The play takes place in the "small town of one of the southern states." The owner of the department store, Jayb Torrens, the leader of the local Ku Klux Klan, is brought from the hospital, where, after a thorough examination, the doctors concluded that his days were numbered. This living dead man, even on the threshold of the grave, is capable of instilling terror in loved ones, and although he almost does not appear on the stage, the knock of his stick from above when he calls his wife Leidy to bed is heard ominously more than once throughout the action.
Leidie is much younger than her husband. Twenty years ago, when she, an eighteen-year-old girl, was abandoned by David Katrir, to whom her relatives found a profitable bride, and her father’s cafe, along with her Italian, who sold alcohol not only to white, but also to blacks, were burned by Ku Klux Klan, who was left without livelihood, I had to agree to a marriage with Torrance - in fact, sell myself. She does not suspect one thing: her husband was the leader of a wild gang that night when her father died.
The store is located on the ground floor of the house where the Torrens live, and so customers who are there at that moment see Jab coming back from the hospital. Among them is the local renegade Carol Katrir, sister of Leidy's former lover. She essentially lives in a car, in “her little caravan,” in perpetual motion, but with mandatory stops at every bar. Carol organically cannot stand loneliness, rarely sleeps alone, and in the city she is considered a nymphomaniac. Carol was not always like that. Once she, endowed with a heightened sense of justice, advocated for the rights of blacks, sought free hospitals for them, even participated in a protest march. However, the same circles that dealt with Leidy's father pacified this rebel.
She was the first to pay attention to the appearance in the shop of Val, who was brought here by Vi Tolbet, the wife of a local sheriff, who heard that Lady was looking for an assistant in business. The "wild beauty" of the young man, a strange jacket made of snake skin, his heady look excite the former "activist", and now an ordinary adventurer. He seems to her almost a messenger of a different civilization, but to all her flirtations, Val briefly answers that such adventures no longer excite him. Drinking dry, smoking before stupefying, reeling, God knows where to meet the first comer - all this is good for twenty year old fools, and not for a man who is thirty today.
But he reacts to Leidie completely differently. Returning to the shop for a forgotten guitar, he encounters a woman. A conversation ensues, a feeling of kindred souls arises, they are drawn to each other. It seemed to Leidy that during all these years of existence near Jab she had “frozen” herself, suppressed all living feelings, but now she is gradually thawing, listening to Val’s light poetical monologue. And he talks about rare little birds that have been alone all their life flying (“they don’t have paws at all, these little birds have their whole lives on wings, and they sleep in the wind: they will spread their wings at night, and the bed for them will have wind "). So they live and "never fly to the ground."
Unexpectedly for herself, Leidy begins to confide with a strange stranger, even opens the veil over her unsuccessful marriage. She agrees to take Val to work. After Val left, she touches the guitar, which the young man still forgot, and for the first time in many years, laughs easily and joyfully.
Val is a poet, his strength in a clear vision of the opposites of the world. For him, life is a struggle between the strong and the weak, evil and good, death and love.
But there are not only strong and weak people. There are those "on which the brand has not yet been burned." Val and Leidy belong to precisely this type: no matter how life develops, their soul is free. They inevitably become lovers, and Val settles in a small room adjacent to the store. Jab is not aware that Val lives here, and when one day a nurse, at the request of the store owner, helps him to get down early in the morning, a stay in Val’s shop is a complete surprise to him. Jab instantly realizes what’s what, and in order to hurt his wife, he blurts out in anger that he and his friends set fire to her father’s house. It didn’t even occur to Ladey — she was all stony.
Val has already prayed for many in the city. The townsfolk are annoyed that he is friendly with blacks, does not disdain to talk with the renegade Carol Katrir, and the sheriff Tolbet was even jealous of his aging wife, whom the young man only sympathizes with: this artist is spiritually close, a visionary dreaming and completely misunderstood by her husband. The sheriff orders Val to leave the city at twenty-four hours. Meanwhile, Lady, burning with love for Val and with hatred for Jab, is preparing to open a candy store at the store. For her, this confectionery is a kind of tribute to her father, she dreams that everything will be like here in her father’s cafe near the vineyards: music will flow, lovers will make dates here. She passionately dreams that the dying husband should see before death - the vineyard is open again! Risen from the dead!
But the premonition of triumph over her husband fades before the discovery that she is pregnant. Lead overjoyed. With a cry: “I defeated you. Death! I'm alive again! ” she runs up the stairs, as if forgetting that Jab is up there. And he, who has faded and yellow, overpowering himself, appears on the site with a revolver in his hand. It seems that he really is Death herself. Fearfully, Lady rushes to Val, who is motionless, and covers him with her body. Clinging to the railing, the old man shoots, and the mortally wounded Lady falls. An insidious husband throws a revolver at Leydy’s feet and calls for help, shouting that the employee shot his wife and robbed a shop. Val rushes to the door - to where Carol’s car is standing: a woman today, learning about the sheriff’s warning, offered to take him somewhere far away. Behind the scene are hoarse male screams, shots. Val was unable to leave. On the floor, Lady is quietly dying. This time, Death conquered Life.
