Grainier, an orphan sent to Idaho by train at the age of 6 or 7 with a destination pinned to his coat, is an ordinary person-a laborer who makes a living building railroads, joining seasonal logging crews, and, as an older man, hauling freight with a wagon. "He'd had one lover-his wife, Gladys-owned one acre of property, two horses, and a wagon," Johnson sums up Grainier's life, near the end of the novella, in a catalog of experience that neatly pins him as a creature of his time, class, and place:
Grainier, an orphan sent to Idaho by train at the age of 6 or 7 with a destination pinned to his coat, is an ordinary person-a laborer who makes a living building railroads, joining seasonal logging crews, and, as an older man, hauling freight with a wagon. "He'd had one lover-his wife, Gladys-owned one acre of property, two horses, and a wagon,"