And if my eyes tear up on me, well, Doughboy, he ain’t the kind of guy to make you feel foolish about that. He pats me on the shoulder and says “Don’t cry, there, Knutteboy. You got friends that care about you, here at home if nowheres else.”
“You’re somebody a man can count on,” I say to him, even though I’d still like to teach them bastards at home a thing or two, sitting there in the kitchen, dragging my name through the mud.
“Put that woman out of your head, Knut-boy,” Doughboy says.
Not like I’ve been thinking about her, but now when I do it’s hard for me not to wonder what she’s up to tonight. I’m grieving. Come all the way out here to bury my one and only father, and she’s out somewhere getting up to god knows what. Alone is what I am. Ain’t a goddamn soul left to turn to.
“Let’s just polish off this last little bit,” Doughboy says.
She’s not the only one that knows how to go out and have a good time, even if the one she’s promised herself to is off grieving a heavy loss. I can empty a glass too, and so I do.
“Stuck in that goddamn Lappland shithole, I was, for eight long months,” I start to tell him.
“Yeah, yeah, sure,” says Doughboy, like he knows all about it already.
Don’t see why he thinks he can take that tone with me. Bigger dogs than him have had to lower their tails to Knut Lindqvist. You’re on your own now, Knut-boy, and there ain’t a goddamn soul left on this earth you can count on. So is it any wonder your eyes start to sting?
“Get hold of yourself,” Doughboy tells me. “What say we go to the Pavilion, you and me?”
I try to get up, but it’s trickier than you’d think, the way his chairs swallow you up.
“It’s too far,” I say. “We’ll never make it.”
“We’ll take the car,” Doughboy says and grabs my arm to hoist me up. Only the floor moves on me and when I grab the table to catch my balance a glass goes crashing to the floor. What a pain in the ass! Why do folks have to put their glasses so close to the edge like that? The table ain’t so steady either, so I grab hold of the gramophone stand. A vase topples over and smashes to pieces on the floor. It’s that last glass of brännvin, I’m sure. Before that one I was steady like an oak. Still, just goes to show. My woman ain’t the only one that knows how to go out and have a good time.
“Forget the vase,” Doughboy says. “Let’s go!”
He turns off the lights and we head out. It got so stifling inside I felt like I might just throw up. But the fresh air outside does me some good. Still, the path is full of rocks that stick right up out of the ground, and I trip over one and land on my knees. Annoying as hell, ’cause now Doughboy will probably think I’m drunk. Not like he’s got room to look down his nose at me. He might be bursting with money now, but he sure wasn’t too good to borrow ten crowns from me that last time, and you think he remembers that? So I got a few morsels of truth I can treat folks to tonight. You better believe it. Like that goddamn Nisse. Might just have to learn the hard way, once and for all, that it don’t pay to play fast and loose with my good name. And the tin-knocker. No saying what’ll happen if I run into that son of a bitch at the Pavilion tonight.
Anyway, it’s good to sit in the car. And I guess I can depend on Doughboy after all. He’s at the wheel fiddling around with the dashboard. He can’t find the knob he wants, so we ain’t going nowhere. It’s funny to see him feeling around all tender and slow with his fingers, like he’s groping a woman. He must be pretty stewed himself, and that’s always a hell of a tickle, watching a fella in that kind of shape. So all due apologies, but I can’t keep from starting to chuckle — cackle is more like it. I get caught up in such a belly laugh the door pops open, and I pretty near fall out. Doughboy starts losing his cool. And there ain’t many things funnier than a fuming-mad drunk. I laugh so hard I start to cry. Finally he gets the engine to turn over, but then we jerk backwards right into a telephone pole. He cusses into his jacket and jams it into the right gear. When he hits the gas we fly out into the road like a cannonball. Yep, he’s a pretty good driver, Doughboy. Some bicyclists scream at us and a couple others we pass just stand there at the edge of the road, glaring at us. He’s driving pretty damn good, considering he don’t even have his headlights on. And me, I can’t stop laughing, pretty much the whole way, ’cause Doughboy’s drunk as a skunk.
Hurtling along the road at that speed, we pull up outside the Pavilion in no time flat. A lot of folks there. They’re gawking at us ’cause I’m laughing so hard. You’d think a man couldn’t have a little fun in this goddamn country. There’s a little hole in the ground near the entrance, and I lose my footing there and end up on my knees. So now the doorman probably thinks I’m drunk. And sure enough I’m getting the stiff arm at the door. We ain’t getting in.
“No entry?” I say, riled up. “We all know what kind of turkey shoot this place is. But that don’t make us the turkeys!”
Takes more than a few brass buttons to make me grovel at the door. But Doughboy, he ain’t standing shoulder to shoulder with me the way I’d expect. Instead he pulls me back and tries to calm me down, and then he says to the doorman, just like he’s a captain of industry or something: “The newspapers might find this an item of some interest, you understand.”
And me, I’m quick on my feet, always have been, so I pick up his meaning straight away.
“I’ll back you up there, Doughboy,” I say. “First thing I’ll do when I get back to the city is write to the papers. I’m sure they’d be very interested to learn how decent folk get treated like shit by these hired goons at the door out here in the sticks. Christ! Any paper worth the ink it’s printed on would jump at that story!”
But the doorman just grins when I say this. So here’s another one for the list. I’ll catch up with him at the right time and give him something to remember me by. But now Doughboy grabs me by the arm and pulls me away. We head up into the woods together around back of the Pavilion. There’s a root sticking up that I can’t help tripping over, and Doughboy, he gets furious all of a sudden and says to me: “If you fall down one more fucking time I’m just gonna leave you there!” He ain’t got no right to talk to me that way. Can I help it if there’s a root sticking up out of the ground there? Nobody’s willing to give me a break.
Round back at the Pavilion there’s just regular farm fencing with some barbed wire strung along the top. So Doughboy helps me up and I go over. I get a bit snagged on the barbed wire, but come away no worse for the wear. He ain’t a bad fella, really, Doughboy. Me and him got the better of that goddamn doorman. That’s the important thing. I throw my arm round his shoulder.
“You know, eight long months I was stuck in that goddamn shithole—”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” he says and pushes me away, like he knows everything there is to know about it.
Who the hell’s he think he is? That’s what I’d like to know. Treating me like that? But he don’t stop when I call after him. He just keeps going, right up to the open-air dance floor. Don’t take him long to get a girl on his arm, and head out on the floor with her. But me, I just get the cold shoulder when I try to follow suit. So it’s all about the money. That’s all that counts in this goddamn world. Guess I’ll just have to win the lottery. Then I can come back and dance till my heart’s content. I don’t see anybody I know. But what do I care? I was born and bred here. But when you go away and spend twelve years in Stockholm, you learn a thing or two about the world. So I walk around and mix it up with folks. I can be pretty damn entertaining when I want to be. Bashful is something I’ve never been, so I make the rounds and lay on the charm with some of the gals. And I get them to loosen up and enjoy themselves. Some start laughing their asses off. I ain’t no tongue-tied farm boy, wet behind the ears. No siree! I know how to be smooth with the ladies, and that’s a goddamn fact.