Read Online This Will Be Difficult to Explain and Other Stories by Johanna Skibsrud - Free Book Online Page B

and got his gun from the rack. “Did you see him run?” he said. “Which direction?” My brother and I shook our heads. We didn’t see it run; it happened fast. “If it was a deer, we’ll have some meat this season.”
    â€œIt wasn’t a deer, it was a dog,” my brother said.
    â€œHow can you be sure?” my father asked. “You can’t see from way back there.”
    He got the gun ready. “I’ll put him out of misery, whatever it is. It’s better that way.”
    We waited in the cab for half an hour. Then my father returned and dropped something heavy into the bed of the truck. He put his gun on the rack and got in beside me. “You were right,” he told my brother, “it was a dog, but I got him. It’s better that way. I hit him quite hard.”
    We drove the rest of the way home and no one said a word. My father’s favourite country music station played. Then we got out and saw that a small dog’s white head and part of his shoulders were stuck to the grille of the truck.
    â€œThis will be difficult to explain,” my father said.
    MY FATHER HAD TAKEN a can of orange spray paint and numbered the logs of the half-built hotel. “I’ll build it exactly the same,” he said, “on the hill.”
    My brother and I, on weekends, got paid fifty cents an hour to help my father in the yard. When we did not do much, he said, “I don’t know if you earned this,” but he always handed over exactly what we were due.
    When all the logs had been disassembled and lay, in small piles, out in the yard, several years had gone by. I was almost in high school when the Caterpillar arrived. My mother said, “Make the most of it, Sasa, these are our final days. We’re leaving you.” But we stayed on all winter, and through most of the spring. My father went back and forth to the hill lot, and took his chainsaw with him. Each time he went he cut down a few trees and flattened the ground.
    â€œDon’t flatten it too much,” my mother said, “or it won’t be a hill anymore.”
    In late October he drove the Caterpillar into the coulee and it stuck. Then he went out each day with a shovel and stayed away until dark. He’d turn the Caterpillar engine on and leave the door open so that he could listen to the country music station while he shovelled and drank. Before the snow flew he put a blue tarp up and kept on working. In the dead of winter, still he went. The mud would have frozen even if the snow didn’t get in through the tarp. We never went over to check what he did when that was the case.
    The blue tarp was visible from the road, and every day we drove by it twice on the bus route, to and from school. In the spring—a few days before we left him—the tarp came down and my father drove the Caterpillar out of the coulee and parked it behind the house. He didn’t mention the event, and neither did we. My mother began to park the station wagon on the side of the road, even though there was still enough room in the drive.
    I WAS ALLOWED TO carry my own ticket, but my brother was not. I was not allowed to carry his. My sister, Emira, carried his, and she carried her own. In my own hand was my own ticket, and nothing more. When we stood on the platform, Emira said: We should guess the exact minute that the train will arrive. Emira was right. How did you do that, you must have cheated, I said. How would I cheat, she asked. Listen to yourself.
    My mother gave us each a bun and a stick of cheese. If you eat it now, you’ll be hungry later, she told us, but I ate mine right away. My brother saved his bun on his lap, and lay the stick of cheese beside it. All day, I watched the bun get dry and the cheese sweat. I told my brother, You should eat that now. Look, it’s being ruined. Let me eat a little of it, I’m bigger than you and need more food. He said, No. I will wait a little