Randy Colburn is buying beer when he gets into a fight with a man who is mean to his (the man's) children. He pushes the man into the man's car, after twisting his arm behind his back, then walks away, victorious. Randy misses his own children, after being kicked out of his house by his wife. He is now living in a camper behind a friends' house and spends most of his free time driving around drinking beer in his car.

Randy drives to a spot by the railroad track where he parks and drinks. He remembers the death of his dog, Blue, in this spot. He used to keep Blue chained up for Blue's safety, but his wife, Carlene, hated that and convinced him to give Blue away to a friend of hers with a dog rescue program. The friend let Blue run loose, and Blue was hit by a train. Randy thinks of Blue as something he gave up for Carlene.

A police officer comes by and Randy hides his beer. The officer talks about Randy's getting kicked out of his house, which is evidently well-known news in the small town. He eventually leaves, but tells Randy he can't stay parked where he is, loitering.

Randy ends up driving to Organ Cave, where he used to work—a cavern with a natural organ of stalagmites that could be tapped to produce different notes. The organ led to significant revenue, as people would book the cavern as a wedding venue. Randy and his wife Carlene were themselves married in the organ cave, after they met there while he was giving a tour. Randy blames "the hippie man" for his being fired from his job there, and for the subsequent crumbling of his marriage.

The hippie man came to town mid-April offering a minimum of $5000 in shared profits for someone to grow marijuana for him to come back and collect. Carlene took him up on it, to Randy's dismay. The couple was struggling to make ends meet, but he feared they would end up prison and their kids would be put in foster homes.

The stress of this, he reasons, is what caused him to spiral into alcoholism, which ultimately led to the loss of his job. Small pieces of the organ were being stolen by cave robbers. Mrs. Bennett, Randy's boss, put a $2000 reward out for the robbers. One afternoon, Randy, was giving a tour and accidentally got himself and a group of tourists locked in the cave—a kid must've pulled the bear gate closed. Because of his drunkenness, Randy didn't have the emergency key he was meant to have. Moreover, he kept making false promises that help was on its way and even offering tourists swigs from his flask. He was fired. He went home, and Carlene said, "Thank God we've got the weed." At dawn, Randy uprooted all the plants, destroying them.

In the present, Randy visits the fields where the organ thieves would sneak into tunnels to break into the caves from. He dances drunkenly on the edge of a well and falls down into it, injuring himself. He cries for help, thinking nobody will find him until it's too late. He recalls Carlene almost dying in childbirth and thinks about how much he loves her. Then: voices. Two men find him—evidently the organ thieves, though in his drunken state Randy doesn't put two and two together. He hears one say "—reward's worth more than that." Then, he hears them make a phone call, saying they've caught the organ thief—and that there's a backpack on the rim of the well with a piece of the organ in it to prove it.