What were you dreaming?

The story begins in the first person point of view. The narrator is hitchhiking. He thinks about how bandits have made it difficult for hitchhikers to get rides. Motorists are afraid to pick up strangers. A car with two white people, a driver and a passenger, stop to pick up the narrator. The driver is male and seems to be English. The female passenger seems to be a local. The whites ask the narrator where he is from. He answers that he is from Cape Town, and the female passenger knows this means he was forced away from the area by the South African government. The whites, particularly the driver, are inquisitive. The narrator patiently answers all questions in hope that his friendliness will get him a ride to his final destination instead of just the next town. The narrator also goes into detail about his plight in hope that once in Pietersburg the whites will give him money.

The narrative switches to third person, and the previous narrator is asleep in the back seat. The driver wants to stop for every hitchhiker, and the passenger does not explain that picking up hitchhikers in that region is not customary. The driver believes that the sleeping hitchhiker is black, but the female passenger explains that he is actually considered a "Cape Colored," a mixed race individual. She also tries to explain some of the history and current political conditions of South Africa, particularly the laws pertaining to race under the Apartheid System.

The driver, the Englishman, is still curious about the plight of non-whites, and the woman tries to explain. While the hitchhiker sleeps, the driver tells the passenger he wonders how the hitchhiker lost his front teeth, and he wonders why he does not have them fixed. The passenger explains that in some circumstances people in South Africa intentionally have their front teeth removed.

The woman wakes the hitchhiker. He says he was dreaming vividly, and the driver asks what he was dreaming. The hitchhiker does not answer about what he was dreaming, but he says that the driver can let him out anywhere because he must find someone to give him money for food and a taxi. The hitchhiker gets out of the car, the woman gives him money, and the car drives away.