by Milk
Along the way I passed a large white farm, and I saw a man and a woman hastily getting their children inside a car. After a few hundred feet, I passed a Dutch barn stuffed with hay, and half a mile later came to a wide field of barley that hadn’t been harvested.
Before long, I could see the first houses in what passed for the area’s biggest town. Towering up over all the houses was a grain silo. And I could see the brownstone school building with its white windows.
Just as I got to town, the local cop drove toward me in his blue Volvo. I waved at him and he waved back, and then he was already long past me.
I crossed the road, and soon stood in front of a broad chain-link gate. Three trucks were parked in the lot, but there was nobody around. I clambered over the gate and walked toward the silo. Small piles of grain lay here and there, and the smell was sweet and good. I put my hand on the outer wall; it felt warm. I went around the silo and found a door behind the building. With a hard jerk, I got the door open and went inside. I stood in a pretty narrow shaft; on the wall were a number of shiny steel stairs, and far above, I noticed a small circle of blue light, which I guessed was the sky.
I started crawling. It was really hot inside the shaft, and when I reached the halfway point, I had to stop and take my jacket off. I tied it around my waist, but that only made crawling more difficult, so I let it fall. I continued up; the higher I got, the warmer it was.
When I finally crawled onto the roof, I was soaked through with sweat. I pulled my shirt over my head and looked toward the south. I could see a huge black cloud of smoke; under it, an orange glow. I couldn’t see the flames. In the foreground, I could see a combine that’d now begun to harvest the field I’d just passed.
I looked at the parking lot below; the three trucks were slightly staggered and resembled toys on display. The houses in the town were unusually close, but they still seemed small. Patio furniture filled the square yards, but there were no people. Furthest away was the train station, and I could see the red train waiting for the regional train.
I turned toward the north and saw a blue glare, which I knew was the sea. Then I turned toward the south and looked at the red glow.
Soon after, I sat down. I flicked my lighter and watched the flame. I fell into a trance and sat that way for a long time. At some point I realized I was freezing. I stood and put on my shirt, but it was cold and damp. I stared toward the south: As far as I could see the flames were burning out.
I moved to the hatch and started crawling back down.
I headed back the same way I’d come. Outside the town limits, I passed the cop. I waved, and he waved back politely. I passed the barley field and greeted the farmhand, who leaned up against the grain wagon smoking. I passed the Dutch barn where two boys shot at a target with a bow. There were lights in the stalls at the big farm, and I could hear the sound of a transistor radio through the open door.
I followed the main road and walked through the little stand of spruce, followed the railroad tracks, and walked through the bog.
It had grown dark by the time I finally made it home. At a distance I could see the light in the living room. I shuffled forward through a thick layer of gray ash. The fire had burned up most of the field; it hadn’t been brought under control until about 150 feet from the house.
When I walked inside, my brother sat on the couch watching television. He looked up.
—Where have you been? he said. There was a fire in the fields.
—I know that, I said.
I looked at the screen. I could see a big white bird lying on a nest: an albatross.
—There were a lot of people here. The cop was here, too. He was over talking to Svend the Hen. He seemed to think it was his fault.
I walked into the kitchen and poured a bowl of cornflakes. When I got back, my brother had changed the channel to some kind of quiz show; from a few notes you were supposed to guess the name of a song or a piece of music. I sat down in the seat opposite him.
They played a few bars of a song.
—“Strangers in the Night”! my brother called out.
We waited for the answer.
—You see, he said.
I pulled the lighter from my pocket, and this time I didn’t flick it—I just tossed it over to him.
—Catch! I said.
He flicked it and saw that the flame was only an inch high. He looked at me and then set it down on the coffee table.
—They say he fucks his cows.
—Yeah, I said and watched the screen.
They played a few bars of a new tune.
—Can’t we watch the show with the albatrosses? I said.
—Okay.
For a long time, without saying a word, we watched the program about the enormous birds. The narrator said they could fly up to a 600 miles a day. They sailed on the wind almost without moving their wings. We saw how they dived after fish, and we saw an albatross egg that was the size of a honey melon.
At some point, my brother turned his head and looked at me. I didn’t look at him, but I could feel his gaze; he watched me for a pretty long time. Then he turned his attention back to the screen.
—Promise you’ll never do that again, he said under his breath.
Acknowledgments
The author and translator would like to thank the following journals where these stories, sometimes in slightly altered format, first appeared:
“What is it?” and “Fling” (as “Summer”) in Redivider,
Volume 6, No. 2
“Tide” in The Brooklyn Review, 25
“Unsettled” in The Bitter Oleander, Volume 14, No. 2
“Phosphorescence” in A River & Sound Review
“Kramer” in Copper Nickel, 14
“Hair” in World Literature Today, September/October 2010
“Rose” and “Crossing” in Portland Review, Issue 56, Volume 3
“Intercom” (as “Markus”) in Absinthe: New European Fiction, Winter 2011
“Albatross” in Numéro Cinq
Photo by Camilla Hultén Fruelund
About Simon Fruelund
Simon Fruelund is the author of five books, among them Borgerligt tusmørke (2006)—published as Civil Twilight by Spout Hill Press in 2013—Verden og Varvara (The World and Varvara, 2010), and Panamericana (2012). His work has been translated into Italian, Swedish, and English, and his short stories have appeared in a number of magazines across the U.S., including World Literature Today, The Collagist, Redivider, and Absinthe: New European Fiction. For nine years Fruelund worked as an editor at Denmark’s largest publishing house, Gyldendal, but is now writing full time. Find him on the web at www.simonfruelund.com.
Photo by Eric Druxman
About the translator
K.E. Semmel is a writer and translator whose work has appeared in Ontario Review, The Washington Post, Aufgabe, The Brooklyn Review, The Bitter Oleander, Redivider, Hayden’s Ferry Review, World Literature Today, and elsewhere. His translations include Karin Fossum’s The Caller, Jussi Adler Olsen’s The Absent One, and Simon Fruelund’s Civil Twilight. He has received translation grants from the Danish Arts Council.
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
MILK. Copyright © 1997 by Simon Fruelund
Translation copyright © 2013 K.E. Semmel
First published in Danish as Mælk: Noveller 1997 by Gyldendal
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