Marlee (Tarra Riggs) lives in the Mississippi Delta with her son James (JimMyron Ross) who is twelve years old. Lawrence (Michael J. Smith, Sr.), another African American, lives in lonely isolation, quietly desperate. Their lives are numb and empty, living amid the apathy and senseless cruelties of their small-town life. Lawrence has suffered the death of a twin brother through suicide, leaving him to run his small store business alone with an estranged son named John (Johnny McPhail). Marlee works every night in a dead-end job; her son is threatened by gangs. She forms an alliance with Lawrence to protect themselves in their own cocoon.