A story's dramatic purpose reaches into every character scene and word in a story to give it meaning and purpose. Words, characters and events that exist outside of a story's dramatic purpose should be revised. They confuse the story's audience. Looking at the dirt encrusted shoes of a local helping with the dig, the narrator thinks, The man in khaki shook his head, staring down at the laceless, crusted shoes caked thick with debris of the pain of living. The author continues to cue his audience to his story's dramatic purpose via the details of what he chooses to describe.
Life is about pain.
Spirit and the shoes were to him but aspects of a stuff more fundamental, a stuff that was primal and totally other. Again, the author sets out the terrain of this story. The author continues, The shadow lifted. Once he could not have loved this man. This last line is a very suggestive, very dramatic sentence.