In 1959 at the Manager’s Mansion near M____, smallpox strikes Lenin Evermore’s family. Lizzi, Kora, and five-month-old Shyla wake feverish and blistered. Kora, too weak to move, warns Lenin to keep others away and urges him to fetch water and tend the cow. His repeated reassurance that everything will be all right alarms Lenin, who senses catastrophe.

By the next morning, Kora is dead and Shyla has stopped breathing. Lizzi barely clings to life. Starving and terrified, Lenin resolves to “follow the straight path,” wandering in a line until he finds help or perishes. A wealthy Christian household bars its doors and threatens him with a dog. Hidden in the rushes, Acca, a pulayi woman, beckons Lenin aside, feeds him fish, rice, and bananas, and identifies the illness as smallpox, explaining she and her husband are immune and promising to send for help.

Lenin returns to the shack to care for Lizzi, dragging her toward fresh air and praying for an angel to save her. He recalls his family’s past struggles and the scar on Lizzi’s belly, a reminder of Kora’s past violence and Lenin’s perilous birth, as he keeps vigil beside her failing body.

At dawn, a thin, gray-bearded priest arrives, the “angel” Lenin begged for. He surveys the scene, recognizes Lenin by name, and, with one look at Lizzi, silently confirms what Lenin already knows: Lizzi has died. The priest opens his arms to the newly orphaned boy, marking the end of Lenin’s family and the beginning of his uncertain survival.