6 juli 2023 The Evaporation of Inga Einarsdottir Part 3

 The Evaporation of Inga Einarsdottir  Part 3

“Inga, a lonely island of sanity amidst a sea of boyhood madness.”
 -- Wednesday’s Child July 1, 2023

    After publication of the Sven & Ula story, “Dem Holes,” in Volume 12 Issue 2, 2013 of THE RAVEN: Northwest Minnesota's Original Art, History, & Humor Journal, I learned through the grapevine as its author, that the characterization of fictional character Inga Einarsdottir Josephson had been offensive to a particular reader. So upon reading about defamation cases regarding similarities of fictional characters to real people, although my fictional characters are composites of several people, I chose to evaporate the character Inga Einarsdottir Josephson at once. I recreated the fictional character Ula Josephson as a sudden bachelor who deals with loss but doesn’t know why entirely. Integral as Ula is to the Sven & Ula story series, rather than eliminate him too, prematurely, I edited the remaining fictional characters to fit the yet-to-be-published stories I had written years ago.

    “Sorry to hear Inga just up and evaporated, Ula,” Sven said soberly, pouring himself a cup of Ula’s coffee. “Life ain’t goin’ to be the same without her, eh?”
    “Vell, that’s what fictional characters do sometimes Sven,” Ula said authoritatively. “Evaporation isn’t a bad way to go if you want, and apparently she did. I thought she’d get her skirt or boot laces caught up in the garden tiller maybe, but I never thought she’d just go ‘poof’ off the page.
    Dippin’ a piece of hardtack in his coffee, Sven said, “Tough as nails, that one, she was a lovely mainstay in our adventures, now what are we going to do?”
    “I dunno,” said Ula. “For years I’ve been a semi-happily married fictional character and now, suddenly, I’m a fictional bachelor character. I don’t know what I’m going to tell the kids.”
 
    The introduction of Inga Einarsdottir as a character in the Sven & Ula story series as Palmville Township neighbors and friends Sven Guyson and Ula Josephson, began in a Warroad now-defunct newspaper, Rural Roads in 1998. Ula was described as being 100% Irish and always more punctual, more articulate, more grammatically correct than Sven, who had long ago accepted his inferiority. Ula was also linguistically gifted, a confessed biblio-maniac, and a maker of great homemade pizza, abilities all of which Sven sorrily lacked. Inga was Ula Josephson’s wife of 39-plus years. Her maiden name was Einarsdottir. She was the 4th-in-succession-birth order daughter born in the 1950s to Einar Olafson and Grunhild Ivansdottir in Stafford Township. Ula and Inga had three sons: Knute, Oskar, and Edwardo who they just called Ed, for fun.

   “During an in-line marathon race to Duluth, Inga managed to force Oskar off the road near the pumping station at the 17 mile marker much to her credit. At mile marker 22, at the crest of Lemon Drop Hill, he flew up behind her and grabbed her by her left arm, whirled her around backwards, and hurled her with all his might against a large Norway spruce that would have certainly decommissioned a normal recreational skater intent on a leisurely skate to Duluth, but not a woman born on a farm south of Roseau. Inga Einarsdotter had been kicked against the barn wall by many a big ol' Holstein in her milkmaid career. Totally undeterred, she shot back off the knot-scarred spruce trunk like a steel ball in a pinball machine, speed skated two miles uphill, and drilled a winded and unsuspecting Oskar in the back with her fist ... no worse for the experience.”
 
    Inga weaved through the story line again in THE RAVEN, Volume 7 Issue 2, 2004. “Sven & Ula Do Dublin: Part 1,” joining characters such as Heide Svensdottir, and Sven’s romantic partner, Monique LeBlanc, on a trip to Ireland in the early 2000s.  

    “The five Americans met two men dining near them in a restaurant in Clonakilty. The younger man was an attorney, and the older man, Joe Lyons, was a Commissioner of Oaths i.e., a Court Administrator in American terminology, something Inga was very knowledgeable about because of her obsession with Judge Judy.

   "Lyons told Ula about the statue of Michael Collins, the Irish patriot, standing a little beyond them, when Sven heard Inga holler for Ula oblivious of her plight. She was wrestling with an obvious suitor on the street corner, who brought his attentions to bear on her the moment she walked out of the restaurant well behind them.

    “Sven would’ve filmed the action. However, in just a blur, Inga had the man in a ‘Half Nelson half-hitch, sheepshank, Scandahoovian wrestlin’ knot, the moment he touched her shoulder, then with a swift kick, sent him on his way. She’d had so much practice on Ula in the last 39 plus years that the show was over in a heartbeat. Ula was worried moreso for the stranger than he was for Inga as he knew her extraordinary farm girl strength.”

    Toward the end of her tenure as able-bodied Mrs. Josephson, was the Sven & Ula story; “Dem Holes,” on Page 14 of THE RAVEN, Volume 12 Issue 2, 2013. 

   “Festus Marvinson would say his dad, the dearly departed Marvin Davidson, would be out here settin’ traps for all these skunks, er... methodist methodist, who are makin’ all these holes in your yard. He knows skunk holes, that one,” Sven retorted, amazed Ula could be so stubborn. “Besides, if Inga catches a whiff of your nonsense, you’ll be out here trappin’ ‘em ‘neath the moon. You got yourself a skunk trap?”

    “Don’t need no skunk trap, Sven. And they ain’t ‘methodists’, they’re ‘mephitis mephitis’, the Latin term for striped skunk. I ain’t gonna argue with you anymore, red squirrels have been diggin’ these holes and I’ll catch ‘em soon enough.

    "It’s just that I’ve been busy lately,“ Ula sighed. “Inga’s got me remodelin’ the old chicken coop for her Circle Meetings on Wednesday nights, so I haven’t been trappin’ too hard. She told me dem squirrels will have to wait.

   "Knowing all too well Inga’s firebrand Swedish-Scot-Irish temper, Sven said, “She didn’t say anythin’ about the skunks havin’ to wait, Ula. You best be gettin’ yourself a skunk trap--or she’ll be takin’ you to the woodshed straight away.”

    “Don’t need no stinkin’ skunk trap...,” Ula fumed.

     "So it was that very evening when Inga was pushing her mower out near the new chicken coop a big skunk waddled out of the high grass along the riverbank, sniffed around a bit, and then hid itself under the pile of lath and old windows that were leaning against a tree not too far away. 

    "Shrieking, she hoofed it to the house where Ula stood stirring the evening’s stew, “GOOD GAWD ULA! GRAB YOUR GUN! THERE’S A SKUNK OUT BY THE CHICKEN COOP! C’MON, QUICK!” 

    "Throwing his ladle onto the counter, Ula whipped off his apron and careened out the open door and was down off the porch in an instant.

“GOT YOUR GUN, ULA?” Inga gasped, her gaze riveted on the old windows. “ULA? ULA?” 

    Ula had turned around and went back to the hall closet where he was uncasing his twenty-two and looking for shells at the same time. 

    “ULA JOSEPHSON WHERE ARE YOU?? HE’S GOING TO GET AWAY!” Inga yelled, frantic now, looking toward the house and back to the panels ‘til her neck hurt. 

    “Vell, you tell me you don’t like no guns in the house and now your yellin’ at me to get me gun, and now I can’t find me shells ‘cause you likely hid ‘em in some ‘safe’ place, and now you’re comin’ back to the house mad as...” Ula broke off, talking to himself as he was, just as Inga jerked the door open.

    “ULA! THERE’S A SKUNK! DONCHA HEAR ME YELLIN’ FOR YOU?”

    “Yah but, Inga--the gun’s in a case and I can’t find me shells. I can’t be shootin’ ‘im that near the chicken coop anyway, it’ll stink for days! Maybe we can just scare ‘im away, Inga, maybe he’ll just mosey on down the river, let’s try that.” Ula said plaintively, closing the closet door and leaning the half-cased gun in the corner. He walked past her through the open door and to where the mower still stood idling, its bluish exhaust rising against the dark tree tops of the Hunert Spruce Grove.”
 

    Dem Holes” Excerpt Page 15, 3rd paragraph

    “How are you, Mrs. Josephson?” Sven said. “Vat are you doin’ about town without your Mr. Josephson?”

    “I’ll have you know, Mr. Guyson, that I go anywhere I vant with or without the likes of me husband. And it’s none of yur business vat I’m doin’,” retorted Inga, whose ire could be manipulated to no end great or small. Non-miffed, Sven said, “Vell I know dat, you’ve been tellin’ me the same t’ing for going on 29 years, Inga Einarsdottir. I’m just a teasin’ you just to see your cheeks get red like dat. Vere’s Ula, eh? Buyin’ skunk traps at Annie’s Trading Post?”

    “Oh, he told you about the big ol’ skunk I saw by the chicken coop?” Inga replied, the ivory-like scandahoovian complexion returning to her face, “I don’t know why he’d be needin’ skunk traps, Ula told me the skunk wasn’t comin’ back.”

    “No, I didn’t know you had seen a skunk, Inga, but that just confirms what I was sayin’,” Sven said, looking up the street toward the Uptown Bank.
     “Vat was it you were sayin’ Sven?” Inga asked impatiently, eager to be on her way to a Ladies Aid meeting at the Sports Bar north of Ernie & Ole’s Carwash, “Vat had you been tellin’ Ula?”

     “You mean he hasn’t told you it’s that skunk and all his relatives that’s been diggin’ all dem holes in your yard by the basswood tree?” Sven said, returning his attention to Einar’s fourth-in-birth-succession daughter, “Good grief, farm girl, you didn’t believe ‘im when he told you it was squirrels diggin’ dem holes?”

    "Inga’s sky-blue eyes narrowed angrily Sven saw right away. He immediately got the sinking feeling he had let the skunk out of the bag and Ula was going to pay for it as Inga wildly jerked open the heavy door of her Chevy grain truck and threw her grocery bag full of quilting patches and huge purse up onto the bench seat. The old truck roared to life.

 

    "Shoving the clutch to the floor, Inga slapped the worn-smooth gear shift knob into reverse, mashed the foot-feed, and the truck flew away from the curb, its rear duals shuddering, spewing sand and small stones.
She stopped the truck suddenly, then turned the truck down Main Street shifting gears across the rough railroad crossing by the elevator. Downshifting to second, she careened around the corner the mudflaps jerked well to the outside, then shifted up into third --and fourth -- and out of town without the clutch. 

    "Later, Sven told Monique, “Uffdah, Ula is goin’ to get his butt whupped for sure. I thought Inga knew all about it. I thought he would’ve told her, Monique. Heaven knows, I tell you everythin’...”

    "Monique, a woman of some rational experience, ignored his last statement, adding only, "It’s not your fault that Ula is têtu ...uh, stubborn, bon ami. Inga was only going home to confirm that fact.”

    "It was close to a week before Sven saw Ula again. “I sure wish I knew who was beatin’ up me mailbox so regular lately,” Sven said.“ Inga been keepin’ you busy on the chicken coop?”

    "The more Sven blathered on about his mailbox the angrier Ula got. He wrenched open the driver’s door and started to slide out the cab, pulling his ball bat out from along the seat at the same time when a grain truck’s twin air horns blasted his ears.

    "Unbeknownst to the two men, Inga, who had sent Ula to apologize to Sven after he told her all about their skunks, had followed Ula in her  truck at a distance then coasted up behind them and laid on her air horns scaring them out of their wits. “Hah! Serves you right you two old coots!” Inga laughed. “You apologize to Sven then, Ula?” 

    “Apologize? For vat?” Sven asked in a wee voice, his ears deafened.     “It’s me who should be apologizin’,”

    Ula, never one to deny another his or her opportunity to out themselves should the need arise said, ”You can apologize to me if you so desire. It’s best to get such things off your chest and not let ‘em fester so. Vat was that you were goin’ to say?” 

    “Vell, I, I...,” Sven stammered, closing his plier and slipping it back into the holster on his belt. "Out with it, den eh,” Ula insisted while eyeing Inga’s impatience with him build. 

    “I’m sorry I told Inga about ‘em bein’ skunk holes in your yard and not squirrel holes,” Sven said slowly. “I thought you two had talked about it. I should’ve kept me mouth shut, but I knew I was right and you was wrong. You know how you get ven you won’t admit it and keep stallin’ about not correctin’ the situation. Den you lead Inga, your lovely wife of 39 plus years, down a merry path of deceit, tellin’ her a mighty fib to keep her from thinkin’ she has skunks livin’ under the porch of your house when you do...”

“WE HAVE SKUNKS LIVIN’ 

UNDER OUR PORCH???”