The day after planting the potatoes, Luke walks out to the garden to find it destroyed. His mind immediately assumes animal destruction, but he quickly realizes there are footprints all over the garden. They are from the same type of shoes he wears. He also notices that some of the shoe prints are bigger than his own while others are smaller. When he realizes that several people destroyed his only possession, he begins to cry, apologizing in his mind to his two older brothers for yielding to his emotions.

Luke cleans himself up in the creek after mourning the loss of his garden and angrily wonders who is responsible. He calls them “fonrols,” “exnays,” and “leckers” (71). He trudges back to school in dismay but realizes he can’t go inside since everyone is in class. He contemplates running back into the woods, but he knows it isn’t safe anymore. He realizes that other boys must sneak out into the woods regularly, and that the hall monitor was panicked because he was guarding the door to make sure the coast was clear to sneak out. He imagines that they stumbled onto his garden and destroyed it.