- It's hard to tell what's going on—this chapter is a stream-of-consciousness narrative full of all the characters and many images from the book.
- Joel seems to be having fever dreams, and wakes up to the sound of a rocking chair. Sometimes it's Amy sitting in it, other times Randolph or Zoo, even a pirate.
- He is taking medicine, people are caring for him, and finally, one day, he comes out of it.
- Randolph is sitting up with him and Joel asks if he hates him for going away. Randolph kisses him on the forehead and tells him to lie back.
- Joel is sick for a long time, and Randolph stays with him.
- One day he gets a postcard from Idabel, asking why he hid.
- He believes that she's run away with Miss Wisteria, but the card says she's been sent to live with family in Alabama.
- Randolph tells Joel that Little Sunshine wants to see them and that they must go visit the Cloud Hotel. He also explains that Zoo came back.
- He asks what happened on her journey and she tells him that she was gang-raped and tortured by a group of white men.
- Joel plugs his ears; he doesn't want to hear Zoo's tragic story.
- Randolph and Joel take the mule to the Cloud Hotel, not exactly dressed for a hike through the woods. They're cold and uncomfortable but finally make it to Drownin Pond and the hotel.
- Little Sunshine is not expecting them and tries to shoo them away before he realizes who they are. Joel realizes that Randolph has lied to him; he said that Little Sunshine had invited them.
- It turns out that Little Sunshine has fixed up the little apartment in the hotel really nicely, though the rest of the building is in ruins.
- Little Sunshine and Randolph start boozing.
- Suddenly a terrible noise starts and Little Sunshine and Randolph, drunk as skunks, realize that it's the mule that has come up the stairs.
- Joel and Little Sunshine go out and see him, but the mule, terrified, crashes over the stair rail and hangs himself from the beam by his reins.
- In the morning Randolph tells Joel not to wake up Little Sunshine, and they leave the hotel, past the dead mule hanging in the lobby.
- Randolph is in a weird mood, and Joel tries to cheer him up. When that doesn't work he realizes it's up to him to find the way home.
- When they get home they see Zoo trying to pull the old slave bell out of the ground and Amy shouting at her to lift it. When Amy sees Randolph she tells him to leave her alone because she'll report him to the sheriff. He ignores her so she begs him to let her have "it," and tells him that she told a woman that "they'd" gone off on a squirrel hunt.
- Zoo is annoyed that Amy made her work so hard because no one will ever buy the old bell.
- Joel asks Zoo who had been there, and she says it was a woman from New Orleans with a deaf child. Joel realizes it must have been his aunt Ellen and his cousin, Louise, who's deaf.
- He hears a sound as though the bell has tolled, and expects some magic to transport him back home to New Orleans.
- Suddenly he looks up at the window upstairs and sees, in Randolph's window, the lady, beckoning to him.
- Joel walks into the house, but turns and looks back, at the boy he had left behind.