An Abundance of Katherines: Chapter 15 Summary & Analysis

Things are awkward over the next few days because Lindsey and Colin do not talk about anything they mentioned in the cave, but slowly things return to the way they were. Lindsey has a boyfriend, and Colin works on the Theorem. To shake things up a little, Hassan has a girlfriend, and everyone is preparing for a pig hunt.

Colin tries to prepare for the pig hunt by reading. The feral pig seems like a fierce enemy. Colin consoles himself by thinking that he is not really going on a hunt—it is more like a walk through the woods with a gun. The morning of the hunt, he is excited to wake up before the rooster for the first time. He runs into Hassan in the bathroom, and Hassan says that he is confident no pigs will die today.

Colin and Hassan drive to the meeting place for the hunt in the Hearse with Lindsey. Lindsey directs them to a lodge off a dead-end, where they find TOC, JATT, and a middle-aged man Colin recognizes from one of the interviews as Townsend Lyford. Katrina comes outside and greets Hassan cheerfully. Colin calls Hassan a smooth cat.

Inside the lodge, SOCT hands Colin and Hassan camouflage outfits and bright orange vests. They change in the outhouse. Mr. Lyford then gives a speech before everyone about the dangers of the feral pig, or “the poor man’s grizzly bear.” He puts heavy emphasis on a lot of words. He calls pig hunting a sport and says that the pigs are pests that even the government says should be eradicated. To Colin’s surprise, TOC calls Mr. Lyford “Dad.” Everyone gets their marching orders except Katrina, who refuses to hunt on moral grounds. Hassan tells her he is thinking of going vegetarian. She tells him not to get skinny, they kiss publicly, and Colin is baffled.

On the hunt, Colin and Hassan are to stick with Mr. Lyford while the others go off separately. He tells them to start looking for rootings, or places where the hog has turned up the soil. He talks to them as if they are younger than they are, but he also offers them chewing tobacco, which they decline. Eventually, Hassan finds a rooting, and Mr. Lyford takes off at a brisk pace between a run and a walk. Colin and Hassan ask to slow down, and Mr. Lyford disappointedly decides to leave them behind in search of the pig because “This is no time for lollygaggin’ or dillydallyin’.” He leaves his chewing tobacco with Colin in case the hog smells the wintergreen. 

Hassan has Colin pull out the mini recorder from the interviews and records a “captain’s log,” in a Star Trek voice, about how boring hog hunting is, and how he is going to take a nap while Colin keeps a lookout. While Hassan naps, Colin thinks about Katherine XIX and decides against calling her again. He wants to wait until he completes the Theorem. He begins thinking about Katherine III and why on earth she is posing a problem for the Theorem. He only knew her for twelve days. He anagrams her name, “Katherine Mutsenberger,” and finds the phrase, “remark eighteen, snub rest.” It does not make sense, he thinks, because he remarked all nineteen.

When Hassan wakes, Colin tells him about Katherine III, and how she dumped him at the end of “smart kid camp.” She was homeschooled, and as it turns out, Hassan knows her from homeschooling events he attended before he started going to Colin’s school. When Colin expresses his perplexity that the formula does not work for Katherine III, Hassan encourages him to call her. Colin has never thought of this before, but he decides to give it a try. When Katherine III picks up, he reminds her who he is and questions her about how cool she was in fourth grade, then hangs up. Hassan tells him she must think he’s “STARK RAVING BONKERS.” Colin ponders for a moment whether the formula could possibly already be right. He calls Katherine back and finds out that indeed, she did not dump him—he dumped her. He apologizes for hurting her feelings, and they get off the phone amicably.

Colin feels betrayed by his memory. He tells Hassan that he has only ever been two things: a child prodigy and dumped by Katherines. Hassan says he should be grateful that now he is neither. Colin is now a Dumper, and Hassan is “making out with a ridiculously hot girl.” He says the world has turned upside down, like a snow globe God is shaking. Colin feels an affinity with Lindsey now in her inability to identify what “I” means. He now has not one missing piece from his gut but, rather, thousands. He feels that there is something wrong with him that he needs to fix. He looks up at the branches splitting the sky into pieces and feels like he has vertigo.

Just then, Hassan spots a pig, and the pig spots Colin and Hassan. It is huge and terrifying. Colin tries to recall useful information from books he has read, but try as they might to intimidate the pig, it charges at them. All Colin can do is summon the courage to shoot the pig the way Lindsey showed him. He is amazed to see the pig stop dead in its tracks and run away, but then it becomes clear that the pig ran away because Colin accidentally shot a hornets’ nest. Colin and Hassan take off running, Colin always remaining behind Hassan so his friend, who is running impressively fast but is still not athletic, will not die alone of hornet stings on a hog hunt in south-central Tennessee.

When the buzzing stops, Hassan collapses. Colin panics at first, thinking his friend is allergic to bees and going into anaphylactic shock. Hassan reassures him after a moment that he is simply out of breath. It then becomes clear that while Hassan only has three stings, Colin has taken the brunt of the damage, with eight stings, because he stayed behind Hassan. The stings are very painful, and Hassan announces that he hates the outdoors. Colin, drawing on information he learned in one of the factory interviews, pulls out Mr. Lyford’s chewing tobacco and presses it on his stings to alleviate the pain. He offers some to Hassan. Hassan tells Colin that this is an actual interesting fact, and that he should “focus less on who was prime minister of Canada in 1936 and focus more on shit that makes my life better.”

Colin and Hassan begin walking downhill, uncertain of where they are and worried that they might die out in the forest. Finally, they see a house that Colin recognizes as one that can be seen from the Archduke’s grave. They hurry toward it and see movement in the graveyard. As they draw closer, Hassan confirms with Colin that they are seeing Katrina, naked, straddling “some guy.”