The End of Country Read Online Free PDF

At least most of it was. Our dairy-farming neighbors still had to get up at dawn to milk their cows, and they still had to muck out the barn. But after that, we’d all gather at the house of an eighty-six-year-old spinster schoolteacher with the potpourri-scented name of Lucretia Davis, who was affectionately referred to by just about everybody as Cousin Keat.
    Even in the winter of her years, she was as a straight as a shagbark, and sharp and kind and wise. Before this latest generation was born, she was one of the only people in the area to have attendedcollege—she had gone to Columbia University in 1902, a remarkable achievement for any woman at that time, let alone one from rural Pennsylvania. She had taken a job as a teacher in the New York City school system, and the day she retired in 1941, she bought a brand-new jet-black Ford sedan, packed it with all her belongings, and drove back home. She was still driving that car in the mid-1970s. You’d see her coming down the road, her paisley bonnet and the tops of her rimless glasses just visible above the steering wheel, hustling along that two-lane with surprising speed.
    No one embodied the rhythms of the place as thoroughly as Cousin Keat. She’d spend every Saturday in front of her ancient woodstove, baking banana bread and spice cake; she’d ice bottles of Coke in the cooler; and on Sundays, after chores and church, all the neighbors, kids and adults, would drive or walk or ride their ponies to Keat’s house to socialize. In the cupboard in her dining room she used to keep an old shoebox filled with money, change mostly, but a few crinkled bills as well. I remember pretending not to watch as one of our neighbors, whose last check from the dairy hadn’t been big enough to pay his bills for the month, ducked out of Keat’s kitchen and into the dining room to take what was needed and slipped back, hoping that no one was any the wiser. That’s why Keat put the money there in the first place. It was always repaid. At least Keat assumed it was.
    As per my father’s instructions, I’d tend the calves, and in winter, it was up to me to feed and water the cattle. In between, I learned a little bit about how cruel and capricious the land can be. One lesson in particular still stands out. We had owned the farm for about two years when it happened. An aged Holstein belonging to one of our neighbors, a cow that was already weakened by age and suffering from mastitis poisoning, a common but easily treated malady among Holsteins, had wandered into a swamp and collapsed. Her head was above the water, but her weakened frame was stuck deep in the mud. My neighbors and I tried everything to get her out—at one point we even tried tying a rope around her front legs, hooking it up to the tractor, and dragging her out—but the more we pulled, the deeper she sank into the muck. I remember being struck by the contrast between my bitter disappointment—it bordered on rage—over how, despite all wehad done, the cow had died, and how calmly my neighbor had accepted defeat.
    I learned that lesson again the following winter, when the nature of the place played cruel with us. My father had finally mastered the art of keeping his cows more or less on his own land and had made grand plans to double the herd, buying about half a dozen calves, when suddenly a virus that had been going around that year hit our cattle. Within a few days, it had infected every one of them, and for nearly a week after that my father and I took shifts around the clock, not so much nursing the calves as trying to ease their suffering, but to no avail. One by one, the calves died. My father or I, or both of us, would tie baling twine around the dead calf’s hind legs and drag the carcass a few dozen yards from the barn, far enough, we hoped, to prevent the virus from infecting the other calves. We’d leave them on the frozen ground, praying that the cold would preserve them until we could find a few free