The whole story is focused around the narrator and the two main characters, the father and his father (the grandfather). It is told like a story, since the father is looking back. He is looking back, telling his son about what has already happened. I can even state their ages during the actual time, since the author is giving hints throughout the story.
In the first line of the text, we are told that the father was 18 years old when the mule killers came. The narrator goes on, “I am twice as old now as he was, when the mule killers came”(l. 76) and since it is also said that he had the child when he was 18, the father must be 54 years old.
He starts the story by telling about the episode in his early youth, when his father came to the decision to replace their farm's mules with two international Harvester tractors – and thereby replaces the romantic traditional way of farming with modern industrialism. The story tells how one of the mules, Orphan Lad, was the father's first love and how Orphan Lad also became the father's first loss of true love, as Orphan Lad was slaughtered just like the other mules. Next he tells about his other true love – an unreachable, mysterious woman called Eula Parker.
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