Lucynell sits on her porch with her daughter, and a strange man approaches her. He is young, but has the expression of a much older person, and from up closer Lucynell can tell that he is an amputee. She greets him, but he doesn’t say anything back for a while. Then, he tells her he would spend a fortune to live in a house like hers just to see the sun set every evening. He also looks around and observes that Lucynell has a car, but she quickly tells him that it hasn’t ran in years. The man finally introduces himself as Tom Shiftlet, and suddenly states that the world is rotten. He continues on in a spiral, and repeatedly emphasizes that the world is not as it was before, and that people lie all the time. After a while, Lucynell finds out that Tom is a carpenter and offers him a job, but mentions that she cannot pay him outside of giving him food and a place to sleep. He reluctantly takes up the offer. Despite his perceived unwillingness to work for no money, Tom makes an effort to fix up Lucynell’s residence. Within a week, he patches up the front and back steps, builds a new hog pen, restores a fence, and teaches Lucynell’s deaf daughter how to say the word “bird.” Impressed, Lucynell attempts to persuade Tom to pursue her daughter romantically, and Tom agrees to marry her after a while. After the wedding, Tom convinces Lucynell to give him some money to take her daughter on a nice honeymoon. He takes the money and her car, and leaves Lucynell in a restaurant minutes into the trip. As he drives away, Lucynell sees a hitchhiking boy get into Tom’s car, but shortly after the boy opens the door and falls out.