In 1833, as Moses Beno, a surly and chronically distrustful misanthrope, tends to his garden, a large steamer coming from up river approaches his dock. Moses retrieves his shotgun from the house where his wife and son, Calvin, who soils his pants at the grandeur of the ship, are instructed to wait. The captain and 4 men unload a coffin into a rowboat and row to the dock where Moses stands waiting with his shotgun loaded and cocked at their faces remarking that they wouldn’t pass the house his wife and child are in.

Aboard the ship a few days earlier, a crew member had keeled over from cholera and the captain, so as not to stir any panic aboard the ship, convened the crew and demanded that if anyone asked, he died from delirium tremens. Wanting to give the young man a Christian burial, he sails down the river towards a small gravesite near Beno’s cabin. Beno, fully aware of the cholera plague that had traveled from up river, denies the captain and his men passage through his land past his house at the threat of death. The captain and his crew sail further down river to bury the body. 

A year later, in 1834, Moses Beno contracts cholera and dies, survived by a wife and 2 boys and much later, his story is told and retold. Calvin recollects the day and recalls that his father was so distrustful of other people that he can’t be confident that his father was even interested in protecting him and his mother. Much later, the story is told again, and many of the details are incorrect. In one instance, and recalled by Moses’ nephew 2 generations later, the captain and crew landed with multiple bodies. In another iteration told by Ted Adams, Moses shot at the crew and boat.