The Icelandic Canadian - 01.03.2003, Page 36

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THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Vol. 57 #4
through the window, so I was able to get a
good look at him. He had bushy, bristly
hair on his head, face, chest and arms; I
thought he looked like Harry Monster
from "Sesame Street.” He had had two
thick gloves on, which my mother had put
on the dresser with his other clothes, which
were covered with dirt. Although everyone
looked big to me at that age, I could see
that he was larger than normal, even larger
than my father, because his feet poked out
from under the sheets and hung over the
end of the mattress. He didn’t do very
much except lie there and breathe, so I was-
n’t entirely disappointed when my mother
discovered me in there and pulled me out
by the ear.
The next morning, I woke up to dis-
cover that a blizzard had settled in
overnight. My mother said the phone was-
n’t working, and I went outside to join my
father in the field where they had found the
man. There was a crater where the shooting
star had struck, and I was fascinated. I
asked him about it, and he explained that it
wasn’t really a star, it was a meteorite,
which was a piece of rock from outer space.
I was relieved to hear my father’s explana-
tion, because it seemed to undermine my
previous theory of a vengeful archangel (as
well explain where rocks come from). I
asked him what had happened to the star,
or rather meteorite, and he just said that he
had put it in the shed. I, of course wanted
to see it , but my father said that that was
out of the question, because it might be
radioactive. When I asked him what that
meant, he said that if I got too near it I
would have two-headed children. This, of
course, only served as an incentive for me
to get a sleeping bag and head for the shed,
but my father reminded me of my chores
and my plans were thwarted.
It was Friday, but we didn’t have
school because of an inservice in our divi-
sion. I suspect that my siblings and I would
have come down with mysterious maladies,
which would have disappeared about an
hour after the school bus came, had it not
been a day off. Our strange guest had not
yet regained consciousness, a condition
which I was unable to verify myself; my
mother never left the kitchen because she
knew that the minute she did, we would all
creep into the guest room, which was adja-
cent. My parents discussed what should be
done about the man’s head wound, and we
all listened intently, except Brian, who
seemed to want us to think that he knew
more about skull fractures than the man on
Quincy.
My father was no doctor, but he said
that if he didn’t always know what would
save a man’s life, he did know what would
kill him, and a stone in the head was no
good, especially if it was radioactive. (I
hoped that the man was married so that I
might be able to see how many heads his
children had.) There was no way for us to
contact a doctor, and what with the bliz-
zard, it was doubtful whether anyone
would be able to get to us anyway. My
father argued that since the stone was not
very big, it would probably be better to
take it out than leave it in. I was unclear as
to the advantages of having a large stone in
one’s head as opposed to a small one, but
then Brian said that my head was just one
big rock anyway, and since I felt I had to