Chapter 12 Summary

Years pass and Mervin Wendell becomes a realtor, and Phillip is sent away to music school while his mother becomes a leader among the middle-class society of Centennial. Phillip refuses to perform for family or friends on his visits home, and his mother comes to realize that the murder and his role in the cover-up affected him more than she'd thought at the time. Mervin sometimes teases about it, saying that for his birthday he wants only to know where they hid the body. They never tell him and these statements anger Phillip.

Potato Brumbaugh grows huge sugar beets on his farm and continues to ship them to a factory where they are processed into sugar until the time comes when a factory is built locally, prompting others to begin sugar beet farms of their own. Potato, by now seventy years old, faces...