One winter evening, around dusk, while he is sitting at the end of a counter and talking to George, the manager of a diner in Summit, Illinois, a small town south of Chicago, Nick Adams watches two over-dressed strangers in black (Al and Max) enter the diner. After complaining about the serving schedule, the two men order dinner, joking sarcastically about George and Nick being a couple of dumb country boys.
Finishing his meal, Al orders Nick and Sam, the Black cook, to the kitchen, where he ties them up. Meanwhile, Max boasts to George that he and Al have been hired to kill Ole Andreson, an aging boxer, who, they’ve heard, eats dinner there every night.
When the boxer fails to show up in the diner, Al and Max leave, and George hurries to untie Nick and Sam. He then suggests that Nick warn Andreson, who lives in a nearby boarding house.
When the boxer hears about Al and Max’s plan to kill him, he’s unconcerned; he’s tired, he says, of running. Nick leaves and returns to the diner, where he tells George and Sam that he’s leaving Summit because he can’t bear to think about a man waiting, passively, to be killed by a couple of hired killers.
