He thought about the broken milk bottle. The shards of glass and the white milk running out.
It could have been him.
The bottle of milk could easily have been his body that was crushed into a thousand pieces. The white milk could have been his blood.
He felt unable to move a muscle.
Now the penny dropped, and he realised what a narrow escape he’d had. He ought to be dead. But instead he was lying here on the examination table under the white blanket, and he hadn’t suffered a single scratch.
But even though he hadn’t been injured, he started to feel the pain.
It was a totally silent pain.
He closed his eyes, and heard the Greyhound’s mum enter the room.
‘The boy’s tired,’ she said in a low voice.
‘Is it absolutely sure that he hasn’t been injured?’ Samuel asked.
‘Dr Stenström is certain about that,’ said the Greyhound’s mum. ‘But naturally, he had a bit of a scare. That’s why we’re keeping him in overnight for observation.’
Joel felt himself being lifted from the examination table onto a trolley.
He peered through half-closed eyes and noted that he was being wheeled down a corridor. A door opened, and he was transferred into a bed.
‘Can I stay here with him?’ he heard his dad asking.
‘Of course,’ said the Greyhound’s mum. ‘Ring the bell if there’s anything you want.’
A miracle, Joel thought.
Jesus walked on water. And I was run over by a Ljusdal bus but escaped without a single scratch.
He half-opened his eyes again.
Samuel was sitting on a chair by the window.
Joel knew what he was thinking about.
Jenny. His mum Jenny who’d simply vanished carrying a suitcase, and left them to get by on their own.
Joel knew that Samuel thought about her every time something unusual or unexpected happened. His dad might be sitting on the kitchen bench, or on the edge of Joel’s bed, but he just stared into space. Joel would try to think the same thoughts as his father. Sometimes he had the feeling that he succeeded. But not always.
And now he was much too tired. Despite the fact that it was only afternoon. He could make out the sun through the window. The shadows were lengthening in the room, and he knew that twilight was falling.
Joel fell asleep, and didn’t wake up until next morning.
Samuel stayed at the hospital all night. He didn’t go to work in the forest. They drove home in a black taxi.
‘Shouldn’t I go to school?’ asked Joel.
‘Not today. Tomorrow,’ said Samuel.
‘Shouldn’t you go to work in the forest?’
‘Not today. Tomorrow. Here we are, we’re at home now.’
Joel went to his room.
This is where he lived. He would continue to live here, even though he’d experienced a miracle.
Samuel made him a pork pancake. It got burnt, but Joel didn’t complain.
‘What’s a miracle?’ he asked.
Samuel seemed surprised by the question.
‘You’ll have to ask the vicar about that.’
‘But I was run over by a bus? And I didn’t suffer a single scratch?’
‘You were lucky,’ said Samuel. ‘Incredibly lucky. It’s only people who believe in divine powers that talk about miracles.’
Joel didn’t bother to ask any more questions. He could tell from Samuel’s tone of voice that his dad preferred not to talk about miracles.
Joel knew that his father didn’t believe in God. Once when Samuel had been drunk, he’d hurled a bucket at the wall and cursed and shouted that there were no such things as gods. If Miss Nederström was right, that meant that Samuel was a lost soul.
Mind you, Joel had no idea what a lost soul was.
But he realised that he would have to give serious thought to what he believed in connection with God, now that the Ljusdal bus had enabled him to experience a miracle.
After dinner, when Samuel had fallen asleep on the kitchen bench, Joel took his logbook out of the showcase containing the Celestine. On the last page, where he used to list all his unanswered questions, there was hardly any space left. There was only just enough room for one word and a question mark.
‘God?’
If you had experienced a miracle, you ought to thank God for it.
But if Joel was in the same category as Samuel, a lost soul, how should he go about that?
How do you thank a God that you might not believe in?
And what would happen if you didn’t say thank you?
Would the miracle be withdrawn, so that you would be run over by the Ljusdal bus again?
Joel sighed. There were too many questions. And the questions were too big. He wished there was one day every week when all questions were banned.
He replaced his logbook, went to his room and started to cut up an old map he had. Now he would start inventing his new Around The World game.
Samuel had woken up and suddenly appeared in the doorway.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked.
‘Making a game,’ said Joel.
‘You’re not sitting here and thinking about the accident, I hope?’
‘It wasn’t an accident.’
‘What was it, then?’
‘I didn’t get a single scratch. So it can’t have been an accident, can it?’
Samuel looked as if he didn’t know what to say.
‘You must try to stop thinking about it,’ he said. ‘If you have nightmares, wake me up.’
Samuel went to his room and switched on the radio. The evening news programme was on. Joel stood in the doorway. Perhaps they would say something about the miracle that had taken place.
But there was no mention of it.
No doubt the miracle was too small to report.
The next day he went to school as usual. He avoided going past the bar and seeing the damaged lamppost. He was also a little bit worried that the bus might come back and run him over again.
He must find a way of saying thank you for the miracle.
And he must do so quickly.
When he got to school Miss Nederström gave him a hug.
That had never happened before.
She squeezed him so hard that he had difficulty in breathing.
She used a very strong-smelling perfume and Joel didn’t like being hugged at all. His classmates looked very solemn, and Joel had the feeling that they were afraid of him, as if he were a ghost. A walking phantom.
It was both good and bad.
It was good that everybody was paying attention to him. But it was bad that he had to be a ghost for that to happen.
Things weren’t made any better when Miss Nederström told him that he should thank God for having survived.
I hope she doesn’t ask me to do that here in the classroom, Joel thought.
I’m not going to do that.
But she left him in peace. He could start breathing again.
It was hard to concentrate on the lessons. And in the breaks it seemed as if his classmates were avoiding him. Even Otto left him alone.
Joel didn’t like all this at all.
If people thought he had a contagious disease just because a miracle had happened to him, he’d rather it hadn’t done.
It was all that confounded Eklund’s fault, of course, the man with the big red hands who hadn’t been driving carefully. If you were driving a bus you had to expect somebody to run over the road because he was in a hurry to say thank you for two packs of pastilles. Didn’t they teach bus drivers anything before giving them their driving licence?
After school Joel trudged back home.
He would have to find a good way of saying thank you for the miracle.
And he would have to be quick about it.
No doubt there was an aura around him telling everybody that he still hadn’t said thank you to God.
Feeling in a bad mood, he went down to the river and sat down on his rock.