27.12.2006
One
Jon is an ordinary teenager in every aspect. Though his looks are unusually spectacular; he has dark hair and green eyes. His nose especially sharp, just as his chin, but the cheeks are a little bit round. You could say that he´s every mother´s dream. His youth until this surveillance starts has been very ordinaire, just as with other boys living When Faxabraut (ponyavenue) was the only street closer to the moors above the town, a street of 80 houses, built in a curve that reaches Hafnargata (harbour-street), which is closest to the ocean and where most of the town´s stores are occupied, and by which one of his friends lives, Gardar , a tall and strong-built lad, who could´ve been a real women´s man only if... he wasn´t so terribly shy. The last one in this friends´ party of three is Nonni, nicknamed sick just at a time he isn´t close enough to hear, for if he did the devil would be on He´s quite athletically built, but his nose looks like a big potato and he has to fight a severe acne-problem. The nickname he got playing football; he just wasn´t a team´s player; he just had to be the one who scored the goals, eventhough his shots were like lightning most of them went far from the target. Nonni lives by Skolavegur (schoolstreet), a street with 50 houses that lies above Haholt and reaches down to Hafnargata, just where the old Swimming-Palace is on the bank of the Vatnsnes (waterpoint). The friends do a lot of shady things, just as other boys did back in the sixties, before the arrival of pastime-mediums such as the video and The prevalence and posture have altered in such a way, that children and adolescents don´t bother anymore going outside looking for adventures as participants. Instead they like to watch others having them. The shed is standing on an empty area that lies between Skolavegur and where Baugholt (ringstreet) will be in the near future, on a site where Raggi the baker will later on build his villa. - Now there´s only one trip left thus enabling us to finish the shed, Nonni the sick informs his friends with his pleasantly rusty voice at the time he hammers the last three-inch nail in the roof. And we need more nails. You´ll make the trip tonight and meet me here at half past ten, he informs his friends finally. Normally he´s their bravest; quite active and a real dare-devil, but...I got the newest Elvis-record today. Jon and Gardar agree as always, maybe because Nonni the sick is both their elder and stronger than they are put together. His words being the law. His dad´s employed on the NATO base, has made a good reliance with some Americans, who buy for him all kinds of duty-free things, that happen to be Often their minds have been filled with envy, when Nonni has vited them into his room to see and hear some new equipment or some star´s latest LP, e.g. Creedence Clearwater Revival or Elvis Presley. In spite of some normal faults Nonni´s quite eager to give them from his lot of American candy or lending them his LPs so that they could record the music on their tiny tapes, which they had gotten at their confirmation-parties. On the tenth hour pm, when the cloudy sky´s become totally black on this September-night the two friends come together in a cold and raw weather by the unmasoned dark and spooky house, which the owner is building for himself and his family. In the windows there´s only plastic that had been renewed number of times because of sabotage. -Let´s go in at the backside, Gardar. Let´s hurry. They creep around the corner over the building´s site having the ditch on one side and timber that -Ah... Jon cries, I stepped on a nail. Damned be the man, couldn´t he have cleaned his timber, and he sends the owner a bundle of dirty thoughts. Give me the light, Gardar, Jon begs and carefully takes a seat on a pile of timber that had obviously been cleaned. Jon removes his rubber-shoe and the sock and lights up the tiny wound on the sole of his foot. -What shall we do now? Mamma says that you should put spirit on such a wound to prevent blood-poisoning. -Squeeze the wound until the blood is clean, Gardar says with a reassuring voice. My mamma has told me that that will make everything OK. - I can´t, Jón whimpers, it really hurts. - Close your eyes and clench your teeth, I´ll do it for you, his friend comforts him just as he goes down on his knees and takes a hold of his aching foot. Shortly afterwards, when they´ve sabotaged the new plastic and elbowed themselves into the cold dark house a eager search for the nails they so Gardar lets the light flow around the house, until Jon gives a constrained wailing. - Come and see what I´ve found, Gardar. - Wow, that would come handy in the shed, the rascal says just as he lights up the brand-new cassette-radio. But after quite a thorough search all over the nearly finished house they have just about given up the hope of finding any nails. -He must have taken them with him to his home! Well, we did at least get the radio for our effort. Let´s leave, Jon says just as he returns to the -I´ve located them, Gardar shouts from where he´s busy with his right hand while holding the torch in his left one, left handed as he is. Come to me Jonni my friend, he sings with a happy tone. Hold my torch for a while. -Gardar, you know my mamma doesn´t like it when I´m called anything else but the name that I´ve been baptised, Jon reprimands his friend at the same time as he turns to him taking the torch into the hand that´s free. -The owner is obviously fed up with us, Gardar moans when he sits himself on the cold cemented floor and with both hands takes a grip on the top board that had been nailed on the wall. The light now reflects an ingeneous fitted store-room just where the chimney is supposed to be. -The Man seems to have renewed his collection of tools, they moan with pure admiration, at the same time they are putting three inch nails in their All of a sudden they get startled, when carlights overflow the room and the car is parked infront of the house.
ONE
http://www.netsaga.is/media/files/Rammur%20Steinn.mp3
in Keflavik in the Sixties, full of suspense and drama, when Haholt (highhill), a short street with 24 houses, one of which is his home and has the second farthest distance from the ocean.
the loose.
computer-games.
The adventurous three have with a lot of effort managed to assemble material, primarily pieces of wood for their large pigeon-shed which is almost fully built, when the story begins.
very scarce in Icelandic homes in those days.
hadn´t been cleaned of nails on the other side.
desperetally needed to be able to finish the neatest pigeon-shed on the Sudurnes (south peninsula) begins.
window with the broken plastic having the radio in one hand.
pockets.
WAIT I DROPPED THE RADIO. Jon is feeling his way back in the darkness in the means of locating their most worthy stolen property, just when a key is stuck into the padlock on the door.
-Leave the radio Jonni! We´ll just return for it later.
-WHEN WILL YOU GET IT, MY NAME IS JON, he yells at his friend who is used to the using of nicknames among friends, and is just about to fly on him, when...
-Sorry Jo...n...Gardar quickly says, amplifying the 'n'.
The thieves gasp, when the house is suddenly illuminated, and they stick their heads out of the window, just when the owner´s screams of wonder and anger rattle around the house. .
With moans and groans they manage to clamber over the unfinished lawn and then they take to running in the dark heather.
-HE´S FOLLOWING US, Gardar yells with a voice of dismay, just when they´ve reached an old cemented shed built in the years of WW ll, the so called Black Shed (Svarti kofi) which the Yankies had built and used back then, but had since been overtaken by some Icelander who kept a lot of 'junk' inside, e.g.
paint. Of course the right of the owner of all this 'junk' had often been dishonored by jolly boys who happened to be travelling in the vicinity. The double-door was opened ajar just like it was welcoming the boys inside, but they didn´t give in to the temptation. They keep on running just as fast as they manage in the total darkness, but when they reach the horse-shed which is owned by Skuli an owner of a small store in the the street of Lyngholt (linghill) and is located in the hollow, where Efstaleiti (tophill) is nowadays, Gardar informs Jon his dicision, that they should split up and points his partner to turn right up the hill. He himself turns left and runs toward the Turner-gate.
Before the fence around the Base was moved because of the new-built Airport of Leif Ericsson the Americans who rented Icelandic flats were allowed to use the Turner-gate which was guarded by American MPs. The gate was on the Flugvallarvegur (airportroad) which lies between the town of Keflavik and the village of Njardvik and runs from the Hafnargata by a fenced area where the Americans used to keep their oil, the so-called Nikkel- area. Close to the gate on the Icelandic side, there were a few old military barracks that had gotten new tasks; horse-stables used by the Keflavik´s Head of Police and others. The largest barracks and the only ones that still are standing today were used as the town´s store-house for much of its apparatus, but have these last years been housing old cars and auto-parts for a private company.
Jon takes a turn to his right side towards the Lakes, which then were relatively far from the inhabited district of Keflavík. Especially far for young boys, but somehow it became closer when the houses were built closer and the legs became longer.
One of the Lakes, or ponds is on Keflavik´s side of the fence that
surrounds the NATO-base and is a lot smaller, so small actually that it disappears sometimes in dry seasons in winter time. The other, so called Big Lake has a lot more attraction, thus the three friends before mentioned have in one of their many journeys transported two empty herring-barrels which they´d 'borrowed' at some fishing factory. In the neighborhood there happens to be some timber they´d also borrowed. They fastened the barrels
together with the timber and with a saw they made a hole on each one just big enough for a boy to stand inside. If necessary Jon is going to step on board the barrel-boat and punt himself to the middle of the pond, where he´ll wait until the man´s temper has become better.
His heart is raging in his chest, while he´s running and
jumping scared between the grass-covered parts in the moor. He´s thankful for all the practise in field-running he had last summer in the christian boys´ vacation camps. When his eyes have become used to seeing in the dark, at a time when he´s crossed most of the distance he halts just for a
second he dares looking back. When the moon breaks its way through the heavy skies he gets a glimpse of The Man. -Bloody energy in that man, Jon thinks angrily, but deep down his respect is mixed with fear of the man who keeps on chasing him in spite of all the heavy falls when he steps in numerous deep hollows.
But he shan´t get me Jon says to himself reassuringly just when he having reached the high fence made of iron net and barbwire elbows himself under it through the hole they´d made between the two ponds in the heath which usually are named Little and Big Lake.
Jon runs to the northern side of Big Lake, where he´s spotted a silhouette of their barrel-boat.
Damned,where is the punt-pole? He goes down on all four and grabbles the area around the boat, until he finds the narrow pole with his knee.
Jon jumps into the boat and starts rowing for his life with the pole which he pushes down until it reaches hard-bottom and then he pushes the barrels forward away from the bank. Thus he has in a short while made it to the middle of the pond, where he´s going to wait until The Man goes away, but Jon is at this moment able to see his silhouette on the other side of the fence. He sees where the silhouette bends itself and suddenly it´s standing on the bank, where it points with a fist at the silhouette out on the middle of Big Lake.
-YOU DAMNED WRETCH. NOW YOU CAN THANK THE ALLMIGHTY FOR THE FACT THAT I DON´T HAVE MY FISHING-BOOTS ON.
The Man yells towards the poor boy whose so frightened that he´s not sure whether it is his heart that has dropped down into his knickers, anyway he senses something warm and damp down there.
HERE ON THE BANK I´LL WAIT UNTIL YOU´LL RETURN TO LAND OR I´LL BE ABLE TO RECOGNIZE YOUR FACE.
And then I´ll have a talk with your parents, he says
in a lower voice and sits down on the grassy bank.