Joe Braxton is a convict who violates his parole after a failed attempt to
lift a bunch of televisions from a store in Philadelphia. After a dramatic attempt at
reverse psychology with the judge, he is given a second chance at parole, and his parole-officer, Donald, has him do something for him. Donald is also involved with school teacher Vivian Perry, whose school was just closed down by the city due to budget cuts. While most of the children have been relocated, eight special needs students have yet to be relocated. Vivian decides to take them to her aunt's farm in rural Washington. Donald is against it, and at first gets Joe to tell her the old bus she planned on using would not work. However, that blows up in his face, but Donald then decides to have Joe go ahead and drive the bus to Washington. As Joe, Vivian and the kids ride the bus, the past lives and ailments of the kids are told: • Harold is blind, but so badly wants to drive a vehicle, and eventually does. • Anthony is a pyromaniac who accidentally burned his house down and killed his parents, whom he could not wake up. • Annie is a former Vietnamese
child prostitute that has a knack for art. Joe thinks he is there to fix and drive the bus, but he finds out his true knack is helping out the kids, especially shown when he scolds and counsels Annie after she tries to sleep with him and saves Anthony from setting another person's property on fire, eventually taking the kids fishing for their first time. After fixing the bus in the rain on a dirt road, Joe and Vivian have trouble getting it out of the mud. When Joe leaves to get help, he is found walking in lock step with a group of
Klansmen, who follow him back to the bus. Joe then manages to talk the head Klansman and the rest into getting the bus out to get the kids to a hospital in Washington, suddenly claiming they are all blind. They agree sympathetically and push them out of the mud. Somewhere in Montana, Donald catches up with them at a motel, after finding out Vivian lied to him and falsified the kids records. After trying to flee in the middle of the night, Donald catches up with them and demands they return to Philadelphia, which the kids, Vivian, and Joe all resist. After arriving at the farm, Vivian meets with a banker in order to secure a $15,000 loan to save the farm. One of the other kids overhears them and tells the rest of the kids this. Joe then confronts the kids, who are whining and protesting about their fate. Joe learns about this as well and heads into town where he sees an ad for a "trapezoid scheme" and goes in to learn about it, dressed as a cowboy from
Texarkana. Eventually, he works his way into sitting with the group and schemes to rip them off. He does and gets Vivian her $15,000 then leaves with her, while two men from the group pursue them. After evading them and burning the money, they go back to the farm and have an argument about the money. They realize the old
Rolls-Royce from the bank is there, and they find out the kids told the president of the bank (who is also the mayor of the town) lies about what good things Joe and Vivian did, and convinced the mayor to give the loan and make the kids a part of the community. After they celebrate, Donald shows up with a police officer demanding they all return to Philadelphia but has a confrontation with the mayor that he ends up losing. In the end, it seems that Joe is going to go back to Philly with Donald, but Donald gets to the end of the driveway, and changes his mind and lets Joe stay. ==Cast==