In 1920, a girl who works with her stepfather for the town butcher recounts when a woman from a nearby Native American reservation came to work at the shop. While the woman never did anything herself, the girl believes she is the cause of a series of troubling events.

While fighting the Sandinistas in El Salvador, a young American soldier uses hallucinogenic drugs to cope with his fear, making it difficult to determine what's real and what's not.