I can’t bear to sit here anymore, watching Grampa like this, so I run outside and start walking along the edge of the creek, throwing stones at the frogs and scaring off a trespasser that’s fishing from a boat he’s got hidden in our reeds. It’s dark so I can’t see his face, and he makes real sure to turn it away from me while he’s rowing out of there.
After a while I feel like carving, so I take my knife and run up through the yard to the stable. But when I pull open the door, I see Sigrid lying on her back in the middle of the carrot-top heap. And right there on top of her — sitting right there on top of her! — is Alvar, biting her hand. He jumps up and curses at me. I slam the door and run.
I don’t run inside the house. What I’m feeling is too strange to go inside — so strange that I need to be alone with it for a while. So I run around to that room at the back of the barn where we usually shoot the pigs. I sit down on a milk pail and put my head in my hands. I’m trying to get that picture of Alvar and Sigrid out of my head, but I can’t seem to do it. And at last, I figure the only way I can get rid of it is if I do something really different, something so dangerous and exciting that it’s bound to make everything else seem like nothing. So I sneak into the hen house and scare away a hen that’s sitting on her eggs. Then I feel around under the hay with my hands. I once got a cigarette from one of the neighbor kids and that’s where I hid it, along with a pack of matches. But I’m nervous, so when I go to light it, I accidently drop the burning match and it starts a little fire in the straw on the hen house floor. Real quick I pour a bowl of milk over it, and it dies out. But it still smells like smoke in here.
I go and sit down again on the milk pail in the slaughtering room. It’s totally dark in here, and the little bits of light coming through the cracks in the barn wall make the threshing machine, with all its wheels and belts, look like some kind of giant ghost animal that just creeped into its dark cave. The rain’s knocking lightly against the splintered roof and the cows are chewing in their stalls — actually, that kind of sounds like rain, too. All of a sudden Sigrid comes walking in with a lantern and a couple of milk pails. When she catches sight of me, she puts them down on the floor and comes right up to me. And with the light coming up from underneath, her face gets all these terrible shadows all over it, and it’s pretty scary. I scream out, but she grabs hold of my arm and pinches, long and hard.
“You tell Tora or the old man …,” she says, “and I’ll pinch you in the throat so bad you’ll never say another word again.”
Then she lets go of me, picks up the pails and the lantern and heads into the stall. When they see her, the cows stand up, grunting softly, chains rattling like a gang of prisoners.
When I go inside Grampa is sitting on the daybed, looking totally different. Mama must’ve made him get into his best suit of clothes. He hasn’t wore it since last year at Gramma’s funeral. He looks way too white in all those black funeral clothes, like all the blood has run clear out of him. There’s a red scratch on his cheek that sticks out like a thin mouth, but the rest of him is pure white. He looks tired, too. Doesn’t seem to know what’s going on around him. I wonder if he even knows his only sister that he hasn’t seen in twenty years is coming in about a half an hour.
Mama’s standing there combing her hair in front of the dresser with the mirror on it. She went and put on her best dress. And the wristwatch that’s broken, the one she got from my daddy, she even put that on. I go and turn on the radio. It’s in the middle of the weather: Eastern Svealand and the coast of Southern Norrland, a bit chilly for this time of year — and in the northern parts of the district, sleet.
“What did they say?” says Grampa in a weak voice. “What are we getting?”
“Sleet,” I say.
Alvar comes in and picks up the bootjack. He pulls off his boots with a groan and then puts on his shoes. I look at the thermometer outside the window, the one I bought for Grampa when he turned seventy. He always wanted a thermometer outside the window. But when he finally got one, his eyes were so bad that he couldn’t read it anyway.
“You bought one with too small numbers, boy. Little shit numbers!”
It’s thirty-five degrees out. The wind’s blowing more and more, whipping through the lilac hedge, and the rain’s hitting hard against the windows. A lantern comes floating over the yard from the barn. It’s Sigrid on her way in with the pails. I’ve got a big bruise on my arm. I pull down the shade so I don’t have to think about her.
When the clock strikes we’re all sitting around, waiting. All except Sigrid. She’s standing in the corner of the room separating the milk from the cream. Sigh-sigh-sigh goes the separator — that’s just what it sounds like. Normally Alvar helps her out with that, but not today. He’s sitting here at the table, giving me this creepy look. Maybe he wants to pinch me, too.
“Did anybody hear the weather?” he says. “What are we getting?”
He puts his hands up on the table, like giant sandwiches.
“Sleet,” I say for the second time.
And it sounds so strange, so crazy. It doesn’t sound the least bit normal. But it goes so well with all the other unnormal things that have been going on around here today: Grampa sitting on the chaff-cutter, Mama and Alvar dragging Grampa across the yard, the trespasser I scared off, Sigrid lying in the carrot tops with Alvar on top of her, Sigrid pinching me, the fire I started in the hen house, Grampa sitting speechless and pale on the daybed.
Mama’s sitting next to Alvar. She puts her hands up on the table next to his. She looks at them and sighs. The separator sighs, too — sigh-sigh-sigh. Suddenly Mama looks at me to see if I need washing. She wrinkles her forehead. My beautiful mother. She leans across the table.
“Who gave you that ugly bruise?” she says.
The separator slows down, Alvar glares at me, and all of a sudden I’m scared again. Nothing scares me more than a licking. I look away from Mama. I look behind me and see Grampa sitting on the daybed, still so white, just staring ahead with quiet, unmoving eyes.
“Grampa,” I whisper, as I look Mama in the eyes.
Mama bites her lip. Alvar coughs. The separator speeds up again, sighing and sighing. I look at Grampa, but there’s no reaction. I’m sure he didn’t hear a thing. The time goes. The clock strikes another time. The separator sighs on, and I guess that’s why we don’t hear anything until the knock comes on the outside door.
“Was that a knock?” says Mama.
She looks at Grampa.
“Daddy, it’s her,” she says. “She’s here. Shouldn’t you go out and meet her?”
And everybody looks at Grampa, but he doesn’t move from the daybed. He just keeps on looking straight ahead into the empty air. But the thing is, none of us can bring ourselves to go out and open the door either. I pull up the window shade a little and peek out. There’s a car rolling out through the gate, picking up speed, rushing off toward the village. Next we hear some footsteps in the hallway, moving slowly toward the kitchen door. Another knock.
“Daddy!” says Mama, almost pleading with him.
Then the door opens. And all of a sudden, there stands the aunt from America, right on the threshold. A strange woman with thick lines of makeup on her face. She’s got tired eyes, and her mouth is all sunken-in, like she doesn’t have any teeth left.
“Good evening,” she says in a strange accent and then blinks from all the light.