Beans Curry is the 10-year-old first-person narrator and protagonist of the story. He lives in a small “shotgun” house in Key West, Florida, during the Great Depression. His mother takes in laundry to help the family get by, as Poppy, his father, cannot find work. Beans often gets stuck supervising younger brothers Kermit and Buddy. He does not love school and finds arithmetic especially challenging. His gang is made up of best friend Pork Chop and pal Ira, along with Kermit. The gang goes by the name Keepsies for their marble-playing abilities.

The author reveals Beans’s characterization throughout the opening chapters in a series of vignette-style scenes: Beans shows determination in digging for cans through Key West’s stinking garbage heaps; he shows frustration when hoodwinked by Winky out of the promised can money; he shows naïveté when Mr. Stone arrives wearing what Beans thinks is underwear (he actually sports Bermuda shorts); he shows his resourcefulness, ambition, and critical thinking traits when he devises the plan to sell cut-up fruit to fisherman at 100% profit.

Beans also has the steady, strong belief that grown-ups lie with frequency and audacity; a shady character like Winky certainly lies, but notably, so does Beans’s father.