The novel opens with a stark statement: “They murdered him” (3). Freshman Jerry Renault is trying out for the Trinity High School football team, but at five-foot-nine-inches tall and 145 pounds, he finds himself violently tackled over and over. Though Jerry is “stunned” by the pain, he struggles through, getting up and back into the play repeatedly, until the coach tells him to come back tomorrow. Nauseated and aching, Jerry thinks about his mother and how much pain she was in before she died. He makes it back to the locker room, where he vomits.

The third-person narrative shifts to the perspective of a student named Obie, who is watching the football tryouts from the bleachers with another student named Archie. Obie thinks about how bored and tired he is, and about how much he hates Archie, whom he calls a “real bastard” for making him late for work. Archie tells him not to swear or he’ll have to go to confession, and Obie suggests Archie has more sins to atone for than he does.

Archie tells Obie he would be happy to be fired since he hates his job, and Obie reveals that he couldn’t lose the job anyway, because his boss is a friend of the family.