When father wasn’t watching I brushed their backs. Scratched them behind the ears and let them lick the salt off my arms with 139their long rough tongues. Once the last cow had been milked I washed the separator and the churns and put everything on the shelves. Even then I liked order.

Then I heard loud voices. Father and bror were arguing. Bror’s voice had broken and it cracked when he raised it. Arguing wasn’t something we went in for. We obeyed.

I hurried out from the milking parlour and at first couldn’t see them. I followed the noise. Now they were on the floor wrestling in a stall. Bror hit out at every part he could reach but father struck him hard convinced he had the upper hand. Go on he shouted. Come again you little shit. The day you beat me in a fight I’ll do your bidding he shouted and lifted bror as if he were an armful of hay. He carried the boy to the familygrave and held him dangling over the abyss. Used the same phrase.

The day you beat me in a fight I’ll do your bidding. Until you do what I say goes.

Then he let bror fall down into the steaming stench of the dunghill and left him to drown. As he turned to go he caught sight of me.

What is this he said. So we have someone else here who questions the rule of the righteous.

He came towards me and I backed. All possible flight routes had been mapped out long ago but I had lowered my inner guard after a year free of pestering.

I turned and ran. He came after me. I would have escaped if I hadn’t tripped over the hayfork. The same hayfork.

I fell and broke the fall with my hands hitting the concrete floor. A moment later he was on me. His strong farmer’s hands tore my trousers off and rooted around to get in at the same time as he opened his flies. The bag on his belly glinted through the gap in 140the overalls. The milkingcoat had wrapped itself around my body. I wriggled and twisted like a worm on a fishing hook but he was in already. Thrust hard and bellowed in my ear when he came.

I had given up. Had no strength left. Didn’t want to live anymore. Then I saw bror. He was sneaking along behind the cows. Covered in dripping dung like a monster from a horrorfilm swamp and with a heavy soilcutting spade in his hand.

Father was getting up on his knees. The greasy strands of his combover hung across his forehead. He stared at me and seemed about to say something.

I hadn’t registered it before. His eyes and ours had the same colour.

Bror raised the spade over his head as an executioner his sword and sliced father’s head in two.