Connecticut

Connecticut is the birthplace and formative landscape of the Trask family, a New England farm on the outskirts of a little town not far from a big town in Connecticut. It is here that Adam Trask was born in 1862, six months after his father Cyrus was mustered into a Connecticut regiment, and here that his half-brother Charles grew up under the same roof. The Connecticut farm is the stage for the central dramas of the brothers' childhood: Cyrus's tyrannical military training, the savage beating Charles gives Adam after Adam beats him at peewee, and Charles's later attempt to kill Adam with a hatchet. It is also the place where Cyrus, having lost a leg in the war, builds a fraudulent reputation as a military expert and amasses a fortune of over ninety-three thousand dollars, a secret that haunts Charles after Cyrus's death. The Connecticut setting thus provides the psychological and moral foundation for the Trask brothers' adult lives, establishing patterns of violence, guilt, and the search for identity that they carry westward to California.

The Farm and the Family

The Trask farm in Connecticut is a working property with a woodlot, a barn, and a kitchen where Alice Trask, Adam's stepmother, silently endures her consumption and her husband's military obsessions. It is a place of harsh discipline: Cyrus teaches the boys the manual of arms when they can barely walk, forces them to march for miles carrying knapsacks loaded with stones, and drills them in marksmanship in the woodlot behind the house. The farm is also the site of Alice's secret smile, which Adam discovers when he is small, and of her quiet death from consumption. The physical details of the farm—the woodlot where Adam hides between the roots of a stump, the kitchen where Alice darns socks, the pond where Adam's biological mother drowned herself—are woven into the brothers' earliest memories and their later attempts to understand their own histories.

The Violence Between Brothers

The Connecticut farm is the setting for the two most violent episodes between Adam and Charles. The first occurs when Adam beats Charles at peewee, a game with a small pointed stick and a bat. Charles, enraged, strikes Adam in the face with his bat, kicks him heavily in the stomach, and walks away. The second, more serious attack happens after Cyrus tells Adam he loves him better than Charles. Charles, consumed by jealousy over a pearl-handled knife he gave Cyrus that was never used, beats Adam savagely, then returns with a hatchet to kill him. Adam hides in a ditch and survives. These events, rooted in the Connecticut farm, establish the lifelong tension between the brothers and the guilt that Adam carries for being the favored son.

Cyrus's Fraudulent Legacy

Connecticut is also where Cyrus Trask, after losing his leg in a minor skirmish, constructs a false military record. He buys books about war, studies maps, and writes articles that attract attention from the War Department. He becomes a spokesman for the Grand Army of the Republic and eventually a paid secretary, traveling the country. After his death, Charles discovers that Cyrus was never at Gettysburg or any major battle—his discharge papers prove he was hit in a skirmish and sent home. The fortune he leaves, over a hundred thousand dollars, is unexplained, and Charles suspects it was stolen from the G.A.R. This legacy of fraud and hidden wealth, born in Connecticut, follows Adam to California and shapes his own struggles with honesty and purpose.

The Brothers' Departure

Adam leaves the Connecticut farm when he enlists in the cavalry, a decision forced by Cyrus. He serves five years, then re-enlists rather than return home. Charles remains on the farm, working it obsessively, adding a hundred acres and planting tobacco, but living in a state of savage filth and loneliness. When Adam finally returns after years of wandering, the brothers confront their father's legacy and the money. Adam eventually sells his share of the farm to Charles and moves to California with Cathy, leaving Connecticut behind. The farm, with its memories of violence and guilt, becomes a symbol of the past that Adam tries to escape but can never fully leave.