Apollo nodded because he simply couldn’t keep up. The open front door, the old man hiding in wait with a knife, the tale of Askeladden and the troll, and now a sheep’s head boiling in a pot. And he thought the island had been as wild as things would get?
“My wife,” Apollo said, the words like a lifeline. He raised his free hand to show the red string on his finger. “I don’t care about all this other shit. I just have to find Emma.”
“You must approach her with caution,” the old man said as he set the timer on the counter. “There are ways such things must be done.” He pointed at the pot. “With an offering.”
The old man walked to the fridge, opened it, and reached inside. He pulled out a bag of potatoes. He walked back to the counter and dropped them with a thump. He returned to the fridge once more and revealed a green bottle with no label.
“That’s a strange wedding ring,” the old man said, pointing at Apollo’s left hand. “Is hers made of barbed wire?”
He took a coffee mug out of the sink, opened the green bottle, and poured a clear liquid in. He set the bottle down.
“It took you months to finally show up,” he said. “I thought you’d get here sooner.”
This hit Apollo so hard, he dropped the rolled-up newspaper on the table. “You know about my wife and son, don’t you.”
“I do.”
From a cabinet by the sink, he took out an eight-ounce bottle of Ensure. He poured the chalky white drink into the mug that held the clear liquor. He swished the cup to mix the two. He took a gulp. His top lip showed a faint cream mustache.
“You can help me then.”
He took a second gulp from the coffee mug, then turned away from Apollo. He picked up a potato and peeled it over the kitchen sink. “Do I want to help you?” he asked.
“You’re helping my wife,” Apollo said.
The old man finished with the first potato and got to work peeling the second. The old man looked out of the window above the sink, into the modest paved yard behind his home. Up the slope of the block, he could see the trees of Forest Park.
“Ever since your wife appeared, I haven’t had a night’s rest,” he said. “All my life I’ve slept well. Even as a baby, my mother told me. But now it’s one hundred and twenty days without a good night’s rest.” He dropped the second peeled potato onto the counter with a thunk. “And it’s all because of your wife.”
He looked over his shoulder at Apollo. “Will you prepare the cabbage?”
Apollo watched him, stupefied.
“You have to core it first.” He pointed at the second supermarket bag impatiently, a grandfather supervising his grandson for the afternoon.
When Apollo still didn’t move, the old man took out the cabbage and brought it to the table on a cutting board. Apollo would’ve argued more, but there on the board he’d also set out a large utility knife with a serrated blade. Better than rolled-up newspaper as far as weapons went. The old man watched Apollo calmly. Apollo pulled the board to himself and picked up the knife. The old man then turned his back to Apollo and went under the counter for a smaller pot in which to boil the potatoes. The enormous pot with the sheep’s head continued to burble and roil.
“Jorgen Knudsen,” Apollo said, picking up the knife.
For the first time, the old man went rigid. He turned from the cupboard and stared at Apollo. But in a moment he recovered his weary whimsy. It might have been that the liquor kicked in.
“Joe,” he said. “Here in the United States everyone calls me Joe. In America your name must be convenient or it must be changed.”
Jorgen rose slowly, filled the pot with water.
“So I’m guessing you know William Wheeler,” Apollo said.
Jorgen took another pull from the coffee mug, then refilled it with liquor and Ensure. “Is that what he’s calling himself?” He said nothing more. He drank instead.
Apollo cut the cabbage into quarters, then used the knife to slice out the wedge of cabbage core. Jorgen set the small pot on another burner, and then there was the sound of the tick tick tick as the pilot light caught, and the halo of blue flame appeared. When he looked at Apollo, he seemed pleased.
“Now chop the cabbage very fine.” He put out his hands for the bits of core, and Apollo handed them to him. Instead of going to the trash bin, he pulled a small pail from under the sink. He dropped the bits of core inside. He caught Apollo staring. “You do compost, don’t you?”
Apollo brought the knife down into the first section of cabbage, chopping it into fine strips. When Brian had first been born, Emma hadn’t been able to cook anything, of course, and it had fallen to Apollo to prepare foods from his admittedly limited repertoire. Now he felt himself transported back to that sensation of preparation and responsibility. He was making a meal for Emma.
Because Apollo lost himself in the work, it took a few moments before he realized Jorgen had started speaking to himself, under his breath. He removed a third pot from a cupboard. He came to the kitchen table and swept in the cabbage Apollo had chopped and returned to the counter. He found a bag of flour and poured some in, estimating the proper amount with practiced ease. He finished with another gulp from the mug.
He recited lines from Outside Over There as he dropped salt and caraway seeds in with the cabbage.
Apollo joined him. Word for word.
This stopped Jorgen’s patter. “Why did you say that?” he snapped.
“I thought we’d recite it together.”
“You know it?” he asked. “What is it? A song?”
“A book,” Apollo said. “A fairy tale.”
He snorted. “Of course.”
“My father used to read it to me when I was a baby.”
“That book exactly? Have you ever wondered why?”
Apollo tapped the tip of the blade against the table. “Yes, but I don’t know.”
Jorgen turned from the oven. He gulped down the rest of the potion in his mug, then bumped the side of the cup against his forehead. “I hear her in here, day and night. Even right now, as we are speaking. Your wife. She repeats and repeats the words from that book, and I can’t drown it out no matter what I try. I can’t get any sleep because of it. She’s torturing me.” He pulled the mug away from his face and peered in. “I don’t know how she’s doing it. Do you?”
“She’s a witch,” Apollo said, and he almost sounded proud. He finished chopping.
Jorgen reached across the table for the cutting board, but Apollo held on to the knife. “You’re scared of Emma,” he said.
“Yes,” Jorgen said. “I am.”
He looked at the cutting board in his hand with some surprise. He set it back in front of Apollo as if there were more work to be done. He looked back at the timer. Three hours before the sheep’s head would be ready.
“I hear her voice,” Jorgen said. “And at night, from my bedroom, I see her out there. Walking in the woods. I see her blue light. A witch. Yes. Did you know that’s who you’d married?”