so that the edge of it strikes the sheriff in the eye.

As the sheriff is struck with the scarecrow’s hat, Dell throws her basketball at him. This causes him to drop the gun, which Dell picks up. She intends to force the sheriff back into his car but suddenly sees that something has made him run toward his car on his own accord.

Rays of light of a color that Cleo cannot describe shine out from the stalks of wheat.

The group makes its way back to the farmhouse as the rain continues to fall. Antonina is still stunned by the light they have witnessed, certain the sheriff fled from it because it forced him to confront the wrong he has done.

In the distance, the sky turns green. Harp yells to the others to head into the root cellar as the tornado approaches.

The storm lasts for 24 hours. Twenty-four inches of rain falls, flooding the Republican River. When Harp emerges from the cellar, he sees that his house and his wheat have been destroyed by the tornado. The cat, however, has given birth to seven kittens.

In the root cellar, Dell watches the kittens moving inside the cat, about to be born. She realizes, suddenly, that forgetting painful memories is more painful than remembering them. She suddenly feels her mother’s presence with her, then tells Cleo that she has no desire or need to pursue Lada’s killer. Cleo shows Dell a photograph she took in Dell’s bedroom when she was testing the light: The photo depicts a 10-year-old Lada.

The cat nurses her newly born kittens in the root cellar. She emphasizes that she is not lesser than the humans and that her new children do not make up for the loss of her others.

The scarecrow can suddenly see the family members from his past gathering in the field. Then it sees Antonina approaching him.

With the storm over, Antonina climbs out of the root cellar to look at the damage. Harp’s home and wheat crop have been destroyed, but she acknowledges that some magical force must have protected the four of them from the tornado. The scarecrow, she notes, has been destroyed.

Suddenly, Antonina feels compelled to lift her earhorn to the sky; it fills with water as the rain continues to fall lightly. She then holds it to the scarecrow’s chest like a stethoscope. Inexplicably, she knows then that the scarecrow contains the soul of her son. She is able to see the good life her son lived as an adopted boy named Benjamin. He died in a car accident as a young man on Black Sunday. Antonina knows that he has come searching for her and has found her at last.

As Harp exits the root cellar and surveys the new landscape, he feels the memory of killing the rabbits return to him. He knows that the memories of the other people of Uz will return to them as well.