Page 9 of The Living and the Dead

“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 soilflew 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.

6

Sander had met with a man from Stockholm with sparkling blue eyes. Ardelius, his name was, and when Sander looked at him it was as though a gap appeared in the curtains, and through that gap he could see the real life that awaited him out in the world.

It took some effort, or maybe keen perception, to see it that way. From a distance, Ardelius appeared ordinary, almost meek. His brown jacket drooped on his shoulders and his wrists were wrinkly and thin; the skin of his cheeks was pale and spotty like the walls of a waiting room. But his eyes revealed something unusual about him. Maybe that’s the way people’s eyes look, in Stockholm.

And his voice. It was low and pleasant, melodic but steady. He sat still, too, no fidgeting, as though he had all the time in the world. Leaning back with his legs crossed and his fingers laced around his knee, his gaze calm and curious as he looked at Sander over the table.

—