Harrogate starts exploring the city’s underground tunnel system, looking for entrances into bank vaults. Harrogate becomes confused in the tunnels. He “began to suspect some dimensional displacement in these descents to the underworld, some disparity unaccountable between the above and the below” (262). That year, locusts take over and battle with nature, making the tunnels even dirtier than before. Harrogate finds a human bone in the tunnels and keeps it. Harrogate finds a barricade and digs at it, uncovering a new wall for which he decides he needs dynamite.

When Suttree visits Harrogate, he finds Harrogate increasingly obsessed with his maps and plans. Suttree is worried Harrogate will blow himself up with the dynamite.

The old junkman stops by Suttree’s houseboat looking for a smoke or a drink. He wants a shotgun for thieves, which Suttree finds harsh. Suttree offers to row him home because it’s late and he’s worried the junkman will get in trouble in his condition. The junkman goes to his brother’s junkyard, but only the junkman’s nephew, Clifford, is there. The junkman accuses his brother of stealing from him.

At night, Suttree wakes up to some disturbance, which he takes to be an earthquake.

Harrogate uses his detonator in the tunnels, and it sends him flying into the air.