During the height of World War II, a Hollywood film production moves to this small rural town for its soft, English light and pastoral charm. A young boy and his two friends, Ken and William Connor, searching for materials for a magic show they’re staging, go up the hill to a prop mansion being built for the movie. They are intercepted by a surly guard who tells them that the prop mansion will be blown up in the movie. The boys leave the mansion back down the hill to continue working on their magic show.  Still in search of materials, they unsuccessfully visit the dump and then plot to steal some of the extra boards and planks from the mansion facade. While William Connor and Ken advance on the hill, undetected, to steal the planks, the narrator distracts the guard. The narrator anxiously distracts the guard with conversation about a local farmer, Lee Hiram, whose large farm is visible from the prop mansion on top of the hill. They also talk about Ronnie Hiram, Lee’s oldest of 9 children who went off to fight “Roosevelt’s war.” The boys successfully accomplish their mission and store the planks in a ditch on Lee Hiram’s farm.  They boys wake up the next morning for church and discover on their way that the planks are gone from where they left them. They all suspect the security guard who the narrator was certain knew the plan all along. Later, they learn that Ronnie Hiram was killed in El Guettar during Germany’s invasion and the locals all mourn his loss. The narrator and his mother visit Lee Hiram and just as they are leaving, searchlights and smoke fan above the air over the hill at the mansion where the war-film is being produced—a sad juxtaposition to Lee Hiram, grieving his dead son.  The narrator later rides up the hill and meets the security guard as they are packing up the production and about to demolish the set. He tells the guard that Ronnie Hiram had been killed in the war. The guard, still resentfully unimpressed by Ronnie’s valor, laments his life. The narrator rides his bike back down the hill towards Lee Hiram’s and falls off his bike into a ditch. The Hiram’s take him into their house where they regale each other in the honored memory of Ronnie.