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shelves according to her directions and occasionally delivering groceries.
If Augusta had any flaws, her younger son wasn’t aware of them. He knew that it might be a sacrilege even to think it, but in his eyes she was no less infallible than God. He recalled a time (it was, in fact, his earliest memory of her) when he was just a toddler. He was standing at the top of the staircase in their old house on Gould Street. Somehow, he lost his balance and felt himself being pulled—or pushed?—down the steep flight of wooden steps by a powerful force. Panic turned his insides to ice. Suddenly, he felt a crushing grip close around his right arm. His mother was behind him, a wild look on her face, shaking him, shouting at him. He burst into clamorous tears, overcome by a rush of violently conflicting emotions—fright, relief, guilt. Why was she so angry with him? He had no idea, but he knew he must have done something terrible to make her so furious. Misery washed over him. It was all his fault.
From that point on—even into his middle age—he placed all his reliance on her. She alone could be counted on to rescue him from life’s dangers.
There was one other memory he had of his childhood in La Crosse.
Behind the meat and grocery store was a windowless, wooden outbuilding which he was forbidden to enter. As a result, it exerted a tremendous fascination. He had seen animals being led into the rear of the shack—big-eyed heifers and grunting pigs—and on several occasions had heard a fearful bellowing coming from behind its sagging boards. Curiosity blazed in him.
One day, when his parents weren’t around, he went out through the back door of the grocery and stepped quickly to the prohibited place. The door was opened a crack, enough for him to peer inside.
There, hanging upside down from a chain in the ceiling, was a slaughtered hog. His father stood to one side of the animal, holding it steady, while his mother slipped a long-bladed knife down the length of its belly, pulled open the flaps, reached inside, and began to work at the glistening ropes of its bowels, which slid out of the carcass and into a large metal tub at her feet. Both his parents had on long leather aprons spattered with blood.
He must have made some sort of noise, because his mother turned completely around to look at him.
For the rest of his life, he remembered the moment with an uncanny clarity: the dangling beast, its carcass split open, its guts slopping onto the ground; his mother standing beside it, blood and slime smeared down the length of her body.
Years later, when they asked him about Augusta, he would say, “She was like nobody else in the world.”
Then, like the rotting, reawakened corpses in those horror magazines he enjoyed reading so much, the wretchedness would rise up in him from some buried place deep inside, and, though he was by then a man in his early fifties, he would begin to cry as noisily and helplessly as a baby.
4
Wisconsin: A Guide to the Badger State
“ City people, attracted by the cheap price of land, came out seeking new opportunity…. When they arrived, they found, instead of the pastoral life they had envisioned, merely interminable, unclocked labor, logging, stumping, stoning, draining, fencing, and breaking ground. The region demands a toll of at least one failure for each piece of land successfully brought to cultivation; of the relatively poor land left, much could be sold and resold, and ruin settler after settler, without ever becoming more productive than a sand dune . ”
B y the time Eddie was seven, Augusta had become the uncontested head of the family—its driving force and decision maker—and in 1913, she decided that the Geins would become farmers. Her hard years of labor in the store, toiling day and night and keeping a close eye on every penny, had paid off. She had managed to accumulate enough money for a modest farm. The Geins would become landowners, people of means. There was a
If Augusta had any flaws, her younger son wasn’t aware of them. He knew that it might be a sacrilege even to think it, but in his eyes she was no less infallible than God. He recalled a time (it was, in fact, his earliest memory of her) when he was just a toddler. He was standing at the top of the staircase in their old house on Gould Street. Somehow, he lost his balance and felt himself being pulled—or pushed?—down the steep flight of wooden steps by a powerful force. Panic turned his insides to ice. Suddenly, he felt a crushing grip close around his right arm. His mother was behind him, a wild look on her face, shaking him, shouting at him. He burst into clamorous tears, overcome by a rush of violently conflicting emotions—fright, relief, guilt. Why was she so angry with him? He had no idea, but he knew he must have done something terrible to make her so furious. Misery washed over him. It was all his fault.
From that point on—even into his middle age—he placed all his reliance on her. She alone could be counted on to rescue him from life’s dangers.
There was one other memory he had of his childhood in La Crosse.
Behind the meat and grocery store was a windowless, wooden outbuilding which he was forbidden to enter. As a result, it exerted a tremendous fascination. He had seen animals being led into the rear of the shack—big-eyed heifers and grunting pigs—and on several occasions had heard a fearful bellowing coming from behind its sagging boards. Curiosity blazed in him.
One day, when his parents weren’t around, he went out through the back door of the grocery and stepped quickly to the prohibited place. The door was opened a crack, enough for him to peer inside.
There, hanging upside down from a chain in the ceiling, was a slaughtered hog. His father stood to one side of the animal, holding it steady, while his mother slipped a long-bladed knife down the length of its belly, pulled open the flaps, reached inside, and began to work at the glistening ropes of its bowels, which slid out of the carcass and into a large metal tub at her feet. Both his parents had on long leather aprons spattered with blood.
He must have made some sort of noise, because his mother turned completely around to look at him.
For the rest of his life, he remembered the moment with an uncanny clarity: the dangling beast, its carcass split open, its guts slopping onto the ground; his mother standing beside it, blood and slime smeared down the length of her body.
Years later, when they asked him about Augusta, he would say, “She was like nobody else in the world.”
Then, like the rotting, reawakened corpses in those horror magazines he enjoyed reading so much, the wretchedness would rise up in him from some buried place deep inside, and, though he was by then a man in his early fifties, he would begin to cry as noisily and helplessly as a baby.
4
Wisconsin: A Guide to the Badger State
“ City people, attracted by the cheap price of land, came out seeking new opportunity…. When they arrived, they found, instead of the pastoral life they had envisioned, merely interminable, unclocked labor, logging, stumping, stoning, draining, fencing, and breaking ground. The region demands a toll of at least one failure for each piece of land successfully brought to cultivation; of the relatively poor land left, much could be sold and resold, and ruin settler after settler, without ever becoming more productive than a sand dune . ”
B y the time Eddie was seven, Augusta had become the uncontested head of the family—its driving force and decision maker—and in 1913, she decided that the Geins would become farmers. Her hard years of labor in the store, toiling day and night and keeping a close eye on every penny, had paid off. She had managed to accumulate enough money for a modest farm. The Geins would become landowners, people of means. There was a
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