An old man tells his nephew a story about how an incident involving a stolen lock eventually led to the creation of a town in 19th-century Mississippi.

A young Black aspiring writer takes a job as a janitor in a building near Harvard Square where he befriends his retired predecessor and gains a new perspective on life.

A woman navigates a budding relationship with a hunter. While she is able to look past their differences in taste and politics, she struggles to reconcile the hunter's infidelity and deception.

When a man's wife gets swept up in the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, he agrees to tag along on a march in Boston while sick in order to save their shaky marriage.

A young, optimist white teacher in New York takes a job at an all-Black school, determined to break through to his students and properly teach them, despite being stuck in a school system that has continually failed them.

A young woman embarks on a voyage across the Atlantic, leaving her boyfriend behind. Her good-bye reminds her of when she almost married an artist in Mexico.

In an airport terminal, a former boxer recounts to his coworker about the time he punched a classmate outside of the ring and the traumatic events that transpired.

When an isolated group of US soldiers are on an expedition in the Arctic, one shoots and wounds an owl and takes it back to camp as a pet. One of his associates thinks that the owl should be killed or set free, and acts accordingly.