It is Halloween in Iowa in 1989. Lance and his wife, Kirsten, stop at a gas station to figure out what is wrong with their car. Lance scams the young mechanic, Bill, to fix up his car for free, by saying he is working for a charity and doesn't have much money to spare. He and his wife leave the gas station and stop at an intersection where Lance reveals several stolen packets of gum he had hidden in his sock. Kirsten complains that one piece of gum would have been enough for her.
Kirsten gets out of the car and walks towards the intersection. She feels cold, as the clothes she is wearing are flimsy and inappropriate for the weather. She and Lance bought them in Florida, and now they are in Iowa. She sees a young girl out trick-or-treating and wonders if she could trick the girl into coming with her. The girl disappears in a cornfield and Kirsten follows her, but when Kirsten tries to grab her hand the girl screams and runs away. Kirsten finds a way out of the field into a different part of town. She knocks on the door of a two-story house. When someone answers, she tries another scheme, handing the women a flyer and claiming to represent a charity. Kirsten invokes the women's pity and convinces her to let her into the warmth. Inside, Kirsten tries to con the woman out of at least 5 dollars, hoping to buy a new bra to keep her breasts warm. The women has nothing to give her and turns her out. Kirsten returns to the car and Lance, and explains that her scheme failed because a man came to the house. Lance lightly scolds her for not using her sexual attraction to her advantage to get money from the man. Kirsten is still cold, and begins to have cravings for heroin, which she used to be addicted to. Kirsten begins to reflect on how she met Lance, in Florida, during her second year of detention. Lance had been addicted to methamphetamines. They had run away together and passed a year employed in a string of odd jobs. Then, Lance had proposed a way to move forward and get some money—by creating a charity for babies addicted to drugs. Back in the present, Lance and Kirsten stop at another house. Lance kicks off the scam, but when he pauses for Kirsten to say her line, she asks the women to give them a place to sleep. Then, she makes an auspicious guess that the women's daughter is dead, and asks the woman to let them sleep in her daughter's room. The woman, surprised, lets them in. In the morning, Lance and Kirsten watch the woman and her husband work outside from the bedroom window. Kirsten asks Lance not to take anything from them, but he only gives a vague smile. Kirsten goes outside to talk to the woman and helps her hang the wash. The old couple is kind to Kristen, offering her a hot shower and offering to fix Kirsten and Lance's broken car. On the road again, Lance asks Kirsten where she disappeared to the day before, when she had followed after the child. Kirsten does not want to tell him. She begins to reflect on her own childhood going through a string of different institutions. Kirsten remembers when a social worker told her that the only thing better than heroin is a future, and Kirsten reveals that that was what Lance had given her. But as Lance suggests they hit a trailer park to knock on more doors, quickly losing faith in Kirsten's suggestion to try a wealthy neighborhood, she begins to doubt that Lance knows best. The first two doors she tries get no response, but a child opens the third door. The girl's mother comes and lets Kirsten in, serving her coffee and Pop-Tarts. The woman and Kirsten begin a heartfelt and personal conversation about childhood drug addiction, and eventually the woman signs a check and hands it to Kirsten. Back in the car, Kirsten and Lance have a short conversation. Lance expresses his desire to walk into people's houses unnoticed so he can make some toast. He confesses that he doesn't even care about the addicted babies, he just wants money for gas. Kirsten is not surprised. At the next house, Kirsten meets a racist old man. He knows the old couple that Kirsten and Lance stayed with the night before. He kisses Kirsten on the lips and tells her to give the kiss to the old couple. Then, he gives Kirsten his last 5 dollars. Kirsten and Lance return to the old couple's farmhouse. The old woman, Gen, offers Kirsten some old clothes from her attic. Kirsten kisses Gen and says the kiss is from an old man in town. Gen immediately identifies him as Johnny. Kirsten continues to talk to Gen and guesses how Gen's daughter died—hit by one of the combines in the cornfield at the same time of year. Kirsten further observes that when she and Lance showed up, they never knocked, and that the woman had opened the door expecting it to be her dead daughter. Kirsten confesses that she saw the girl before she came to the old couple's house. That night Gen and her husband Effie serve dinner and dessert for Lance and Kirsten. As the four of them talk, Effie says he will give them money for their cause. Kirsten then moves the conversation to a child's painting hanging on the wall, where four people are labelled. She guesses that Johnny was Gen and Effie's other child, revealing the true identity of the man she had met earlier. Kirsten has a vision of the girl in the field being swallowed up by the combine in the cornfield. Kirsten commands Lance to leave, and writes a thank you note to Gen in crayon. Kirsten and Lance leave, and Lance pulls a handful of stolen jewelry out of his pocket to give to Kirsten. She points out that the jewelry is fake—costume jewelry. Then he tells her to look in the back of the car, where she pulls on a blanket and uncovers a wealth of Iowa corn.