Raid and the Blackest Sheep (20 page)

    
The gravedigger’s shift was over. The drone of the front-end loader ceased.

    
“You just wonder if it hurts when a maggot burrows through your skull, and if you can see when your eyeballs dry into two gooey lumps…”

    
Nygren glanced at Raid.

    
“Pretty gruesome thought, huh? Sure, I could picture the flowers growing over me in the summer, the whispering winds rushing over me in the fall. And in the winter, I’ll lie under a fresh white blanket of snow as lovers ski over my grave…”

    
“Right.”

    
“There was a time when I was convinced I’d die with dignity. I pictured how calmly I’d watch the sunset and say, ‘it’s a good day to die.’ Seemed so festive and beautiful that I almost looked forward to it.”

    
“Aren’t you convinced anymore?”

    
“I’m finally convincing myself that it won’t be like that. That I’ll whimper in terror and won’t give a shit about dignity. I’ll probably be bargaining with the devil for an extension.”

    
Nygren looked at Raid inquiringly.

    
“Hard to say,” said Raid.

    
“My mother had been dead for many years before I visited her grave for the first time. I pulled up the weeds around the grave and planted that shrub… An old woman stopped next to me and said, ‘There’s a fine resting place for a pious woman,’ then smiled and walked away. Always kind of bothered me. I always wanted to know how she knew my mother. Were they classmates or something? One thing I’m sure of is that she wasn’t speaking generally; by ‘pious woman’ she meant my mother… Mother was…”

    
Nygren became suddenly aware of his own words.

    
“We should get going.”

    
On the left side of Nygren’s parents’ grave was a vacant strip with no headstone, but it clearly belonged to the same plot. Nygren noticed Raid looking at it.

    
“That one’s mine.”

    
Nygren’s boyhood home was a good half mile from the church. Once past the church, the downtown area ended abruptly. Two-story wood and brick houses, some old, some new, drifted past on the roadside. They passed a small-engine repair shop, a dressmaker’s shop, a bar and a pharmacy on the right. On the left, a 1970s white stucco school building loomed behind a sparse pine forest.

    
“The last time I drove this stretch there was no pavement,” Nygren remarked. “No school, either. I had a fire-truck-red Porsche that I’d bought with some of the spoils from a gig. The way people stared at me, I should’ve pitched a tent and charged admission.”

    
The roadside dwellings petered out for a while. On the right was a field, and on the left, a slope carpeted with pines.

    
Some modern row houses could be seen on the far side of the field.

    
The road climbed and curved gently to the right.

    
“Take a hard right at the top of the hill.”

    
The road came to an end behind a pale-yellow house. A rusty van was parked in the yard.

    
“The addition wasn’t there before…and the house was red.”

    
Raid shut off the engine.

    
“The aspen’s gone,” Nygren noted.

    
“What aspen?”

    
“There was a big aspen growing over the root cellar. We had a fort there.”

    
“You want to take a closer look?” asked Raid, but Nygren didn’t seem to hear.

    
“The shed used to be on the left side of the house and the sauna was on the far end of the lot…”

    
Nygren fell silent and gazed at the yard.

    
“My mother planted the apple trees. I remember when she did it. She dedicated one tree to each child. The furthest one was Hanna’s tree, Sylvi’s is in the middle and mine is the closest to the house.”

    
Nygren’s tree seemed to be faring poorly. Some of its branches had dried and a few stunted apples hung in the canopy. The two other trees seemed to be growing well, with abundant fruit. The apples on the furthest tree were pale, and the other’s were dark red.

    
Raid got out of the car and walked through the yard. A woman with a child in her arms was standing at the porch window. Raid waved and picked several apples from each tree. The woman opened the door and came out onto the stairs.

    
“Hello,” said Raid.

    
She nodded stiffly, clearly frightened.

    
He took a twenty-euro bill out of his pocket and offered it to the woman.

    
“Six apples for a twenty. Fair?”

    
Raid left and the woman stood staring at the money in amazement.

    
Nygren studied the apples and smelled them with his eyes closed.

    
“I remember the smell.”

    
He held the apple from his own tree in his palm. It was small, and some kind of apple blight had speckled it with black spots. He bit into it and grimaced, then opened the door and tossed it out.

    
“Let’s go.”

    
The town had only one hotel—a small inn in the old downtown. The lower level of the plastered brick building had once been home to a bank. Now it was occupied by the hotel’s reception area and a restaurant. Upstairs were about ten rooms. Nygren had reserved two adjacent ones.

* * *

Raid awoke to a scream just before three in the morning. It was followed by a broken howl and sobs, which faded almost completely before picking up again.

    
Raid threw on his pants, went into the hallway and opened Nygren’s door with the key-card.

    
The light was on in the bathroom, and the open door cast a swath of light against the wall. Raid snapped on the lights in the entry. Nygren’s room was identical to his own: a large bed, small nightstand, a television and a mini-bar. Raid’s bar was still stocked, but Nygren’s was empty. On the nightstand, rows of miniature bottles were arranged like chess pieces. Nygren’s pants were neatly folded on the edge of the chair.

    
Nygren was sitting halfway up, and was staring blankly through his knees. His breathing was deep and labored. His hair jutted in every direction and his face glistened with sweat.

    
The only drink left was still in the mini-bar, an unopened bottle of orange juice. Raid opened it, poured some into the glass on the nightstand and offered it to Nygren.

    
“You have a nightmare?”

    
Nygren raised his eyes. They were cloudy at first, but slowly he began to come out of it. His arms shuddered like they were freezing.

    
“No…it was hell.”

    
He took the juice from Raid and gulped it down.

    
Raid opened the window and a southern breeze glided in along with the smell of fresh-cut hay.

    
Nygren crawled out of bed and went to the window. He put his head out and took a deep breath. His upper body was naked, his lower half clothed only in briefs. For his age, he was in good shape, slim and wiry. Only on his neck and face were the lines of age beginning to show. A thin gold chain with a small cross hung from his neck. A hawk flying skyward was tattooed on his right bicep.

    
“You wanna know what hell is like?”

    
“Not especially.”

    
“It’s a nightmare that ends in another that’s even worse than the first, and the chain never ends. Your only emotion is fear, and every sense is harnessed for producing pain. In hell, you can’t close your eyes or plug your ears, or take a gun and put a bullet through your head and say it’s all over now. I thought I had rid myself of these dreams, but this was the worst one yet. Feels like my organs are on ice.”

    
“You want something?”

    
“Just stick around long enough for my blood to start pumping again.”

    
“Tell me about your dream.”

    
“You don’t wanna know.”

    
“But you wanna tell.”

    
Nygren snuffed out his cigarette and wrapped himself in a blanket.

    
“Well, I died…and, of course, with my lifestyle I ended up in the hot spot. These creatures were all over the place. The ones that, when I was a kid, used to jump out from underneath the bed when the lights were out. They surrounded me, kind of curious, and closing in the whole time. I tried backing up, but the ground was mucky and my feet were stuck. The first one that got to me stuck a sharp tongue out of its mouth, rammed it through me, and started eating my guts.”

    
Nygren felt his stomach.

    
“Somehow I realized it was a nightmare and I forced myself to wake up, which I did, but only to another. I was standing out on the plains in Russia or somewhere. Not far off were some soldiers who looked like Huns hacking at their prisoners with these big sabers. Everything was in vivid detail, the soldiers’ clothing, the horses’ saddle ornaments, the fear in the dying men’s eyes, the suffering. Everything seemed real.

    
“I was afraid the soldiers would notice me so I forced myself to wake up…”

    
Nygren gathered the blanket more tightly around himself. It seemed to Raid that Nygren was eyeing him warily, as if afraid he had woken up to yet another nightmare.

    
Raid lifted his hand and Nygren shrank away. Then he realized what Raid was up to and reluctantly touched his hand.

    
“Yarns from an old man.”

    
Nygren took a cigarette off the table and lit it with trembling fingers.

    
“Do you believe I’m not the least bit ashamed to admit that I’m afraid?”

    
“Yes.”

    
“If you’ve done the kinds of things I have, and lived long enough, you’re not capable of being ashamed of much anymore. At least not about what might matter to others. These days I’m only ashamed of stuff from the past.”

    
Raid took a chair and sat down next to Nygren.

    
Nygren glanced at him.

    
“These memories keep coming back to me about things that happened decades ago. At the time, they didn’t mean shit to me, but now I regret them, and I can’t forget. They’re like the bloodhounds of the past, tasked with chasing me to the grave. No matter how hard you try, you can’t shake ’em off or bribe ’em.”

    
Nygren beat his temple with the base of his palm, then glanced at Raid.

    
“Care to listen?”

    
Raid nodded.

    
“I was in my final year of elementary school when this family from the backwoods moved to town. They had nine kids. The dad got a job at the church as a gravedigger. He got drunk and dug graves. One winter he passed out at the bottom of the pit and got frostbite on his feet. One of the boys was in a lower grade than me, a short skinny kid with ratty clothes. One day he came to school with some new shoes, brand-new and squeaky clean, but damned if they weren’t as long as canoes. You could just about spin ’em on his ankles. The kid’s big brother was a couple years older and we heard from his friends that they took turns wearing the shoes. Every recess we picked on the kid and trampled on his toes. One time when we were teasing him, he took off the shoes and walked home in his socks. It was November and there was slush on the ground. He fell down once, but didn’t give so much as a backward glance. Everyone else just stood there and watched as he walked away with his shoes in his hands. That was the last time he came to school and his family moved away soon after.”

    
The memories weighed down on Nygren and he felt compelled to stand. He went to the window and took a breath of night air.

    
“The sad tale of the boy with big shoes—part two. When I was doing time in Oulu in the early eighties, I ran into him again. I found out he’d murdered two women he had just met at some Christmas party, and got life. There were lots of articles in the paper about it. One writer even sympathized with him…troubled childhood and so forth. I recognized him right away, but he didn’t know who I was, nor was I too eager to reminisce about old times.”

    
Nygren paused, “Well, tomorrow…today…is a busy day. I think I’ll get some sleep.”

    
Raid got up and Nygren stopped him.

    
“Thanks.”