What happened was that one day I got talking to a holiday resident. He was an engineer from the mainland and very interested in my ideas. He was the one I spent time with when I was gone for hours. He offered me a job with his company, but I said no initially, because I didn’t think that I could leave you. And yet one day, I did just that. I had his business card in my pocket, but I didn’t dare show it to you.
It was a really good job and the pay was great right from the start. At some point I set up my own business. We made lots of things in metal and steel, mostly filing systems, and so on. But my biggest success – brace yourself – were mechanical Christmas-tree stands. I made so much money that I travelled to Austria and set up a subsidiary down there.
During all that time I got a trusted employee back home to send money to the Head every month. She has done so faithfully, as far as I can gather. Now I’m back and engaged to that same trusted employee. We live in a wonderful apartment in town, but even so, we talk about moving. And starting a family. Fortunately, my fiancée is a little younger than me.
I must confess that I’ve started really missing my own family, you and Mum. I think about you often. It has just been so bloody difficult to contact you.
Once, I plucked up the courage and called the pub in Korsted. I think I spoke to the new owner – I’m guessing Oluf isn’t there any more – or possibly a guest. Whoever he was, they were halfway through the New Year’s Day lunch. I didn’t tell him my name, I just asked general questions. I know how people like to talk and, as I said at the beginning, I didn’t want to cause trouble for you. I learned that Else no longer lived on the Head but that she had visited you around Christmas and had apparently left again.
Sometime later I was at a dinner and happened to sit next to a lady who asked me about my surname. She told me that she knew an Else Horder. It turned out that Mum had been staying with a friend of hers for a long time; she believed that they were cousins. Unfortunately, her friend had suffered terrible brain damage following a traffic accident, so the lady couldn’t tell me where Mum was now, only that she definitely didn’t live with her cousin any more.
But I’m guessing that you already know that, and that you also know where Mum lives today. Or is she back with you? You’ve always been good at handling Mum and her desire to control. I admire you for that.
Anyway, the best bit about my calling the pub was learning that you still lived on the Head – with your wife and your daughter. I’m absolutely delighted to learn that you are married and have a child, Jens. I do so hope that you’re happy.
I would love to be a father myself. I started thinking about having a family much too late, I was far too busy inventing clever devices and manufacturing them. In one way, I wish I shared the love of nature which you and Dad had. There is something healthy about it, about you. Something real. Today, I miss working with wood, the fresh scent of the forest, and the sea, especially. In fact, I miss it so much that we’re toying with the idea of moving to the island; if not the Head, then the main island. What would you say to that?
Initially, I would like to visit you and your family. Rekindle our relationship – that is, if you want to. Please would you write to me? Or call me, if that’s an option. I’ve listed my home address and my phone number below.
PS I’m sure that you grow the country’s finest Christmas trees. And although you obviously prefer wood to metal and plastic, I wanted you to have one of the Christmas-tree stands my business manufactures. I’m taking the liberty of sending you a Christmas-tree stand as well as this letter.
Jens Horder folded the letter once, then he folded it again before stuffing it into his inside pocket. He placed the envelope with the money in the front pocket of his coat. He briefly looked at the cumbersome parcel on the tree stump. Then he picked up the plastic bags and took a left around the barrier.
The Man on the Head
Still staying in the forest, I tailed the man as he walked away from the dog. At one point he almost spotted me. He certainly looked in my direction for a long time. But I stood stock-still – I can do that – and in the end he moved on. He walked around the end of the building with the white room. It was strange to see someone walk that way rather than up the gravel road, and I wondered if he knew about the traps, but he couldn’t possibly have done.
I think he was just lucky.
But I was scared because I didn’t know what he wanted. Dad hadn’t come back, and Mum was upstairs in the bedroom and couldn’t do anything. And the man had seen the dog and the trap and taken my arrow. He was walking around with it in his hand. I was scared that he was looking for me. But he couldn’t know that I was there. He hadn’t seen me. Besides, I was dead.
When he reached the farmyard he stopped for a long time with his back to me. I’m sure he was staring at all the things. He probably wasn’t used to seeing so many things gathered in one place, unless he also went to the junkyard.
I wish I knew what he wanted. I wanted Dad to come, yet at the same time I was scared about him turning up. Most of all, I just wanted the man to go away, I think. But without walking into a trap. And without bumping into Dad.
He just stood there at the edge of the yard with his back to the forest. I thought that he might make his way to the house, and I held my breath in case he walked past the silage harvester.
If you wanted to get from the white room to the house, you shouldn’t pick the most obvious route, past the harvester. You should walk around the baker’s pile first, in a zigzag pattern past the barn, then back towards the workshop, and then remember to take a right by the old cooker on the last stretch leading to the front door. I remembered it every single time – mostly because I’d never forgotten the look on Dad’s face when he explained the route to me.
I didn’t know exactly what it was about that cooker, but I had a hunch that it might tumble from the tall blocks it sat on if you went the wrong way round it.
Dad had made me promise to never ever do that. He trusted me more than any other person in the whole world, he said. It made me happy, but also a little bit sad. I don’t really know why.
The man didn’t go past the harvester. I think he heard a noise from the barn because he suddenly looked in that direction. Then he went around the farmyard and over to the barn door at the end. He stood there for a long time.
Meanwhile, I was wondering whether to shoot him.
I could easily hit him as he stood there, completely still, peering inside the barn. Especially if I crept a little closer and knelt down, because if I did that, I could hit anything I aimed at. By now I was as good an archer as Robin Hood.
But would Robin Hood ever shoot a man in the back?
And would Mum even like me shooting a man at all?
And would Dad mind me not shooting him when I had the chance? I had a hunch that Dad would have shot him.
You would probably need several arrows and possibly also a club to whack him over the head to finish him off. I didn’t know how killing a man would be compared to killing an animal or a granny, and what if I missed because I wasn’t used to shooting men? I squeezed the bow in my hand.
And then the moment was gone because the man started walking around the barn. What was he doing in the field? No one but us ever went there, and we had stopped going. Had he come to take our chickens? I wasn’t sure if we still had any. The geese were long gone.