: A thirteen-year-old boy comes to the northern border town to earn money. He wants to help his family and repay debts to everyone who helps him.
In the northern border village, where everyone is in sight, an excavator Roman Pankevich meets a strangely dressed boy of about thirteen, Pavluha. Pavluha lives a hundred kilometers from the village with his mother, younger brother and sister. Mother worked on a fish farm; now, due to a hand illness, she was transferred to another place.
A minor Pavlukha also wants to work on a collective farm, but the chairman did not allow it, he only presented huge fishing shoe covers that attracted everyone's attention. The boy appeals to the district executive committee, but they offer to arrange him in a city boarding school. Father left them and did not pay child support. When Pavluha was small, his father scared him, and after that the boy began to stutter.
Since Pavlukha is not yet fifteen years old, he cannot be hired. He lives with Roman, rejecting any material help from the Komsomol members of the village. Seeing that the boy is suffering, Roman tells him about his childhood. At six, during the war, he remained an orphan. He was picked up by an unknown old man with a violin, which lacked one string. The old man everywhere looked for the missing string, and people looked at him as if he were crazy - the war is on, whether it is up to the string - but when he played, even without the string, the soldiers cried. The old man identified Roman in an orphanage, and he died in the besieged Leningrad. A novel is owed to many people because it was raised.
Surveyor Viktor Nikolaevich takes Pavluha to work - during school holidays, he can attract schoolchildren. The boy becomes attached to the surveyor and dreams of sending money from his paycheck to his mother and repaying his debt to Roman.
Once, during his work, Viktor Nikolaevich tells Pavlukha that he has a duty to his youngest son: when he worked in Kamchatka, his son went to prison. Suddenly Viktor Nikolaevich falls unconscious. Pavlukha runs out on the road to ask for help, but no one stops. Then the boy blocks the track with a tripod. A truck with border guards stops and soldiers help deliver the surveyor to the hospital. Pavlukha regrets that he has no money to buy at least Kazbek cigarettes for them.
On the day of the pay, the cashier calculates for everyone a gift to Viktor Nikolaevich. Pavlukha wants to give him his boots instead of his worn shoes, but they take money from him, like everyone else.
Pavlukha goes to Roman to settle accounts with him, and there he finds his friends who came to congratulate him on the birth of his son. Pavlukha wants to give money, but then decides to give the boots.
