A dumping ground.
A garbage dump in the forest!
Some seagulls were flying over the far end. Screaming, they circled above the garbage as if it were the sea. The stench, sweet though still pungent, stung our nostrils. Then the shots rang out again. Not loud, the reports were crisp, like a kind of crackle. Slowly we made our way down to the edge of the dump, and there, a stone’s throw away, we saw two men, one standing by a wrecked car, the other lying on his stomach next to him. Both had guns pointing across the dump. They fired at intervals of a couple of seconds. The man on the ground stood up, and then they went into the dump, carrying their guns. We walked over to where they had been. Between the piles of waste, which rose and fell like hills and dales, ran a path that they followed. They were dressed like proper hunters with boots and gloves. They were grown-ups but not old. Around them I saw cars, fridges, freezers, TVs, wardrobes, and dressers. I saw sofas, chairs, tables, and lamps. I saw skis and bikes, fishing rods, chandeliers, car tires, cardboard boxes, wooden chests, Styrofoam containers, and heap upon heap of fat, bulging plastic bags. What lay before us was a whole landscape of abandoned goods. Most of it consisted of bags of food leftovers and packaging, things that all households carried to the trash can every day, but in the part where they were standing, and which the two men were crossing, perhaps a fifth of the total area, larger items had been deposited.
“They’re shooting rats,” Geir said. “Look!”
They had stopped walking. One held up a rat by the tail. The whole of one side was shot to pieces, or so it seemed. He swung it around a few times and let go, launching it through the air. It landed on some bags and slid down between them. They laughed. The second man kicked away another rat, putting the tip of his boot underneath the corpse and flicking it.
They returned. Their eyes squinting in the bright sun, they said hello to us. They could have been brothers.
“Are you out for a walk, fellas?” one asked. He had curly red hair beneath a blue peaked cap, a broad face, thick lips with a vigorous moustache above, also red.
We nodded.
“A walk to the garbage dump! Takes all kinds, eh,” the second man said. Apart from his hair color, which was blond, almost white, and his top lip, which was hairless, he was the spitting image of the first man. “Are you going to eat your packed lunches out there? On top of the piles of garbage?”
They laughed. We laughed a little, too.
“Do you want to watch us shoot some rats?” the first man said.
“Yes, love to,” Geir said.
“Then you’ll have to stand behind us. It’s important. OK? And stand very still so that you don’t distract us.”
We nodded.
This time both of them lay down. For a long time they didn’t move. I tried to see what they could see. But only when the shots rang out did I see the rat, which seemed to be hurled backward along the ground, as if caught by a sudden, violent gust of wind.
They got up.
“Do you want to come and see?” one said.
“There’s not a lot to see!” the second man said. “A dead rat!”
“I want to see it,” Geir said.
“Me, too,” I said.
But the rat wasn’t dead. It was writhing on the ground. The rear part was almost completely blown away. One of the men jabbed the stock of his gun into its head, there was a soft crunch, and it lay still. He studied the gunstock with a concerned expression.
“Oh, why did I do that?” he said.
“You probably wanted to look like a tough guy,” the second man said. “Come on. Let’s go. You can wipe it when we get to the car.”
They went “ashore” again, with us tagging behind.
“Do your parents know you’re here?” one said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Good,” he said. “I suppose they said you mustn’t touch anything here? It’s full of bacteria and other shit, you know.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Great! See you, fellas.”
Some minutes later a car started down on the road, and we were alone. For a while we ran around looking at things, emptying bags, pushing over cupboards to see if there was anything behind them while shouting out what we had found. A bag of recent magazines, in good condition, was my biggest find. There was a stack of Tempo and Buster, a Tex Willer paperback, and then some of those small, rectangular cowboy magazines from the 1960s. Geir found a slim flashlight, a small deer embroidered on linen, and two stroller wheels. When we were looking, we sat down in the heather with our finds and ate our packed lunches.
Geir scrunched up the wax paper and threw it as far as he could. Thinking, probably, that it would end up in the middle of the garbage, more or less, but it was met by a gust of wind just as he released it, and it was so light that it didn’t even reach the edge and landed in the heather.