Stig Dagerman - Sleet - Selected Stories

“Forget the vase,” Doughboy says. “Let’s go!”

He turns off the lights and we head out. It got so stifling inside I felt like I might just throw up. But the fresh air outside does me some good. Still, the path is full of rocks that stick right up out of the ground, and I trip over one and land on my knees. Annoying as hell, ’cause now Doughboy will probably think I’m drunk. Not like he’s got room to look down his nose at me. He might be bursting with money now, but he sure wasn’t too good to borrow ten crowns from me that last time, and you think he remembers that? So I got a few morsels of truth I can treat folks to tonight. You better believe it. Like that goddamn Nisse. Might just have to learn the hard way, once and for all, that it don’t pay to play fast and loose with my good name. And the tin-knocker. No saying what’ll happen if I run into that son of a bitch at the Pavilion tonight.

Anyway, it’s good to sit in the car. And I guess I can depend on Doughboy after all. He’s at the wheel fiddling around with the dashboard. He can’t find the knob he wants, so we ain’t going nowhere. It’s funny to see him feeling around all tender and slow with his fingers, like he’s groping a woman. He must be pretty stewed himself, and that’s always a hell of a tickle, watching a fella in that kind of shape. So all due apologies, but I can’t keep from starting to chuckle — cackle is more like it. I get caught up in such a belly laugh the door pops open, and I pretty near fall out. Doughboy starts losing his cool. And there ain’t many things funnier than a fuming-mad drunk. I laugh so hard I start to cry. Finally he gets the engine to turn over, but then we jerk backwards right into a telephone pole. He cusses into his jacket and jams it into the right gear. When he hits the gas we fly out into the road like a cannonball. Yep, he’s a pretty good driver, Doughboy. Some bicyclists scream at us and a couple others we pass just stand there at the edge of the road, glaring at us. He’s driving pretty damn good, considering he don’t even have his headlights on. And me, I can’t stop laughing, pretty much the whole way, ’cause Doughboy’s drunk as a skunk.

Hurtling along the road at that speed, we pull up outside the Pavilion in no time flat. A lot of folks there. They’re gawking at us ’cause I’m laughing so hard. You’d think a man couldn’t have a little fun in this goddamn country. There’s a little hole in the ground near the entrance, and I lose my footing there and end up on my knees. So now the doorman probably thinks I’m drunk. And sure enough I’m getting the stiff arm at the door. We ain’t getting in.

“No entry?” I say, riled up. “We all know what kind of turkey shoot this place is. But that don’t make us the turkeys!”

Takes more than a few brass buttons to make me grovel at the door. But Doughboy, he ain’t standing shoulder to shoulder with me the way I’d expect. Instead he pulls me back and tries to calm me down, and then he says to the doorman, just like he’s a captain of industry or something: “The newspapers might find this an item of some interest, you understand.”

And me, I’m quick on my feet, always have been, so I pick up his meaning straight away.

“I’ll back you up there, Doughboy,” I say. “First thing I’ll do when I get back to the city is write to the papers. I’m sure they’d be very interested to learn how decent folk get treated like shit by these hired goons at the door out here in the sticks. Christ! Any paper worth the ink it’s printed on would jump at that story!”

But the doorman just grins when I say this. So here’s another one for the list. I’ll catch up with him at the right time and give him something to remember me by. But now Doughboy grabs me by the arm and pulls me away. We head up into the woods together around back of the Pavilion. There’s a root sticking up that I can’t help tripping over, and Doughboy, he gets furious all of a sudden and says to me: “If you fall down one more fucking time I’m just gonna leave you there!” He ain’t got no right to talk to me that way. Can I help it if there’s a root sticking up out of the ground there? Nobody’s willing to give me a break.

Round back at the Pavilion there’s just regular farm fencing with some barbed wire strung along the top. So Doughboy helps me up and I go over. I get a bit snagged on the barbed wire, but come away no worse for the wear. He ain’t a bad fella, really, Doughboy. Me and him got the better of that goddamn doorman. That’s the important thing. I throw my arm round his shoulder.

“You know, eight long months I was stuck in that goddamn shithole—”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” he says and pushes me away, like he knows everything there is to know about it.

Who the hell’s he think he is? That’s what I’d like to know. Treating me like that? But he don’t stop when I call after him. He just keeps going, right up to the open-air dance floor. Don’t take him long to get a girl on his arm, and head out on the floor with her. But me, I just get the cold shoulder when I try to follow suit. So it’s all about the money. That’s all that counts in this goddamn world. Guess I’ll just have to win the lottery. Then I can come back and dance till my heart’s content. I don’t see anybody I know. But what do I care? I was born and bred here. But when you go away and spend twelve years in Stockholm, you learn a thing or two about the world. So I walk around and mix it up with folks. I can be pretty damn entertaining when I want to be. Bashful is something I’ve never been, so I make the rounds and lay on the charm with some of the gals. And I get them to loosen up and enjoy themselves. Some start laughing their asses off. I ain’t no tongue-tied farm boy, wet behind the ears. No siree! I know how to be smooth with the ladies, and that’s a goddamn fact.

And lo and behold! Here’s the tin-knocker, so plowed I can’t figure how he made it past the doorman. But this is good, ’cause now I can give him a piece of my mind. I go up and grab him by the collar.

“Listen, buster!” I say. “If you think you can treat the old man any old way you please and get away with it you got another goddamn thing coming!”

“Who the hell are you?” the tin knocker says.

“Knut Lindqvist,” I say. “If that rings a bell. He was a good man, tried and true, and you got him all liquored up and then sent him on his way. And believe me, you’re gonna live to regret that!”

I get more and more furious by the moment. Tomorrow the old man is getting buried. And this no-good tin-knocker’s got so little respect that he’s out getting plastered the night before.

“A mouthful of my knuckles is what you got coming,” I tell him. But somebody’s right there, grabbing my arm before I can let it fly. And then a circle of gawkers closes in around us. Not that I mind. At least now they’ll know what sort of bastard the tin-knocker is. I spin around and there’s the deputy, brass badge pinned to his chest.

“We don’t want no trouble from you, Lindqvist,” he says, the meddling bastard. “Time for you to go home. You got a father to bury in the morning. Try not to forget.”

And I know just what to say back to him, the prick, but now Doughboy comes by with his arm around a woman, saying: “Come on, Knut-boy. Let’s get out of here. I got another eighth at home we can demolish.”

Another eighth!

He must really think I’m plastered, trying to feed me a line like that. Probably trying to save the tin-knocker’s ass. And now the goddamn deputy’s lecturing me for getting soused. What a crock of shit! If I was that gone I’d have jumped at Doughboy’s line. But this deputy’s a strong son of a bitch, old as he is, and now the tin-knocker’s flown the coop. Shitting bricks, I expect. Maybe he’s hiding outside, or hightailing it down the road. I’ll ask Doughboy to get the car and we can chase him down, and then we’ll see who has the last laugh. He’s a good fella, Doughboy, so he’ll do it, I’m sure.