The Icelandic Canadian - 01.03.2003, Page 40

176
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Vol. 57 #4
door. However, my father had closed the
padlock.
“Hva5 er nu Jaetta?” he said, confused.
“It’s locked,” I said, “Only my dad has
the key. We can’t get in.”
“Ha?” he said.
“We can’t open the door, “ I said,
shaking my head. “It’s locked.” I pointed
to the padlock.
He looked at me, and then back at the
lock.
“J>a3 JaySir ekkert,” he said. With that,
he seized the padlock in one huge hand and
ripped it off the door. I stared at him as he
proceeded into the shed and returned grip-
ping the meteorite in his great gloves. I
remember being amazed that he didn’t even
have to turn green like the Incredible Hulk
to do it. It was an odd shape (if there is an
ordinary shape for a shooting star); it
seemed to be made of a clay-coloured rock.
When I got a closer look at it, I realized
that it was not stone at all, it was something
covered by clumps of earth, and stones. He
lifted it up and smashed it down on the
ground, and it fractured into a thousand
fragments. I was too interested in what was
inside it to speculate further on its compo-
sition. The man picked up the object that
lay revealed and raised it joyously over his
head with one hand. I remember wonder-
ing at the time whether he might be a car-
penter, or a blacksmith like my Uncle Bart,
because I had never seen such a large ham-
mer.
“Mjolnir!” he cried.
“Is that your hammer?” I asked.
“]aa3 er nefnilega J>a3.”
“Who are you?”
“J>or heiti eg.”
“I’m Jamie.”
“BlessaSur,” he said, extending his
hand. I took it, and he clasped my arm so
tightly that I thought it would break before
he let it go. Then we returned to the drive-
way, where he banged his hammer on the
ground three times and looked up to the
sky. The stars were out, although there
were some patches of blackness where
some more clouds were rolling in. It wasn’t
long before we saw a shooting star.
Unfortunately for my nerves, this one
seemed to be getting closer, too, rocketing
down out of the sky. I heard a distant rum-
bling noise, like thunder, and the star, or
whatever it was, flashed like a sparkler as it
approached. Soon I was able to discern a
vehicle hurtling towards us out of the sky.
It wasn’t a plane, or a rocket, but a chariot,
which was pulled by two huge rams and
driven by a boy who was older than me.
The noise grew louder as the chariot came
nearer, and I saw lightning flashing about
its humongous wheels. The boy parked in
our driveway.
The man looked at me.
“Jamie, Jaetta er Pjalfi. Pjalfi, jpetta er
Jamie.”
The boy smiled, but I didn’t let him
take my arm. The man jumped into the
chariot.
“Nu ver3 eg a3 fara heim. Takk fyrir
allt saman!”
“Goodbye, Thor,” I said, waving.
He waved back and said, “Bless!”
With a crack of the reins, the two huge
rams took off, nostrils steaming and hooves
thundering. The chariot whisked away into
the sky, rumbling and flashing all the way,
until I couldn’t see it anymore.
1 went inside and found my mother in
the basement, listening to As It Happens
on the radio as the washer chugged and the
dryer whirred in the background. I
explained to her what had happened, but I
don’t think she was listening, because she
didn’t even react when I told her about the
man breaking the padlock.
I was heeded no more later, when
everyone had returned home and it was
discovered that the man was gone. It had
started snowing again, so the tracks from
the chariot were all covered up. All in all, I
don’t think my mother was all that sorry to
see him go, because even though he could
certainly pull his weight when it came to
chores, he probably would soon have eaten
us out of house and home. I did manage to
tell everyone that his name was Thor, and
at that, my father said that he must have
been from Selkirk, after all.
We kept the whole episode to our-
selves, except for times when my mother
had had too much to drink and started
telling stories about Ukrainians who ate as
much as alligators. I have always wondered