Addie~ A Chapter from The Russian Girl by Dan Spanton

Addie McKenzie exhaled a shaky breath and pumped a shell into the shotgun chamber.  She was praying she’d make the shot, but in case she didn’t, she’d persuaded herself that skeet was a hillbilly sport, anyway.  A granite crescent at her feet had been notched with six shooting positions, and two ugly trap towers lobbed rabbits at a silver sky.       

She sighted down the gun barrel, feeling a sting in her wrist as her heart rate climbed.  In front of her, tattered trees flanked a clearing that sloped downhill for a quarter mile, and an insect chorus swelled from the brown swaths of mowed hay.  It was the raggedy butt-end of autumn.  Far below, where the woodland began, mist was pooling in hollows that would be frosty by midnight.

                “Pull!” 

            She braced for recoil and squeezed the trigger.

“You suck!” shrieked Tulip Turnbull.

The clay bunny flew unharmed above the dying alfalfa.  Addie ignored the sickening roil in her gut.  One more shot.  Keep it together.

“Pull!” 

The skeet target disintegrated.  This time Tulip kept her fat mouth shut. The instructor called Addie’s score and she turned over the twelve-gauge and rotated out.  No one high-fived her.  She caught a couple of half-hearted “way-to-go-Addie’s,” and Kyle Fowler, the dumbest jock in Portland High’s senior class, clapped briefly while staring at her sun-browned legs.  Near the clubhouse she spotted a patrol car squeezing into a parking space.  She pulled off gloves and safety glasses and sank onto grassy earth.

Kyle stepped up to shoot.

Addie sprawled.  She squinted heavenward through a weave of oak branches, heart racing.  She counted breaths, focusing on the distant, rhythmic clack and rumble of an Amtrak train, syncopated by Kyle Fowler as he shot positions.   Easy, she urged herself, no worries.  Nothing mattered.  Nothing….

Minutes passed.  Anxiety waned, and mischief raised its feral head.

She remembered the patrol car, slipping into a parking slot. She pushed up onto an elbow and called softly to Tulip Turnbull, who crouched near the trap house firing up a hand-rolled.  Addie jabbed a finger toward the cop car and mouthed “For you, Cupcake.”  Tulip scowled and exhaled smoke in her direction.  Tulip Turnbull had no sense of humor and Addie never tired of baiting her.

Addie knew the patrol car hadn’t come for Tulip.  She flashed back to the night before.  Her sinuses burned from acrid chemicals, and if evil-doings had an aftertaste, the flavor of bad behavior coated her tongue.

Skeet practice wound down as a half dozen kids chose to shoot a final round, and others headed out.  When Addie reached the parking lot Kyle Fowler passed, making a point of brushing against her, and suggested: “Me and you should hang out.”

 “Never gonna happen,” Addie retorted.   Kyle smirked and continued toward his car, and her mood ticked up a notch.  The fumes of fresh asphalt tarred the air, and nearby a weed whacker snarled with raw hostility.  She unlocked the Chevy Camaro and slung her backpack inside. The used Camaro, boasting a V-8 engine, white leather interior, and 26” wheels, had been acquired by cashing in a ten thousand dollar savings bond from her grandfather, intended for college tuition.

  She stole a look between vehicles.  She’d encountered most of the cops in the Portland Police Department, but this one had a fresh face.  A short black woman leaned against the hood of a cruiser.  At her feet lay pine cones flattened by tires and she swiped at them with the side of her shoe as if she was clearing a doorstep.  She looked up in time to catch Addie’s eye, and beckoned her over.

“You McKenzie?”

Addie turned and pointed out Tulip, climbing into Blind Billy’s truck.    “That’s her, Officer.”

A faint smile.  “Sure it is,” agreed the cop, not fooled.  “They told me to look for a tall blond who’d be a lot prettier if she wasn’t planning who to beat up next.”

“Everyone’s a critic.”

The officer smiled again, this time displaying teeth.  “You swing by Dicky’s Lobster Pound last night?”

“No reason to.  I quit over the weekend.”  As Addie spoke Blind Billy trawled past in his Ford F-150, his sister Tulip Turnbull riding shotgun.  Billy wasn’t actually blind, just fumbling and shortsighted.  Somebody had bashed him in the
skull when he was younger, possibly causing brain damage.    Right now he was gawking out the window like a lame-ass.  “Baddie Addie Waddie,” he brayed, almost steering off the pavement.  Tulip Turnbull screeched from the passenger seat but Addie didn’t turn her head.  Neither did Officer Martin.

“According to Richard Bailey, he fired you.  Just coincidentally someone entered the business after hours and activated a fire alarm.”  Office Martin studied Addie for reaction. “The pound got sprayed with flame retardant foam.  Worst part, it contaminated the holding tanks.  Piles of dead lobbies.”

“Sorry to hear it.   Any witnesses?”

“No, Miss McKenzie, I was hoping you’d shed a ray of light.”

“No ma’am, wish I could.”

Officer Martin sighed theatrically, opened the door of the black and white, and maneuvered her sturdy bulk inside.   

“I figured this for a long shot,” she confessed through the half-open window.   “Only reason I bothered is the lovely foliage.”  She waved toward the hillside above the parking lot, where naked branches clawed the sky.

“Sorry I wasn’t more help.”

“Hold up a sec.”  Through the car window she passed Addie a brochure.  “I worked a job fair last week,” said the cop. “Why not check this out?”

Addie accepted the brochure and eyed the cover.  “Law Enforcement Careers.  This a joke?”

Officer Martin regarded her soberly until Addie got the idea it wasn’t a joke. “It may help you get your head straight if you start planning your future.”

The patrol car backed onto the access road, tires crunching new gravel, and abruptly sped away.

Addie McKenzie experienced a rare moment.  People rarely proposed that she might have a future, and she was caught off guard.  Even she wasn’t sure what happened next, but she knew that fistfights and petty vandalism didn’t cut it anymore, they barely scratched the itch.

She heard a distant howl of triumph.  Above the skeet range rosy clouds bled down the silver autumn sky.   She remained rooted in place, listening to wind and gunshots, and the jarring tempo of hard, desolate thoughts.

                                                                               ****

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.

Dan is also the author of Waiting for Natalie available at these links.:

http://www.melange-books.com/authors/danspanton/waitingfornatalie.html

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009GBTV36

A Chapter from "The Russian Girl" by Dan Spanton

 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.

 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.

Dan is also the author of Waiting for Natalie available at these links.:

http://www.melange-books.com/authors/danspanton/waitingfornatalie.html

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009GBTV36