A man in prison is questioned by a visitor. The prisoner remarks that he likes small towns because everyone knows everyone else, and the behavior of individuals is predictable. However, he says that there was one person in the town that he could never figure out, and that was Lum Zither. The visitor says that he was in the prisoner's town and wanted to ask him about Lum. The prisoner responds that sometimes it is as clear as day, but other times it is all foggy and jumbled, However, he says that he did what any other white man would have done. Lum was the prisoner's best friend growing up, and he was adopted from the South somewhere. When Lum was twenty, his parents died and left him their shack with land. The prisoner notes that Lum had black curly hair, but he wasn't any darker than the prisoner himself, and that he would not have spent time with Lum or let his sister marry him if he suspected that he was not fully white. The prisoner also notes that the Colonel in the town hated Black people, and could always tell when someone was not fully white, but he did not ever say anything about Lum. The prisoner says that one time, Lum cut his finger. When he saw his blood, he stared at it and said "Oh God" multiple times, and wiped it away. The prisoner thinks that maybe Lum suspected he had mixed blood. Lum was deathly white for a little while, but then he got better and started playing the banjo. In the middle of the song, however, he slipped into a black person's song. The prisoner thought that Lum seemed to be a thousand miles away when he was singing, but he tells the visitor that he did not suspect that Lum was colored from the singing. The night after Lum cut his finger, the prisoner had a dream where he was walking with Lum, and Lum started singing a Black song. As Lum was singing, the prisoner saw a Black man come running towards them, chased by a white mob. This dream always comes back to the prisoner at night. The prisoner tells of a carnival that happened. The prisoner's sister was not there, because she was having a child with Lum, so Lum had sent her to her mother to stay for a few months. Lum was not at the carnival at first, either. In the middle of the carnival, two Black men showed up and roped off a section for a show. One of the Black men had a white woman with him, and the woman was holding a Black baby that she had had with the man. This makes the prisoner feel sick. He was worried that Lum was not there, and the dream was in the back of his mind. Soon, the Colonel came and told the Black men to clear out. One of the men started talking back to the Colonel, which angered the man. The Colonel whammed the Black man on the head with his cane. The prisoner saw Lum in the crowd, staring at the white woman with the Black baby. The white woman screamed, and everyone stood frozen. When she stopped screaming, the Black men were running away through the crowd. Somebody yelled to get them. The crowd took off after the Black men, and Lum was trailing right behind the two Black men. Lum had looked back with fear on his face. Lum and the two Black men ran into the river, and the mob yelled at Lum to get the bigger man. A rock hit the smaller Black man, and he went down and did not come back up. Lum and the larger man kept running. A gun cracked at the larger man, and he went down. Lum was gone, too. The prisoner started thinking about how it seemed that Lum was running from the crowd not after the Black men, which he would not do unless he was black himself. Some boats went out to search for Lum, but they did not find him. The prisoner was relieved by this. Back at the carnival, the white woman was rocking on the ground with her baby, moaning. She asked the prisoner what would become of her child, and he asked if it belonged to the Black man, which she said yes to. The prisoner tells the visitor that at the time he was sure that Lum was running with the Black men, but now things are foggy. Regardless, he says that he did what he had to do whether or not he was sure of Lum. He says that he could not have been sure that Lum was white after he died, and so there was only one thing to do. He says that any white man would have done the same thing, and his sister would have wanted him to do what he did because there are things worse than dying. He says that he would have killed his sister whether she wanted him to or not, because he did not want to take any chances of her baby not being born white. The visitor still does not understand the prisoner's actions, and the prisoner asks where in the name of God he was brought up.