Carter is a white schoolteacher at a newly desegregated school in the American South. He's in his friend Mercer's bar with a few other men. Something awful has happened. The men discuss a wounded white boy, one of Carter's students, in the hospital in a coma. Before entering the coma, the boy said Jess Calgary, a Black boy who is also one of Carter's students, was the one who injured them. There are also two witnesses who say they found the two boys fighting in an alley.
The men anticipate a mob of white men forming. Mercer recommends Carter leave town in case they come for him, too. Many disapprove of Carter's ideas of integrated education and will hold those ideas as the cause of this. The men decide the best course of action is for Carter to take Jess to the station and turn him in, to pre-emptively prevent a mob going to his rural neighborhood to get him themselves. Carter very reluctantly agrees.
Carter picks up Jess in the early morning. He notices all the families have sent away their women and children in anticipation of the mob. He tells Jess's father nobody was hurt in the fight and that the police just want to ask some questions and he'll bring Jess back. Jess's father makes him promise. Jess is beat up, half of his face shattered, and various other wounds including a stab wound above his kidney.
In the car, Carter asks Jess why he had to knife the boy and Jess tells Carter he didn't; in fact, he did nothing but defend himself. It was three against one--the two supposed "witnesses" were actually there the whole time, helping the white boy attack Jess and beat him with a lead pipe. They would've killed him. And it wasn't Jess's knife that killed the white boy.
Carter stops the car and tells Jess to get out and run. He implies that they'll kill him otherwise, but Jess refuses. He says his father and neighbors knew Carter was lying--they had talked the previous night about how the best course of action was for Jess to turn himself in to protect the others. If Carter won't give him a ride, he'll walk himself.
Carter drops Jess off at the police station, where a crowd has formed. Carter's friends usher Jess inside safely, then Carter drives home to sleep, feeling tired and sick.
