Chapter 5
Those who knew Sander Eriksson and Killian Persson back then always said they were inseparable.
Each was so clearly an only child—and maybe it was that simple.
Here came Sander, walking through Skavboke, with Killian at his side.
Killian was practically his best friend’s opposite, tall and burly and blond as he was, with clumsy hands and a kind but mildly perplexed gaze.
They made an odd pair, but at the same time they made sense together.
It wasn’t hard to understand what they saw in one another.
His father, Sten, had moved out, so these days Killian lived with his mother, Linda, on the outskirts of the community. They, like Sander’s family, had never been farmers.
“Some folks aren’t even poor farmers,” as the saying went. “They’re just poor.”
Killian only ever spent time in the house to eat or sleep. There was an old workshop on the property, and six months ago Killian had decided to tear it down and build a new one. He would live in it, he said, and he called the concept “the cabin.”
Sander helped. All they kept of the old shop was its stone foundation; they began to demolish the rest with sledgehammers under a blazing July sun. Splinters and sawdust sailed. It was cathartic to destroy something that had started out whole.
But it did take a hell of a long time, and both of them grew exhausted. That evening, they regarded the half-razed shop with beers in hand.
“There must be an easier way to do this,” Sander said.
They grabbed a few beers and set off through the village. Soon they were standing behind a barn over on Kjell ?stholm’s farm, gazing longingly at his old tractor.
“Do you know how to drive it?” Killian asked.
“No, do you?”
“Almost. I think. It’s just that there’s so many levers.” Killian drained his beer and looked around. “So, is he here?”
“His car is gone.”
“Shit, let’s try it, right? What’s the worst that can happen?”
They climbed into the driver’s seat. Sander was getting drunk by this point and spilled beer on the engine. When Killian turned the key, the tractor did nothing but give a weary sigh. He tried again. The tractor sputtered and briefly woke up, only to doze off again.
Killian looked at the beer can in Sander’s hand.
“Maybe it’s thirsty. Try giving it a little more.”
Sander leaned out of the cab and dumped the beer onto the engine. Killian tried to start it again and the engine coughed, faltered, and creaked grumpily, but then roared to life, awake and ready.
Sander and Killian reached for the sky, a silent gesture of triumph.
At first there were a lot of fits and leaps, but soon they were driving smoothly through the village, through the warm summer evening.
The sound of a chugging tractor was as natural, in Skavboke, as the birds and the cows.
As they turned into Killian’s driveway, they lowered the bucket.
Killian closed one eye and aimed for the remains of the shop with its half a roof and leaning walls.
“I’m thinking we just scoop it up. Can you grab me another beer?”
“But…” Sander said as he hopped back into the cab with two fresh cans. “I don’t think it’s exactly like scooping up sand with a shovel.”
“Not exactly,” Killian said, taking a big gulp of his beer. “But almost.”
He worked the levers and the tractor leapt forward again.
They rumbled across the yard and the massive tires left deep brown tracks in the grass. They ran straight into the shop, their determination in the lead and the bucket right behind.
In the sudden collision Killian dropped his beer, and frothy Carlsberg streamed over the floor of the cab. With a disappointed groan, he let go of the wheel and reached to right the can.
“Killian, the wheel!”
Sander leaned over Killian and tried to keep the tractor steady as the bucket began to crunch through the shop.
Through—or over. It was like the machine couldn’t quite get its teeth into the structure; instead it began to scrabble up it, like a dog trying to leap over a log that’s too high. The engine growled and they began to rear back.
“Let off the gas!” Sander yelped; he had to hold tight to keep from falling off.
“What?” Killian shouted. He’d finally recovered his beer and was trying to see if there was any left.
The wooden wall of the shop cracked. The tractor hissed and everything began to lean weirdly. They were about to roll over.
“You have to let off the gas—”
A ceiling beam gave way under the weight of the tractor, and the engine gave one last, deep cough.
With a heavy thud, the tractor tipped onto its side like a wounded animal, and Sander and Killian tumbled out of the cab.
The ground shook and a big clump of soil flew into the air as one corner of the cab plowed into the grass. The engine died.
Killian was on his back. Sander too. They were still holding their beers. Killian craned his neck and tossed his empty can away, then looked at Sander.
“Well, that went great.”
“Almost like scooping up sand with a shovel,” Sander said.
“Maybe we should have put a forklift on the tractor instead.”
“Yeah, I’m sure that was the issue.”
—
It had taken time, lots of hot summer days and chilly fall mornings, but when winter rolled around almost six months later, there was a tidy new cabin where the old shop had once stood.
It smelled just like it had in their dreams: fresh, clean lumber and oil.
They had built it themselves, erecting walls and trying to figure out how insulation worked; they had laid a floor and installed a ceiling and decorated the place as best they could.
They had even built a little hatch in the floor, no bigger or deeper than a shoebox.
They called it the Hidey-Hole, a stash for beer.
Now as Sander arrived in the cold December dusk, he saw Killian hauling something across the lawn, something that looked like a big creature of metal.
“What’s that?”
Killian straightened up. Despite the chill, he looked hot.
“A generator. It’s so fucking cold out now. I got it from Frans; he said it doesn’t work, but I think he’s wrong. Wanna try?”
Sander put down the bag of beer he’d brought and got a grip on the generator.
“Shit, it’s heavy.”
“Here,” Killian said. “This’ll be good. I made a little hole in the wall here.”
From the ceiling inside the cabin dangled a single lightbulb. Killian tried to slip the cord through the hole in the wall to hook up the generator.
“It’d be perfect if I can get it working before we go to Pierre’s.
That way I can sleep out here tonight, when I get home.
If I manage to bring a bottle or two back, it’ll go into the Hidey-Hole.
” Then, as if he’d just remembered something, he looked up from the floor.
“By the way. How’d it go, what did he say?
I noticed the two of you went off to talk. ”
Yes, they had.