Hake Morris has always been a poor man. He and his wife, a very tall woman with significant Cherokee heritage, spend their lives moving from farm to farm in rural Tennessee as sharecroppers. Decades into their life together, they finally secure something like a permanent place at a rich man's farm when he switches to machine-based cultivation. Hake is very good at that, so he, his wife, and their youngest son, Big Boy, stay. One day, the wealthy lawyer Oman Hedgepath comes to visit. He is very interested in the town's football team, he tells Hake, and he wants Big Boy to play. Hake is resistant at first, worried about losing Big Boy's labor, but when Hedgepath tells him that he, too, grew up on a farm and that he would make sure Big Boy made enough money to support his family, his tune changes. Over Cuban cigars and expensive whiskey, they agree that Big Boy will play football. He leaves with Hedgepath that night. Afterward, Hake and his wife sit in their kitchen, finishing the lawyer's whiskey and cigars. For the first time in their married life, she begins talking about her Indigenous grandparents and -- most uncomfortably of all for Hake -- singing her grandmother's rain dance. Struck by the distinct feeling that he has made some terrible choice in life, he becomes increasingly agitated as she sings, drinks more whiskey than him, and smokes the cigar that he cannot. After he abruptly runs outside to finish his farmwork for the day, he crawls into bed next to his sleeping wife, feels the emptiness where Big Boy had been, and thinks about the rain.