Part One: Pages 1-52 Summary

The book opens with Candy Sweet discussing her love of snakes as she performs several routines as a majorette for the Mystic high school football team. She looks for her boyfriend, Willard Miller, among the football players as she flirts with Joe Lon Mackey, who is standing at the goal posts watching practice. She notes that he and her sister used to be an item, but that when it came time for Joe Lon to go to college, it was revealed that he couldn't read. Berenice, her sister, thus went to college without him. She also recalls that Joe Lon killed a traveling salesman by drowning him while much of the football team watched. Joe Lon watches Candy and thinks of Berenice as he drinks, because she reminds him of his own failed life. He rereads a...