A poor barely functional Southern family starts off on a trip to Florida. The grandmother has notions of being a cultured lady and worries the others about "The Misfit", a semi legendary outlaw newly escaped from prison. She badgers her son into detouring to see an old vaguely remembered plantation house rumoured to have silver hidden in it from the war. On the way there, the son unexpectedly rolls the car into a ditch way down a back road. "The Misfit" and two psychopath sidekicks roll up and march them two at a time into the woods to be shot. The grandmother is last, pleading to The Misfit's better nature, but finding it isn't there when he shoots her and orders her body dragged to the woods to join the others.
In conversation, The Misfit had pondered his extended time in prison where he forget what he was being punished for. He said he regreted not being present at Jesus' ressurection as that might have affected how he turned out in life.