It's Fine By Me Read Free Page A

back across the floor and snatched the notes from our hands and said:
    ‘That’s enough fun for tonight!’ He turned on his heel without a stagger, stuffed the notes back in his breast pocket and marched to the kitchen as straight as a flagpole. ‘Now, get to bed, it’s late,’ he said.
    At first my brother stood with his mouth wide open, then he began to howl like the baby he was. ‘Waaaah!’ he wailed. ‘Waaah!’ Tears gushed from his eyes, and I went over to him and punched him in the shoulder.
    ‘You idiot,’ I said, punching him hard a second time. ‘You goddamn birdbrain, shut up!’ I hissed, and then I walked past him on my way upstairs to bed.
    ‘I never did anything to you!’ he yelled after me.
    It was my last year as Wata, Davy Crockett’s friend of the Creek tribe. As soon as I was on my own, I was Wata. I was twelve years old, and I went up the squeaking stairs to thefirst floor of what I thought of as our log cabin, and I hated it now, it felt so cramped I could not breathe.
    Inside our room, I stood by the window gazing out at the dark edge of the forest, longing to be there. There were paths running through it I knew better than the house I lived in. That night there was a moon, big and yellow, and I lingered and kept watch as Wata would have done, and then I got into bed without cleaning my teeth and hoped that Egil would not be up before I had gone to sleep. I pinched my eyes shut and thought of the shiny bow I would never have.
    ‘Shit!’ I said aloud in the darkness. ‘You goddamn paleface!’ But that did not help much, and I knew that Wata’s days were numbered. He could not be my companion any longer. I saw him glide through the night, fleet-footed and silent through the trees on his way back into the books, his brown body and his three white feathers gleaming in the moonlight.
    Now Tommy has his newspapers under control, his sister gives him a hug, the yellow stripes of his jacket shining, and they disappear round a corner. I take twenty papers from the barrow, fold them under my arm and start working my way along the first houses in Grevlingveien. This is what I like. To be left in peace, feel the morning air on my face, feel every step, how my arms and legs move, and the morning so still, and I don’t have to think about anything. My round goes like clockwork, the shining door handles line up and I feed them with newspapers. I have nevermissed a single one, never given anyone a paper they shouldn’t have, and I know every door sign so well that at first I don’t even remember what they say, just what they look like, the shape of the letters, the colours and where on the door they are. I can think of a house, picture it, choose that door and then read the sign any time, anywhere, asleep in bed, at school, on holiday, it’s in my bones, and that’s fine with me.
    I cross Veitvetsvingen down by the red telephone kiosk. I have a quick look under the grate on the floor to see if any change has fallen through, a habit I guess I’ll never quit, and as always I find two or three kroner. But I blush and hope there is no one watching me from behind their curtains.
    There are only terraced houses along the road, and a few years ago I thought maybe it was posher to live here rather than in the tenement blocks, until I realised that the blocks were just two terraced houses on top of each other, and inside they were identical. At the bottom of the hill, on the left, there is a terrace of eight flats. Arvid lives in the one next to last. It’s the only house with balconies, and in the old days Arvid was nervous it would make him upper class, because nobody we knew lived in a house with a balcony. But I didn’t reckon three and a half square metres of balcony was enough to make him upper class, especially since his father worked night shifts at the Jordan brush factory. Arvid was happy to hear that. Under no circumstances did he want to be upper class, and as far as that goes, we both