by Maria Parr
Hello, I’m talking to you! Have you had a brain anesthetic or something?” Lena asked.
“Huh?”
“I said: Can you bring Reidar’s mountain poncho so we’ve got something to camouflage ourselves with?”
“You can’t kill foxes with air rifles,” I replied, annoyed.
Lena wasn’t planning on killing it, she told me. She just wanted to scare it. The fox couldn’t be allowed to keep swaggering around and killing innocent civilian hens who’d never done anything except lay eggs and go tobogganing.
“When it hears the bang of the air rifle, it’ll realize.”
“Lena, I don’t think that —”
“You’ll see!” she roared.
It had started raining, but Lena used a tarp to make a little hunting shelter behind the corner of the hay barn. When I arrived with the poncho, she was sitting astride a folding chair, her face locked in concentration and daubed with camouflage paint. The rifle was lying on her leg, and on a small table beside her was a towering stack of chocolate-spread sandwiches and a pair of binoculars. She looked totally crazy. Normally I would’ve laughed, but not that day.
I plonked myself down next to her and laid the green-and-brown poncho over our legs. Neither of us said a word. We just stared somberly at the chicken run.
Suddenly, after only half an hour, we heard sounds coming from over there. Lena lifted the air rifle and fired off a shot at the moving shape.
“Aaaaargh! What the —?”
A large shadow stood up inside the chicken run.
“Smoking haddocks, I’ve shot Reidar,” Lena whispered.
“Lena? Trille?!”
We sprinted off across the dark fields, sending slush splattering around us.
“Let’s hide in the boat,” Lena said, panting. “We can lock it from inside.”
She was already heading out onto the floating pier inside the breakwater, where Troll was afloat for the first time since the hurricane. We clambered aboard and slammed the cabin hatch shut.
For a while, we stayed frozen in the darkness and listened. We heard Dad calling angrily a couple of times, and then there was silence. I felt tired, so I crawled along to the innermost bunk and lay down, exhausted. The smells and sounds in the cabin reminded me of the summer, of Grandpa, of the sea and peaceful times. It was like returning to an old country we’d left behind.
I heard Lena rummaging around in the cupboards, and she soon appeared in the darkness, bringing some cookies.
“These were probably well past their sell-by date before we were even born,” she muttered, stuffing one in her mouth. “Are there any blankets here?”
I thought of all the times Lena and I had sat like that, talking about all sorts of things. Now we were both completely silent. We listened to the waves lapping beneath the boat as we wrestled with our own thoughts, and the dark slowly swallowed all that was left of the day.
“I’ve got to go now,” Lena said eventually, her teeth chattering. “I can’t catch a chill with all the season’s games still to play.”
She got the air rifle ready and opened the cabin hatch. Was she going to shoot Dad again?
“I’ll stay here a bit longer,” I mumbled.
Maybe I could catch a chill? I thought hopefully, tucking myself into the blankets Lena had warmed up.
With the rain drumming down outside and the waves lapping against the side of the boat, I fell asleep.
I could’ve been offended that neither Mom nor Dad noticed I was gone until the next morning. But there are so many of us in the Danielsen Yttergård family, it can be hard to keep track of everyone. Dad’s bum hurt, and Inger had been screaming all evening. Each of my parents thought that the other had said good night to me.
But they hadn’t, because I was lying asleep in Grandpa’s boat, with a woolen blanket over my head. When I woke up, Troll was swaying in a different way from the night before, and the engine was running. I sat up in a daze. The gray morning light was seeping through the cabin hatch, and I caught a few glimpses of Grandpa’s blue overalls out on deck. Was it morning? Grandpa was talking on the phone. That was what had woken me. He always holds his cell phone a short distance away from his head, as if it’s a crab that he’s worried might bite his ear.
“Eh?” he was shouting. “No, Trille’s not on board . . .”
I was about to creep out, but Grandpa was busy.
“Half the line’s in the water, Reidar. I’ve got to go! Call me back if you can’t find him.”
Then he hung up and tossed the phone into the cabin. It landed right next to me. I felt a lump in my stomach right away. I remembered Birgit’s face when Grandpa had killed the hen. And Kai-Tommy mockingly turning up his nose. The very thought of going to school made me feel queasy. With my stiff fingers, I picked up Grandpa’s phone and wrote a message to Dad. I’m in the boat. Sorry that you got shot.
Then I turned it off and plunged back under the blankets. I felt like a little jellyfish. I could imagine Dad going berserk when he read the message, but I couldn’t summon the energy to care. They could go ahead and shout at me. I couldn’t take any more. The throbbing of Troll’s engine mixed with my pounding heart. I quietly tucked myself in more tightly and drifted off to sleep again. I didn’t want to think any more about anything.
Several hours had passed when I suddenly awoke. Somebody was yelling!
I’ve heard lots of yelling in my life. Lena frequently yells, and so do the rest of my family sometimes. Every one of them. But I’d never heard Grandpa yell before. That’s why I couldn’t immediately work out what I was hearing. And when I did realize, it was as if a rockslide had slammed straight into me.
I threw the blankets aside and leaped out through the cabin hatch. The gray daylight blinded me. The deck was covered in fish blood, and Grandpa was leaning over the winch. He yelled again. And then I saw it: his hand was stuck, and the blood on the deck had nothing to do with any fish.
“Grandpa!” I shouted.
I saw him jump when he heard my voice.
“Trille?”
He couldn’t turn around. I reached up and switched off the winch.
“The knife . . .” Grandpa spluttered. “On the deck . . . You’ve got to cut . . . the line.”
The knife, the knife. Where was it? My hands scrabbled around in my grandfather’s blood and the rainwater. I eventually found it in the shadow of the fish tub.
“Got it!” I shouted.
Grandpa didn’t answer. I was afraid he’d black out, but he nodded at the line. It was drawn taut straight down into the sea. Something was pulling at it with immense force.
When I got to the railing, I saw something I’ll never forget: there was a monster next to the boat. A white body, almost as long as Troll herself, shone at me from the water below. The halibut was writhing around on the hook, using its enormous strength to try to free itself. The whole boat shook.
“Grandpa . . .” I whispered.
The giant fish was pulling and pulling as it tried to swim back down into the dark waters. Were there really such big creatures down there?
I turned toward Grandpa. His face was gray, and he just gave me a brief nod.
Then I cut the line with the knife. All the strain was gone. The huge, beautiful fish vanished into the depths below, and Grandpa sank down onto the deck.
It was as if life had all been a game up until that day. Whatever mess I got myself into, there was always an adult who would sort things out. But that day on Troll, the only adult was lying lifeless in his own blood. We were surrounded by rough seas. I could’ve shouted my lungs out and nobody would’ve heard. It was just me, Trille Danielsen Yttergård, and the sea.
I don’t know how long I stood there with the knife in my hand, as if I’d been switched off. But, eventually, something inside me gave me a kick in the backside. I had to get Grandpa ashore!
I whipped off my sweater and wound my white T-shirt around Grandpa’s shattered arm. Then I rushed into the cabin and found a
n old sheet, which I wrapped around it again. His arm now looked like a ball. I didn’t risk moving Grandpa into the cabin. Instead I dragged all the blankets out and managed to put two down beneath him and two covering him. As I unfolded the last blanket, Grandpa’s cell phone suddenly slipped out onto the deck, then under the railing, and into the sea with a plop.
“No!”
I ran to the side of the boat, but I could only see bubbles where the phone had disappeared.
Troll danced and drifted over the gray sea swells. The shore was endlessly distant, wrapped in clouds of mist and squalls of rain. There were no other boats to be seen. I gritted my teeth and started the engine. I couldn’t head to Mathildewick Cove. We were closer to town — where the hospital was.
I’d been out with Grandpa on Troll a billion times, but he’d never taught me how to make emergency calls on the radio. Why had he never done that? And why didn’t he have an emergency stop button on the winch? Why didn’t he even wear a life jacket? I beat my fist on the wheel.
“Grandpa, the radio. How does it work?” I shouted.
He moaned a few words, but it was just a muddle. The ball of fabric around his arm was starting to turn red.
The sea was getting rougher. I kept having to get up and adjust our course, and I was drenched by the rain. Then I found Grandpa’s oilskins in the cabin. Shivering, I spread out the oilskin jacket on top of all the blankets. When I’d finished, Grandpa looked like a mummy. Only the center of his face was visible, but he was still shaking. I put my ear right down by his mouth. He was whispering something. I leaned closer.
“Inger,” he murmured, and then it was as if he drifted away again.
I started to cry. Why was he saying Granny’s name? Couldn’t he see me? Was he dying?
“I’m here, Grandpa,” I cried. “I’m here.”
Then I had to go back up to the wheel. A prayer pounded away inside me, over and over again. Let Grandpa live. Let Grandpa stay with me. Make Grandpa wake up. Make Grandpa better. Let him stay with me.
The town emerged above the misty sea now and then. It was getting closer and closer, but we didn’t meet a single other boat. Nobody could help me. Troll was pummeling against the waves and struggling through the sea, Grandpa was breathing and bleeding, and I was praying and crying. Oh, if only the engine had that extra horsepower Lena had talked about! It was so slow that it hurt.
It’s hard to say what he made of it all, that suntanned man in the white sailboat who was the first to see us. He probably thought about his own boat first, as here came a fishing boat roaring into the town harbor with a half-crazed boy for a skipper.
“Help!” I shouted, waving my arms. “You’ve got to call an ambulance. Grandpa’s hurt!”
Then I did what made Grandpa proudest of all. I docked the boat. I didn’t smash any sailboats. I didn’t give Troll so much as a single scratch either, which clearly surpassed everything else I’d done that day.
“Old Troll is no easy boat to maneuver and berth, you know,” Grandpa said later, as if that was what made me the hero of the day.
“Pure luck,” was what Lena had to say about the docking. “Pure, sheer luck.”
It was so strange to be somebody else all of a sudden. I was no longer that snotty brat from Mathildewick Cove. Now I was the boy who’d saved his grandfather’s life.
Magnus stopped making fun of me, Mom cried at the very sight of me, and the old men at the shop said hello to me as if I were a grown man.
“I always thought that Mini-Lars had the right stuff,” I caught the hard-of-hearing Thunderclap Kåre telling Pitt one day as I was going past.
They even wrote about me in the newspaper.
But I don’t think I really understood what a big thing I’d done until I heard Dad talk about it. The Sunday after the accident, he invited Uncle Tor to dinner, as well as everybody from next door. I was in the kitchen with him while he was preparing the meal. He was stirring the pot of chicken fricassee and scurrying around in an apron that was far too small for his stomach.
“Trille,” he suddenly said, nodding in the direction of the sea, “what you did for Grandpa . . .”
I looked up in shock. Dad never normally gives me praise. Now he was staring at me as he searched for words, emotion written all over his face.
“I’ve always been proud of you, but what you did . . . You’re a good lad, Trille.”
“Do you think so?” I said, stunned.
Dad nodded and fumbled with the whisk, without saying another word. I ran off happily to put the napkins on the kitchen table. In my confusion, I laid a place for Grandpa too.
He’d been moved from the hospital to the nursing home now. I’d ridden my bike over there after breakfast. All the blood loss had made him feel weak and miserable, and his arm was never going to be quite the same again. When I’d gotten there, he was asleep in bed. For as long as I could remember, Grandpa had looked after me. With him I’d always been as safe as a seagull chick. Now it almost felt as if I had to look after him. I sat down quietly on the chair next to the bed. After a while, he woke up a little. A frail smile appeared.
“To think you docked Troll all on your own, Trille lad.”
And then he fell asleep again.
And now I’d laid him a place at the kitchen table out of habit. I just left it like that. He wasn’t dead, after all. I looked at the table, which was all set. At each end, bottles of red-currant squash sparkled in the low February sunlight, and from the middle of the table, wisps of steam curled up from our biggest cast-iron pot. Dad and I looked proudly at each other.
“I would like to propose a toast to Number Seven,” Lena said with a cough when everybody had arrived. “Mathildewick Cove’s Formula One chicken, who sadly had to die far too young . . .”
“She wasn’t all that young,” Dad muttered, but he raised his glass anyway.
“And to Trille,” said Minda. “The world’s littlest lifesaver.”
Then we ate the chicken fricassee, the one just like Granny used to make. And just like her parents had surely made for her out on Kobbholmen. Oh, how I wished Birgit could’ve been there to see it. How could I explain to her that it wasn’t just any old dead chicken that had dropped out of midair? And had she heard about Grandpa? I knew I had to go up to Hillside later that evening.
“Can we put some chicken fricassee in a box and take it to the nursing home?” Lena asked when we’d finished tucking in to our dessert and people were about to leave. “It was Lars who provided the main ingredient, after all.”
Dad said he’d been about to suggest the same thing, and he poured the leftovers into a huge plastic tub.
Lena and I fetched our bikes. When we got up to the main road, I strapped the tub onto Lena’s carrier rack.
“You go,” I said. “I went this morning.”
Lena frowned and was about to say something, but I was already on my way up the hill.
And so it was that we each went our own way that evening. Lena cycled to the nursing home, and I pedaled all the way up to Birgit at Hillside. The same thing would happen a number of times over the next couple of months.
Spring was sprouting. Bristly yellow dandelions shot up like stars on the edge of ditches. The sea glittered, and even a few shining wood anemones popped out amid all the dead grass on a slope halfway up to Hillside. I saw more and more of them as the days went by, as I was always going to see Birgit and her family. I was almost starting to get used to vegetarian food. After the accident, I could finally talk with her normally again. The episode with the hen hardly mattered anymore once we’d even had a little laugh about it.
Things were different at school too. The day after the rescue, I’d turned up in my wellies. I didn’t mind if I looked stupid. I was fed up with having wet feet. In any case, I couldn’t give a shark’s tail what Kai-Tommy thought. He could just go ahead and stare.
Everything seemed to be going a bit better, except in one place: back home in Mathildewick Cove.
I
don’t really know what I’d expected to happen when Grandpa finally came home. I suppose I’d imagined we’d sit down in his apartment and talk about the accident, shaking our heads as we thought about the giant halibut and those dramatic few hours. At the least I thought Grandpa would look at me warmly and thank me, like Dad had done. But he didn’t say anything. It was as if everything with the halibut and the winch hadn’t even happened. Instead, Grandpa walked around like a shadow, holding his arm and hunched over in a way I hadn’t seen before. Was he angry?
On the very first day of warm sunshine, I asked if he wanted to come along down to the boat shed again. He quickly backed away with his hand over his face, mumbling something about not quite feeling up to it.
“Maybe another day,” he added, without looking straight at me.
“All right,” I said, trying not to sound downhearted.
So then I asked another day, but Grandpa said the same thing. I felt a strange emptiness in my stomach. Why didn’t he want to spend time with me?
Lena wasn’t trampling all over our doormat anymore either. To start with I thought that might be a good thing, but actually it made me sad. She was going to her blasted practices all the time, and when we did meet, she was quiet and morose, not really her usual self.
And then, early one Saturday morning, a few weeks after Grandpa had come home, everything became twice as difficult as before. From my window, I saw Grandpa and Lena walking down to the boat shed together. He was wearing his overalls for the first time since the accident, and she was carrying his toolbox. I could feel tears of anger welling up behind my eyes. Why hadn’t they asked if I wanted to come too? I swallowed hard and turned away from the window. Soon I was on my way up to Hillside. They were welcome to have a nice time without me!
I didn’t ask Grandpa if he wanted to come along down to the boat shed anymore. But I did discover, to my despair, that many of the times I’d been to Hillside or other places, he and Lena had been down there without me.