- The fifth poem tells the story of a feud between two sisters, Reed Woman and Corn Woman.
- Reed Woman splashes in the bath all day long, while her sister Corn Woman works hard in the cornfield. Corn Woman gets a little resentful about this and yells at her sis.
- Reed Woman's feelings are hurt, so she goes back to the "original place down below." She takes the rain with her. Everything dries up, and the people and animals go thirsty and hungry.
- Back to Tayo on the ranch: He's feeling guilty for cursing the rain and praying for it to go away, because he thinks the drought is his fault.
- Next we jump around in time some more. First we go to a hospital, where for a long time Tayo felt like white smoke—an invisible blob with no consciousness of itself.
- Next we see Tayo in a train station in Los Angeles. His body suddenly feels like it has density again, and all his memories of Rocky and the war come flooding back to him. Tayo starts to cry.
- In the hospital Tayo can't cry, because the medicine erases all the memories of the past . . . and all the pain.
- A new doctor forces Tayo to snap out of his stupor, which isn't fun—all of the pain comes flooding back, and Tayo feels like throwing up. The doctor tells Tayo he's sending him home.
- Back at the train station, Tayo remembers for the first time in a long time that he has a name. He's not feeling so well . . .
- Tayo passes out. Lying on the concrete, he hears voices speaking Japanese and thinks he's back at the prison camp. When he comes to, a group of Japanese women and children are leaning over him.
- The Japanese women call for help. When the station master arrives, they leave. A little boy wearing an Army hat looks back at Tayo and smiles.
- Tayo asks the station master why "those people" aren't locked up, referring to the Japanese women. The station master explains that that had been years before, after Pearl Harbor, but that Japanese Americans had been released and allowed to go home.
- The face of the little Japanese boy reminds Tayo of Rocky's face when they were kids, and it makes him want to vomit.
- OK, now we jump back to the ranch. Tayo is staring at the plaster. Yep, this is one sick guy.
- One way we can tell how Tayo is feeling is by the state of his stomach. And so we bring you the first of many "Tayo Tummy Updates." Right now Tayo knows his tummy is going to begin to "convulse," and he runs outside. Ick.
- It's windy and dusty. The sky is hazy and looks far away. But Tayo can remember a time when he and Rocky went hiking and the sky seemed so close he could touch it.
- Tayo had believed then in "the stories"—until the teachers at Indian school had taught him that they were "nonsense" (V.36).
- But in the war, Tayo had decided that the teachers had been wrong—the stories were true, and Josiah had appeared to him in the jungle.
- Tayo is sitting under a tree in the yard when his friend Harley comes riding up on a burro. Harley looks pretty silly on his ride—the burro doesn't want to walk in a straight line, and Harley's legs practically touch the ground.
- Harley had been in the war at Wake Island with two of their other friends—Leroy and Emo. They had all come back with Purple Hearts. Tayo doesn't think the war has changed Harley much—he's still chubby and likes to joke around.
- OK, maybe one thing is different about Harley—he drinks a lot of beer now.
- Harley didn't use to like beer. Tayo remembers stealing alcohol from old Benny when he, Harley, and Rocky were kids. Harley had thought that beer tasted awful—"like poison!" (V.49)
- Harley says he wants to be helping his family with the livestock, but after what happened they won't let him.
- Here's what happened: Harley had gone to herd sheep for his family. His family was pretty happy about this, because Harley had taken a while to settle down after he got back from the war. But after only a week on the job, Harley abandoned the sheep and took off. A couple days later his folks got a letter from prison. Wild animals had killed thirty sheep and the sheep dog.
- Tayo gets a creepy feeling—maybe Harley has been more affected by the war than he thought. He doesn't seem to feel anything anymore.
- Harley really wants to go get a beer, but Tayo explains that they have no transportation. Harley implies that it's probably because the last time Tayo got drunk, he tried to kill Emo. Casual.
- But Harley is on a mission. He wants that beer and he's going to make it happen. The guys are about 30 miles away from the line of bars on the other side of the reservation boundary. They call barhopping "going up the line" (V.71).
- Harley manages to talk Tayo into riding the stubborn burro and the blind mule up the line. He jokes that they'll set an Indian world's record for longest donkey ride ever made for a cold beer.
- Tayo climbs onto the mule and Harley ties a lead rope to its bridle. Tayo doesn't have the energy to hold onto the reins—he just sort of slouches forward over the mule's shoulders and closes his eyes.
- After a while Harley closes his eyes, too, and takes a nap. The burro can tell Harley's not paying attention and wanders off the road to munch on some grass. Every fifteen minutes or so Harley wakes up to set the donkey train back on track.
- Tayo's mind continues to wander. He thinks about Josiah and wishes he were around so Tayo could tell him how he's been feeling.
- The old blind mule reminds Tayo of old Grandma. They're both old and persistent.
- Tayo recalls how old Grandma would constantly bring up Rocky's name after the war, even though she knew it made Tayo cry.
- Everyone had expected great things of Rocky, who was going to be a college football hero. Tayo's family mourns Rocky by constantly remembering his plans.
- Tayo feels there has been an accident in time and space—Rocky is still alive in the minds of his family, while Tayo is dead. Somehow the corpses got mixed up.
- Back to the present. Tayo, on the old blind mule, starts to cry. Suddenly, the memory of the flash flood and Rocky's death overwhelms him—he feels like he's experiencing it all over again. He falls off the mule.
- Harley helps Tayo up and leads him to the shade. He blames Tayo's fall on sunstroke. Tayo is sick…again.
- A large space on the page indicates a change in scenery. We're in New Laguna at Tayo's Auntie's house, right when Tayo gets back from the hospital in Los Angeles.
- Tayo Tummy Update: Let's just put it this way—Tayo spent the night in the bathroom on the train.
- Tayo knows his Auntie will take care of him while he's bedridden, just like she took him in when he was a kid to cover for her younger sister.
- Auntie doesn't do these things out of the goodness of her heart, but because the extra suffering will prove to everyone what a good Christian woman she is. She has a classic martyr complex.
- At the end of the first week, Auntie changes the sheets on all the beds, as though Rocky and Josiah were still living there. When she changes Tayo's sheets, she puts him in Rocky's bed. He freaks out because he can feel the outline of Rocky's body in the mattress, and it feels like a coffin.
- Tayo prefers to lie in the dark so he can cry about Rocky and Josiah and some sort of spotted cattle. Guess we'll find out more about them later.
- At first old Grandma and Auntie's husband Robert kind of avoid Tayo because of all the crying and vomiting. Auntie has taken charge of him, and she's pretty mean. Poor Tayo.
- One day Tayo hears Robert coming back from the ranch and calls out to him. Robert tells Tayo all about the latest horse gossip, and Tayo realizes he's never really known Robert very well. Robert has always been quiet—guess you kind of have to be, married to Auntie.
- Robert's feeling kind of overwhelmed now that he's had to take on all of Josiah's old responsibilities. Tayo says that when he gets better he'll help him.
- Robert tells Tayo he's glad he's home, and we feel warm and fuzzy inside.
- Tayo has a dream where Josiah is hugging him like he did when Tayo was a child, and he's overwhelmed by love. He wakes up crying and decides he can't stay in that house—it reminds him too much of everything that's been lost. Tayo wants to go back to the hospital.
- He calls out to old Grandma to tell her they need to take him back to the hospital. She holds his head in her lap and cries with him, then tells him her idea:
- The white doctors haven't helped Tayo at all. Old Grandma thinks they need to call someone else.
- When Auntie gets him, old Grandma convinces her they need to send for a medicine man.
- Auntie objects to old Grandma's plan because she's worried about what people will say—she thinks it'll bring up all sorts of old gossip about Tayo's mother, because Tayo isn't full blooded Native American.
- Grandma tells Auntie to relax. What does she care what people say?
- Auntie gives in, figuring she'll get to say "I told you so" later. Auntie really enjoys being right.
- OK, flash forward a little bit to when old Ku'oosh the medicine man comes by the house. He waits until the women leave, then he pulls his chair close to Tayo's bed and starts to speak in the old dialect of Laguna, mixed with a few English words.
- Ku'oosh talks about an old cave that Tayo remembers from his childhood. He keeps chanting, acknowledging that Tayo might not be familiar with some of his words because of his absent white father.
- Old Ku'oosh tells Tayo that the world is fragile. Tayo's experiences in "the white people's war" are important, not just for his own sake but also for the entire fragile world (V.114).
- Tayo can't seem to figure out how to tell the medicine man that, even though he never killed anyone, he did something far worse: he cursed the rain and caused the drought. He tells the medicine man that he's sick.