Doughboy stops for a few seconds and his eyes fill up. “I’m all on my own now,” he says, and then he breaks down. Big as he is, he just looks at his hands and cries.
All of a sudden I feel pretty bad for him. He ain’t a bad fella. So I pour him a new glass. And I take a little for myself, mostly to keep him from getting bluer. All that about what happened to the old man — well, it’s just gonna have to wait. Not like I can trouble him with that right now. He’s got his head buried in his arms on the table. “Cheer up there, fella,” I say. “You and me ain’t seen each other since we buried my Mamma. So come on. Let’s have a drink together.” To comfort him, I take another slug, ’cause he really ain’t a bad fella, Doughboy, when you get right down to it.
“She even took the dog with her!” he says. “So who wouldn’t get furious?”
He’s got a point there. It’s a hell of a thing to go and take a man’s dog.
“You,” he says. “You’re lucky. Grieving for somebody who’s dead, that’s alright. But to grieve for somebody that’s alive. That’s about the worst thing I can think of.”
Well, so much for talking to him about the old man, least for the time being. He’s gonna have to settle down first. But that’s looking kind of hopeless right now, the way the tears start streaming down his cheeks.
“I think maybe we should just finish this bottle,” I say, trying to lift his spirits a bit. And then I empty out the rest of the brännvin and knock it right back, mostly to console him. It was a big shot, that last one, enough to do the trick for me. Not that I’m drunk or anything. The last thing I’m gonna do is give Lydia and the rest of them more ammo to snipe at me with.
But Doughboy, he just can’t be consoled. So I forget the old man for now and start to talk about Elinda instead.
“Don’t think you’re the only one with wife troubles,” I say. And right away Doughboy’s face lightens up when I mention Elinda like that. Not right away, but soon enough. I figure this means everybody must have heard something about that by now. Doughboy, he wipes his eyes with his hand, and then he pulls the cork out of the whiskey bottle. I tell him to hold off. And right away his face gets dark. So I let him pour me another glass. But pouring and drinking, I think to myself — now that’s two different things.
But Christ, I’ve got to dig deep to get at that whole sorry business with Elinda. It’s worn on me something terrible, but that don’t make it easy to talk about. So when Doughboy raises his glass to me I go right along with him. It ain’t no fun to trip over your own words as you try to get them to come out right. Makes you sound like you’re making it all up. After a good slug the whole thing comes a little more natural. And Doughboy, he’s pretty good at helping ease some of the details out of me, so I figure he knows a thing or two about the whole sorry business already. I’m sure it’s Lydia and Nisse I can thank for that. So if they jump all over my ass when I get home, I’ll have a few things to say to them. That’s for goddamn sure!
The whole thing was a mess from the start. If Elinda had to go and get herself another fella while I was doing my conscript service, how come she couldn’t do better than some fat, pasty turd from a little market town? Turns out this lout went to school with Nisse. After I gave him the treatment he went back to this little burg they come from and spread rumors about me. I’d love to get my hands on that son of a bitch again. God forbid he ever shows his face in my neck of the woods. And Nisse could do with a lesson too. Would serve him right for driving around in his starched white shirts, talking shit for the next six months. So I drain my glass and tell Doughboy what really happened. In case he ain’t heard it right.
“At the time I’d been in the service for eight months,” I told him. “And the whole platoon was getting transferred from Jämtland down to Linköping. So on the layover in Stockholm, I get the idea to slip away and go home for the night. I figure a night with the wife, that’d be just the thing. So I rent a car and hire a driver. Sixteen crowns it cost me! Well, if you count the ride out there plus the cost of cleaning up afterwards. Still, I figure it’s worth it just to get to sleep on a real couch again. But then finally when I get home and I’m standing there in my kitchen, what do you think I come face to face with? Here sits this bastard in his bare feet, right there on the cushioned bench, and in his lap is my wife! Darning the son of a bitch’s socks! So I don’t exactly need the whole evening to figure out the shape of things. ‘Get your goddamn socks on!’ I say, yanking them out of the wife’s hands. ‘And get the hell out of here! And you know what, buster? I got a feeling one of them eyes of yours is gonna be black before you hit the door. In fact, you can bet your sorry ass on it!’ And I’ll be goddamned if that miserable clown don’t get his socks on in record time. Then he starts scrambling to get his shoes on — only I can see then that they’re my shoes! So out he goes, into the night in his stocking feet!”
Doughboy, he just grins and pulls back on the cork again. But enough is enough, ’cause the bottle is starting to wobble a bit and the sweat is pouring right down off me. Just put your hand up and show him you mean to stop here. But him, he just keeps grinning and pours another. But pouring is one thing, of course, and drinking is another. I’ve got character. And that pack of pious pricks shaking their heads back in the kitchen at home — well, what the hell would they know about that?
“Now that’s interesting,” Doughboy says. “’Cause what I heard is it was you that got the licking. Someone said they heard that from Nisse.”
A licking! Me! Well, that’s pretty much what I’d expect from that slimy ass-kissing Nisse. No, if someone deserves a thrashing it’s that prick. I’ll just have to remember to have a good talk with Nisse when I get home — as long as I’m in good shape. Get a couple warm belts in me and I can do my talking just fine. What a bunch of goddamn hypocrites, all of them back there. So I drain my glass in one go and tell Doughboy how things really went.
“So we finally get out of that Lappland shithole,” I say. “You should have been with us on that trip, Doughboy. Ten of us fellas and ten liters of brännvin. You really should have been there! We come straight out of that shithole and by the time we get to Stockholm that night we’re feeling mighty fine. And it’s on to Linköping first thing in the morning. So I go ahead and rent a car and driver to get home from Norra Station. With the cost of cleaning up afterwards it come to pretty much twenty crowns. So it ain’t like I’m counting pennies or nothing when it comes to the wife. I figured she’d be over the moon to see me walk in the door like that as I’m turning the key. But then what do I find when I get in the kitchen? Her sitting there all over this bastard, the tramp. And him, he’s half-naked, so it ain’t like I don’t know what’s been going on. And I’ve always been good to that woman — you know that, don’t you, Doughboy? So I just make sure she’s out of the way, good and safe, and then I yank that son of a bitch up off the bench. ‘Get your clothes on, buster!’ I yell at him. ‘You and me got some business to take care of!’ And I peel my army jacket off and tell him, calm as a cucumber: ‘I wouldn’t go entering no beauty contests if I was you.’ And right out the door I send him packing! And this is right from the horse’s mouth, believe you me! Out he goes reeling, in his bare feet! And you know I ain’t one to pull my punches. So if somebody or another is running around talking shit about me, they’ll get theirs soon enough. There ain’t no question about that, now, is there? I might not have the extra padding in my shoulders that some of these stuffed shirts have, like a certain radio dealer we might know. But if they think that’s where a man’s power comes from, my dear friend Doughboy — well, then, they got another goddamn thing coming to them! I’ll tell you, this soldier right here was stuck up in that Lappland pisshole for eight long months. Ain’t had a woman that whole damn time. Just wait till you get home and see your girl — that’s what I tell myself. And I drop twenty-five crowns in one go on a car and driver, not a penny more or less. You know me, Doughboy. I’ll spare no expense for my woman — she always comes first. You know that.”