The rural Virginia in the 1930s is a destitute place, and the inhabitants know it. As their family friend, a young, unnamed boy, explains, the Dabney family is a good example. They once owned a large plantation and many slaves, but the ensuing years have drained their coffers, leaving them impoverished moonshiners. While the boy plays marbles with one of the Dabneys' seven children, a mysterious, ancient-looking Black man named Shadrach walks up to them. Enraptured, he greets the two boys effusively. They run to fetch him water and food. The boy and one of the Dabneys' daughters learn that he has returned from his sharecropping work in Alabama to die on the Dabneys' plantation -- he was born there ninety-nine years ago. Over the next few days, Shadrach's health declines sharply, so the patriarch, Vernon Dabney, drives his wife, the old man, the boy, and some of his children to their ancestral farm. Upon reaching the house, the boys play, Shadrach sleeps, and Vernon tends to his still. As the county sheriff soon informs the latter, however, state law prevents them from burying the old man on their property. When he realizes that he will have to pay thirty-five dollars to inter him in a Black-only churchyard, he erupts -- even five would be too expensive. Later that day, Shadrach has the kids take him to the millpond, where his pure joy demonstrates that he has not returned out of nostalgia so much as to recapture the one pure, untroubled moment in his long, arduous life. He dies the next day.