Free Shoulder the Sky by Lesley Choyce

sorry,” I said to them, sorry for letting them go unattended. I leaned over and began to yank out big clumps of weeds. And I tried to remember the names of the flowers: delphinium, marigold, peony,lily, gladioli, cosmos.
    I remembered with crystal clarity the conversation of a small boy sitting on those back steps with his mother.
    â€œWhere are you driving to today?”
    â€œNorway.”

C HAPTER T HIRTEEN

    Junk
    There are four and a half million people in Norway and I don’t know even one of them. I wonder what it’s like in Norway in the winter when it stays dark for almost all of the day. It’s like that in the Northwest Territories, too, they say. I think I’d freak over that.
    Why you should be interested in Norway, I don’t know. They were Vikings at one time and they had lots of wars. In a war, people kill other people on purpose. They think they are doing the right thing by killing their enemy. You would expect that we would have evolved past that by now but we haven’t. I don’t think the Norwegians do a lot of organized killing anymore,but some countries still do. The list is too long to include here.
    There are thousands of islands that are part of Norway. On many of those islands you could live a very isolated, peaceful life. But it might get lonely sometimes in the depths of a dark, cold winter.
    Emerso

    I was sitting in the cafeteria at lunch hour with Darrell. “Sorry I didn’t call you back last night after you left that message,” I said. “I get confused sometimes.”
    â€œConfusion is good. The state prior to enlightenment, said one Chinese philosopher.”
    â€œScott Rutledge never looked confused. He always looked like he knew what he was doing. Like he understood what was going on.”
    â€œI could never be like that.”
    â€œMe neither,” I agreed. “Many hits on your site?”
    I nodded. “Lots of people out there killing time.”
    â€œKilling time. Ever think about why we say it that way?”
    â€œIt’s weird isn’t it?”
    â€œLotta stuff is weird. I’m thinking that maybe it’s too weird and we’ll never figure it out. Not enough time.”

    â€œTempus fugit.”
    â€œExactly.” Darrell paused, looked toward the fluorescent lights like he was waiting for a message from some alien friends. Then he shook his head. “I just don’t know what the methodology is. It’s really tragic about Scott. Martin, if you could make a trade, I mean if we could manipulate time and space and stuff, and you could trade your life as you are now, alive and breathing, for having lived the life of Scott Rutledge — you know with his looks, the girls, and all that — but now you’re dead — would you do it?”
    Leave it to Darrell to pose such a question. I didn’t have to think twice. “Yes.”
    â€œMe too.”
    â€œToo much killing time, I guess. Darrell, if I tell you something, would you promise not to tell anyone?”
    â€œMy lips are sealed.”
    â€œI think I know how to drive.”

    Junk
    The imagination has teeth. You bite into a thing and chew on it. You leave marks in what you are chewing. You process reality this way. You chew it, you taste it with your tongue, and then you swallow it and it becomes part of you or it ends up as shit.

    The line between what is real and what is imagined is a fuzzy line. It’s all based on perception. Just because we can’t see it with our eyes doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. You don’t see the electromagnetic waves coming at your television set, do you? But they are real. (This is if you have the old antenna thing and not just cable.)
    In the end, what is real and what is not real is probably less important than what you believe. I believe life would be much better for me in Norway, for example, but I have never been there. I don’t speak Norwegian and I don’t