This is a chapter from Dan Spanton's work in progress:
Synopisis. In THE RUSSIAN GIRL a troubled Maine teen flies to Moscow to find her birth mom. The action centers around a revenge scheme in which the son of a politician is taken hostage.
Synopisis. In THE RUSSIAN GIRL a troubled Maine teen flies to Moscow to find her birth mom. The action centers around a revenge scheme in which the son of a politician is taken hostage.
Kostya
When Kostya woke he discovered Vadim, the test
pilot, seated near the window and lingering over a French-pressed coffee. Vadim was neatly put together in a flight
suit, aviator glasses, and tightly laced boots. His flight helmet rested on one raised
knee. Like Kostya, Vadim was only eleven
years old, but the Russian people had already proclaimed him a hero. He studied Kostya critically without offering
a good morning.
Kostya limped along the hallway to the
bathroom. A pair of his grandpa’s
underwear hung drying on a towel bar, and above it a Marxist revolutionary
named Trotsky smiled from a tape-mended lithograph. An irreverent connection formed in Kostya’s
mind while he peed. “Leon Trotsky’s
sopping underpants,” he whispered gleefully.
He returned to his room to dress, snorting with loopy hilarity, until
Vadim was forced to ask, “Care to share?”
“Trot-sky…wet his…” Kostya hiccupped breathlessly.
“You’re beyond help,” Vadim said sourly. He returned to his coffee. Recently the
relationship between the two of them was exhibiting cracks, and Kostya had no
idea why. His spirit soared anyway. He couldn’t help feeling that every new
morning held something wonderful in store.
He headed to the breakfast table where he
accepted a plate of blini slathered
with jam from his grandmother. Vadim,
the people’s hero, reached for the ladle of the buckwheat porridge. Kostya’s grandfather scowled as though he’d
caught the sound of a suspiciously creaking floorboard.
Vadim withdrew his hand and shot a glance
toward Kostya from behind murky aviator glasses, and although his expression
was unreadable Kostya felt reproved.
Vadim Nikolayevich retrieved his helmet from atop the toaster and slunk
away.
“Where’s Bobik?” inquired Kostya.
His grandmother squinted over the top of the
gazette. “I’ve let him out, darling, would you call him back?”
Kostya abandoned his breakfast and made his
way toward the rear of the house through the laundry room, where he stepped
over a pile of old boots and nudged open the back door. “Bo-bik!” he coaxed the empty yard. He scanned the outdoor world. Sunrise had been locked out by a steel-grey
overcast. Tall spruce trees formed a
corridor along the main road and he could just glimpse the blue roof of the
mini-mart. The wind had covered Bobik’s
tracks and in places it had piled snow waist high. There was no choice but to mount a
search. Kostya thought about pancakes,
layered with cherry jam, and his concern for the headstrong little terrier
mingled with annoyance.
He
sensed Vadim at his elbow. “Are you
coming with me?” demanded Kostya. He
heard naked pleading in his own voice and flushed in shame. There was no
response from Russia’s foremost test pilot and Kostya drew the door shut while
managing to remain perched on the protrusion of doorsill. Then he spread his arms and lunged out into
snow.
“You’re not real,” he flung at Vadim. It was the best he could come up with.
But Vadim gave no sign he’d heard, or even
cared. He’d disappeared.
****
With
Vadim’s sulky departure Kostya’s spirits drooped. The world felt off-kilter. Worse than off-kilter, he amended, something
was putrid. A dead cosmonaut sprawled
atop the neighbor’s propane tank, but that wasn’t the problem. Kostya knew it was only mounded snow.
Another fact-- Bobik was a confirmed homebody
and not inclined to run off. But that
wasn’t the out-of-sync part, either.
His thoughts turned to Vadim’s recent
attitude. How often does one’s imaginary
friend decide he doesn’t care for you any longer? It was upsetting and frustrating. It was definitely out of kilter, but not the particular thing that was wrong with
this morning.
“Bobik…!
Hey buddy…!” Once more he scanned
in all directions. To the south the road made a bee line to the highway, and at
the intersection sat the new gas station and convenience store. He waited for a plan of action to formulate
on its own, as it usually did.
His grandparent’s home was a pre-fab replica
in a long row of two story units, and there were other rows of units as well,
and the entire ugly thing sprawled in the middle of nowhere, miles from
town. Kostya headed for the jungle gym
between buildings, and found it braced stoically against the onslaught of wind
and snow, but there was no sign of Bobik.
Finally a sense of genuine concern made itself felt, and it was more
than mere irritation with his grandparents’ terrier.
He found himself hurrying. At the end of the housing row, a woman
swiping frost from her windshield paused to shout at him. She brandished her scraper. Kostya realized that he’d run out in the cold
without coat, hat or gloves. Now that he’d been reminded he felt his fingers
abruptly go numb.
“Have you seen a terrier?” he
cried. “A little black and white
fellow?”
A head shake, followed by a warning to put his
cap and coat on. “It’s minus 17°C!”
He hugged himself and tried to think.
Some stupid person has dumped garbage along
the access road between housing and highway.
Plastic bags had been ripped open and he could still make out a set of doggie
footprints.
He
hurried on, but the set of tracks was soon covered over by snow.
He reached the highway and halted. He hadn’t planned on coming this far. He
looked back toward his grandparents’ home, but the wind lifted, and veils and
plumes reeled out from every snow bank. He could barely make out his
grandparents’ carport. He wobbled
awkwardly and ended up looking eastward.
A new apartment complex loomed above the
scruffy firs, and beyond it spread a field used for soccer in summer, and
beyond that was the scrap metal yard
where, legend had it, Bobik had been born in the trunk of a rusting Volga.
He delayed anxiously, reluctant to attempt the
main road. It lacked a walkway, and banks of snow thrown up by the plows made
it necessary to travel shoulder to shoulder with rushing traffic. He imagined Bobik crying in distress, his
tail waving frenetically as he waited for rescue.
Bobik had definitely
gone this way. Without deliberating
further, Kostya steeled himself to brave the busy highway, and after waiting
prudently at the traffic light for a cement mixer truck to rumble past, he
nearly stepped in front of the logging truck behind it. He leapt back and fell against a bank of
dirty snow. The truck whooshed by,
leaving the air charged with a piney pungency. Kostya got to his feet unscathed. Across the street two men at a bus stop
returned their attention to an approaching blue trolley.
He picked his way carefully along the border
carved by the plow. He was losing sensation in his face. Twice more a blaring horn warned him not to
be rash. When he reached the driveway to the apartment building he turned up it.
At the top of the drive he tilted back his
head. In the sideways flight of snow the
cement towers appeared to be undersea. Nearly all of the windows were framed by
Christmas lights.
He chafed his bare hands over his arms and bounded a few yards in kangaroo
fashion. It didn’t make him any warmer,
in fact it aggravated his hip and now he was limping again. He stopped to reassess.
Really, it was a long way for Bobik to have
ventured on his short little legs. A sense of failure nibbled at Kostya. He’d miscalculated. Should he turn back? He was so cold he shuddered in achy spasms,
but after a minute or so of anxiety a daydreaming state set in, and his whole
body calmed. Where the heck was
everybody? If he could talk to someone….
He’d
ended up inside the plaza between the two high rise buildings of sheer
cement. It was time to go back before he
froze. Still he dawdled, noticing the twinkling
Christmas tree behind one of the windows. He asked himself, not for the first
time that week, what his dad would get him for Christmas. So far, no hint. Something amazing. His dad rarely guessed wrong about gifts.
Kostya snapped out of reverie. He’d heard
a distinct, distant barking. He raced to
the parking lot fence and screamed repeatedly out across the snowy soccer
field. No answering yips. On the far side the gigantic mechanical claw
of the scrap metal yard hung idle. He
became aware that the wind has scoured the field and left it passable. He’d
already come this far….so….
The gate barely budged in the snow but he
managed to force a gap. He squeezed through and made a jerky dash across the
field. On the far side he came up against
the chain link fence which surrounded the scrapyard. “Bobik, you idiot!”
The scrapyard slumbered under snow. He couldn’t detect the slightest sign of
life; even the distant entry gate from the highway remained closed. He buried
his nose in the crook of his sleeve and stared at jagged metal mountains. He listened intently. He even called out inside his mind to Bobik,
on the chance that a psychic link existed between them.
Finally he turned and retreated, trudging
across the soccer field. A gust of wind
revealed a smooth glimmer, and ice crackled underfoot with a satisfying sound. He backed
away, then ran forward and glided over the ice.
At the last second he spun in a circle before sliding to a halt. He
laughed hoarsely. He repeated the process until his lungs felt raw and
hollow. Instead of hurrying homeward he
remained.
He began a second activity. This one didn’t produce laughter.
He stamped with his good leg and
broke off a chunk and without planning to do so, he raised the chunk to face
level and smashed it against his forehead.
Then another. Puffs of breath whooshed out with every
strike, and with every clunk and shattering against his forehead he was granted
a reprieve from …something.
The minutes passed. The shattering ice produced a numbed,
satisfying whiteness inside his skull.
Crack! A pain switched off.
Crack! The bliss of something
absent. Crack!
During one of these stunned intervals he looked up with a bleat of
surprise and saw an older boy watching him.
Blond stubble covered his cheeks. He wore an
ushanka with the ear flaps folded up, and an old soviet red star was pinned
on the front. The cold had imparted a
scraped appearance to his skin.
“Kostya, am I right? What’s up, pal?”
The boy’s sudden appearance was
scary enough, but the fact that the stranger knew his name was truly sinister.
A second boy approached from the
apartment complex. This one carried a
squirming bundle beneath his quilted grey coat.
Kostya lunged toward him. “Give me my damn dog!”
The boy held him off with an
outstretched arm. A thin line of reddish
gold beard encircled his mouth, and his lips curled back over small pointed
teeth.
“You’re pulling my leg, right? I just found him,” said the boy. “If you want to know, I plan on keeping him.”
At the sound of Kostya’s voice Bobik managed
to free his head and poked it out between flaps of the coat. He yipped and his panicked eyes pleaded with
Kostya: Save me!
The first boy intervened. “Relax, he’s busting your balls.” He signaled the second boy, who with a grin pretended
to hand over Bobik, but at the last instant snatched him back. Kostya made a grab for the terrier, and a
moment later enfolded him in his arms.
The little dog licked his face in a frenzy of relief.
Kostya turned to the first boy, the one
wearing the soviet star on his hat. “I
remember you.”
“Good.
You can stop crapping your pants.
Remember my name?”
Kostya didn’t immediately respond. His earlier effort to locate the out-of-
kilter part of the morning had turned out to be unnecessary.
Out-of-kilter had found him. Out-of-kilter brought
with it the dull conviction that the forward momentum of his life had been
suspended.
He’d had experience, he knew how it worked.
Things might go on, or they might not. But from now on, everything was moment to
moment. He tensed his body to make a dash for safety, knowing there wasn’t any
safety anymore.
“You’re called Arkady,” answered Kostya.
****
Author Bio: Dan Spanton lived in Colombia for five years, teaching English in
Bogota, Cali, and Medellin. He now resides in Maine where he's been a
clamdigger, sail maker, and restaurant cook.
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