Chapter 35
A note about the dynamite. Lots of people knew about it, and this was originally thanks to Karl-Henrik, no matter what actually happened later on.
Sometime in late fall, Sander and Killian were walking home from the bus stop when they spotted two figures approaching in the distance. It was Mikael and Filip. Together they were carrying something heavy, but Sander couldn’t tell what.
The first frosty nights had arrived. The brothers were wearing heavy fall coats and gloves, and their ears were red with cold. They walked under an overcast sky, hauling a wooden box the size of a milk crate, and they each held one handle while sticking the other arm out for balance.
“Hello,” Sander said when they met. “What are you two up to?”
Mikael and Filip’s faces were pale as a sheet. Then it began to dawn on Sander what they had.
“We’re going to blow up a boulder on the farm,” Mikael said. “We picked this up from Frans’s.”
“Can you manage that?”
“It’s not very far. It’s just heavy.”
Killian and Sander joined them and soon the group reached Killian’s house. There stood his mother’s old Saab.
“We can borrow the car,” Killian suggested. “It’ll be better. It’s still a ways to go.”
Mikael seemed relieved, but not Filip. He looked anxious. With Sander’s and Killian’s help, they gingerly loaded the crate into the cargo area of the old Saab.
“It must be a big boulder,” Killian said.
“We only need a couple of these guys,” Filip said, “and we’ll save the rest.”
Killian got behind the wheel while Sander sank into the passenger seat and the brothers hopped in back. They cautiously took off for the big farm.
“Why didn’t you drive in the first place, though?” Sander asked. “You’ve got a bunch of cars.”
“Dad thought we should walk,” Filip said, and then, to Killian: “We have to park a ways away, so we can walk the last stretch.”
“Not while carrying dynamite,” Mikael said grimly.
Filip snapped at him: “He’s going to say it was my fault, that it was my idea to take the car. Because he thinks I’m the lazy one. Don’t you get it?”
Mikael didn’t respond. Filip heaved a loud sigh and gazed out the window. After a moment, he yanked his headphones from his coat pocket and put them on. The music, fast and harsh, leaked into the rest of the car.
They inched down the county road. Sander tried to meet Mikael’s gaze in the rearview mirror.
“Is it always like that?” he asked. “With your dad, I mean. Like the time we were sitting on the log to pick off the wild boar.”
“He means well. He’s preparing us to take over the farm. It’s been in our family for so long, all the way back to my great-great-grandfather. But times are hard now. He doesn’t want it to fail. So when I fail…”
“But you’re not a failure!”
“That’s not how he sees it.”
“Why does he want you two to haul a crate of dynamite through the whole village, though? It’s so dangerous!”
Mikael shrugged. “To toughen us up, I guess. He does this stuff sometimes. And it’s not that dangerous.”
Killian swerved slightly toward the center line to avoid a pothole the size of a serving platter, deeper than a bucket. Sander’s father had called in to report it, but no one had come out yet. That was how it went out here. Things in town were important; Skavboke wasn’t. No surprise there.
Filip had to listen to rants about how he wasn’t more like Mikael; Mikael had to hear that he was useless.
That he needed to be tougher. Which meant nothing could be good enough, everything was a vicious cycle of disappointment, and maybe that wasn’t much of a surprise either.
It was like a pothole in the road. It just was.
They could see a glimpse of the Grenbergs’ house on the other side of a field. Mikael’s eyes followed it, like he was searching for something, almost longingly, but he didn’t say anything.
“Do you even want to take over the farm?” Sander asked.
Mikael laughed. “It’s better than nothing, at least.”
“Is that the alternative? Nothing?”
“Yeah. Isn’t it?” He gazed dejectedly at the road again and placed a hand on Killian’s shoulder. “You can stop over here, and we’ll walk the last bit, like Filip said. That probably is the best plan after all.”