After graduating from high school in Memphis, seventeen-year-old Allan Seager meets George L’Hommedieu at the YMCA pools. George is about twenty-four or twenty-five and upon seeing that he cannot swim, Allan offers to teach him, not having anything to do as a result of not being able to find a job. Allan finds George very elegant and feels proud that he successfully teaches him how to swim. One day, George offers Allan his job at the Memphis branch of the Illinois Board & Filler Company, saying that he is moving North to work at a glass company and his old job would be easy work for Allan. Allan accepts, and George takes him on a tour of the facility, explaining that they make egg-case fillers, cardboard contraptions that people can put thirty dozen eggs in. George introduces Allan to Mr. Cathey, the foreman, and Allan shakes Mr. Cathey’s hand but realizes that he doesn’t talk very much. George stays to teach Allan for two weeks and then leaves to the North.  After George leaves, Allan realizes there isn’t much to do at work and explores. He finds monstrous rats as well as a chicken yard outside. Mr. Cathey tells Allan that they are game chickens and he fights them on Sunday mornings to make money. Spring comes, and Allan finds that he still doesn’t have much to do. However, he does take inventory of the facility’s stock and realizes that he has lost 1500 cases. A letter arrives from the president of the company, who writes, “What the hell are you doing down there, Allan?” Allan then replies with condolences to another letter of a client explaining that his establishment burned down, and six months later, he learns that the client believes he is crazy. By the beginning of the summer, Allan decides to give up on being a good employee and reads books at his desk. He does try to bond with Mr. Cathey and learn about his experiences fighting in World War II, but Mr. Cathey never gives straight answers about how he feels. Mr. Cathey does, however, tell Allan about his various affairs, but when he says that he once made love to a woman fifteen times in one night, Allan scoffs with disbelief and upsets him. Allan finds Mr. Cathey uglier than ever but finds that his determination to defend himself makes him a bit more respectable.  In October, Mr. Cathey employs twenty Black women to help run machines in the facility, and Allan decides that his easy days are over. He finds the women beautiful but laments that he can never tell them apart. One day, Mr. Cathey tells Allan one of the women killed another out in the shop with a knife. Allan goes to see the body and sees a huge bloody gash in her neck, a pool of blood on the floor. Angered, Mr. Cathey tells the women to get the body out and get back to work. Allan asks if they should call the police, but Mr. Cathey says they are just Black women (using the N word), so it doesn’t matter. Mr. Cathey is annoyed that he has to find another worker. Eventually, a car comes by to retrieve the body, and Mr. Cathey comments that they will surely have a brass band at the funeral.