Outer Dark

The turnip farmer is the husband of the butter maker and is a person whom Rinthy Holme encounters on her journey. Although he initially admonishes Rinthy for stealing some turnips from his garden, he takes pity on her and invites her to share a meal with him and his wife as soon as he sees how hungry and bedraggled Rinthy is. He is, however, a man who has turned bitter thanks to a difficult lot in life, including the loss of all five of his children before adulthood. Over the meal, he judges and criticizes Rinthy for her choices, and when his wife defends the girl, he grows angry and violent toward the butter maker. Later, the turnip farmer, now identified as Bud, runs into Culla Holme on the porch of Clark’s general store. Bud complains to Holme about his hard life—his five children all died in a cholera outbreak leaving him with only his shrewish wife for company—before confronting Clark to demand that he expedite the removal of the bodies of two lynched men hanging from a tree on Bud’s property.