Twenty-five years ago, the narrator and his friends Randy Shepperton, Nebraska Crane, and Augustus Potterham are throwing a football around. One of them misses the ball, and Dick Prosser, Mr. Shepperton’s new hired man, comes along and catches it, tossing it back. The boys are in awe of Dick’s skills and his gentleness. He can shoot a gun with perfect aim and has taught them how to throw a football and how to box without hurting one another. They think there is nothing Dick Prosser cannot do.
However, the boys also fear Dick. Sometimes he comes up on them stealthily like a cat, and when they hear creaking noises at night, they think it might be him. Dick is deeply religious; he is always humming hymns, and sometimes, when he speaks, he seems to chant, muttering biblical phrases such as “Armageddon day’s a comin’.” After reading his Bible—the only object in his room—he emerges with eyes red from weeping. Once, Lon Everett, driving drunk, crashed into Dick’s car, then punched Dick in the face, even though the accident had been his fault. Even though Dick didn’t retaliate, his eyes got red and his teeth bared. Also, around the time when Dick was hired, the Sheppertons’ cook, Pansy Harris, became very sulky and quit her job shortly thereafter.
Earlier on the day Pansy quits, the boys are playing in the Sheppertons’ basement, and they peek inside Dick’s room. They see a gun lying on the table next to the Bible. Suddenly, Dick is there, baring his teeth, and the boys are terrified. Then Dick laughs and explains that, as an Army man, he can’t do without his gun. He says he wanted to surprise them on Christmas morning and teach them how to shoot the gun. He asks them to keep his secret from the other “white fokes,” and they give him their word.
That night, it snows heavily. The narrator awakens suddenly when the town’s alarm bell clangs. Everyone in town runs into the streets, asking what’s happening. The narrator hears “it’s that nigger of Shepperton’s” and “they say he’s killed four people.” He and Randy think about the gun in Dick’s room and feel guilty because they didn’t tell anyone. The narrator gets in Mr. Shepperton’s car with his friends, and they head towards town.
A mob of townspeople has gathered outside the hardware store. The mob gets more and more excited, and, without waiting for Cash Eager to come unlock the door, they smash the window and break inside. They grab guns and ammunition and stream out of the store in pursuit of Dick. The narrator hears the terrifying sound of howling hounds approaching the town square. He and Randy feel sick and afraid, but Nebraska Crane seems excited, and there’s a savage glimmer in his eyes. The boys stay behind, but the mob sets out, following the trail the hounds are picking up from Dick’s scent.
Back at the square, the narrator listens and pieces together the story of what happened. Earlier that night, Pansy Harris’ husband had come home to find Dick with Pansy. They began to fight, and Dick shot Harris as he tried to run from the house. Dick grabbed Pansy, hid in the house, and waited. Policemen Willis and John Grady came to the shack looking for him, but Dick shot them both, then made his way towards town, swinging his gun left and right. John Chapman, a well-loved police officer, stationed himself behind a telephone pole and fired at Dick as he approached, missing. Dick shot and killed him, then left town.
The mob of townspeople and policemen trails Dick for several days as he hides out in the woods. Dick kills several deputies before the mob eventually corners him at the river. There, Dick drops his gun, but then he does something strange: he unlaces his boots, takes them off, and stands in his bare feet facing the mob. They shoot him through with bullets, then hang his body to a tree and empty their guns on the corpse. They take his body back to town and hang it up in the square for everyone to see, and Ben Pounders brags about having fired the first shot. The narrator and Randy feel nauseous when they see the hanging body, but Nebraska Crane is triumphant. The narrator is aware of a darkness he can now see in all of humanity.
A few days later, the boys go down to Dick Prosser’s room with Mr. Shepperton. Mr. Shepperton picks up the Bible that still sits on Dick’s table and reads from the place where Dick had been reading, “The Lord is my shepherd.” Years later, the narrator thinks the poem “Tyger Tyger, burning bright, in the forests of the night,” seems much more fitting for Dick than the biblical Psalm. After the crime, the town speculates as to where Dick came from, but no one can figure it out. In the present, the narrator thinks he knows the answer: Dick came from darkness, and he is a symbol of man’s “evil innocence.”
