In 1984, 11-year-old Boy lives on a farm with his younger brother Rocky (who thinks he has magic powers), their gran, and a goat. Shortly after Gran leaves for a week, Boy's father Alamein appears out of the blue. Having imagined a heroic version of his father during his absence, Boy comes face-to-face with the real version: an incompetent hoodlum who has returned to find a bag of money he buried years before. This is where the goat enters.