Out Stealing Horses

In his memory of 1948, Trond says that after learning about his father’s work with the resistance, the world looks different. He recognizes his father’s impatience to sell the timber and also understands that his father and Franz have argued about whether it is a good time to send it downriver. That night, he watches his father sleeping and doesn’t know what to think about him or the world itself. When he goes back to bed, he feels like he is spinning on a large wheel and gets nauseated.

The next morning, they have to move the timber, which proves difficult and dangerous. During a break, Trond goes and lies beneath the tree with the cross nailed to it; he now knows that Franz put the cross there in 1944 to mark the place where German soldiers shot a man attempting to flee into Sweden.

He is awakened for lunch by Jon’s mother and is disturbed by her presence. Lars is also there, making a small stack of wood that mimics the timber pile the men are working on. He tells Trond that he shot his brother, and Trond replies that it wasn’t his fault. “An accident,” they both say.