Sleet: Selected Stories

It’s a hell of a thing, letting yourself get carsick like that. You can bet they’re back there in that goddamn kitchen, the whole pack of them sitting around and talking about how Knut is probably shitfaced right now, like always. Can you help it if you got legs made of clay? Can you help it if you get carsick? And that goddamn pudding — they should have to swallow that themselves. There’s a lot they should be made to swallow. Like the estate inventory after Mamma died, how Nisse took it home and touched it up — it would be good to jam that right down their throats. The old man’s the only one that gave two shits for you, so is it any wonder you lay here bawling in the rain? And you ain’t drunk. ’Cause who the hell can think about estate inventories drunk? There’s no way you could do that. But now you’re sharp as a whip again and they better watch out when you get home. Wouldn’t it be nice to catch a couple of them in your crosshairs? Look at them lousy little shit wreaths they bought! And they’re bursting with money. But you, picking up folks’ trash for a living, does that make you cheap? Damn straight it don’t! Everybody knows that stingy is something you’ve never been. But the thanks you get is none at all. Who thanks you for going to the churchyard and putting flowers on your Mamma’s grave, flowers that cost you eight crowns of your own hard-earned money? Or who appreciates you for sending the old man money for his dipping tobacco, every month for eight long years? Or the twenty crowns you spent hiring a car and a driver when you got out of that Lappland shithole? The thanks you got when you showed up at your own home was a hard kick in the ass and your own wife helped throw you out. So is it any wonder you’re laying here on your back, crying in the road next to Jacob’s hedge? And now the road is washing out with light, a car coming round the curve. It’s just as well if they run you over. Then we’ll see what that goddamn pack of jackals has to say back in the kitchen at home. We’ll see if they take back some of the knocks they made against you, the shitty things they had to say. At the funeral Lydia and her radio dealer will regret every last thing they’ve done to you, Knutboy. Every last thing they’ve said. To think that this is how you died, ’cause there ain’t no way that car’s gonna stop in time, not when it’s this dark out.

But when I’ve been dead for a good long while, somebody shines a light in my face and yells: “Lord Almighty! It’s one of the Lindqvists. Knut. Snot-slinging drunk! Can we get him up on the bike and wheel him home? His old man’s getting buried tomorrow. We can’t just leave him here in the road like this.”

This’ll just stoke their righteous fires, you can be sure of that. They think I’m drunk when really I’ve just got clay in my legs. They plop me down in the trailer cart on top of the newspapers and start pulling me home with the bike. That’s when I set them straight. They hear all about the clay and a few odd things besides. “I was stuck in the asshole of Lappland for eight long months,” I tell them. “So you can be sure I seen a thing or two alright! I hired a driver and car from Norra Station, and that shit-licking excuse for a man goes out through the window faster’n lightning. And just behind him my woman’s sandals come flying, clonking him right in the head. Could’ve thrown her right out on her ass too, but I know how to control myself. Eight long months in that Lappland sewer—”

“Yeah, yeah,” says the fella on the bike that’s pulling me. Like that’s all he’s been hearing from me! Think they can look down their noses at me just ’cause I’m a little undisposed for the moment. Can I help it if I get carsick? There’s pills you can take for that. Next time I’ll do that so there ain’t no misunderstandings. One of these jack-asses is running behind me pushing me in the back like some kind of goddamn deputy. Probably can’t hear a word I say. So I turn half around as best I can and tell him: “Eight long months I was stuck in that Lappland shithole—”

“Shut up!” he says, the dumb bastard. Like he was the one stuck in that shithole for eight months.

It ain’t worth trying to have a proper conversation with these goddamn hayseeds. Till they come to the city and live a while in your shoes, they got no way of understanding what a man can go through.