After thirty years of addiction, Harris Greeves runs the drugs out of his system. As he tries to break free with exercise, therapy, and volunteering, he muses that maybe he used the narcotics to escape trauma. His family was what they called "white trash," especially Gomer, his father. His mother, a "better sort," became a successful secretary, and the young couple had ambition. Loans from a banker, Mr. Pool, bought them a beautiful home, a yard, two cars, and a country club membership, which catapulted him into what passed for their Arkansas town's gentility. One weekend when Harris is ten, Gomer takes him on a long trip to said gentility's deer lodge. Reality quickly intrudes on their relaxation, as Gomer has assumed, wrongly, that a gift of land has slashed his delinquent debt to Pool. While the men drink, he orders Harris into his room while he plays a high-stakes game of chess with his lender. Gomer becomes a different person, and adopts an oddly feminine, haughty persona when he plays chess, and his skill is considerable. His game with Pool lasts three days, during which Mr. Kervochian, the town druggist, begins to take care of Harris. After Gomer wins, however, hell breaks loose. Harris and the men return from a hunt to find Pool pistol-whipping his debtor in the yard, and when Harris stands between the two, all his father can manage is to crow, yet again, that he won the match. A week later, Gomer throws himself in front of a car. Kervochian, addicted to opiates himself, gets Harris hooked, too, and only his death from pancreatic cancer inspires Harris to quit.