Ingram walks the highway, eating his pork, which only intensifies his hunger. He reaches a roadside diner and watches families eat inside. Overwhelmed by starvation, he snatches meat from a large man’s plate and flees as patrons laugh. The theft reminds him of a night when his father brutally beat a man attempting to steal one of their pigs, and he recalls his father saying that stealing can get you killed. Ingram understands he has committed a crime.

He walks into the night, nearly getting hit by a car after wandering into the road. He stumbles into a muddy ditch and falls asleep. The next morning, he wakes, horrified by bugs crawling from his mouth and finds himself in a swampy area beneath a massive elevated highway. Rising water forces him up an embankment toward the road, where the complex highway structure overwhelms him. Trapped on a narrow shoulder with high-speed traffic, he turns back, running until he can jump over the guardrail into the mud below.

Walking under the highway through trash and debris, he is tormented by intense hunger. As darkness falls, he spots a large pillar supporting the highway. Near it, he finds a small shelter constructed from tarps. Exhausted, he crawls inside, lies down on a quilt, and falls asleep.

Ingram wakes to a large hand choking him. A massive man sits on his chest, demanding to know why he is in his tent. Ingram explains he only needed sleep. The man releases him and exits. Outside, Ingram finds the man eating stew by a fire. The man’s size and appearance make Ingram think of him as a mountain. The smell of food is agonizing. The man calls him over and examines him, touching his shoulders and hips. Up close, the man’s face has a shining quality that reminds Ingram of his mother.

When the man (who Ingram now thinks of as “the mountain”) asks him about his circumstances, Ingram explains his situation. However, the interrogation and his hunger become so overwhelming that he faints. He wakes briefly to find the mountain carrying him, an experience he compares to seeing a young girl being carried by her mother. When he wakes again in the tent, the man gives him water from a glowing bottle, scolding him that water is essential for survival. He then feeds Ingram his remaining stew.

The mountain     reveals that his own mother sent him away as a child. He explains that the world is divided between white and Black people, and warns Ingram never to trust a person who smiles at him. He tells Ingram to continue under the highway to Houston, reminds him never to forget his mother sent him away out of love, then pushes him on his way.

At dusk, Ingram walks down a residential street where most inhabitants are Black. Residents watch him pass. He observes a loud conversation between a man in a car and an old woman on her porch. Her deeply wrinkled face and toothless grin fascinate him, but remembering the mountain’s warning about smiling people, he runs away in fear.

Tormented by hunger and thirst, Ingram develops an internal dialogue with the mountain’s voice. He realizes he can find water by using his ears. Following the sound, he locates a stream, where he strips off his clothes and hat, leaves them on the bank, and wades in. He impulsively lets the current carry him downstream in the darkness.

The stream takes him past a large industrial building discharging burning sludge. The channel narrows, becoming a concrete-lined passage with high walls. Ahead, he sees the water flowing into a large, dark circular hole in a wall. Realizing the danger, he swims to the side and climbs onto the concrete bank, where he finds himself trapped between high walls with no way forward or back. Naked and alone, he regrets his foolish decision and wishes for a guiding figure he feels he once knew but cannot remember.

Ingram wakes on scorching concrete. He spots a metal ladder just out of reach on the wall and jumps, grabbing the lowest rung. Guided by the mountain’s voice in his head, he climbs the ladder and finds himself on a thick wall overlooking a massive construction site filled with workers and machinery.

A man in a gray suit pulls a chain, sounding a loud whistle for lunch break. The workers stop and eat, reawakening Ingram’s intense hunger. However, he remembers his mother slapping him for being naked and decides not to climb down. A worker spots him and starts up the ladder after him. Ingram runs along the wall’s top while workers cheer. Another worker, Ernie, cuts him off from the other side, trapping him.

Ernie gently coaxes Ingram down. On the ground, he covers the boy with his flannel shirt and carries him to an office trailer despite his supervisor’s objections. He gives Ingram his second sandwich and water, then returns to work. Ingram eats and falls asleep to the construction noise. He dreams of a cold, gray, snail-like creature from a childhood fever, draining his life away. The whistle wakes him. Ernie returns, finds him burning with fever, and drives him to a hospital. Drifting in and out of consciousness, Ingram hears a woman singing on the radio.

Ingram wakes in a hospital ward at night with an IV in his arm. A silent girl stares at him from the next bed, laughing at him when he becomes afraid of a thunderstorm. Delirious with fever, Ingram wets the bed. He feels a cold lump next to him, which he believes is the gray creature from his childhood nightmare, and he fears that he is dying.

He wakes again to hear Ernie’s wife telling a doctor they are not financially responsible for him. The doctor explains he will be sent to a home for orphan boys once he recovers. The girl in the next bed taunts him, revealing the boy who occupied another bed died that morning.

An older boy named Tab introduces himself, jokes with Ingram, and advises him to stand up for himself and not to always obey adults. He introduces Ingram to two other boys, Peach and Wilson. When they ask about his past, Ingram feels overwhelmed by their sudden kindness and his own painful memories and starts to cry.

The next morning, a large nurse grows angry when Ingram wets the bed again, making derogatory remarks about country children. Tab calls her a “fat cow” (52), making Ingram laugh. When the nurse brings clean pajamas, Ingram remembers Tab’s instruction to stand up to authority and refuses to put them on. The nurse grows frustrated and threatens reform school. Tab warns it is a deadly place, teaches Ingram that red EXIT signs show the way out, gives him clothes, and helps him escape the hospital.

Ingram finds himself in chaotic downtown Houston. Overwhelmed, he hears the mountain’s voice telling him to escape. He steps on a broken bottle, severely cutting his foot. A man helps him to the side of a building but quickly disappears. Ingram pulls the glass out himself and tears a piece from his shirt for a bandage. A man in a blue uniform with a black stick orders him to move along.

Ingram limps away, deliberately choosing quieter streets with fewer people and eventually wandering into a predominantly Black neighborhood; the slower pace here feels more comfortable. He sees a group of boys on a stoop, eating pork and bread. Starving, he stares at the food. The boys notice him. Their leader, Jerald, taunts him with a piece of pork, then slaps him. Another boy, Charlie, punches Ingram in the mouth, knocks him down, and repeatedly hits his face. Ingram does not resist, a survival tactic learned from his father’s beatings.

Jerald pulls Charlie off and questions Ingram, who cannot explain where he is from or where his home is. Taking pity, Jerald helps him up and tells the others he is taking the boy to Miss Maw’s house. He leads Ingram away from the group.

Jerald brings Ingram to a well-kept white house where a girl named Sinema answers the door. They share an immediate, silent connection. She notes Ingram’s injuries, and they begin laughing together, a moment that feels deeply natural to Ingram. She takes his hand and leads him to the kitchen, where a large woman named Miss Maw is cooking and singing hymns. Miss Maw cleans Ingram’s face and, seeing his hunger, seats him at the head of the dining table.

Sinema and her sisters bring out a large lunch. Overwhelmed by the biggest plate of food he has ever seen, Ingram begins eating and crying simultaneously. A tall, suspicious girl named Beth Anne complains he receives special treatment because he is white. Sinema retorts that Miss Maw is being kind to him because Ingram reminds her of her deceased son, Martin.

After the meal, Ingram feels faint. Sinema takes him upstairs to rest in Martin’s bed. He wakes to find her tending his infected foot. A man’s deep voice comes from downstairs. Sinema explains her father, Pa, has returned early from the oil fields. They share another moment of uncontrollable laughter. At supper, Pa, a very large and muscular man with a spotted face, sits at the table’s head and stares intimidatingly at Ingram. Miss Maw has Ingram eat in the kitchen. Eating a second full meal in one day makes him feel strong for the first time.

After supper, Pa tells Miss Maw that Ingram cannot stay. She argues with him. Ingram, expecting violence, begins shaking with fear. Pa notices, softens, and observes that Ingram has “seen some bitter days” (79), finally agreeing he can stay the night. Miss Maw tucks Ingram into Martin’s bed and gives him the only kiss he can remember.

The next morning is Sunday. The family dresses for church. On the porch, Miss Maw gives Ingram a bag of food and Martin’s old shoes. Pa walks him to the railroad tracks bordering the neighborhood and gives him a folding knife he had intended for Martin, instructing him to use it only in an emergency. He advises Ingram on surviving, getting smart, and one day becoming a man. When Ingram says he is alone, Pa replies that being a boy and a man means being alone. Ingram says yes, sir, turns, and walks across the tracks away from Black Town.