So says Ulrik. I don’t know why he thinks he’s got to mention all that stuff about the old man being dead drunk and all, not when the whole thing’s still so close. I’m sure all this just stokes the hot white fire of righteousness for Lydia and her fella. I’ll never forget how they acted at Mamma’s funeral, pissing and moaning just ’cause I was decent enough to bring along my whole legal ration of liquor for the occasion. It seems Ulrik ain’t done yet, ’cause now he brings Blenda to a creeping pace. We must be a sight to behold, hobbling along down the side of the road like we’re on our last leg.
“So I say to the nurse, how’s the old man doing?” Ulrik says. “And she just shakes her head and says he’s gonna need rest. A few days probably. If I can just fix getting him home, she promises to come by in the morning and check up on him. The air was getting awful thick with the smell of brännvin in there, and that’s not so nice right in the middle of potato season and all. Me, I go to get on my bike again to ride home and right there’s the old man’s bike lying in the dirt at the foot of the nurse’s stoop, the handlebars bent up a good bit but otherwise looking okay for the most part. Back home I wait till it’s a little darker before I set out. Don’t much feel like being ogled in the village by everybody and his brother on account of the old man. But then finally I hitch Blenda to the buckboard and head back to the nurse’s. Dad’s still out cold when me and the nurse carry him out. When I get him home, we carry him in to the cot in his room, me and that smirking hand of ours. I don’t much feel like taking the old man’s clothes off, so I put a blanket on him and then head out to milk the cows and tend to the horses.
“When folks come round that evening for their milk you can just tell from all the sly smiles that they know all about it. ‘The old man never was one to turn his back on a drink.’ I hear this more than once. ‘But at his age!’ someone else says to me. For the sons there’s no escaping the sins of the father. Later that night something didn’t sound right in his room, so I went in and struck a match over him. And all of a sudden I was scared. I turned the electric light on, but the old man was already dead. I send our hand to go and to fetch the nurse. But she only stays in there with him for a few minutes, and then she comes out to the kitchen and says to us that she never would have thought it possible, him going so quick like that.”
It so happens we pass by the nurse’s place right then. And wouldn’t you know it, there she stands just inside the window, giving us a good long stare just like everybody else around here as we go by. The same window she was standing at when the old man hit the ground and went to sleep for the last time. And that was right here on the road, the spot we’re passing over this very moment in the shadow of Jacob’s hedge. How many times as a kid did I run down this road? How many times did I step right on this spot or push my kicksled over it in winter? And for how long has it been in the cards that my own dad would crash his bike here and knock himself senseless? Ulrik cracks the whip now and sets Blenda into a hell of a trot. And all the way till the road curves there at the boarding house, I stay halfway twisted round, looking back at that little bit of road between the hedge and the Nurse’s white house. It’s like I’m looking at the old man’s grave. And it ain’t till then that I really understand he is dead.
But the churchyard is right here across from the boarding house, and the door to the dead room is open. You couldn’t see that from the road when we buried Mamma. But it was July then, so all the maples was in the way. Just as we come up even with the churchyard wall, Ulrik slows way down and takes his hat off, setting it in his lap till we’ve gone by the church. He’s a funny one, Ulrik, with his old-fashioned ideas. Like it does the old man a damn bit of good now to take off your hat when you go by his dead room. Somebody closes the door right then, shutting the old man in, but it don’t feel the same as it did just a minute ago when I was looking back at that little patch of road. And it’s funny, ’cause I don’t feel the same when my thoughts turn to him now. The old man, he was always so full of life, so I can’t help thinking of all the good times me and him had together. For some reason I think of that morning, the day we buried Mamma, when I took my own razor and shaved the old man myself. He was so happy he almost cried. “Wish Ulrik would do this,” he said. “But he don’t give a goddamn if I almost cut my throat shaving! These hands of mine get so shaky.”
And now Ulrik’s sitting there beside me staring at the hat on my head, but if he wants the damn thing off my scalp he can yank it off with his own hands. Out of the corner of my eye I can still see a bit of the boardinghouse we just passed. Used to have one hell of a lady friend working there. Name of Irma. Now that was a gal to hold on to. Used to meet me in the woods out back in the evening and bring me a full dinner from the boardinghouse, all wrapped up in a nice big napkin. A man had everything he could ever want then. But then Mrs. Lund, she got wind of it and put an end to that real quick. And Irma, she run off with this lieutenant that come and stayed at the boardinghouse for four days. “Sure beats a freeloader with a bottomless stomach!” she says to me right to my face, the witch. The grief I’ve had to endure! But I’ve been known to give back just as good as I take. I’ll say that much!
Back on with your hat, Ulrik. There you go, Ultrick. And sure enough, he doffs it again the moment we pass the last grave and then gives Blenda such a whack with the whip that she bolts right down the hill. The blacksmith stands half-hanging over his gate, three sheets to the wind from the look of it. So we’re not far now. First across the little creek that I thought you could fish when I was a cub, then past the parsonage and into the open fields. “Maybe we should’ve dropped off the wreath at the church,” I say to Ulrik. Not like he’d bother to give me an answer. He’s in a surly mood now. You can tell by the way his moustache is drooping. There’s a car in the yard, that I can see right away, and then Lydia’s bloated lout comes out on the steps. He’s wearing a white shirt and is puffing away on a cigar. The place looks pretty tiny to me — it gets smaller every time I come home. Even at Mamma’s burial, it didn’t seem like there was much of it left, and now it’s shrunk down to almost nothing.
I can tell Ulrik’s looking at me off to my side. He’s probably thinking: “Take a good hard look, ’cause it’s the last time you get to come here to my home on a free ride.” Lydia’s fat boy comes over and opens the gate for us as we drive in, and of course I can’t get out of saying hello, so I hand him the bag and climb down, then reach my arm out to give him a hearty clap on the back, but then he stiffens up and starts away with the bag like he just got stung by a wasp or something. He thinks I’m stewed, of course. And that shirt of his is too spanking white to get pawed by an honest working man’s hand. Ulrik drives ahead to the trough to let Blenda drink. I’m not about to go chasing after the radio dealer. He can just slow down and wait for me, which he does, but only so he can show off his car.
“Yes, sir — this beauty is brand new!” he says, as if I’d asked him. “And a six seater too! Pontyac. Just the thing for business trips.”
Alright, so business is good, for Christ’s sake. Good for you. At the little gate he manages to remember his manners, though, offering his condolences to me as he opens the gate. Right then Lydia comes running out on the porch. Lord God, has she gotten fat! But at least she ain’t wearing her Women’s Auxiliary Corps uniform, nor that god-awful folk-dress getup. She hugs me so hard my spine feels like it’s about to cave in. Then she lays her head on my shoulder, crying and hiccupping, while that idiot of hers just stands there gawking at us like he’s at the circus.