Good-bye and Amen by Beth Gutcheon

Author:Beth Gutcheon
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: HarperCollins

Jimmy Moss The summer I was Charlesie’s age, I was sent to Denmark, to work on a pig farm owned by some friends of my father’s. The family was all up in Hornbæk at the beach, at least the mother and the children were. The father came and went. He had a mistress in Copenhagen, which everyone thought was normal. I was shocked.

The oldest daughter was my age, very beautiful. We had less than no interest in each other. I was in love with a girl in Dundee named Frannie Ober. Frannie gave me my first marijuana. It wasn’t very good, she grew it herself, but we smoked a lot of it. In Denmark I felt as if my real life was going on in Dundee without me. Frannie was in Dundee, waiting tables at Olive’s Lunch. Our whole crowd would be there together every night, and I was a world away, in a place where all it took to isolate me completely was for everyone to speak Danish. Which came pretty naturally to them.

Of course I later came to realize I’d felt most of my life that my real life must be going on somewhere else.

It was a rich farm, built around a courtyard. The house was in front, but the farm buildings were all attached to it, all the way around, so you could herd all the livestock and peasants inside and lock the gates if some neighboring baron arrived with bad intentions. Like something out of The Seventh Seal. When someone from the family was at home I ate with them. Otherwise I ate with the farm workers. Their favorite food was a mash made of beer and stale bread that was mixed in great vats in the farm kitchen. The pigs ate better. I’ve never been so bored and lonely and hungry in my life.

I rode a bike into the village to see if I could find any action, but when anyone spoke to me in Danish and I couldn’t respond, they assumed I was German. They were polite; Danes are a polite people. But you don’t want to be looked at like that.

I was allowed to go down to Fyn to my grandparents’ beach cottage only once. Not that that was so lively, but there were pretty girls in tiny bathing suits on the beach there, some topless. We didn’t get a lot of that in Dundee, Maine. My only other escape was to go into Copenhagen to stay with Aunt Nina. The first time, she drove up in her little deux chevaux to get me. I still remember driving out of that courtyard with her, while the rest of the men were finishing up the Friday chores. If I’d spoken Danish I believe my sentiments would have been, So long, suckers.

Aunt Nina took me to concerts, and to jazz clubs in the city. She tried to get me to play the piano, which no one had in a long time, but I looked at those keys and felt they would burn my fingers if I touched them.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.