i
- The scene opens in Toronto, where our narrator is sizing up a Polish waitress as she serves him. It's a bit creepy, really.
- He remarks that she has the nervousness of an immigrant without papers—it seems the waitress' displacement strikes a chord with him.
- He notes that the voice of her people is magnified by the great poets of her country.
ii
- Back to Boston, and deeper into autumn—it's almost winter now. The narrator sees Catherine Weldon before him.
iii
- Back in time with Catherine, it is 1890 and the winter of the Ghost Dance.
- We see the advance of the U.S. army forces on the Great Plains—not a good thing for the American Indians—and the departure of the red autumn colors and the coming of the white winter is a prophesy for what will happen to the Native Americans in the massacre to come.