This is a short story collection.
Elisa Allen lives in the Salinas Valley in California. She's pruning chrysanthemums when two men arrive in suits. Her husband Henry tells her that he sold the men a cow and wants to celebrate by watching the boxing match in town. He departs to work, and another man arrives, looking lost. He offers to do small tasks for cash, but she turns him away. Before he leaves, they share some intimate words about gardening. On their way to town, she finds that the flowers he was given in a pot have been dumped in the road. She wants to see the boxing match, but instead she cries.
"The White Quail"
Mary Teller lives with Harry her husband, and her room overlooks her prized garden. It was a non-negotiable for their marriage. She decides the garden is absolutely perfect and refuses to change it anymore. She says the garden feels like a part of her. Together, they kill slugs and Harry thinks about her. He compliments her sureness, but she says she doesn't have that sureness about much.
She sits and watches the birds visit, making use of a little bath she left for them. A white quail arrives. She reflects. When she sees a cat, she worries for the white quail and decides to kill the cat. Harry sits up early one morning waiting for the cat, but when he sees the white quail, he shoots it and buries it, telling her it was the cat.
"Flight"
Mama Torres decides to send her eldest son Pepe to town to buy some salt and medicine. He is nineteen. She finds him throwing knives with Emilio and Rosy, his little siblings. He agrees to the errand and she calls him a peanut. He departs and returns with bad news. He got drunk and stabbed someone to death. He departs to the wilderness to avoid the consequences, taking only some essentials. The town people find him and shoot his horse as he rides. He runs on foot until he runs into a mountain lion. He faces the town and is shot in the chest.
"The Snake"
Dr. Phillips studies sea stars. A woman arrives asking to watch the rattlesnakes being fed. He makes her wait on him to finish some studies, and he embalms a cat for a biology class. The woman is still waiting when he's done, and now she wants to buy the snake and mouse to watch the snake eat. He gives in and shows her the feeding, but ruins his sea star experiment.
"Breakfast"
A narrator describes waking on a cool morning to find a young woman cooking breakfast while nursing a small infant. The narrator also meets two men by the fire. They eat breakfast with coffee. They invite him to their migrant work, but the narrator declines. He tells about how fondly he remembers that breakfast with those strangers.
"The Raid"
At a Communist rally, Dick and Root are talking. Dick is older and says his maturity is greater than Root's. Root says he might run away if someone raids the meeting. Dick threatens him if he does it. They are eventually raided and Root wakes up in a jail cell in the medical ward. Dick is also there to congratulate him. Root was attacked and sustained head trauma, and Root considers whether his situation is like Christian martyrdom. Dick tells him there is no room for Jesus in Communism.
"The Harness"
Peter Randall lives in Monterey County with his underweight wife, Emma. He is a farmer, and after a business trip, he returns and his wife becomes sick for a month or two. She eventually dies. Peter grieves and mourns. He reveals to Ed Chappell, high on morphine (to sedate him) and drunk, that his shoulders are only back because of a harness, and that he cheated on his wife frequently with prostitutes.
Peter's plants forty acres of a risky crop, to the town's concern, but after a bountiful profit, Ed visits Peter in San Francisco. Peter has returned to the prostitutes. He says that Emma haunts him. He says he'll never wear the harness again.
"The Vigilante"
A mob has lynched a Black man. Mike is frustrated in the aftermath as they determine what to do with the body. He struggles with guilt. The lynch mob goes to Welch's bar for a drink, and Mike has his beer and then walks home. At home, his wife thinks he's been with another girl, but he can't bring himself to tell her the truth. He says in a way, he feels exactly as if he had cheated.
"Johnny Bear"
A first person narrator lives in Loma. He is a supervisor on a swamp reclamation project, staying at Mrs. Ratz boarding house. He meets Mae Romero in the woods for some romantic company and goes to the Buffalo Bar for a drink. Johnny Bear is there. He confronts the narrator and recites the events in the woods with Mae Romero. He continues pantomiming about town women disrespectfully so the narrator leaves, along with Alex Hartnell. They talk about the usefulness of a good reputation.
Two days later, Amy Hawkins commits suicide. They find themselves at the bar again, and Johnny Bear describes the conversation where Amy found out she was pregnant. Johnny's pantomime implies that Amy slept with her Chinese employee and killed herself from shame. Johnny and Alex fight.
"The Murder"
Jim marries an Eastern European woman named Jelka. He recalls the embarrassment of marrying a foreigner. Jelka's father advised him to beat her up every now and then to remind her who's in charge. But Jelka is the perfect wife. Everything in the home is superb, yet he doesn't love her. He misses the prostitutes from the brothel he used to visit. Jim returns to find Jelka in bed with someone else. He shoots the man in the head. Afterward, the authorities drop the charges. Jim beats Jelka almost to death, and she asks him to promise her that he'll do it more often.
"Saint Katy the Virgin"
Roark is a bad man. He likes when others fail and suffer. Katy, his piglet, eats her own newborns. When Brother Paul and Brother Colin come by, he gifts Katy to them, but the pig attacks and chases them into a tree. Brother Paul converts the pig to Christianity, and the pig becomes a good pig. She is venerated by the community as a saint and a virgin, even though she is only a virgin because she ate her children.
