Killing Mr. Sunday

they’d come.

“You dig a hole here, yah.”

And the boy began to dig while the father stood

watching him and the house through the veil of rain

and snow. The digging went easy and several times

the boy stopped and looked at his pa and said, “This

deep enough, Papa?” and the man looked at the hole

and said, “A little deeper, Olaf. Dig a little deeper,

yah?”

And when the hole was about knee deep the man

said, “That’s enough,” and laid the towel in it with

the icy rain already building a puddle in the bottom,

and said to the boy, “Go on and fill it up, shovel the

dirt back in quick,” and watched as the boy did as he

was told. Then the man took hold of the shovel and

smacked down the wet lump of earth two or three

hard times and handled the shovel back to the boy

and they walked back toward the shed, the night sky

a muted dark reddish color.

It was on the way back that the man decided what

he’d do. It seemed like the only thing he could do to

alleviate his fret. Things had already gone too far for

any good to come of it. He kept thinking about

Gerthe, how he knew she was going to die and that

would be the end of everything. The last little pre-

cious thing he had in this world to ease the aching

loneliness and isolation he felt. Sometimes when he

was with her he thought of dark blue mountain slopes

rising from the silver fjords of another place that had

been his home when he was a boy, younger than her

even; when everything seemed so full of hope and

lacking in troubles.

He didn’t know why he was the way he was, what

caused him to do the things he did with her, his own

daughter. Twice she’d run away, once with that In-

dian’s boy. The last time the boy had been shot dead

by a stranger who must have wanted her more than

the Indian boy. That was the sort of thing she aroused

in men, even young men.

“I know what you do with them boys, yah,” he said,

getting her alone. “You just remember something.

You just remember who puts food in your belly and a

place to put your head down. It’s not those wild boys.

You should be grateful to me for these things, yah.”

Then not long after the men brought her back

from running away that last time she began to get sick

every day, eating her mush and throwing it up and he

knew why, because he’d seen the old woman do the

same thing each time she got with child. It was the

way women got. And he got her alone again and he

said, “You see. This is what happens when you don’t

obey your papa, when you go around laying with

every boy you can find. They get you like this, yah.”

The wet snowy rain fell into his eyes and dripped

from his hair and off his ears and soaked through his

shirt, the boy walking ahead of him, the shovel over

his shoulder, and when they got to the shed he said,

“You go on to the house, Olaf,” and the boy went. In-

side the shed he could hear the rain dripping off the

roof and it was a lonely sound and caused him to feel

like he had nothing else in his life—that the only

thing worth having was in the house dying.

He reached onto a shelf and took from it a piece of

burlap that smelled of machine oil and unwrapped it

and lifted free the pistol.

“There,” he said.

She had made him keep it out in the shed, saying

that one of the boys might fool with it and shoot him-

self or worse.

“They’re too young,” she said. “When they get

older, maybe.”

The rain going drip, drip, drip.

The boys were gathered there at the table when he

shot them. All except for Stephen, the youngest boy.

He wondered where Stephen was, but his mind was

too mad with the explosions to go and look for him.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

“Lord, Jesus!” the woman screamed coming out of

the girl’s room.

He aimed at her but she ducked back inside the

room.

“What is it, Mama?” the girl whispered as her

mother climbed into the bed with her and wrapped

her in her arms.

“Oh, Gerthe,” she said. “Oh, Gerthe,”

Then he was in the room with them and for a soli-

tary moment she thought he might not shoot her and

the girl.

“Lars . . .” she said. “Lars . . . what you do?”

He did not say anything, but raised the pistol once

more and shot her and she fell over still grasping the

girl whose fevered mind was already confused; she

thought she was having a bad dream, that she would

awaken from it.

“Mama!” she cried. “Mama!”

And he shot her, too.

Then in his madness he placed the end of the barrel

against his temple. It was like a hot kiss against his

skin. He smelt the cordite and machine oil even as his