- Vardaman goes out to the porch, crying. He goes over to the ground where he dropped the fish he caught and thinks about how, now, the fish is in pieces of "not-fish." He’s basically trying to understand his mother’s death through the fish as example. (Remember, he’s just a little kid.)
- He immediately scapegoats his mother’s death on Peabody, reasoning that before the doctor had arrived, she had been alive.
- Vardaman runs to the stalls, vomiting and crying.
- He throws sticks at Peabody’s horses, crying out that they killed his mother. The horses run off.
- Cash comes and takes in the scene. He hopes that they run past Tull’s house.
- Vardaman can hear Dewey Dell calling out for him to eat dinner. He struggles to understand death, since the fish was once right there on the ground and is now on the table for supper.