by Karin Fossum
Each day at three o’clock he’s waiting outside the school. Julie comes in all weather. She throws herself into her work and gets Crazy to master the difficult exercises. Coordinating the great, muscular body to obey her smallest instruction. Charlo puts up jumps for her and holds his breath as the horse canters toward them. His own body moves in sympathy, trying to will her over. The landing is thunderous, and Julie clings to the horse with her calves, jumping again and again. He’s enjoying these days, so he doesn’t look back. The fact that he experiences a few happy days fills him with a deep contentment.
It’s January and very cold. Julie rides in thermal overalls and Crazy’s large body can’t get properly warm. He’s stubborn and stiff. Julie is tired, so Charlo tries to slow her down.
“Put him back in his box,” he suggests. “Today we can just clean it out and leave things at that. And you can take a day off. It doesn’t matter if he stays in for one day.”
She shakes her head emphatically.
“That’s out of the question. Horses have to have exercise every single day,” she says categorically.
He praises and encourages, and comforts her when she complains. He makes up for all his sins. And she clings to him as she did when she was small. My daughter, he thinks, the lovely redhead, the veterinary surgeon.
It is on one of these icy January days that he suffers another strange episode. Frightening and incomprehensible. He’s helping Julie muck out. He throws himself into the task eagerly with the shavings fork and feels the muscles working in his arms. Now that he’s got going, he mucks out the box next door as well. And the one next to that, too. He works so hard that he makes the shavings fly. The wheelbarrow fills up and is heavy with horse muck. He wipes the sweat from his brow and his shirt feels cold down his back. He goes over and opens the hatch. Returns for the wheelbarrow, grips the handles, and begins wheeling it down the passage. Just then, one of his legs gives way and he pitches violently forward. His face is thrust into the damp droppings. The wheelbarrow tips over sideways, its contents spilling over his head. Confused, he lies there kicking with the acrid stench of muck in his nostrils. He wipes his face in bewilderment. The muck is everywhere: in his eyes and his mouth, and even down the back of his neck.
Desperately he attempts to gather his wits. Just then he hears Julie’s laughter. He’s never heard this laugh before. It cascades heartfelt and bright over his head, and he thinks how comic he must look, lying on the floor with the wheelbarrow over him. And Julie just can’t stop laughing. For his part, he’s dumb. Frantically he tries to stand up to right the wheelbarrow. Julie is unable to help him; she’s clutching a broom and laughing so much it echoes around the stable. At last her laughter subsides into silence. Just a few little gasps of mirth. She stops because he’s silent and struggling to get to his feet. She goes over to him, takes hold of the wheelbarrow with both hands, and turns it over.
“Oh, Dad,” she says.
There are still some traces of laughter in her voice, but also something else, a note of anxiety. Because he’s not laughing, too.
“What happened to you?” she asks, drying her tears.
Charlo has stood up again and is looking himself over, avoiding her eyes.
“Well,” he says uncertainly. “One leg went all weak. It’s odd.”
She titters again, goes up to him, and starts brushing his jacket. She’s kindly now, soothing.
“I’ll have to use the broom,” she says. “It’s stuck to your clothes, Dad. You’ll have to go home and take a shower. My God, what a sight you are! Why did you stumble? Was it slippery?”
He says nothing. The stench of dung fills his nose. Again he thinks there’s a flickering before his eyes, but he doesn’t say anything. She uses the broom gently on his back and dries the last tears from her cheeks.
“Weak, how?” she asks, and now there’s more concern in her voice.
“Well, I’m not sure,” he says. “I probably just wasn’t concentrating. You know how scatterbrained I am.”
Deep down he knows there’s something wrong. Again he had that feeling of weakness in his joints. First they seemed to go into spasm, then to lose all power. There’s a deep throbbing in his breast, a rising disquiet that something’s wrong with him. It’s strange, he thinks. He’s never unwell. For as far back as he can remember, he’s never been ill. Not since childhood measles and that sort of thing. But nothing since then.
He walks out of the stable, pulls off his jacket, and shakes it as hard as he can. It does no good at all. As he stands outside in the cold and darkness looking down at his own body, fear comes creeping over him. Something is about to overtake him. A punishment because his sins are so great. He isn’t going to escape. He stands shivering beneath the stars. It was too good to last, he thinks. What Julie and I found. Dear Lord, don’t take it from me! Then he shakes his head in perplexity. Sighs and pulls himself together. He feels quite normal again, as if nothing has happened. No, really he’s as fit as a fiddle. The wheelbarrow was so heavy, and perhaps it had more weight on the right side. That made it impossible to control, that’s how it happened. Maybe he slipped on some ice in the passage. It is very cold. There are lots of explanations. He’s forced to go in again, but he doesn’t know what he’s going to say. The event has become so difficult to manage. Julie is grooming the horse. He shakes his head in resignation.
“I must be getting old,” he says, and makes for the sink. He turns on the tap and splashes ice-cold water in his face.
She demurs and works on with her currycomb, using long, powerful strokes. Crazy shines rubicund in the light and munches hay with imperturbable calm.
“Has it happened before?” she asks suddenly, watching him narrowly.
He doesn’t want to answer. But they’re together now and mustn’t have secrets—no more than necessary.
“Yes,” he admits. “A couple of times. But I didn’t pay much attention to it. It’s probably just a bad habit, that I don’t look where I’m going.”
She puts down the currycomb and picks up the horse blanket, spreading it across the horse’s back.
“I think you ought to see the doctor,” she says.
He considers her suggestion. He never goes to the doctor, because he’s never ill. And what would he say? Sometimes I trip and fall? Surely everyone does that. But then there’s this flickering vision. Are the two things connected? Are there other things going on in his system that he doesn’t know about? Once again he peers down his body. The idea that it won’t do what he asks is an impossible one for him. The notion fills him with righteous anger; he feels the indignation burning his cheeks.
“Yes,” he replies, “I’ll call in the morning.” He nods as if to emphasize the seriousness of the thing.
They close the box door and walk toward the exit, switching off the ceiling light. Julie opens the door and Charlo feels the icy air creeping in everywhere. It cuts him like a knife. All the things that can attack human beings. Personally he feels that he really doesn’t want to know. He wants to live his life now, undisturbed by details. All the same, he phones the doctor the next day and makes an appointment.
Dr. Graff takes his blood pressure and says it’s excellent. Charlo sits on the edge of a chair in nothing but his underwear. He feels horribly naked. He, a grown man, coming to the doctor because he’s tripping over his own legs. It’s pathetic. The doctor works away eagerly on his keyboard, typing everything up in his notes. Whether he smokes and how much. If he sleeps well, if he eats well. If he’s allergic to anything, if there are hereditary conditions in his family. Things like that. Charlo answers dutifully and honestly.
“So you’re not sure whether you tripped over something or your knee gave way?”
“It might have been a patch of ice,” Charlo says, because that’s what he’s hoping. “And then there’s this flickering in front of my eyes. Maybe I need glasses. I’m at that sort of age.”
“We’ll do some blood tests,” the doctor says. His voice is re
assuring and neutral. “So that we can exclude a number of things.”
Charlo nods and reaches for his shirt. He wonders what the doctor is trying to exclude, but he doesn’t dare inquire. He’s given a form and told to sit down and wait outside the nurse practitioner’s office. At the same time, a new appointment is made for him.
The nurse takes some blood. He watches the thin red stream and wonders what the blood will show. What it is he has too much or too little of. He wants to leave and go to the stables. He wants to pretend this isn’t happening. Then he shakes it off. The body isn’t a perfect organism; it goes wrong from time to time. It does with everybody. Once the nurse has finished helping herself liberally to his blood, he gets up from the chair. He straightens up and pulls down the sleeve of his shirt. He stands there broad-shouldered, holding his stomach in. Showing off his fine physique. She isn’t particularly interested.
Maybe he’s being poisoned by his own crime? He can keep order of a kind inside his head and try to put it behind him, but perhaps it’s seeping out into his system and debilitating him? Remorse, guilt, and panic distilled into some paralyzing substance that’s eating its way into his joints, muscles, and nerves? He tries to laugh this idea off. If he really is suffering from something, it must have been there right from the beginning, in his genes. Then he imagines that everything is coded and that time unleashes it all—all diseases, all catastrophes. Was his crime also contained in his genes? Was he born with a predisposition, or was it just circumstances that turned him into a murderer? The fact that he has no answers troubles him. He needs to work through his own guilt, to place it somewhere outside himself. Not with his mother or father, he thinks. Not with Inga Lill or Julie. Not within his own nature, because he’s not aggressive. He never flares up. Almost never. He doesn’t go off the rails when he drinks. He did fairly well at school and got up to the usual boyish pranks. Now he’s an honest man. He never parks illegally and he doesn’t cheat on his income tax. He informs Social Security each time Møller pays him. He takes care of Julie with gentleness, fatherliness, and self-sacrifice. But things went wrong once, in Harriet Krohn’s house. She shouldn’t have attacked him. She should have kept calm and let him do what he’d come to do in peace. She would have saved her own life, he thinks, and she’d be walking around now, sucking on candy in her ugly green dress.
The days pass slowly as he waits for the results of his blood tests.
He looks at the calendar and counts down, alternating between hope and anxiety. He wants to get the date behind him, to move on. There mustn’t be any problems. Julie must be happy, and he must be there for her as long as she needs him. The day arrives. It’s dull and wet, and he’s toyed with the notion that sunshine would be a good omen. There’s no sunshine, only a keen wind that whips through the streets and blows his thinning hair around. His appointment is at three o’clock. Julie says, “Then I’ll come, too. I can leave school a bit early, and we can go to the doctor together.” Charlo is both touched and concerned because if there’s bad news awaiting him, he won’t be able to conceal it. She must be spared any worry. But he’s really so fit. He can’t believe that he’s got anything the matter with him. Then he checks himself. Of course something can be the matter with him; it happens to everybody. It’s only a question of time. Is it going to happen now, he wonders. Has my time come? That wind is particularly sharp: a warning, icy blast that presages danger.
They sit together in the waiting room. Suddenly Julie takes his hand.
“Nervous?” she whispers.
He laughs and says he isn’t. “No, sweetie, it’s only a routine checkup. I’ve been overplaying it, and I feel a bit silly.”
“So you’re feeling quite all right?”
He looks down at his boots with their brown laces. His feet are firmly planted on the floor and he’s got complete control over the pair of them.
“Yes,” he says firmly. “And now I feel ridiculous. Going to the doctor just because I tripped over a wheelbarrow. What must he be thinking, Julie. Have you ever tripped over a wheelbarrow?”
She smiles and nods. “Yes. Or rather, it was worse than that. I’d got a full load and I’d opened the hatch. I tipped it up to empty all the droppings, and the whole wheelbarrow went through the hatch and got stuck. You know how heavy those wheelbarrows are. It took three of us to haul it out again.”
“Yes,” says Charlo, “and you didn’t go to the doctor because of that. No, I’m probably just getting old,” he remarks with a sad smile. “Old and anxious. There, now I’m being called. No flowers, please,” he laughs, and gets up from his chair.
Dr. Graff is waiting in the doorway, tall and dark and thin. He holds out a dry, white hand. It’s the same ceremony as last time. They shake hands and go into his consulting room. The doctor closes the door. Points to a chair and sits down at his desk. Charlo examines him carefully, but his face gives nothing away. It’s a calm, pensive mask. First he brings up Charlo’s records on his computer. There, Charlo thinks, lie the answers. It’s only a matter of seconds and the axe will fall. Leukemia, he thinks. Diabetes.
“Well,” the doctor says at last, looking at Charlo. “How have you been since we last met?”
“I’m feeling in great shape,” says Charlo. “So if there is anything wrong with me, it can’t be all that serious. No, I haven’t noticed anything. My vision’s been all right. My legs, too,” he adds. Then he stops talking and waits.
The doctor looks at the blood test results and scratches his chin.
“The symptoms you described to me last time haven’t recurred? Is that right?”
Charlo nods fervently. He wants to go back out to Julie and put this behind him.
“I think I must have been unlucky,” he says. “I can’t put my feet in the right place. I’m just clumsy. It’s winter after all, with slush on the pavements. My boots haven’t got much grip; I’ll get some new footwear. I’m sorry about all this fuss, but I was worried there for a moment. You never quite know, but I feel fine.”
The doctor listens and nods.
“Well,” he says, looking at his screen, “we did a number of tests. And we haven’t got any abnormal readings. But let me put it this way: come back if it happens again, and we’ll investigate further. You’re feeling perfectly well?”
“Absolutely,” Charlo replies happily.
“What about your vision? Anything to report there?”
“Nothing serious. Presumably I need glasses.”
“Yes, it might be an idea to visit an optician. Is there a family history of glaucoma?”
“Only cataracts. But I’m a bit young for them, aren’t I?”
“Probably,” says the doctor. “As things stand, I can’t see any reason to start major investigations. Let’s see how it goes. Don’t hesitate to come back if you feel in doubt about anything. Just give us a call.”
Charlo springs up from his chair. He’s never felt better.
12
THINGS ARE GOOD now.
But they’re fragile. He’s skating on thin ice. He tiptoes through the days, looking over his shoulder and starting each time the phone rings. But nobody comes, nobody asks for him. There are no strange cars parked in the street.
It’s the tail end of winter. Everything is lighter, easier, milder. The snow is melting on slopes and in ditches. Puddles of ice water glitter in the sun, and water trickles vernally. Huge cotton wool cloud formations pile up in the blue sky in a white, noiseless roar. Julie and Crazy work hard and purposefully. They’re well acquainted by now, and the horse hasn’t produced any unpleasant surprises. But he doesn’t like wind. Trees and bushes move in a frightening way, and there’s a nasty howling around the corners of the building. The occasional plastic bag comes flying in between his hooves, and he starts and rears, thrashing his forelegs angrily. Julie hangs on hard. She sticks to his neck like a burr. Apart from that, he’s a great, friendly copper-colored giant.
Charlo prepares the outdoor ring. He drives the tractor slowly
in circles, working the sand until it’s as fine and even as a beach. He enjoys driving the tractor. It’s almost like a toy to him, and it doesn’t feel like work at all. He’s at home on the great green machine. There’s always something to do at Møller’s Riding Center. He paints the fences white and picks up litter, which he later burns in the incinerator by the parking lot. He hangs new rope around the paddocks and gathers up the biggest stones and the odd rusty horseshoe. He clears away the girls’ drink bottles and picks up clothing they’ve cast off in the indoor ring and places it in a box in the tack room.
Julie is riding out in the sunshine in just a T-shirt. The hair beneath her helmet is damp and her cheeks are red. Charlo runs to and fro, plying her with drinks and trying out his hand as a coach. He takes up position at the bottom of the ring, leaning against the fence. He stands in sunlight glittering from the melt water.
“A bit shorter on the reins,” he calls. “Be clear, stay a little ahead all the time. Don’t forget his hindquarters—he’s got to move with all four legs. His neck’s too long, try to pull him in. That’s it, yes. That’s good. D’you want to try a jump?”
He takes a few steps into the ring.
“You want to try one thirty?”
She rides the horse in a volte. The horse is well collected. All four legs are there, working together in one great organism. A fabulous monster.
“Yes. Why not, I’ll have a go.”
Charlo walks to the jump in the middle of the ring. He moves the bar up, takes a few steps back, and then realizes just how high it is. He takes a quick glance at Crazy and sees his long legs, his muscles and his strength. Presumably he’ll fly over. But only if Julie is confident and determined, and only if he trusts her. The balance must be perfect, and the landing must be soft. After the jump, he has to turn to the right toward the next jump, which is only one meter high. Nothing for Crazy. Can they do it? Is it safe? She wants to improve, so she’s got to push herself. She’s got to make Crazy do as she wants. She must dare. Charlo walks back, throws off his jacket, and hangs it over the fence. Waits on tenterhooks. But then he can’t keep silent, so he begins shouting.