It's Fine By Me by Per Petterson Read Free Book Online

at the same time. Before that, I had only driven a tractor out in the countryside. The cars were Egil’s thing, he was obsessed and pestered his way into most of those around our place from the time he was ten, but I do like the movement and freedom and always stretch the speed limit. Arvid rolls his window down all the way, and his head is almost out of the car, the wind blows in and it gets cold, but he shuts his eyes and opens his mouth and refuses to roll the window back up.
    ‘You’ll get your head chopped off or a sparrow down your throat,’ I say.
    ‘Aw, shut up,’ he answers and I swerve the car wheel to give him a scare, but he doesn’t care.
    ‘Leaving Oslo,’ I say as we pass the sign by Skillebekk. ‘Akershus County next. Nittedal or Skedsmo?’
    ‘Skedsmo,’ he says from outside the car, and I turn at the crossroads at the top of the ridge and drive down the long, winding hill behind Mortens Kro, the restaurant there, and on to the Hellerud plain.
    ‘Please, not Lillestrøm.’
    ‘OK.’ I turn into the road for Nittedal church and Solberg, down a steep incline and cross the narrow bridge over the Nitelva river. Along the banks there are boys with fishing rods casting their lines and having a good time in the warming sun. One of them has just landed a perch, its scales glinting, and I stop the car and watch. Arvid opens the door, gets out and goes over to a bush where he throws up and then slides down the embankment to the river and washes his face in the ice cold water.
    ‘We should have brought fishing tackle,’ he says, comingback up behind the car and is in a cheery mood all of a sudden.
    ‘Well it’s too late now, you have soiled the water.’
    He gets back in, and I do a perfect hill start without the handbrake. The fields rise steeply on both sides of the river and yellow and grey they arch in a pattern of shapes and lines against the blue sky, and I don’t know why, but it does something to me.
    ‘Left or right?’ I ask at the first junction.
    ‘Right, or else we’ll be back in Nittedal.’ I turn right, up a gravel road and wonder what’s with him and Nittedal.
    The road winds between sloping fields and slowly climbs, and then we are at the top. Down to the left, the valley opens beneath a lattice of shadows and light on the meadow, and moving north it narrows into a funnel and only the gleaming road heads on to Harestua. We can barely make out Glitre Sanatorium, its solid yellow shape in the foothills. There is a strong wind here: a gust catches the car and almost blows us into the ditch, and I wrench the wheel against the wind and the car lurches forward like a drunk man’s car, and I give Arvid a glance and wonder how his gut feels. But he laughs, he’s having a good time.
    ‘Step on it,’ he says, leaning back and putting his feet on the dashboard. ‘Shit, I feel so much better now.’
    We enter Skedsmo by Nittedal church through a grove of spruce trees. There are a few houses, and there is a bus shelter, and Arvid points at the trees.
    ‘Do you remember when we trudged through those trees to the Krakoseter cabins with our rucksacks down round our knees? We had to sing the Scout song the whole way.Do you remember when you got your pants filled with Coke? Being a Scout was such great fun.’
    I do remember, and I remember exactly how much fun the Scouts were. We had joined the Scouts for a year because of the trips they went on, and I remember that one time I didn’t finish a cross-country run because I’d been lying in the heather watching a fox attack a pigeon. The Scout leaders came crashing and yelling through the forest and scared the fox out of its wits and dragged me down to the cabins. And when we were there, I had to stand on my hands out in the yard surrounded by Girl Guides while two leaders held me up by the feet and a third poured a bottle of Coke down each trouser leg. Then they forced me to walk around for two hours without changing my clothes while the