2024, DIRTY WORKS

Three months shy of his eighteenth birthday, Eugene Biggs leaves school and the small family farm, because that’s what is expected of him. It’s what people in southern Georgia have been doing since before the Great Depression: hopping on a Greyhound bus and heading to Jacksonville, Florida, to earn a living. Upon arrival, he rents a tiny room and begins stringing together menial jobs. He drifts from a bakery, a cellulose factory, a roofing company, a construction firm, to a shipyard. It is there that he meets Budd Jenkins, who, sensing his boxing potential, decides to put him in the ring and become his manager. Thus begins the dream. He wins thirteen consecutive fights and gets the chance to open the preliminary round at Madison Square Garden. Everything seems to be going smoothly, but reality soon proves otherwise. After a third knockout defeat, Budd, disappointed, abandons him to his fate in New Orleans. That very day, Eugene discovers he possesses an extraordinary skill, which he will not hesitate to use to sell his soul to the sordid underworld of the city.