Sleet: Selected Stories

So they probably didn’t mean for me to be on the carrot with them, but that doesn’t matter. I’m already on a whole bunch of other places. I’m on the barn wall, I’m up in the haylofts, I’m over on one of the stall doors, and I’m even right here in this part of stable. We’re all here, for that matter. Even Grampa and Gramma are here, on the stable wall, but their names are so old you can barely read them. Gustav and Augusta Berg 8-10-1897. In 1914 came Mama for the first time, and then in 1918 came Alvar. I’m here for the first time in 1933 and then came Sigrid in 1936. And right here in the stable it even says Palestine on one of the beams. It happened last year, just before Gramma died. A tramp slept in the stable one night, but he left before anybody woke up. While the rest of us were having our coffee, Gramma went out to get the eggs like she did every morning. And then suddenly she came running in, all out of breath, and said: “You won’t believe who slept under our barn roof last night! Jesus! That’s who! None other than the Lord God, Jesus Christ Himself!” But then another tramp stopped off that night and I was out in the stable with him, showing him where the horse blankets were, so he wouldn’t have to freeze to death. He wanted to shake my hand and thank me, but I was afraid he was full of lice, so I kept my distance. And then he got a look at Palestine on the wall and said: “Oh, Christ! Has that old scumbag Palestine been here? If that’s the case, you can bet them blankets is just crawling with lice.” So Jesus was just another bum after all, and full of lice at that. When I told Gramma the truth at supper that night, she just sat there and cried. She told me I was too little to understand. But Mama stood up for me and said I certainly was not, and just because some lousy tramp came along who felt like calling himself Palestine or Jerusalem or the Holy Land, then that didn’t necessarily mean he was Christ or the Apostle Paul, Mama said.

My carrots are just about done now, so I’m taking it easy. Mama’s are almost done, too, and the same with Alvar and Sigrid. Only Grampa’s got a whole heap left. Right now, Mama’s over by the chaff-cutter trying to get her hands on some of them. But this is only making Grampa really mad. He’s telling her to leave his carrots alone, he’s gonna chop them himself, damn it, and that’s all there is to it!

“So, you’re just going to go on chopping carrots when your sister gets here!” says Mama. “Is that it?”

She makes a grab at a bunch of them, and Grampa stabs at her with his knife. She’s got one of Alvar’s shirts on and the sleeve gets ripped. So now she’s just standing there, looking at Grampa like he’s not all there in the head.

“You just watch your step, Daddy!” she says. “Or else you’ll go and do something real crazy, something you’ll regret the rest of your life.”

This makes Grampa pretty sheepish for a while. And now all of a sudden it’s real quiet in here. There’s only the rain dancing on the roof, and the knives cutting away at carrot tops. Finally, I can’t keep quiet any longer.

I say, “Alvar, tell what it’s like on the Atlantic.”

And suddenly Alvar looks all deep in thought.

“On the Atlantic,” he says. “On the Atlantic, the waves are as big as houses.”

And I’m thinking to myself, “What kind of houses? Little red ones like ours? Or big yellow ones like the school teacher’s?” Because when I think about waves being as big as houses, then I guess they must look like houses, too. The whole Atlantic is just one big county with waves of two-story houses and little red shacks. And over the waves, here comes Mama’s aunt, just riding along. But actually, she’s not riding anymore. We got a letter from her the first day she came ashore, and for the next four days Grampa was out on the bridge about ten times an hour to check and see if she wasn’t out there, coming down the road. But no, we didn’t see or hear from any Aunt Maja.

But then one day another letter came that said we should expect her inside a week. Her brother-in-law was going to drive her up here in his car. Mama read the letter out loud after supper, since Grampa went into the bedroom to lay down for a bit. When she finished reading she got so angry that she ripped it up into little pieces, screaming “Of course, since we’re the poorest in the family, we’ve got to wait to be the last!” And her, she’d be damned if she was going to lift a single finger to make this house nice for when that old bitch got here.

So nothing’s been done to make it nice for Aunt Maja. Which is kind of funny when you think about it, seeing we practically haven’t talked about anything else since we first got her letter last spring, the one that said she’d be coming in the fall.