The events described in Chapter 5 take place where most of the events of Chapter 1 took place, on the Bannon farm a few miles outside Aven. In fact, Chapter 5 reintroduces all of the characters the reader encountered in Chapter 1: Joe Bannon, Jeanie Bannon and two of Buck's younger brothers, Hearn and Jeff. Buck's return to the Bannon farm takes place about 1889, two years after Buck made the decision to move to Aven when he turned 18. Times have changed on the Bannon farm. Even though Joe Bannon is still a prosperous farmer, time and hard labor have taken its toll on old man Bannon and as he loses his strength the Bannon farm risks falling apart because when it comes to Buck's younger brothers "ain't neither one of them too much hand to work."

Chapter 5 opens with Buck loosening the reins on his little red mare so he can speed his shiny new rubber-tired buggy down the road toward the Bannon family farm. He's wearing a derby hat and dressed in his Sunday best coat and tie but protected from the road dust by a driving coat. 20 year-old Buck has now acquired all the hallmarks of a successful businessman but it's hard to  imagine that a former farm boy who'd never left home during his first eighteen years of life would move to a town only a few hours wagon ride away from his childhood home and then wait two years before returning to visit his parents and twelve brothers and sisters at the old home place but once the reader understands the purpose of Buck's mission, his absence begins to make sense.  Buck hasn't visited his parents in two years because Buck was too busy making money and now he plans on using that money to create a better life for his large family. Buck senses that the new growing season will be his father's last cotton crop but Buck believes he has a way for his father to avoid the grave, to cease his hard labor and to enjoy his last days by leaving the Bannon farm and moving to Aven. Buck feels he can successfully convince his parents to make such a drastic change because he's now made enough money in Aven to make it happen. 

It had been four months since Buck closed the deal to buy Green's store in Aven and by this time, he'd accumulated enough cash from that enterprise along with his payday loan business to accomplish his mission which according to Bascom in Interlude #2 was "to argy his folks into movin' to Aven." There will be one person in the Bannon family who Buck won't have to convince to move and that's his brother Hearn who, upon Buck's arrival at the Bannon place, sees Buck's latest fashion and brand-new rig and exclaims, "Look here, Buck. Take me back when you go. Maybe I can get a buggy, too." Convincing Buck parents to leave the family farm and move to Aven was going to be a lot more challenging than convincing his little brother.

Buck had taken on a great challenge when he decided that after a two year absence, he would return to the Bannon farm and reframe reality for his family by convincing his parents to leave their farm. If experience is the measure of a life then the commercial life of a railroad town beats the Bannon farm every time but if the measure of one's life is love and companionship, then the family farm beats the Aven rat race every time. Buck understands this as he approaches the Bannon place in his new rubber-tired buggy. He reminisces about the smells and tastes of his childhood, saying to himself, "Hey, Lord, a little eatin' like that will make me forget the grubbin' I been doin'. Sellin' and buyin' all day and lendin' and collectin' most of the night. Worth it, though, ever' minute of it." In Chapter 1, Buck let his parents know what he thought of their farm when he joked that the hump in his nose "comes o' rootin' for vittles in this here sorry clay." Now in Chapter 5, Buck has sharpened his argument when he tells his father, "Farmin' right now ain't helpin' you none." To his Mother, Buck is even more brutal in his opinion of the Bannon farm's future, "Sell it, or throw it away. Do anything, but get Papa off it." 

One of Jeanie Bannon's favorite expressions is, "Shirtsleaves to shirtsleaves." This 19th century maxim refers to the tendency of the children of those who have escaped poverty to squander what wealth their parents have accumulated and to see the family return to a state of poverty. Buck shares the same fear as his mother and his attempt to create his own commercial empire in Aven is his way to avoid catastrophe because Buck knows that he will never take his father's place on the family farm and he also knows his brothers will never succeed at farming. As he tells his mother, "...they won't never put out enough on this place to help Pa much. This ain't no one horse farm. It needs good labor and lots of it."

Buck has an alternative to farming. Buck proposes that the family move to Aven so they can "farm" the farmer. Buck asserts to his mother,"Look, pore farmers have got to be furnished and somebody's got to furnish them...See here, the man that does the furnishin' makes more'n the farmer. You know that. Rent him his land, sell him his tools, seeds, guano, anything he wants. He'll own you and he won't like you. He'll cuss you, but you'll have to take it. He may kick you, but take it. Then, by God, if he makes a crop, take it."

Aven's dishonest commercial world which Buck describes to his mother abounds with every social evil associated with greed gratification but Buck's argument makes an impression on Jeanie Bannon. She knows that the farm's future is unsustainable. As she tells Buck, "A man breaks land for forty years but the land don't break a man but once." But Aven's ways aren't the Bannon ways and Mrs. Bannon cannot imagine selling her family's hard earned land and moving to a town where "them pickpockets'll fight over you." Buck ends his sales pitch to his mother before it turns into an argument by saying, "You all muddle it out tonight. It won't hurt." With that mother and son call it a night and go to bed. 

From his pallet on the floor in the children's room, Buck finds himself unable to sleep. Laying there, Buck listens to the sounds coming from his parents' room. When he hears his mother get out of bed and walk into the kitchen to the back porch, Buck gets up and follows her outside and whispers, wanting to know what his father said about moving to Aven. His mother replies, "What did he say? What he said don't count. It's other things. It was him- fumblin' at the ham tonight, and hackin' it up when he used to cut it like butter. It's me havin' to button his shirt and make out like I'm doin' it for fun. It's them things, them, and him turnin' over in yonder and flingin' his poor stiff hands out in his sleep. They're the things that'll move us."

Buck knows that his mother is the decision maker in the family and that this is one decision that she doesn't want to have to make. Buck leaves his mother on the back porch but before closing the door, he overhears her prayer which she whispers and she stands on the porch looking up to the heavens, "Please don't let me be scared of all them folks."

Mrs. Bannon understands that there is no alternative to leaving the farm so the family will move to Aven but she will never forget the cotton farm. She and her family's memories of the good things about farm life will become an Edenic myth. In modern Aven the Bannons will will preserve many of their rural customs and continue to eat their country cooking as reminders of the happier and more harmonious life they lived but lost when they left the farm.