Cory and Tom get haircuts at Dollar’s Barbershop, owned by Mr. Perry Dollar. The conversation between Mr. Dollar, shoe-shiner Gabriel “Jazzman” Jackson, and an elderly man named Mr. Owen Cathcoate turns to the unsolved murder at Saxon’s Lake. They speculate that the bootlegging Blaylock family is responsible. Mr. Dollar reveals that Donny Blaylock once drunkenly confessed to killing a man.

Mr. Dollar then prompts Mr. Cathcoate to recount his old story about the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Mr. Cathcoate claims that in 1881, as a nine-year-old, he saved Wyatt Earp’s life and subsequently became a gunfighter known as the Candystick Kid, killing 14 men before his gunfighting days ended when a younger, faster man shot him in the left side. When Mr. Dollar mockingly uses the gunfighter nickname, Mr. Cathcoate becomes enraged, warns him never to say the name again, and storms out. Mr. Dollar dismisses the entire story as a fabrication. As Cory gets his hair cut, he sees Mr. Cathcoate walking past Vernon Thaxter, the town’s resident eccentric.

Upon returning home, Cory finds a beautiful new bicycle on the porch—his reward from the Lady. Though Tom is uneasy about accepting it, Rebecca persuades him that the bike is a reward rather than charity. Cory names the bike ‘Rocket’ and discovers it is incredibly fast but difficult to control, crashing it into a hedge on his first ride. While checking for damage, he briefly sees a golden eye in the headlamp before it vanishes.

He finds Davy Ray and Johnny practicing baseball and is introduced to a new boy, Nemo Curliss, a skinny nine-year-old with a lisp. Nemo stuns them by throwing the baseball with phenomenal power and accuracy. He reveals his mother forbids him from playing on a team, believing he is too fragile. Their practice is violently interrupted by the town bullies, Gotha and Gordo Branlin. The Branlins taunt Nemo and are about to urinate on him when Cory intervenes by throwing the baseball at Gordo. In the ensuing fight, the Branlins brutally beat Cory, Davy, and Johnny. Just as they corner Cory again, Nemo stands ready with the baseball, his eyes filled with a terrifying rage. Cory fears the damage he could do to the bullies. Before Nemo can throw the ball, the mailman, Mr. Gerald Hargison, arrives, and the Branlins flee. The boys check their injuries; Johnny, the worst affected, has a broken nose and a severe concussion.

In the aftermath of the fight, Johnny Wilson is diagnosed with a serious concussion that will sideline him for weeks. Sheriff Amory’s visit to the Branlin family results in a minor punishment that Cory knows will only deepen their grudge. He blames the bullies for stealing Johnny’s summer. To cope, Cory covers his bedroom walls with pictures of classic movie monsters, who he feels are misunderstood outsiders like himself. He is also deeply disturbed by images of real-world violence in a Life magazine, including the Kennedy assassination and the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, which introduce a new kind of fear into his world.

One afternoon, while buying milkshakes at the Spinnin’ Wheel with Davy Ray, Cory is captivated by the Beach Boys’ song I Get Around. At a Fourth of July picnic, Reverend Angus Blessett publicly smashes a teenager’s radio for playing the song, calling it satanic and announcing a special sermon to expose its evil. Cory, intrigued, decides he wants to attend. That night, a burning cross is erected in the Lady’s front yard.

The next morning, Rebecca tells Cory the Ku Klux Klan burned the cross to intimidate the Lady, who has been petitioning to integrate Zephyr’s public swimming pool. That Wednesday, Cory and his reluctant parents attend Reverend Blessett’s service after Cory pesters them to do so. The reverend delivers a frantic sermon, condemning the Beach Boys’ song as a tool of Satan that promotes immorality. To prove his point, he plays the record backward, claiming to hear the hidden demonic message, “the devil is my strawberry” (205).

For his finale, Reverend Blessett produces a spider monkey named Lucifer and tries to force it to “dance” to the music. The tormented monkey attacks, biting the reverend’s ear and spraying feces on his white suit before breaking free. Lucifer rampages through the terrified congregation, leaving a trail of filth before escaping into the night. The service ends in chaos, and Reverend Blessett’s anti-rock-and-roll crusade is ruined.

Lucifer the monkey remains free, becoming a nuisance around town. For his 12th birthday, Cory receives a typewriter and begins practicing. He later plays ball with Nemo, but Nemo’s mother, an anxious and severe woman, angrily puts a stop to it, insisting her son is too fragile for games and revealing her bitterness over the transient, impoverished life due to her husband’s work as a travelling shirt salesman.

Cory then spends his annual week with his paternal grandparents. He likes the kind Grandmomma Sarah but dislikes the eccentric, often cruel Granddaddy Jaybird. On an errand, Jaybird takes Cory to a secret poker game held at Jerome Claypool’s house, where Bodean Blaylock is present. Jaybird has a gambling addiction and forces Cory to wait outside for over an hour. Furious, Cory takes the errand’s objective—a box of ice cream salt—and starts the six-mile walk home. Dr. Parrish finds him on the road and gives him a ride. As he stands at the front door, speaking to Grandmomma Sarah, he reveals that Mrs. Neville died only hours earlier. Cory is shocked by the news of his teacher’s death. That night, Cory dreams of Mrs. Neville encouraging him to enter the writing contest and to remember everything, as memories are the key to storytelling.

Inspired by his dream, Cory writes a true story for the contest titled Before the Sun, recounting the morning the car plunged into Saxon’s Lake. He shows it to his father, who is shaken by the memory. Tom confesses that the dead man haunts his sleep, demanding the killer be found. Though his first instinct is to forbid Cory from entering the story, Tom reverses course after a longer emotional exchange and allows Cory to submit it.

As summer ends, Cory, Ben, and Davy Ray go on an overnight camping trip; Johnny is forbidden to join them due to his concussion. Deep in the woods, they tell ghost stories around a campfire. Their night is interrupted by the arrival of two cars on a hidden trail. They watch from the bushes as Biggun Blaylock and his sons, Wade and Bodean, sell a small wooden box to two men in white masks for $400. Cory recognizes the masked men as Mr. Moultry and Mr. Hargison. Ben accidentally makes a noise, and the Blaylocks give chase. The three boys scatter into the darkness, and Cory becomes separated and lost, without supplies or a compass.

After a miserable night alone on a boulder—plagued by mosquitoes, hunger, and fear—Cory sets out at dawn trying to navigate home by tracking jet planes toward the nearby Air Force base. Wandering through dense forest, he stumbles upon a secluded pond where a naked 16-year-old girl is swimming. When she wades toward shore, Cory announces himself, startling her. She is Chile Willow and, despite her initial anger, she leads him to her family’s impoverished tarpaper shack, where her mother tends to his thorn scrapes with iodine. 

Cory is immediately and powerfully smitten with Chile, but the arrival of her 18-year-old husband Bill and the sight of her infant son turns that feeling into longing. Chile gives Cory a dime from a cracked heart-shaped purse so he can use a pay phone. Bill reluctantly drives him to a gas station near the base. Cory calls home, and his parents retrieve him without punishment. That evening, Sheriff Amory interviews Cory on the porch. Cory identifies the masked buyers as Moultry and Hargison based on the name “Dick,” Hargison’s distinctive false voice, and the chewed white plastic tip of the cheroot Hargison threw into the pine straw near Cory’s face. He also reports Hargison’s threat about making unspecified people “tap-dance in hell” (276). The sheriff acknowledges the Blaylocks are nearly impossible to pursue given his limited resources. The chapter closes with a violent storm and Cory’s first dream about four dressed-up Black girls calling his name beneath a leafless tree.

As summer ends, Cory learns that Sheriff Amory’s investigation into Mr. Hargison and Mr. Moultry has stalled, as their wives provided them with alibis for the night of the meeting with Biggun Blaylock. On a personal note, Cory wins third place in a local writing contest but is terrified to learn he must read his story aloud at the library. While playing baseball with his friends Johnny, Davy Ray, and Ben, they are approached by a distraught Nemo Curliss. Nemo announces his family is moving away the next day because his father must chase a “lucky break” in the next town selling shirts, a cycle Nemo knows will never end. 

Heartbroken at constantly moving and being unable to make friends, Nemo accepts a baseball Cory offers him as a keepsake. In a climactic burst of rage and despair, Nemo throws the ball straight up into the sky with such incredible force that it disappears and never comes down. He then walks away, resigned to his fate. As Cory and his friends ride home, Cory reflects on the unresolved mysteries he faces, including his recurring dream, the contents of the wooden box, and his father’s need for peace.