Northern Idaho, 2005: Twelve-year-old Ash is bailed out of trouble on the last day of school by his father, Kelly, and in exchange will work off the debt as they hustle and scheme to save their land from impending development, all while navigating their own fraught relationship. Ash spends his summer break learning about survival and adulthood, and experiences his first brush with romance.

SYNOPSIS:

Northern Idaho...

An endless expanse of pine-bristled mountains with a small town nestled in the heart of it all, and on the outskirts, an elementary school. The bell rings, children flood outside with an eternity of summer break before them, but ASH KUHLMAN (12) has other plans: slashing his PRINCIPAL’S tires in retaliation for getting detention over a lunchtime scuffle with DUSTIN (12), a fellow student. Ash is caught red-handed, and his father, KELLY (30s), hustler by day and janitor by night, bails him out by paying off the principal. Only one problem - this has now put them behind on rent for their trailer on some acreage outside of town, for which Kelly has a long standing rent-to-own agreement with the LANDLORD.

On the first day of summer break we introduce McKENNA (15), the new girl in town who befriends Ash, and while he would prefer to spend his summer hanging out with her, he’ll instead spend it working off this debt to his cash-strapped father.

Father and son navigate their own fraught relationship as they hustle their way through North Idaho’s underbelly with the help of Kelly’s sketchy friend, TROY (30s), and in his free time, Ash bums around with McKenna; exploring the backwoods and pursuing his fledgling affections for her. The situation turns dire when Kelly is served an eviction notice by their unscrupulous landlord, a consequence of past-due rent, and so Kelly hatches a plan: scrape together the remaining down payment - after all, he can’t be evicted if he owns it. While Kelly races against looming eviction, Ash experiences his first heartbreak when McKenna ditches him for an older group of kids, with whom she’ll be starting high school with in the fall. Meanwhile, the solution for Kelly’s predicament comes in the form of a half-baked tractor heist.

The silver lining in all this bullshit is that Kelly and Ash have arrived at a truce in their relationship, but this moment of levity is fleeting as we learn that Kelly’s prospective land has already been sold to a circling out-of-state developer, and furthermore, Troy has sold him out for stealing the tractor, resulting in a confrontation that leaves Kelly physically and emotionally beaten.

Some weeks later, with summer drawing to a close, Kelly stands in his empty trailer looking out at the development of his would-be land, unable to fight the powers that be. A recurring bit involving the faulty septic system brings us to the climax; when in a final “fuck you” Kelly blows the septic tank sky-high with treestump remover, raining shit down on everything; the construction, the land, the trucks, everything. While Kelly gets his revenge, Ash makes amends with his classmate, Dustin, over a common enemy: their principal.

The boys tag his car with spray-paint, and ride off into the sunset.