An unnamed, tall man with a heavy build who inhabits the farmhouse before its sudden abandonment. Evidence in the house suggests he is religious, owning a Bible with a broken back. However, the external state of the property features fields full of boulders and a leaky barn, indicating he lacks the skill or inclination for successful farming.

An unnamed woman who lives in the isolated country farmhouse with her family. She displays resourcefulness in the face of poverty, lining her kitchen shelves with oilcloth and stocking the cellar with jars of plum preserves and canned tomatoes. The abandonment of her carefully sealed food stores suggests she departs the farm in a state of nervous panic.

The unnamed child of the farmer and his wife. The child's existence on the property is documented through a collection of battered, farm-themed toys scattered in the yard. These items include a rubber cow, a rusty tractor, and a doll in overalls. The toys mirror the adults' struggling agricultural reality and are left behind when the family flees.

The personified structure that observes and speaks for the absent family. It acts as a collective narrator alongside the objects inside and around it, attempting to deduce what happened to the people who once lived there. Though it possesses the ability to speak and judge the evidence, it lacks complete understanding and cannot explain exactly why the family fled.