Chapter 5 Summary and Analysis

Chapter 5. The wind is picking up in St. Cloud's. it even awakens the stationmaster, who thinks it is Judgment Day. Melony watches as a few women walk from the first train of the morning up to St. Cloud's. Melony observes that the women that come on the morning train and leave on the afternoon train walk differently when leaving than when coming, as if they carry a heavier burden when leaving without their baby. Dr. Larch, Melony, and Homer all feel something is different in the air. Unknown to them, the stationmaster lays dead in the weeds.

Dr. Larch asks Homer to perform an autopsy on a dead fetus. The mother was killed in a stabbing, and the doctor wants a specific cause of death, since the baby was almost fully developed when the doctor tried to deliver it. Homer performs...