After dinner at Bev’s Eatery, Tim Jamieson checks into the DuPray Motel and finds his room dilapidated: a rattling but ineffective air conditioner, a dripping shower he muffles with a towel, a scorched lampshade, and a crooked, disturbing picture of grinning Black sailors that refuses to hang straight.

Tim sits outside in a rusty lawn chair, watching the sunset and a long Georgia Southern freight train roll through, which underlines the town’s dependence on the rail junction. The motel proprietor, Norbert, appears and makes small talk about the train schedules and potential warehouse jobs, then pointedly asks about Tim’s car and whether he is a cop. Tim rebuffs him, and Norbert withdraws after an assessing glance.

As dusk settles and traffic resumes after the train, Tim reflects on DuPray’s remoteness and perceived pointlessness, imagining the warehouses as churn points for goods endlessly moving between ports and inland hubs. He doubts he will be hired as Night Knocker and wonders about the purpose of such a town’s existence.

Returning to his room, Tim locks the flimsy door and lies on the sagging bed, turning over his recent life of “loading and unloading”—volunteering off a flight, sorting recyclables, and shifting library books after a highway jam diverted him to DuPray. He contrasts that cycle with the simplicity of a Night Knocker’s job, recalling his grandfather’s view that walking and knocking is “the beauty part.”

Near midnight another freight train wakes him. Before going back to sleep, he removes the crooked, unsettling picture and leans it facing the wall, noting that it gave him the willies.