The story, which takes places in 1930s America, is about the blurred line between right and wrong and what happens when all the good people look the other way. Mike LeMay, a cynical Federal Writer's Project interviewer arrives in a small Texas community a few days before the town eccentric, Effie Beck, is reported missing. He learns over the course of the story that the enigmatic, elderly Effie Beck has moved through the lives of the town's populace "like brown smoke." What happened to Effie that she'd just walk out of her house and disappear? And what secrets did she take with her?