Johnny and his mother, Patricia, live in a rural Virginia farmhouse. Patricia has told Johnny that his father died in army training while she was still pregnant with him.

Johnny's mother sends him to get milk for her kittens before a bad storm hits. As Johnny is crossing a bridge he sees an out-of-control pickup hurdling toward him. He jumps off into the icy water and swims to the shore. The pickup has crashed and the driver is dead. He finds a bag full of money and a pistol in the pickup, both of which he takes. As he is leaving, he swears he hears the dead driver say, "I see you, boy." He counts the money at home, keeping it secret from his mother.

The next morning, the town sheriff shows up at their house and tells them about the accident. Evidently the man in the truck was Martin--Johnny's actual father, and a lying scoundrel who left his mother after impregnating her. He had robbed a bank. When the police found the truck, he had walked away, alive after all. They wanted to warn Patricia and Johnny that Martin might come to their house.

Martin shows up and pulls a knife on Patricia, says he recognized Johnny, demands the money back. In an ensuing scuffle, Johnny shoots Martin with Patricia's rifle, killing his father. Then, Patricia asks Johnny where the money is. She proposes to hide it better before deciding what to do.

A boy named Len, whose house neighbors Patricia's and Johnny's, oversees them burying Martin's body in the woods, along with a small box, and becomes determined to find out who Martin is and what is in the box.

Patricia and Johnny buried most of the money in the box, keeping only a couple hundred in the house for expenses. However, when Patricia's car breaks down and she needs to buy a new one, she asks Johnny to go dig up the box. On the way, Johnny daydreams of the life he'll have with that money, which will let him escape Pleasant Grove. However, when he digs the box up, it is empty. He heads back toward the house in a rage, thinking his mother has betrayed him, as she was the only other one who knew about the box--to his knowledge--and prepared to murder her if she doesn't confess.