- This poem is a continuation of the last one. Ever since Mama Corn took away the plants and rainclouds the people have been starving. They figure she must be mad about all the Ck'o'yo magic and decide to send someone to ask for forgiveness.
- They notice Hummingbird is looking pretty good these days—fat and shiny, while everyone else is skinny and sickly. What's your secret, Hummingbird?
- He responds that he flies down to the world three worlds below this one to eat. It's like an all-you-can-eat buffet down there!
- In the bar, Harley tells Tayo how lucky he is. He could have gone to jail for stabbing Emo, but instead he just got sent to the hospital again.
- Harley has another beer and starts mumbling to himself in Laguna.
- Tayo starts to think about the day he stabbed Emo. (Yep . . . another flashback!)
- So here's where we finally get to meet Emo. He's loud and drunk. He likes to talk about how the white people have everything while the Indians have nothing. He takes out a little cloth bag that rattles.
- Tayo Tummy Update: Tayo feels a surge of nausea every time he hears the rattle of Emo's little cloth sack. So what does he do? He has another beer . . . or six.
- Tayo is reeeally drunk. The dirty water on the bathroom floor triggers a flashback to the flooded jungle that Tayo had to crawl through. He escapes the bathroom and walks back to the table.
- Emo's glasses are crooked and his face is puffy. He starts to harass Tayo for being part white—he calls him a "half-breed" (VIII.16).
- Tayo knows Emo hates him for being part white, but he's used to that kind of resentment. Auntie has always been ashamed of him.
- When Tayo was a kid, white men in Laguna had pointed at him and winked at one another. It wasn't until years later that he understood the disgrace of Indian women who dated white men.
- Indian men and white women was a different story. Tayo learned about that type of interracial relationship during the war.