Bess Freemont is a poor widow living somewhere between Tennessee and Alabama. She continues to squat on another farmer's land after that same cotton farmer kills her husband, E.J., over a stolen ham. Out of guilt and sympathy, the farmer, Travis Bolton, allows Bess and her infant son Clay to remain on his land. This peaceful state of survival is interrupted years later when Glaine Bolton, the son of Travis, tells Clay who killed his father. After stewing over this throughout his adolescence, Clay goes to avenge his father's death. Glaine shoots Clay before he can murder Travis, who had become a pastor, leaving Bess behind without a husband or son. As she goes about preparing to bury him she recalls the day that her husband died and the kindness of Travis, how he gave them a means of survival and small gifts along the way, like food and a cow so that Clay could have milk. Bess also recalls how she first married E.J. and their idyllic first months together where they travelled and laughed together. She remembers how Travis wheeled E.J.'s body to her and left him on her living room floor. As Bess recalls these things she is looking for a priest to give her son a Christian burial. She is unable to find her usual pastor, and the Black pastor who E.J. had abused for being Black rejects her outright. In the end, the only person who she can turn to to is Travis Bolton himself.