Mack, a twenty-year-old young man living in Mississippi, goes looking for fights at bars on the weekends with his trainer, a retired boxer named Don. Don's wife Betty and their fourteen-year-old son Jason tag along, most of the time waiting in the truck while Mack goes in to fight and Don collects money from bets. They almost always leave with well over five hundred dollars of winnings in one night. When he wins one hundred fights, Don plans to send Mack to a promoter he knows in New York. So far, he has won almost ninety. Before him, Don had trained another boy, Pig-Eye Reeves, who went on to become very successful in New York. Though his parents want him to come home and take over at the hardware store, Mack knows he can never give up fighting, though sometimes he almost wants to. To train, Don attaches weights to Mack's feet and wrists and takes after him on his horse Killer, slicing the boy with his whip whenever he gets too close. They run like that through the woods for an hour at a time, until Don turns the horse toward the lake, and the boy swims with his two dogs at his side to where the horse can no longer follow. Then they all gather for lunch, and at night Mack sleeps in the guest cottage while Don, Betty, and Jason go back to their house at the top of the hill. Mack usually returns to the lake at night, floating on his back and wondering if he can succeed in New York and if he even wants to. Jason loves listening to his father's stories, especially the ones about Pig-Eye Reeves. Don explains that he first found Pig-Eye when he challenged one of his fighters and won, and so Don left the boy he was training knocked out at the bar and went home with his new fighter. Pig-Eye went on to win several major fights, causing him to be ranked fifth as a heavyweight champion. When he first got knocked down in a fight, however, he wasn't able to get back up. After he lost, Pig-Eye rented a hot air balloon, a hobby he was known for, and cut the ropes when he was as high up as it could go. Don makes sure to train Mack to get up after being knocked out, sometimes shoving a handkerchief with chloroform at him during practice and forcing him to fight through it, even when everything spins and he starts to black out. Don tells Mack a different story about Pig-Eye, however. After years of fighting, Don's memory is not always reliable, so he is not sure which story is true. In this other version, Pig-Eye comes back to Don to train after losing the fight. Then, one night, Don sees Pig-Eye, with weights tied to his wrists and ankles, swimming out to the middle of the lake. The lake is searched, but no body is ever found.