In June 1972 in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, a developer tears up a Hayes Street lot on Chicken Hill to prepare for new townhouses, and Pennsylvania State Troopers discover a skeleton at the bottom of an old well. They find a belt buckle, a pendant, and red cloth remnants, and their first stop is the nearby house of an elderly Jewish man living at the site of the old synagogue.

The troopers show the man the jewelry and ask what it is. He identifies it as a mezuzah and brushes off their questions with sarcasm, saying “Jewish life is portable” when they note it belongs on doors. The troopers press him about Hebrew and suggest he is “Malachi the dancer,” but he claims he quit dancing forty years earlier.

When asked about the building’s ownership, Malachi points to the imposing Tucker School above the neighborhood and says they have tried to buy him out for thirty years. The troopers call him a suspect, and when he reaches into his pocket they panic, but he only produces pens and even offers one to them. They leave, promising to return after the skeleton is removed and the scene examined further.

The next day, Hurricane Agnes hits, knocking out power and flooding the region as the Schuylkill River rises. In the chapter’s telling, the storm wipes out the investigation by washing away the well, the remains, and any usable evidence, casting it downstream to the ocean.

The narration also claims the hurricane settles old scores: Miss Chona, a Jewish woman who was wronged, receives “justice,” the “Son of Man” is gone from the country, and Dodo—the deaf boy—is still alive, with a camp in Montgomery County established because of him. After the hurricane, the troopers cannot find anything to charge “them Jews,” and when they later come back for Malachi, he has vanished, leaving only a sunflower or two behind.