One day in October, a boy named Loxey Cunningham finds a dime glinting in a pile of leaves on the corner of the road. He feels around the leaves to see if there is another coin, but all he pulls out is the stub of a cigarette. All of a sudden, someone is standing over Loxey asking if his father knows he has started smoking. Loxey looks up and sees his Uncle Jake, a fat pig-eyed man. Loxey and his four siblings sometime got sent over to Jake's house when their mother had a baby come over to take care of. Their father told them to do whatever Uncle Jake said, which they did not understand because Uncle Jake did not go to church. When they were at his house, Uncle Jake would insult them and say crude things about their mother. When he saw Loxey with the cigarette stub, Uncle Jake said that he should be ashamed that he is picking up cigarette stubs with his father being a good Christian member of the church. Loxey responds that he thought he saw a marble in the leaves. Uncle Jake spits at Loxey and says he is going to tell his father. Loxey leaves, not caring about Uncle Jake because he has his dime in his pocket. Loxey sits at the depot where it is crowded and his uncle and father will not find him. He thinks about what he should buy with his dime. He thinks about Uncle Jake's house, and how they are fed more food there. Once time, Uncle Jake was in town, so his wife Aunt Millie fed the children. Loxey pulled a piece of white bread that he was excited to eat. All of a sudden, Uncle Jake came home. He was drunk, and angry that they were eating without him. He clamped down hard on Aunt Millie's wrists. There were six kids there; Loxey, his four siblings, and Uncle Jake's niece Betty Lee. Uncle Jake stood over Loxey and flung his bread onto the table. He then knocked Loxey onto the floor. The children wanted to go home, but Uncle Jake made them stay. Betty Lee went home, because her father had a house almost as big as Uncle Jake's. That night as Loxey lay in bed and heard a train, he wondered if he would still have heard the train whistle if he had been dead. At the depot, Loxey hears a train whistle and remembers this event, and he decides that he will buy a loaf of bread with his dime. He walks down the street, trying to decide where to eat it because he does not want to share it with his siblings. As he walks down the street, he sees Ed Journeyman's mama on her porch, with Aunt Millie talking to her. Aunt Millie calls and asks what Loxey has in the bag. He lies and says that it is an old pair of shoes that a man gave him in town. Aunt Millie asks to see them, and Loxey says he is saving them for Sunday. As Loxey walks away, he thinks of what he will say on Sunday, and decides he will tell everyone he was joking and he just had a bag of leaves. Then, he starts to think about how nobody is at Uncle Jake's house, and how there is buttermilk there that would be delicious with his loaf of bread. He goes to the house, and the door is unlocked. Loxey gets the buttermilk and some butter from the kitchen. All of a sudden, he hears running footsteps, and Betty Lee yells Aunt Millie's name. Betty Lee appears in the kitchen and looks at the stolen goods in Loxey's hands. Loxey tells her that they can split the loaf of bread. Betty Lee is hesitant and says that her mother just sent her over to get eggs. Loxey assures her that it would not be stealing, and that they will be done eating the bread in no time. He assures here that he will take the blame if they are caught. They head towards the barn and settle into a corncrib. All of a sudden, Betty Lee gasps as Uncle Jake appears. He stands over Loxey with his fists clenched. Betty Lee whimpers and blames Loxey, then begins to scream. Uncle Jake bends over, shaking her and saying he is not going to hit her. Seeing his opportunity, Loxey starts to run away. Uncle Jake whirls around and hits him onto the floor, where he continues kicking and beating him. Uncle Jake yells at Loxey, saying that he wanted to have sex with Betty Lee and that he is a kin-robbing kin-raping bastard. When Uncle Jake is done beating Loxey, he takes Betty Lee to go back to the house. Loxey yells to him that he can take everything else, but the loaf of bread is his and he bought it with a dime he found. Betty Lee looks at Loxey and tells Uncle Jake that Loxey stole the bread, and when she caught him he made her come with him. Uncle Jake kicks Loxey again and walks towards the house while Loxey yells, insisting that the bread is his. Loxey jumps up and stands inside the barn, watching Betty Lee and Uncle Jake walk away. He sees a pitchfork in the barn and grabs it. He runs forward madly, stabbing it into Uncle Jake's middle. Loxey watches his loaf of bread fall to the ground as Uncle Jake stops and tries to cough. Betty Lee says that there is blood coming out of Uncle Jake's mouth, and then she starts screaming. Uncle Jake falls to the ground and Betty Lee runs inside. Loxey picks up his loaf of bread and watches as Uncle Jake's blood mixes with buttermilk that has spilled on the ground. He runs back to the barn, to a swamp that is behind the building. He unwraps his bread and sees that it is molded. He feels tired and weary and sits there with his loaf on his knees. In the distance, he hears people shouting as they set out to hunt him. He sits quietly waiting for them, and when he grows hungry he eats a slice of his bread even with the mold on it.