Well, what do you know? So I see I get the treatment today. Can see that as soon as we pull into the station. Greeted like a town worthy! Ulrik, he’s waiting by the station house in his greased-leather boots and best hat — the one with the widest brim — looking out over the tracks in his usual gloomy way. The grieving band and black bow tie just complete the picture as the horse leans down behind him and grazes in the flower bed. So I get to ride in the buggy, do I? That’s something I haven’t done since I was a kid. Guess I really am getting the full treatment, all on account of the old man dying. Otherwise I’d be hoofing it out to the farm like always, no matter if the mud’s so deep it swallows your feet whole. The only exception being Mamma’s funeral, of course.
That’s good old Ulrik for you! Can’t come over and meet you climbing down off the train, even if he sees you got your arms full with a wreath and a satchel full of brännvin. Suppose I could have sent the wreath on ahead of me, but you can never be sure how that’ll turn out. Look what happened to Mamma’s wreath, for Christ’s sake! Goddamn railway folks made such a mess of that there wasn’t any way to set it straight before the funeral. My goddamn eyes got shamed right out of their sockets, I’ll tell you that — me stuck there fussing around with the ribbons just before the service to try and hide the wreck of all them mutilated flowers. Not like it would’ve done me a damn bit of good to take it up with the railway folks. All them bastards do is pass the buck right back to you and leave you standing there like a clod.
So anyways, I finally get a proper nod from Ulrik — or Ultrick, like I used to call him when we was kids. He raises two fingers to the brim of his hat and flashes a mouthful of teeth like a regular hayseed. What do you expect? And then all of a sudden I’ve got the tin knocker at my elbow, three sheets to the wind like always, trying to get me to stop and jaw with him. He can probably make out what’s in my bag from the outlines of the bottles. “Sympathies,” he says. “For the old man. Happened quick, awful quick. Saw him just the day before and he was merry as a man can be.” It wasn’t a secret of the crown or anything that the old man was fond of the bottle in his later years, but that don’t mean you need to declare it to everybody within earshot at the station. Wonder if he’s been invited to the funeral dinner. I’m sure he and the old man polished off their fair share of bottles together, ’specially lately, but that don’t mean he should be invited on that account.
Cripes! Now the grieving band’s hanging all crooked on my arm. I already lost my first one, out drunk one Saturday night. Didn’t notice it was gone till I got home. Not really like you grieve with your clothes anyway, but to lose it like that, out on a binge, makes a man feel pretty low, even if it was a month after we buried her. But my woman, she keeps buying them a size too big. Either that or I’m just getting too spindly for them. Who the hell knows? Makes me look like some kind of hick, the way it keeps slipping down like that.
And Ulrik, what’s he do when I come up to him? He don’t put out his hand, even when I set down the bag so I can shake it. And he don’t utter a word, even when I greet him not just once but twice! Always the mule, Ultrick, broody and bound up in himself.
“Why don’t you take the wreath, brother?” I say with a friendly pat on the shoulder.
We’re family, after all, so what’s the point of getting off on the wrong foot when there’s no need. Sure enough, the wreath box fits in nice right under the seat. But the satchel I hold onto myself. Ulrik clicks his tongue and that dumb-ass horse Blenda lumbers around slow and lazy with a bouquet of the stationmaster’s flowers disappearing into her jaws.
“Put the bag away,” Ulrik says, just like you’d expect.
But me, I can’t help thinking of what happened when we buried Mamma. Our little brother Tage wanted to show us all what he was made of. So he grabbed my satchel and then THONK! He whacked it right into the gatepost, breaking two of the bottles. I had to set out in the middle of a scorcher of a Saturday trying to scare up a little replacement brännvin for the funeral dinner. This time the bag stays right with me.
It’s warm back here at home. Makes you wonder if they haven’t seen rain. Turns out, sure enough, they haven’t had a drop in a month.
“Hell of a nice October you got out of the bargain,” I can’t help remarking to Ulrik.
“The cards got sent out a bit late,” Ulrik says. “But I figure you must’ve got yours OK.”
The cards. We’re coming up on the bank, and the doctor’s office, and the café that’s got its own mini-golf course. That’s where Frida worked. She was a good one, that gal. Used to be I could come in through the back door and get my drinks and food for free, as long as it lasted, anyway. Yesiree, romancing that gal saved me a pretty penny.
“So you got it OK, I figure,” Ulrik asks me. Or says to me is more like it. He’s really just covering his ass.
Yeah, sure. The card. The death notice. “It worked out in the end,” I tell him. “You probably should have sent it sooner, but it worked out all the same, I suppose.” He never was much for words, Ulrik. Wouldn’t put a pencil to paper if there was any way around it.
So last Sunday the notice just arrives out of nowhere. I’ve been in Solvalla all day at the horse track, winning a hundred and fifty crowns in the bargain. And how often does that happen? So I figure I can be forgiven for tipping a few pints in honor of the occasion. But soon as I get in the door at home I can see the letter sitting on top of the electric meter right where my woman put it. And her, she hovers there to see how I’m gonna take the news. Like when Mamma died. Only then we got a real letter first from my little sister Lena, who’s in the sanitorium now, so that didn’t come like such a shock. I open the letter and I read it. Then I read it again. Takes quite a while before it really sinks in. It don’t feel right to get a death notice like that when you ain’t really sober, and of course my woman can’t help pointing that out. But I got a ready-enough answer to that.
“The old man was plenty friendly with the bottle himself,” I tell her. “And how do we know he didn’t have a few in him when he gave up the ghost?”
But still, the whole thing feels kind of low and shifty, like when we buried Mamma. I mean after I went out to borrow some brännvin for the funeral dinner. By the time I got back that evening I was pickled pretty in happy sauce, and next day it took everything I had to keep from spilling my breakfast during the funeral.
“Well, you got the clothes you need, all right,” my woman said. “Except the arm band, seeing you lost that out on one of your benders.”
I’m telling you, I’ll never hear the end of that, not till the day I die.
Well, looky there! I can see it now with my own eyes. The part-time sheriff’s deputy had the roof blown clear off his house. That’s what folks say happened anyway. Right now he’s sitting out in his yard puffing away on his pipe as he scours some papers in his hand. Got himself a nice little lounging chair too since last time I was home. Probably reading through the outstanding warrants looking for a likely culprit to pin his roof problems on. Now there’s a bastard thinks his shit don’t stink, believe me. But the town justice, he’s even worse.
A car passes us on the road, a brand-new Chevy. I point out the make and model to my brother, but him, he’s never heard of a Chevy, much less a Chevrolet.
“It’s a shame about Lena,” he says. “I mean that she don’t get to come home or anything for the funeral.”
And he’s right. It is a shame. There’s always been something extra special about our little sister Lena. Nothing like Ultrick, with all his mulish brooding, nor anything like our big sister Lydia, who went and got so high and mighty and stuck-up after she settled down with that radio dealer in town — running around on the weekend in national costume, joining the Women’s Volunteer Defense Corps. My own sister, for Christ’s sake! I know she looks down on me. Can never forget the hell she raised when we buried Mamma on account of my little misstep that morning. “How did I ever end up with such an ass for a brother?” she said right to my face. Far as I’m concerned I’d be just fine not seeing her. Our little sister Lena, though — she’s cut from another cloth. For one, she’s more like me. Not afraid to open her mouth. And there ain’t a stuck-up hair on her body. She would never look down her nose at you. Never! And here she gets hit by TB, working for that son of a bitch Lundbohm, just ’cause he’s too cheap to keep a fire in the hearth. Housekeeping for that sorry slob, I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemies.