It happens one summer afternoon to me and Siri and Sixten. There’s a firestorm raging on the sun this summer, so hot and dry the yellow grass burns underfoot. Still, we’d rather let it burn our soles than wear our wooden shoes. The river is down, the well running dry, and on the horizon the woods are ablaze, a great plume of white smoke forming the one and only cloud in a clear summer sky. The grain withers in the heat and the dusty fields smolder each time there is the littlest breeze. The road is full of cows nuzzling muzzles to the gravel, lowing desperately from thirst. They should be in the woods, but there’s no water there, so they’ve come drifting back homeward in the middle of the day, their bells clanging sorrowful chimes in the heat. That same morning we’d driven them into the woods ourselves with pride, cowboys with birch-switch whips saddled clumsily on oversize bikes we’ve borrowed from the men. We let them back into the yard as we begin hoisting up pails of water from the well.
Just a bit later, as the cows are crowding around the troughs near the well, we look out over the manure heap between the stable and the barn and see a beautiful shiny car making its way down the road in the distance, a long train of dust rising behind it. We love to watch fine cars drive past. So to get a better look we run out to the shoulder of the road and line up just outside the gate, the three of us there step together at attention. The shiny hood gleams. The engine hums. On the roof is a great silver trunk. We once rode in a car. It was to a funeral. As the car gets closer, we can see from the plate that it’s from Stockholm. We’ve never been there, but we’ve heard about it. And then just as the car is practically on top of us we suddenly hear the sound of hooves against gravel. We have forgotten to close the gate and Rosa, that stupid heifer, comes clomping right out into the road. We stand there stunned and petrified, bearing dumb witness to what we can’t keep from happening. The Stockholmer at the wheel probably does all that he can do to avoid it, but then — scratch! — the cow’s horn scrapes the fine lacquered finish right off the door.
We ought to run now. Our leg muscles clench in anticipation and we want to bolt, but we can’t. It’s like we’re paralyzed, nailed in place, our eyes locked on the car as it skids to a halt right in front of us. The trailing cloud of dust settles, and then there’s nothing left to hide behind. The scratch from Rosa’s horn grows and grows under our gaze. A long moment passes without as much as a squeak. The scratch swells. We’re not doing anything, but we break out in a sweat all the same. Through the car window the Stockholmer is probably staring at us, though we can’t bring ourselves to raise our eyes to his. Our gaze sinks lower and lower, losing itself in the gravel under the car. Then the Stockholmer climbs out. He’s tall and is wearing a white suit. The car door slams. Now he moves out to the middle of the road and just stands there in his white shoes, which is all we can bring ourselves to look at. We have never seen shoes like them before. As they step around the car in the gravel, a wisp of dust whirls up. And suddenly they turn away from us.
It’s not until then that we dare to look up at him. The Stockholmer turns his back to us and crooks his head so that he can get a better look at the scratch. He says nothing, just throws his back to us. That’s what’s so odd, so hard to grasp. It’s like we’re not there. The Stockholmer moves two steps back in our direction, so that he can have a fuller view of the scratch, we figure. And still we’re not there. He nearly steps on us. We have to duck away a bit to the side and scrunch right up along the fence to keep from getting stepped on. We’re terrified as usual that a trashing is coming our way, but what we fear even more, what terrifies us most of all, is the possibility that the Stockholmer won’t even acknowledge us, that somehow we don’t really exist.
And yet that’s just what happens. Still with his back to us, the Stockholmer brushes off his hands, like they’re dirty from taking hold of us. It makes a sound we will never forget. And then we catch sight of something else we will never forget. Sitting up front in the car is a girl, about the same age as us, but otherwise different. She is pale and delicate, the way people probably look when they ride in a car every day. She is wearing a white hat. We notice suddenly that she is looking at us. She’s probably sitting a little higher up than us, but not as high as we think. It feels like we have to crook our heads back a good deal to get a decent look at her, which of course we all need to do. There is a pane of glass between her and us and a great deal of distance. One time we were taken to the market town, and we got to look around in all the storefront windows. There was so much beautiful stuff for us to look at, but we weren’t allowed to go inside. And now it feels sort of like it did then, with us standing there looking on but not really being there. Now, like then, the only thing that really seems to be there is the window.
Then the Stockholmer goes around and climbs in behind the wheel again. He doesn’t look at us — he just turns the engine over and lets it hum for a bit. But before the car starts to pull away, the really white girl rolls down her window. We think maybe she wants to get a better look at us, but we’re wrong about that. Her eyes aren’t focusing on us anymore. She sticks her arm out and empties an ashtray on the road, and then the car pulls away. It’s only then that we notice how badly the sharp ends of the stake fence are biting into our backs. We pull ourselves off them and in the back our shirts are dotted with little pricks of red. In the road a cigar lies smoldering in the gravel. It smells like town and dress clothes, like the parsonage or one of those big houses that’s got its own name. We stand for a while in the road circling around the cigar, as if it was a campfire, letting the smoke tickle our rough, thick noses. And still we’re not really there — only the cigar is there. In the distance we can see another car appear on the road. Before it reaches us, we kill the cigar in turn with our bare feet, me first because I’m the oldest, and Siri last of all because she’s a girl. Then we walk back into the yard. It’s not a Stockholm car, this one. It has an “X” on the plate, so it’s just another car from Gävle.
Rosa is back in the yard now, over next to the hay wagon, rubbing her muzzle against its wooden slats. We get our hands on an old link chain and start to beat her and beat her with it until she bolts off, clomping down toward the row of lilacs. We don’t run after her. We drop the chain, and it slinks into the burnt grass with an empty rattle. We’ve discovered one thing anyway: that we don’t get anything out of beating Rosa like that. And actually we’ve discovered another thing: that there’s no remedy for what we know, that we can only ever be what we are — three, grubby, poor kids in other people’s hand-me-down, cut-off overalls, three dirt-farmer’s kids, the lowest of the low.
Still together, sure enough, we walk back to the barn. Up in the loft we squirrel away in the hay, each of us digging out our own separate caves. And we lie there in the dark, sucking on salty braids of hay as the noon hour passes, as the day passes, as the cows bellow from thirst in the pasture, as one after another the grown-ups fling open every door, scythes at the shoulder, shouting our three miserable names over and over. But to these things we’re insensible. All we can see, all we can hear, is a Stockholm car hurtling down a long straight road, bearing on its roof a great silver trunk that holds all our longing and our shame.