Gunnar In The Carrels

A Note to Readers:

Welcome to what I am calling Season 2 of Gunnar In The Carrels. Anyone who hasn't read Parts 1 through 10 (what I am now going to call Season 1), relax! You are officially absolved. But don't let that stop you if you feel inclined as it will certainly help your understanding of events.

What you are reading is the first draft of a potential novelette? novel? written on the fly. Events and timelines are going to shift around as they find their natural level. Go with it.

Most of all, thanks for reading and feel free to comment.

S02 P01
S02 P02
S02 P03
S02 P04

Part 5

Ron Andersson is a nice man. That is the first thing most people would say about him. Ron is such a nice guy. They might even say he was too nice. Some people around Karlstad said that after what happened with Elsa.

He is too nice for his own good. He should take those boys and kick her out of that house after what she did.

Except that Ron was, indeed, a nice man. Being nice, he found it impossible to be angry with Elsa about what happened with David Larsson. He didn’t think it was her fault.

Ron's lifetime study of the beautiful wonder named Elsa Janet Lind had started during Mrs. Watson’s second grade story time. The class was sitting on their story mats at Mrs. Watson’s feet and she was reading them a chapter from Charlotte’s Web.

Elsa was sitting directly in front of Ron. Instead of listening to the story, he was allowing himself the novelty of looking at a girl when he couldn't be seen to be looking. Girls were so different from the dirty, angular boys he ran with a recess.

At least, this one was.

To begin with, there was her hair which was long and shiny and held back from either side of her forehead by little pink plastic barrettes shaped like birds. He had seen the girls running their fingers through each other’s hair at story hour. Could he touch her hair?

He glanced at Joey Pike beside him and Joey pointed at Elsa’s back, plugged his nose with one hand and waved the other in front of his face. Conventional playground wisdom stated that girls smelled. Ron leaned very close to Elsa’s back and gave an experimental sniff. She smelled like flowers and baby powder.

Later on, when Ron was in Ag School and learned about pheromones, he wondered if that first sniff of Elsa Lind was what did him in because there had never been another woman for him. Elsa was the only girl he ever wanted.

That day during story hour, when Joey Pike elbowed him to make him look again and then pointed again at Elsa’s back, pushed up his nose with an index finger and started to make quiet piggy snorts, Ron made a decision that he would stick by for the rest of his life. He chose Elsa. His hand shot out and bopped Joey in the nose, making it bleed.

Ron tasted satisfaction.

For the rest of their shared time at the rural Karlstad District Public School, Ron became Elsa’s secret champion. If another boy called her a name or yanked her hair, Ron would give him an extra hard tackle during the lunchtime game of British Bulldog. They would limp to the sidelines nursing sprained wrists or bruised ribs. The others boys sensed they had offended Ron somehow. They knew he hurt them only in retribution for something they had done, but they didn’t know what.

It frustrated him that he couldn’t punish the girls in the same way.

Pretty Elsa Lind, born to Carl and Anna Lind when they thought their baby years were over, was coveted both by her parents and her three much older sisters. As a result, she showed up at school each day dressed in ruffles with her hair falling in perfect glossy ringlets around her slightly plump face. The other girls alternated excluding her from their games and trying to be her best friend.

It distressed Ron that he couldn’t be in all of the same classes as Elsa when they reached high school. He watched her in the hallways and cafeteria and when their schedules coincided. He saw that she was uncertain of herself, that she hesitated before she joined a table of girls, that she seldom said anything and preferred to listen to the loud, popular blonde girls.

When Benny Giles started to brag about the things he’d done to Elsa in the dark of his burgundy Camero, Ron decided enough was enough. He gave Benny a black eye and then went to find Elsa.

She was at her locker, wearing a pink dress, and had looked startled when he stood beside her.

"Elsa," he'd rasped out.

She said nothing but her lips parted.

"Elsa," he tried again, and this time she nodded, encouraging him maybe. "Will you go with me? Please?"

He'd said 'go with me', not 'go out with me' on purpose and she understand the distinction. Later, she would tell him that she'd always sensed there was a connection between them. That she knew this day was coming.

And she said yes.

That was when his ‘real’ life began, he thought. His adult life. It was only two years later, with graduation approaching, that he parked his dad’s battered blue pick up on the secluded back lane they thought of as ‘their spot’ and Elsa turned a pale, tear streaked face to him and whispered, “I’m pregnant. I got pregnant when we did it.”

“Marry me, Elsa,” he’d said immediately. And grinned.

Ron Andersson was happiest when he was making things right for Elsa.

Now, watching that rat bastard David Larsson cozy up to another young thing he probably stocked his office with like trout, Ron Andersson again wanted to make things right for Elsa.

He met the eyes of the two burly men across from him.

“Hey Paul, you still got that wagon full of shit at your place?”

“Mmhmm,” nodded Paul, starting to smile.

“Let’s go get it. Jim, you mind sticking around here? See if he goes anywhere. Call us if he does.”

“Aye aye, Captain.”

Ron and Paul dropped change for their coffees on the table and rose to leave. Ron took one last look over his shoulder at the well groomed, silver haired man by the windows. He was reaching forward to move a strand of hair away from the girl’s face, every inch of him the tender, considerate lover.

“Right,” said Ron, as they left the restaurant and stood looking over the vehicles in the Acropolis’s parking lot. The shiny black BMW was easy to spot.

“Let’s fix this asshole.”