Questions re some gun stuff near the end
Someone has already asked about this, but I didn't see any responses to it. It's driving me crazy! Page 1222: "Twice more his palm knew that cursed steel. Once egregiously, the last time less so." Then, we hear the story about Kalin shooting the birch when the workers are shooting holes in the bottom of tin pails.
But there's no description of the other time! Is this described one supposed to be the one that was egregious or is the omitted one? The common English meaning of egregious doesn't fit shooting the tree, IMO. However, Merriam-Webster is telling me this: "The Latin forebear of egregious, egregius, literally meant 'out of the herd' but was used figuratively to mean 'outstanding in one's field.' " So, maybe egregious in that older Latin sense. Could the Latin root's allusion to a herd and this being a demonstration of his outstanding shooting be a coincidence? Or is there some other unexplained shooting I am supposed to connect back to Kalin that is egregious as we would today understand that word? I can't think of anyone Kalin would want to shoot except Old Porch or his dad (but very doubtful of that), but they both died in prison of natural causes.
Pages 1224-1225: I think it is clear from the description of their daughter finding Kalin dead at the foot of that elm that he did not shoot himself. Page 1224: A reference to the daughter finding him "in that halo of white." Earlier in the paragraph, there's the description of "the canopy above thick enuf to hold off the snow." Is that snow the "halo" referenced? On page 1001, it says "Kalin watched Landry spin in a halo of blood..." when she was shot. I mean, there's a parallel, but the tone of the kid finding Kalin under the tree completely convinces me he just died peacefully there. And if it were a suicide, it likely wouldn't be described as *less* egregious than the described tree thing. The last time was *less* egregious. I'd reject a suicide interpretation.
Maybe we're simply not told about the other time he held a gun after Pillars Meadow. 🤷♀️ Interested in theories or help understanding. Thank you for not making fun of me; I'm just grasping at straws trying to make sense of the reference to "twice."