Free Heather Farm by Dorte Hummelshoj Jakobsen Page B

always dreamed of. Except for those
festering ghosts.
    “ You won't make the pump work. She said so.” I wiped my
forehead, smearing new streaks of whitewash into my
hair.
    “ Who?” Thomas glared at me, annoyed at my unwillingness to
admit that the old woman had also been a dream.
    He
couldn't see any of them, not yet, but I had seen him jump when
doors slammed behind him on calm days, or when the pump sent out
its melancholy cries untouched by any of us.
    “ She doesn't dare to speak to you. She just doesn't trust
men.” I didn´t even bother to discuss if she was real or not. She
appeared whenever Thomas was away, telling me bits and pieces about
her life on the farm. Her happiness when they were first married
and she gave birth to their children, but also the years of fear
and violence when her husband turned to drinking.
    “ She says we'll have to remove the cement cover around the
pump. There is something beneath it.”
    “ Something beneath it? And she didn't tell you what that
something was? A ton of sand, or perhaps a million dogged heather
roots, I guess.” He tried to be patient with me, but I could see he
was getting worried.
    Last
week, when I had tried to explain to him that the small woodpile at
the house end was growing slowly, by a few logs every day, he had
urged me to take a rest.
    “ Why don't we just remove the cover and check?” I was dying to
tell him everything about the old woman, but I had a feeling I'd
better take it one small step at the time. First the pump, and then
I could try to plant the idea of looking into the outhouse behind
the farm house.
    “ The car is in the shed,” she had said. More than
once.
     
     

    IV
     
    “ Here we go. Caaaareful now... slow... and no toes under it.
Yeees... stop!” Old Mr Hansson who was in charge of the tiny
lighthouse museum conducted the process like a traffic
policeman.
    “ That's it, me dears. Now it's just a question of digging the
sand and roots away, and she'll be as good as new.” He patted the
rusty pump and beamed at us.
    Thomas
prodded the roots and the rubble with the toe of his trainers. “I
hope so. We really like the idea of restoring the old
pump.”
    “ But what's that? That white thing over there?” My mouth felt
dry, and I was certain I knew already, yet I hoped they would tell
me I was wrong. Off my rocker, expecting to see blood and bones
everywhere.
    “ Some bones, I think. A deer, probably.” Hansson kneeled down
in the coarse lyme grass, tugging at the twig-like
phenomenon.
    Suddenly
he jumped up, pointing down at the remains. “So that's where he
went!”
     

    V
    The local
constable had warned us to stay away from the well until the police
had had a chance to look at our find. It was not as if we wanted to
excavate the shaft either. We kept indoors until they had dug out
the remains of a human skeleton and what seemed to be a large dog.
I shuddered, knowing exactly what the brute had looked
like.
    Not
expecting any kind of sense from newcomers, Constable Penrose
turned towards Mr Hansson. “So you know who this is?”
    “ Think so. I grew up nearby.” Hansson pointed to the south.
“When I was a child, some people called Weston lived here. The man
went missing. Vamoosed one night.”
    Again,
Constable Penrose told us to stay away from the yard. The pump and
its surroundings had been cordoned off with red and white
scene-of-crime tape. It looked oddly inappropriate among all the
brown and green shades.
    Thomas
brewed some coffee, and we tried to wash away more than the sand
and dust. He didn't look at me when he asked, “do you still want to
stay here?”
    “ I don't know. I just want him to be gone.”
    “ I'm sorry if I've been stupid. I just didn't expect it to be
like this.” In a sweeping movement, he indicated the whole scenario
around us.
    “ I know. Neither did I. But do you mind if we take a look at
the outhouse to the north? The constable didn't warn us off the
outhouses, did