Joe Coutts and his father, Bazil, are busy with yard work, digging up saplings that are destroying their home’s foundation. Bazil stops to take a nap, but Joe continues, feeling invigorated. He later sneaks into his father’s study to read legal books, including Felix S. Cohen’s Handbook of Federal Indian Law. Bazil catches his son reading, though does not say anything, perhaps signifying that Joe is now a man and ready for the weight of what he is reading. It is Sunday and both men are hungry. That it is afternoon and Sunday causes them to question where Geraldine, wife and mother, is. The narrative suggests that women are like clocks to men, that men regulate their lives around the well-organized lives of women. With Geraldine’s absence, neither Joe nor Bazil know what to do. They decide to search for Geraldine in town.

Joe and Bazil walk to Bazil’s sister Clemence’s house and borrow the car as Geraldine has taken the family car. Bazil thinks Geraldine might be having car trouble somewhere, while Joe remembers her saying she would go to work to retrieve a file. When they drive to her office, Geraldine is not there.