— I’m going to wait a moment before I shoot, Grandpa whispered, carefully opening the window.
— Which are you going to take first?
— The bull, for fuck’s sake …
They only had eyes for each other, those two: mutual irritation is the only enduring passion. They were as quarrelsome as only your runofthemillskinflints can be. They didn’t even look up at the tower. When they were about twenty-five meters away, we had a stroke of good luck. The smallest calf had to take a shit and everyone was forced to participate. The bull tore at his hair and huffed to a stump. The cow ground her teeth and yanked the boy’s pants down. But the boy decided he didn’t wanna anymore. He howled, struggled, dug in, put up a fight. Grandpa laughed derisively. The bull laughed bitterly. The cow called him a drycock, said she wished she’d gone ahead and fucked every single person at the office party. The bull said she could shove whateverthefuck she wanted up that loose, stinking pussy of hers. He was just itching to do them all in. Start with Magnus then, she shrieked, shoving the now shitsoiled calf away from her, you fuckingidiot, you dumbcow.
Grandpa fired. The crack was deafening. He had an ingenious gadget that minimized kickback. Hilding Marlene holds the patent, but he stole the idea from the Japs. The first shot grazed a hand holding an empty yellow berrybucket. Grandpa reloaded and empty casings turned smoking somersaults in the air. The second shot missed completely and so did the third. The bull jumped up, waving his arms and cussing like a missionary in a cannibal’s cookpot. He had an aha moment then and realized Grandpa wasn’t finished with him yet, not by a longshot, and sprinted for the car. He was wearing a blue parka with winered corduroy pants. The fourth bullet got him in the leg, the fifth shot like a prayer straight up to heaven. I handed Grandpa the other rifle. It was obviously going to take a while to shut these fuckers up. The woman was tottering on the brink. Hyperventilating, she grabbed her Kanken backpack and took off down the tractor path, herding her calves before her. But one of them still had his pants down around his ankles, so her brilliant plan went up in smoke.
— You failed to read the fineprint, beastcunt, Grandpa hissed and sent two shots into the rosemarybushes around her boots. I can read lips, you know; I learned back when I had an ear infection.
Grandpa began to swear so it curdled the air and startled the birds. The cow collapsed, legs splaying. Her hair was a mess; she’d scratched the Satansbait. The third shot entered her pecadocastigo, the fourth burst her womb, the fifth took her in the mouth. By now the calves had caved in. Grandpa took the reloaded Weatherby and let fly. Big Brother ran around in circles, bedeviled and befuddled, tugging at the cow’s leg and making a hell of a ruckus. Grandpa, for his part, emptied the whole magazine. Unfortunately, he missed. After that, he shouldered the Remington, while I reloaded at top speed. One of the five bullets took the calf in the knee, he rolled around and stayed down.
— Hurryhurryhurry! Climb down, well show them what we’re about!
Through the door and out onto the platform. I slipped on the top step, fell, and got a branch stuck deep in my armpit. I couldn’t help myself; I moaned. Grandpa laughed and shot me in passing with a boltpistol that took off my left earlobe. Trying to staunch the blood, I limped after him. The bull was pulling himself through the mud toward the car. He cast terrified eyes overhis shoulder, clearly reckoning up all his amortizations. He’d lost a boot and blood was pumping from his beautifully injured leg. Grandpa stopped, legs apart, and gripped his Baby Nambu On-skimodel automaticpistol like an afroamrocop. It took him two tries before he bullseyed the bull’s eyes. The larger calf had already passed out. Grandpa swept him up in his arms, kissed him passionately, and slung him belly first into a mudpuddle beside a fallen tree. That just left littlebrother, and he fell to me, since Grandpa thought I needed the practice. He didn’t even get up, the little twit, just screeched and shit some wicked sausages onto the grass. He was a stubby kid who’d probably thought he’d grow big and strong and learn to smoke Borkum Riff. I bashed his face in with a thick pinebranch. He didn’t have any more tricks up his ass, he just lay there and took it. So I straddled his back, forced his head up and slit his throat with my Ka-Bar Grizzly knife. After that, I puked up the bunch of nothing that was in my stomach. Grandpa immediately set to with the hacking and the carving—“Beware the melancholy, for they will destroy the earth,” he said. He cut fillets from the calves and took a trophy from the bull. Then we headed home.
— Ah hell, we’re going to miss Emmerdale Farm, we’ve got too far to go! Grandpa exclaimed. I just know Mr. Wilks is going to rape and murder Amos Brearly some episode or other …
Grandpa carried the Weatherby, and I slung the Remington over my shoulder and the shitsmeared meat onto my back. After a few minutes, I started to get my hearing back. We crossed a mild browngold marsh with vomithued hillocks, watching for the darker spots where you don’t want to step. Time was, these marshes were bottomless and treacherous, they reached far and wide … Later people drained them just because they enjoyed the challenge, and to give the wetland fowl a hard time. Now the marshes were trying to get their own back, right in step with depopulation … we squelchedsucked as we walked … Grandpa sang: “So weit die braune Heide geht gehört das alle wir!” The trees were sparse, hunched over like rheumatics trying to avoid a beating … they were poor, hiding nothing … not even worth a mercykilling … There weren’t any cloudberries to make jam with … that’s the one thing I remember about my dad’s mom, her making jam while she lifted her skirts to let the snake in … “jamming and juicing, Satan’s shitwork” … We didn’t even see a forest bird … not a soul was stirring … We walked through the trees for hours … when it started getting dark, we rested. Evening was coming on fast.
— There isn’t nearly enough evil in the forest nowadays, Grandpa complained and shoved a stubborn squirrel back down onto the grillstick.
We sat next to a lazy flame. I tried to brush the cobwebs off my face, souvenirs of a walk through the late summerwoods. Dark-green sprucetrees were closing in, pines swayed stiff as corpses in the wind. The wind and the dark cast doubt on everything you think you understand.
— Once upon a time, mankind was a demonic sort of phenomenon … back in the goodolddays, no one knew what mercy was … We’d toss furry critters onto the fire, just to watch the greedy flames devour them alive.
— Back in the goodolddays, women and Christians didn’t dare leave the highroads … If they did, they’d be raped and slaughtered by forestdemons … We called them Leshy or sippers, further inland they were known as the overprivileged lips …
As we sat there, Grandpa spun stories about terrible powers, secret societies and Satan’s commandments. Exhaustion finally conquered terror. Me and Grandpa both fell asleep. When I woke, I was cold as ice inside and out. The sky was sullen. I rested my head on Grandpa’s crotch and listened to his sperm gathering themselves for their next pointless assault. As usual, the day had promised more than it could deliver.
__________
Mossad — Israeli secret service
Wiesenthal — Simon: famous Nazi hunter
Sákar, Hútama — Muslim hells
What of it then if I warble …—from the Kalevala, the Finnish epic (Friberg trans.)
Väinämöinen — Hero of the Kalaevala
Myrberg — town in Västerbotten, Sweden
So weit die braune Heide …—An SS song: “As far as the brown heath goes, it belongs to us …”
Leshy — from Slavic mythology, a male woodland sprite