Eleven-year-old Elijah Freeman meets his friend Cooter one Sunday after church. Elijah agrees to investigate some mysterious animal tracks with Cooter. A local man known as the Preacher tells them that a family of dangerous hoop snakes made the tracks. The Preacher claims that hoop snakes bite their own tail to form a wheel and roll after their prey; one bite and the victim swells from the head down until he or she explodes. Horrified, Elijah runs home, where his mother lectures him for being overly afraid (“fra-gile”) of harmless, untrue things. Elijah comments on Ma’s fear of “toady-frogs,” and Ma reprimands him for answering back.

When Cooter finds an enormous toad, Elijah and Cooter decide to hide the living animal in Ma’s sewing basket. They hide to watch her discover it. She flings her sewing materials in a panic but doesn’t vocalize at all, nor does she reprimand. Elijah is pleased that she’s a good sport.

Two days pass, and Ma offers Elijah a cookie at the bottom of the jar. Elijah pulls out a snake instead of a cookie, screams, and runs away. Ma and Pa laugh, delighted that Elijah got a taste of his own medicine. 

Elijah reflects on the prank his parents played, glad that no one saw; there’s already a “tragical” event associated with his name, so he doesn’t need another. The event occurred when freed slave Frederick Douglass once came to visit Buxton. Because Elijah was the first baby born out of slavery in the Elgin Settlement, Mr. Douglass held him in his arms at the big town gathering. Too much jouncing caused Elijah to vomit all over Mr. Douglass. Exaggerated reports of the incident, including how wild animals came from far away to eat the vomit, pester Elijah to this day. Ma tells him, “Life’s gunn be a tough row to hoe for you if you don’t learn you caint be believing everything folks tell you, not even growned folks” (28).

Elijah’s chores at Mr. Segee’s barn include cleaning stalls and brushing mules. He especially enjoys swatting horseflies, as he can then use the dead bugs for fishing bait. Elijah finishes chores and gets Mr. Segee’s permission to take the mule Flapjack out. Elijah prefers mules to horses; horses are too fast.

Passing the Preacher’s house, he recalls last month when the Preacher saw him throwing rocks. The Preacher told him that his accuracy was a gift from Jesus. Once at his secret fishing location, Elijah allows Flapjack to graze blackberries while he “chunks” rocks at fish to catch them for dinner.

Once he’s collected 10 fish for his own family, Mr. Leroy, Mr. Segee, and Mrs. Brown, the Preacher arrives and suggests that Elijah use his rock-throwing ability to help the Settlement in another way. Elijah wants to know more, but the Preacher offers his fancy silver pistol to Elijah for practice shooting instead. This tempts Elijah—especially because the Preacher has gone back twice on his earlier offers to let Elijah shoot the gun—but he must get the fish back for everyone’s dinner. The Preacher then suggests Elijah owes a tithe. Elijah knows a tithe to be a tenth of one’s possessions given back to the Lord, but the Preacher shows Elijah how one-tenth of ten fish is really four fish, based on a strange way the Preacher has of telling the fish’s age. Elijah never knew one could tithe by age. He goes home with only six fish.

Irritated that his 10 fish turned to six, Elijah reflects on the Preacher and his past promises to let Elijah shoot the fancy pistol. One time the Preacher claimed to be out of bullets; another time, he gave Elijah a rusted old pistol instead. Elijah recalls when the mystery pistol came into the Preacher’s possession: One day three years prior, a rumor spread to Buxton of slavers nearby. Mrs. Guest, the schoolteacher, unexpectedly canceled classes for the day and sent the white and Indigenous students home. The children of former slaves waited to go home four at a time under armed escort. Pa told Elijah the rumor that two “American scallywags” bearing chains and pistols asked for directions to Buxton. Elijah saw the Preacher running into the woods with a blade to search for the slavers. 

The Preacher came back to Buxton claiming that he found the silver gun and holster in the woods. Rumors spread that the Preacher killed the two slavers, then sold one weapon and kept the other, but Elijah questions the sense of that story. He doesn’t think the Preacher would be capable of giving up the other pistol.

After losing the four fish, Elijah heads back to town. He’s glad when Mr. Segee isn’t in the barn, since he doesn’t have enough fish to give him two as he’d planned. At Mrs. Brown’s he happily trades a perch for a cherry pie. Elijah cleans the fish without Mrs. Brown asking. He reflects how Mrs. Brown wears mourning clothes and roams the woods at night because she lost her little boy to fever.

Ma cooks the remaining fish for their dinner and for Mr. Leroy’s. After Elijah eats, he takes a plate of fish, okra, and cherry pie to Mr. Leroy, who is clearing trees on Mrs. Holton’s land. Because slavers caught Mrs. Holton’s husband on their escape, she and her daughters live in Buxton alone. She came with gold coins and pays Mr. Leroy for his work.

Mr. Leroy eats the fish bones and fins along with the fish, a feat Elijah admires. Mr. Leroy tells him, “Fish eating’s like anything else in life, Elijah. […] You caint be timid ’bout nothing you do, you got to go at it like you ’specting good things to come out of it” (77). They get up to continue the job of clearing trees.