Familiaris

John works as a vehicle tester at the Kissel factory, driving car chassis to ensure they are sound. Concerned about the danger, he asks Ricardo Bruno, a leather worker, to make him a helmet. Initially, John finds the helmet ugly, but after Ricardo demonstrates its effectiveness, John appreciates it.

Despite enjoying his job, John’s attempts at innovation, like writing quirky descriptions predicting the cars’ future performance, annoy his supervisors. This behavior has led to him being transferred between departments.

Louis Kissel, the company’s founder, fires him. As John leaves the factory, he passes a strange man in the hallway. Frustrated, John turns back to confront Louis, but the strange man, John Gerbier, joins him and shoots Louis. John tackles and disarms Gerbier.

John returns home from Northern Wisconsin, surprising his wife, Mary, with a new dog, Gus, before heading to work.

A year earlier in 1918, John met and married Mary after convincing his best friend, Elbow, to move to Hartford, Wisconsin. John worked at the Kissel factory, and Elbow worked with an ice company; in their free time, they drove together, with John being loquacious and Elbow quiet.

John first spoke to Mary at Woolworths after she dropped a skein of yarn. She lived with her stepfather, Alfons Svoboda, whom she nicknamed The Beast. After her mother’s death, Mary moved into the carriage house after Alfons groped her, though she continued to manage his household. John proposed to Mary after they both rushed to help a dog kicked by a horse. Mary accepted.

After returning home from work, John tells her about the shooting. Mary is relieved John won’t be doing the dangerous “shake out” work anymore. They discuss finding homes for Vi’s puppies.

John can’t find work after the shooting because the newspaper referred to him as “Either Samaritan or Accomplice” (53). He has an uncomfortable experience in a bar, where he is congratulated for his role in almost killing Louis. He meets Ricardo at a diner, and Ricardo explains he doesn’t do much leather art because when he does, he gets bad dreams and is kicked out of bed. John asks for a job in the leather shop, but Ricardo refuses.

Walking home, John passes the house where he rehomed Champ—now Howard—and watches the children playing with the puppy. That night, he and Mary talk back and forth in their sleep about blueberries and waffles, and they make blueberry waffles in the morning with no recollection of their sleepy conversation.

John comes across Practical Agriculture and Free Will by George Soloman, stealing it from the library. He leaves the library and is stopped by a town car driver, who has come to collect John to take him to Louis’s house. Louis is alive but on his deathbed. He is grateful that John stopped the attack but resentful that he didn’t prevent the shooting.

Louis forces John to choose whether he deserves a reward or punishment. John doesn’t want to answer but eventually caves and says a reward. Louis says John can have a permanent job and a raise—as long as John shows up for his shifts, he will be paid regardless of whether he works. The offer is good for one week following Louis’s death, and he will write it into his will so that his children cannot renege on the deal. A week after Louis dies, John gets drunk in a bar with Elbow and Mary, and he starts shouting at the patron about future possibilities. Elbow and Mary must drag him out.

While at Louis’s, John saw a globe that reminded him of an anecdote. He was in fifth grade when his teacher, Miss Duffy, left him in charge of the class. He dramatically read The Legend of Sleepy Hollow to the class, taking Miss Duffy’s prized globe from its cage, throwing it at Elbow, and then sticking the cage on his head.

When he heard Miss Duffy’s footsteps, he tried but failed to remove the cage. He took the globe back from Elbow and sat down. Miss Duffy asked him to return the globe but left him in the cage until the end of the day when the janitor helped pull it off.

John tries and fails to spook Elbow, who is riding on the back of an ice delivery wagon driven by So Jack and pulled by Granddaddy, a stoic, black draft horse. So Jack likes to do a performance where he pretends Granddaddy is frozen like the ice in the truck. He has children try to pull him forward, and he gives Granddaddy a signal to move when the smallest child is pulling the rope.

So Jack has been with Granddaddy since he was a colt named Baby. He then became Daddy while working for a logging company. The supervisor forced the horses to work too hard, so So Jack trained Granddaddy to fake a limp, getting him removed from the team. Granddaddy was sold to the ice company, and So Jack went along with the horse.

John goes to visit So Jack so he can tell his problems to Granddaddy. John explains he put a low bid on the farm, but he hasn’t told Mary yet. So Jack translates that Granddaddy’s stoicism means John shouldn’t say anything about it yet.

Mary put a lot of effort into making the carriage house livable, including hand-sanding the entire floor over a month. The process helped her feel a connection to the room and process Alfons’s assault. She has the notion that rooms influence a person’s behavior and personality. She wonders if Alfons groped her because he spent years seeing her in her room, potentially when she was undressed, though she knows it isn’t in any way her fault. Mary differs from John in that she thinks the environment influences behavior, while John attributes behavior to inner free will.

Vi runs out the door and jumps on a boy delivering a telegram for John. The telegram intrigues Mary, which reads, “Offer declined. Adamski” (105).

John, Mary, and Elbow visit So Jack and Granddaddy as usual on Tuesday evening but find So Jack drunk and upset. The ice company is switching to gas-powered vehicles, and the horses, including Granddaddy, have been sold to the Ringling Bros. Circus. So Jack insists they leave so he can retrain Granddaddy on how to fake a limp.

By morning, So Jack and Granddaddy are gone, and rumors about their whereabouts spread through town. John, Mary, and Elbow search for them but come up empty-handed. Reflecting on this, John discovers a telegram in Alfons’s office revealing his declined $900 offer on a 92-acre property. Although relieved since he lost his job and can’t secure a loan, John is disappointed because the farm felt right.

Mary surprises John with another telegram—her $1,200 offer was accepted. She has a plan to secure funds from Alfons. They stay up all night planning. The next day, they deliver two of the remaining puppies to their new owners.

Mary travels to Lincoln, Illinois where Alfons lives with his original family. After her mother’s death, Mary discovered that Alfons was married before becoming her stepfather, and he has been living a double life. She goes to Alfons’s house, meeting his wife, Mildred, who, at first glance, looks like Mary’s mother. Mildred fetches Alfons, and Mary pretends to be his niece.

Mary goes outside with Alfons, and she threatens to turn him in for polygamy unless he gives her the funds they need for the farm. Hesitant at first, he agrees to give her $2,500 from his Hartford account. Mary stays at the house visiting until her cab returns in the late afternoon. She cries in the cab, and the driver lends her support.

John has just hung a glass Schlitz bottle from a tree when Elbow arrives. He left Elbow an anonymous note earlier in the day challenging him to a duel. John pulls out two fencing foils and hits the bottle; he then makes Elbow try to hit it. Elbow is good at the exercise because he took tennis lessons as a child. John tells Elbow about the farm, and he asks Elbow to come with him and Mary. Elbow is hesitant about the idea. John pressures him, asking if Elbow will come if John can prove he can do something impossible.

A while back, John taught himself to walk on his hands using pulleys. When he showed Mary his new skill, he asked her not to tell anyone, including Elbow.

John flips upside down, walks on his hands to the swinging bottle, and in one swift motion drops down, grabs the foil, and breaks the bottle. Elbow coughs on his beer and conditionally agrees to come to the farm.

John visits Frank, a wounded veteran and his friend, at the local veterans’ hospital. Frank, who lost an arm and a leg and was badly scarred during his wartime service, resents John. When John wakes Frank, Frank asks if John brought “it”—meaning a pistol—but John did not. Although he already sent a letter about the topic, John explains that he and Mary have purchased a farm, and Elbow has agreed to come with them as long as John asks Frank to join them, too. Frank rudely declines, and John leaves, asking a nurse to talk with Frank to help him feel better.

It was John’s idea he, Elbow, and Frank join the military, but the military refused him entry because he had gray hair following a severe bout of the flu, and his evaluator claimed healthy young men don’t have gray hair. He was supposed to return in six months for another evaluation, but by then Elbow wrote that Frank was badly injured and that John shouldn’t register.

John must wait for a sudden bout of rain to pass. Then, as he is walking to the Kissel, Frank yells out the window that he will come with them. 

For two weeks, John and Mary prepare the Hartford house to sell. The day before they leave, John goes around Hartford checking on the puppies he rehomed. He visits Hoppy, clandestinely petting him from the other side of the fence and then sending him back to his new owner. Next, he checks on Theda, who is chained up without food or water. He gets water and food for her from the empty house, then checks on the other two. He returns to Theda’s house and takes her, breaking the chain to make it look like she ran away. He takes Theda to Ricardo’s family.

John meets Frank at the Malone Diner, where Frank has ordered more than $5 worth of food he hasn’t eaten. John pays then they go to the car, where Frank is introduced to Vi, Gus, and Needles, who bites Frank’s prosthetic hand. Frank sits in the back with Mary while John drives.

They drive until nightfall and camp at Devil’s Lake. Mary cooks dinner while John and Frank talk. Frank, only allowed to take his resentment out on John, asks John to ensure he doesn’t leave them for two weeks. Frank refuses to remove his trench coat he stole from the hospital despite the heat. Mary and John discuss their worries before sleeping.

The next morning, they stop for apples and gas, and John jokes about heading to Camelot. At Yellow River that night, John catches eight fish, and Mary makes home fries. Frank seems better but his mood drops when John and Mary dance to the phonograph. After drinking Elbow’s whiskey, Frank undresses and removes his prosthetics, revealing an emaciated, scarred body. He falls while dressing, refusing help.

John finds a burned box with syringes in the fire pit the next morning. Confronting Frank at a gas station, Frank admits to his morphine addiction and his desire to keep it from Elbow and Mary.

Three days later, they arrive in Mellen, Wisconsin. Frank stays in the car with the dogs while John and Mary meet James Adamski. After an hour of paperwork, Adamski’s evasive attitude worries them, but he says he is just worried the Sawtelles will struggle on the farm.

Returning to the car, Elbow, having gone to the train depot, reports their crates have arrived. They continue to the farm, stopping briefly at a store run by Walter, who introduces his shop as Popcorn Corners. Walter’s daughter, Ida, pets the dogs and asks to see Frank’s prosthetic hand. John finds Ida familiar.

They drive the last stretch, stopping on the hillside overlooking the farm. John wants to walk the remaining distance, but Frank refuses and gets out with a pistol. John tries to reason with him, but Frank attempts suicide. The gun fails, as Elbow has removed the firing pin.

John walks to Mary, seeing lights that indicate someone is already living there.