The story begins with “Mr. Johannes Zegner of the Blue Sink Zegners, pioneer of the tallgrass prairie and future owner of 160 acres of Nebraska,” telling his son, Miles, to get the “Window” ready because the Inspector is coming (83). Miles is the 11-year-old protagonist of the story, and he and his family live in Nebraska, in the Hox River Settlement. They moved to Nebraska from Pennsylvania in hopes of receiving ownership of the land per the requirements of the Homestead Act. The Zegners have met every requirement except having a window in their home.

The Inspector is a rumored man who comes around every once in a blue moon to inspect each settler’s homestead to see if they meet the requirements to receive the deed. Miles’s mom has long ago lost faith in the Inspector’s existence, but it’s rumored that the Inspector is coming. The Zegners own a window, but they haven’t installed it yet because Johannes says, “you know the Window must benefit every settler out here. We are only its stewards” (87). Johannes named it “the Hox River Window and swore it to any claimant in need” (87). Since Miles is the best horseback rider, Johannes asks him to take the Window to their neighbors, so that the Inspector will think that they have windows, too. The hope is that everyone can benefit from this one windowpane.

Miles’s mom is terrified for Miles to go on this errand because it’s too risky: not only do they have to trick the Inspector, the windowpane itself is a highly-desired item since only one is known to exist in the settlement. Even though Johannes has openly stated that he wants to share the window to everyone’s advantage, Miles is secretly afraid that the neighbors won’t want to give the window back once they’ve borrowed it for the inspection.

Miles describes his mom as never yelling at him. However, “lately her voice is dreadful even when it’s cheerful, singing out of the well mouth of our house. Hoarse, so that it sounds as if the very sod is gargling sand. She’s not sick, or no sicker than anybody else—it’s the dust” (89). For most of the Zegners’ time on the land, they’ve attempted to grow wheat, but have been unsuccessful because of constant drought. Instead, they live in perpetual dust and heat, things that are only enhanced by their sod home. Miles describes it as “A ball of pure earth. Not enough timber for building walls on the prairie so we dug right into the sod. It’s a cave, where we now live” (88).

Miles has a brother, Peter. Mile says that “[s]omething is going wrong with my brother. He’s not reliable” (90). Once, after the family thought it was going to rain and it didn’t, Peter disappeared for three days and returned with blood-soaked hands. He said that it wasn’t his blood; Miles is afraid of him. Miles also used to have three sisters, but they presumably died in childbirth and are buried near the house. Sometimes, Miles wakes up in the middle of the night and sees them getting “taller and taller. White legs twining moonward, like swords of wheat. They sprout after dark. […] They stare at me with their hundred-year-old faces. They know they missed their chance to be girls” (90). He is scared by their presence, but he doesn’t tell anyone about them.

Miles leaves on his horse, Nore, with the window packed carefully in tow. His dad is hopeful that he will accomplish the task ahead, but his mom is crying. As he rides, he thinks about the Yotherses, the first family to become homeowners in the Hox River Settlement.

The journey starts out nicely enough, but quickly turns sour. A heavy rain comes, and Miles stops riding and uncovers the windowpane just to watch the rain fall on the glass. While stopped, he sees that a “black figure is moving through the switchgrass. I turn Nore around and try to give chase until I realize it’s not escaping through the rain at all but rather circling us, like a hawk or the hand of a clock” (97).

Miles loses sight of the figure and realizes that it’s now snowing. He spurs Nore to run fast ahead and thinks about how his father got the window. Miles wasn’t supposed to know, but Johannes accidently let it slip one night while drinking. Apparently, the window used to belong to the Yotherses. Johannes had gone to ask them for a bit of glass to meet the requirement, but he:

found their claim abandoned. Tack was scattered all over the barn floor. Outside, three half-starved Sauceman hogs were masticating the pale red fibers of Mrs. Yothers’s dress; piles of clothing lay trampled into the sod—bouquets of children’s bow ties (98).

Johannes saw a strange “new crop” behind the Yothers’s house. It looked like small trees, but the “thin trunks were the funniest shade of milky white” (99). While not directly stated, it’s implied that Miles interprets his father’s description as graves. Johannes took the window and told his family that he bartered for it from a stranger heading to Texas. However, because of its distinct markings, Miles knows where the pane came from.

The blizzard gets more intense, and Miles gets lost. He falls off his horse with the window in his hands and passes out. When he wakes up, it’s sunny and he sees a “willowy man” walking towards him (103):

This man looks even worse off than me. His gaunt face is entirely black except for the wet cracks of his eyes and mouth and pink lesions on his cheeks, as if he has just survived some kind of explosion. At first I think the skin is charred, but then the light gives it a riverbed glow and I realize he’s covered in mud—soil, sod (103).

Miles tries to introduce himself to the stranger, but the man laughs and Miles swears he sees “a nugget of earth tumble out of his mouth” (104). Miles thinks the stranger might be a ghost, or a “creature like my sisters,” but decides the man’s features are too real to be a ghost (106).

Miles asks about the man’s life, and he says that he once had a wife and many children, although he can’t seem to remember his past clearly. The stranger somehow knows Miles’s name, and tells him that he needs a window. Miles, thinking of his dad, volunteers to let him borrow his. The stranger leads Miles towards his sod home, which “bulges and heaves—every inch of it covered with flies. […] No grass grows on it or near it; no birds sing; the smell of death makes my nostrils burn and my eyes stream” (108). The stranger takes Miles behind his house and shows him his “harvest”: “white crosses, hundreds or maybe thousands of them, rolling outward on the prairie sea” (108). Miles is terrified and immediately thinks about the “trees” that his dad saw at the Yothers’ home. Miles realizes that they weren’t trees, but bones.

They unwrap the window and the stranger accuses Miles of stealing it. Miles says no, but the stranger clarifies that it was Miles’s father that stole it. Miles asks how he knows his father; the stranger says that he just came from their house. The stranger has a hay knife in one hand and with the other he tries to put the window in place. Miles attempts to jump on the stranger, thinking that he will have to stab him to escape, but the stranger sees Miles’s plot reflected in the window. He turns to face Miles and “his eyes are bottomless” (111).

The story then jumps to Mrs. Sticksel, who is waiting on her porch for Miles to arrive with the window. She sees a dark figure approaching on a horse. At first, she thinks it’s Miles, but it doesn’t look like him nor his horse. The story ends with, “And just as the children go rushing out to greet the rider, she has the dark feeling she should call them back” (111).