Fiction

Fidelis got a job working for Koska who owned a butcher shop in Argus, North Dakota. When the railroad reached the town taking its commodities east and west, the town started to grow. Fidelis did custom jobs for livestock owners and butchers in other towns as well was working for Koska.

He saves money and his parents sell some land in Germany and he's able to bring Eva over to America. She sees a lot of nothing, where Fidelis sees everything as now complete.

Koska and Fidelis disagree over why dogs become attached to their owners. Koska says it's personal love, but Fidelis says it's a dog's love for food that makes him loyal. Koska's wife raises purebred chow dogs.

Fidelis buys a building way at the other end of town, and a new road is built right in front of his building just after he starts his own butcher shop. The two butchers don't fight over their stores competition, they fight about why dogs are loyal. Fidelis throws his waste in the back of his shop, attracting people, dogs or anything else that wants to eat, including Hottentot, Koska's dog, who comes daily from the other side of town, in spite of Koska's efforts to stop him.

Koska never throws his waste or bones outside, he locks them up in a barrel and sells them. Fidelis deliberately gives Hottentot the ugliest largest bones and other parts he has, including chicken feet, and takes great delight in the dog coming to his shop every day from clear across town. Once, when Koska tries to take a bone away from his own dog on his front stoop, it bites him, and he is angry.

Now Hottentot knows the routine, he knows when a sow is about to be killed and can't wait to get the scraps. Fidelis is going to kill a private sow, a prize pig, and Hottentot is there all excited, more or less terrifying the pig who now suspects something funny is going down. The pig attacks Fidelis before he can shoot it, breaks his kneecap, chews the soft tissues above it. Wounded and in pain, Fidelis finally shoots the pig between the eyes, and ashamedly, weeps for it, and he doesn know why. He then dresses it, giving Hottentot more stuff, who drags it home all through town.

Fidelis goes to the doctors and while there, Doctor Heech starts to sing while he's mending the knee and sewing, and through his pain, Fidelis starts to sings with him..

Koska's wife Fritzie is screaming about all the bones laying on their property, so Koska gathers them all and takes them over to Fidelis' house, finds a door open and puts them all in Eva and Fidelis bed...

Eva is furious about her smelly fancy bed stuff, her dowry in marriage, and blames the dog to everyone for Fidelis' injury. The men no longer speak.

Fidelis misses singing with the butchers as he did in his village in Germany and calls a few friends to sing at the back of his shop, giving them food and beer. It catches on and becomes poplular. Koska also loves to sing and yearns to sing with them, so he comes to Fidelis' shop and joins them, and they learn to get along eventually. Besides the doctor, the banker and a few others, another singer was Roy, the town drunk, who happened to be Delphine's father.

In my mind, Fidelis doesn't care about others,' even tho Koska gave him his first job, he kept on feeding the dog, even though Kaska tied, chained and built a pen for the dog, it would somehow get away.

Now I know understand why Fidelis never thought about the war or why it was fought or the conditions in Germany. He just didn't give a damn about anything but his knives and his sausages, which had to be made of the best ingredients available, not for his customers' sake, but for the sake of his own ego. And he cared for his wife. Nobody else really mattered, it seems.

At this point, I do not like Fidelis, he's a real jerk, and my sympathy lies with Koska..