Nothing Read Free

field, and suddenly it was all like a gym lessonand a day like any other, and I almost forgot why we had to get Pierre Anthon out of his plum tree. For all I care he can sit up there and yell till he rots, I thought. I said nothing. The thought was true only at the moment it was thought.
    “Let’s pelt him with stones,” Otto suggested, and now came a lengthy discussion about where to get hold of the stones and how big they should be and who was going to throw them, for the idea was good.
    Good, better, best.
    It was the only one we had.

IV
    One stone, two stones, many stones.
    They were all piled up in the bike trailer Holy Karl used every Tuesday afternoon for delivering the local paper and the church newsletter the first Wednesday of the month. We’d gathered them down by the stream where they were big and round, and the trailer was heavy as a dead horse.
    We were all going to throw.
    “Two each, at the least,” Jon-Johan commanded.
    Otto kept tally to make sure we each took our turn. Even Henrik, the little butter-up, had been summoned and duly delivered his two shots,neither of which came even close. Maiken’s and Sofie’s were marginally better.
    “So nothing’s got you all scared, then?” Pierre Anthon hollered as he followed Ursula-Marie’s pathetic shots and watched them land in the hedge.
    “You’re only up there because your dad’s still stuck in ’68!” shouted Huge Hans, and hurled a stone into the tree. It smacked into a plum, which splattered in all directions.
    We hooted.
    I hooted with the rest of them, even though I knew neither claim was true. Pierre Anthon’s father and the rest of the commune grew organic vegetables and practiced exotic religions and were receptive to the spiritual world, alternative treatments, and their fellow human beings. But that wasn’t the reason it wasn’t true. It wasn’t true because Pierre Anthon’s father wore a buzz cut and worked for a computer company, and the whole thing was up-to-the-minute and hadnothing to do with either ’68 or Pierre Anthon in the slightest.
    “My dad’s not stuck in anything, and neither am I!” Pierre Anthon yelled, wiping splatterings of plum from his arm. “I’m sitting here in nothing. And better to be sitting in nothing than in something that isn’t anything!”
    It was early morning.
    The sun was beating down from the east, directly into Pierre Anthon’s eyes. He had to shield them with his hand if he wanted to see us. We were standing with our backs to the sun around the trailer on the opposite side of the road. Out of range of Pierre Anthon’s plums.
    We didn’t answer him.
    It was Richard’s turn. And Richard hurled a stone that cracked hard against the trunk of the plum tree, and another that tore in among the leaves and plums and just missed Pierre Anthon’s left ear. Then it was my turn. I’ve never been good at throwing, but I was angry and determined, andthough my first shot ended up in the hedge next to Ursula-Marie’s, the second rattled right into the branch on which Pierre Anthon was sitting.
    “Hey, Agnes,” Pierre Anthon shouted down at me. “You’re having such problems believing things matter?”
    I flung a third stone, and this time I must have grazed him, because we heard a howl, and for a moment it was quiet up in the tree. Then Otto threw, but too high and too far, and Pierre Anthon began his hollering again.
    “If you live to be eighty, you’ll have slept thirty years away, gone to school and sat with homework for nine, and worked for almost fourteen. Since you’ve already spent more than six years being little kids and playing, and you’re later going to be spending at least twelve cleaning house, cooking food, and looking after your own kids, it means you’ve got nine years at most to live.” Pierre Anthon tossed a plum into the air. It followed a gentle arc before plunging into the gutter. “Andyou want to spend those nine years pretending you’ve amounted to something in a