Pitfall

The encounters between three people and the effect of their encounters on three others are told. The three primaries are: a deserter, who is moving from one mining job to another before each of his employers can discover his deserter status and thus report him to the authorities; a candy vendor, she the last resident in what is now a deserted mining camp on her property, she who is futilely waiting word from a male companion to take her away to live in the city; and a man in a white suit and white gloves, his attire seemingly out of place for his environment of the rural area around that deserted mining camp. The three peripherals are: Otsuka and Toyama, rival union chiefs of what are the new pit and the old pit, the rivalry stemming from the differing views in the connection to the mining company itself; and the the deserter's adolescent son, who is traveling with his father and who views all these encounters largely from afar and thus unnoticed, and largely with the wide eyed innocence of a child. While on the surface the goings-on are haphazard, they have been planned with meticulous precision.