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Arizona petty criminal Herbert "H.I." McDunnough (known as "Hi") and policewoman Edwina (known as "Ed") meet after she takes the mugshots of the recidivist Hi during his many trips through her station. After Ed's fiance leaves her, they fall in love and get married. Hi promises to reform. They move into a desert mobile home, and Hi gets a job in a machine shop. After serious and ongoing attempts to have a baby, Ed discovers that she is infertile. The couple cannot adopt because of Hi's criminal record. The couple learns of the "Arizona Quints", sons of locally-famous Unpainted Furniture magnate Nathan Arizona; Hi and Ed decide to kidnap one of the five babies. After a nearly disastrous false start, Hi successfully abducts Nathan Junior (or so he thinks, the fact is never fully established). Hi and Ed return home and are promptly visited by his prison inmate chums, Gale Snoats and his brother Evelle, who have just tunneled out of prison. Under the two brothers' influence, Hi threatens to revert to his felonious ways, leading him to believe that Ed and he are not well suited for each other. Their problems are only worsened when Hi's supervisor, Glen, proposes wife swapping and Hi assaults him. That night, Hi steals diapers and cash from a convenience store and is sucked into a wild chase around the local neighborhood with the police, a gun-toting store cashier, and a pack of dogs. Ed drives off without Hi, but finally relents and picks him up, leading to a tense ride home. Back at the McDunnough residence, Glen stops by to officially fire Hi and reveals that he has deduced "Junior's" true identity and gives Hi an ultimatum: give up the baby to be raised by Glen and his wife, or Glen will turn them in for the reward. Gale and Evelle overhear this conversation and immediately decide to betray Hi and take Junior themselves for the reward. Gale and Hi's ensuing fight wrecks the mobile home's interior before Hi is subdued and tied up. Gale and Evelle leave to rob a "hayseed" bank with Junior in tow. When Ed comes home, she finds the battered and bound Hi and learns that the baby is gone. Despite their disintegrating relationship, Ed and Hi arm themselves and set out to retrieve their child together. Hi admits to Ed that "You were right, I was wrong, honey. A blind man could see that." Hi then chambers a round in a shotgun and shouts "Now let's go get Nathan Jr.!"

While the previous events were taking place, Nathan Arizona Sr. was approached by the menacing and heavily-armed biker/bounty hunter Leonard Smalls, who offers to find the child for twice the publicly posted reward. Even though he considers police efforts to locate his son totally inadequate, Nathan Sr. refuses to partake of Smalls' services. Smalls decides to recover the child anyway and sell him on the black market, as was done to himself when he was a baby. He begins tracking Gale and Evelle, using the scent of the brothers' hair pomade. He breaks into the deserted McDunnough mobile home, and finds a newspaper clipping concerning the targeted bank. Gale and Evelle successfully rob the bank, but end up leaving Junior behind in the road in his car seat. Their miseries are compounded when one of the bank's anti-theft dye canisters explodes in their loot sack, coating them and the interior of their car in blue dye. Back at the bank, Smalls arrives and beats Ed and Hi to Junior, mounting Junior's car seat on the front of his bike, and turns around to fight the couple. Ed grabs the baby and flees; Hi is able to fend Smalls off for a short time, but then the biker begins to methodically brutalize him. After throwing Hi to the ground and drawing his matched pair of shotguns to finish the job, Hi holds up his hand to reveal that he has pulled the pin from one of the many working hand grenades which dangle from Smalls' jacket. Smalls struggles unsuccessfully to drop the guns and get rid of the grenade before being blown to pieces. Hi and Ed wearily sneak Nathan Jr. back into his home. As they are putting him back in his crib, Nathan Sr. confronts them, learns why they took his son, and is uncharacteristically understanding of their predicament. When they say that they are breaking up, he advises them to not act rashly; perhaps someday, medical science will catch up with them, just as it did with him and his own wife. Hi and Ed go to sleep in the same bed, and Hi dreams: Gale and Evelle elect to return to prison, Nathan Jr. becomes a football star, Glen gets what's coming to him, and maybe, just maybe, Hi and Ed will remain married for many years to come, have lots of children, and live together in a better place. Then again, maybe he was just dreaming about Utah.

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