Chapter 27
Mikhail never rode in cars again after an accident outside of New York City, when his young driver had panicked on black ice and sent them careening down a sharp ravine. The driver had died on impact, and Mikhail had remained trapped until the following morning, held in by his crushed legs. Wedged sideways between granite boulders several feet above ground, the door below him had popped open during their descent, allowing a bone chilling wind to work its way inside. Water leaked from the trunk and turned to icicles. It smelled chlorinated, as if it had come from a swimming pool.
He was certain he’d lost an eye, had detected a narrowing of vision and a stinging wetness, but could lift neither hand to his face since both arms appeared to be shattered at the elbow. Shock must have drawn a protective shroud over his body because he hadn’t felt much pain, was thankful for nature’s mercy. There was nothing to be done but wait for help to arrive, and for several hours he drifted in and out of consciousness-not the same as finding oneself dozing on and off on a warm park bench, but something grander and more terrifying, as if he were on a train traversing a vast night plain and coming to only when he heard the harsh cry of its whistle. He hadn’t known the train was real, not until the hammering light of morning when he was being loaded into an ambulance on the road above and heard it a final time, saw the brown-blur of it passing behind a stand of birches with peeled bark ruffling in the wind like pages of ancient text.
During the night he’d also heard dogs howling in the distance, and when he’d glanced down through the open door he saw an old Russian woman he once knew gazing up from below. She’d died years ago, but Mikhail still had tender memories of her, of when he’d sit next to her in the park, listening to her talk about Russia while she fed pigeons as plump as first year turkeys, some of which wound up in her stew pot when money was tight. While Mikhail waited for help in his leather upholstered cocoon-there was no hope of ever freeing his legs and much less crawling out of the ravine-the old woman built a pillow of dried leaves and got comfortable. Soon a trio of scruffy coyotes appeared at her side and sat also.
He wasn’t surprised to see the coyotes. Half suspended in the cold air, he thought he must have resembled a young elk hanging in a tree, remembering a time when he was a boy and hadn’t awakened to greet his father who’d returned late from hunting. He’d gone outside early in the frosted morning and had played below the tree without noticing the rigid corpse above, hadn’t even thought to look up until the body shifted forward and showered him with cold blood. And yet he’d calmly walked back into his house to run a bath while his mother nearly collapsed in terror, convinced that seeing the boy covered in blood had been an omen, a sign that her beloved Mikhail would one day become a cold killer.
It had begun to snow. The coyotes never broke off eye contact with him, and when they began popping their tongues against the roofs of their mouths, the old woman bent forward and swatted them on their behinds like they were insolent children. The dogs lowered their heads and whined.
“Why aren’t you afraid of them, Misha?”
“Who are you talking about?”
“The wild dogs.”
The old woman laughed. “What’s there to fear? You know them as well as I.”
“What do you mean? Wild dogs all look the same to me. Starved and desperate.”
“Look closer Mikhail. At their faces. You know them better than you think.”
Mikhail worried that the old woman had lost her mind. It saddened him to see her like this. “I don’t understand, Misha… How are you feeling? Are you sure you should be out here in the woods?”
“Don’t be silly, my dear. I go where I want to now. Can you believe my bones no longer hurt me when I walk?
“That’s wonderful, Misha…”
“Yes.”
The coyotes stood up and began to pace around the old woman. It was obvious they were growing impatient. Misha grabbed them by their tails and pulled them toward her. They whimpered but did not struggle to get away.
“Now look closer at their faces and you’ll recognize them. These are the three men that took you away from your mother, from your homeland.”
“But Misha… This is foolishness.”
“Just
Mikhail did as he was told. The longer he stared at the coyote’s upturned faces he realized that the old woman was right and he’d felt his heart race. Gradually their human faces became superimposed over their canine ones, like floating masks, exactly the way he remembered them from years before. Dmitri, Ivan and Viktor-he thought he’d never have to look upon those devils again. Not only had they convinced him to leave behind everything he knew, but they were also responsible for the death of his father.
Misha let the coyotes go and they began pacing around her again, baring greenish teeth. Some pissed dark holes in the fresh snow. The smell wafted up and burned his nostrils.
“What do they want Misha?”
“To tear you to pieces of course. They are still angry for what you did.”
“But they murdered my father. My mother warned me and I didn’t believe her. I thought it was only one of her tricks to get me to stay.”
“I see,” Misha said. “You must tell me what happened.”
Mikhail waited for a wave of dizziness to pass. Was he still losing blood from his right arm? He’d felt it collecting in his sleeve. He thought he could see a scattering of drops on the snow below.
“We’d been celebrating since dawn, when we first caught sight of New York. That night someone would help with our passage onto shore. I wasn’t used to drinking so much and passed out behind some crates. But when I awoke I overheard them talking, saying what an ignorant fool I was and how they were planning to make me do the most dangerous work, that they looked forward to turning my life into a living hell. Who’s going to care if he dies, Dmitri had told them. I hope his KGB dog of a father is watching from hell.
“I was terrified and didn’t know what to do. I lay there and cried while they listened to American music on a portable radio, laughing and drinking bottle after bottle of vodka, bragging about who would become the richest of the three. I was still terribly drunk and before I fell to sleep I prayed to my mother. Begged her forgiveness and asked her what I should do. I had a dream she was standing outside our house. Her eyes were sunken though ringed with silver tears, she’d lost a lot of weight. She refused to speak to me, or maybe she was incapable of speech and I watched as she floated past me to the tree I used to play under, saw her reach up and snap an icicle off a branch and hold it before her. I noticed then that the ice was in the shape of a knife and there was blood frozen in it. Her message was clear. When I awoke I crept out onto the deck and waited, holding the very knife my father had used for cutting deer meat, the one gift she’d carefully wrapped and hid in my pack before I’d left with my father’s killers. She’d made sure I was prepared.”
“And how did it feel to kill them?” Misha asked.
“It was easier than I thought it was going to be. They were too drunk to see it coming. One at a time they stumbled up on deck to urinate in the bay and I let them have it, slit their throats and pushed them overboard while they were still holding themselves. Before the captain came down that night to tell us when we’d have to be ready, I’d had plenty of time to clean up the mess. When he found me I pretended to be dead drunk. He seemed curious about what happened to the others but I acted as if I knew nothing and he wrote me off as a slow-witted boy.
