his two silver-handled canes. But they both chanted and sang with full voices, the purity of their lives giving strength to their hymns. The two were always ready to sing.
Andrei was both diligent and modest in his dealings with them. Unlike their maid, who was always leaning in as they sipped their soup to ask what benefice they planned for her in their will, he was respectful. He knew if they both died tomorrow, perhaps perishing hand-in-hand in their sleep, there was a great probability that he would be left poor as a cockroach. He believed this would be fine, a righteous punishment for so devotedly serving a God he did not quite believe in. On the other hand, if they bequeathed him even a small fraction of their wealth, it would only prove to Andrei that if God did exist, he was as indulgent as a drunk uncle at Christmas, throwing out candies and treats to the scattering children, regardless of who was good or bad. Not exactly the spirit you want to build a theology around. But it did not matter, God could do what he wanted to do, the priest would not beg a sou from these two souls who had already piously provided him steady refuge from the world. While they were strict in their rituals and demanding of his time, both of them were kind, and in exchange for a small stipend he delivered a modest service at every sunrise and sunset, along with longer, more elaborate sermons for saint’s days and Sunday masses. Clearly these two did not need his spiritual guidance, theirs were spotless souls, and there was scant wisdom he could offer in his homilies that they had not already gleaned from a lifetime’s experience. In fact, it was painfully obvious to Andrei that what they enjoyed most about their rituals at this point in their lives was simply how the duties of religious observation filled up their empty days.
At that moment his blessing of their bowed heads was disturbed by loud, concussive thunder booming close-by. It sounded as it was coming from over beyond the east side of their property line.
“Is it a rainstorm?” asked the old woman.
“No,” said Andrei, through guesswork measuring the direction and distance of the noises as the thundering continued to boom. “I do not think it is a rainstorm.”
“So what is it?” asked the old man, cupping a palm behind his good ear.
Andrei paused, listening to the rumbling as it grew. Rising, falling, shaking, and vibrating in its timbre with occasional loud cracks, it sounded more metallic than thunderous, and more organic than the gears of any farm machinery. Finishing his rough estimation, the priest grimaced, realizing the probable cause. “You will have to excuse me,” he said, reaching for his coat. “I believe God is burning down my house.”
XVII
Will scrambled to the corner of the barn, bewildered and naked, his ears deafened by the sound of crackling electricity, gunshots, glass shattering, and the screaming of women’s voices. Clouds of colored powders—seaweed green, turnip red, and deep orange—ballooned explosively throughout the room, jars smashed onto the floor, hurled down from above, where a ranting Zoya howled out strange phrases in what Will guessed was most probably Russian.
In the fading light, and with all the dust blooming about, he could not make out the attackers. The silhouette of a woman, shouting loudly in a language equally foreign, stood in the doorway as she and the man beside her both fired their guns straight up into the loft. There was a second man standing beside them, seemingly doing nothing but observing. Squinting through the haze, Will could make the first man out as Brandon and was sure the second was little Bendix. He did not recognize the old woman.
Other bullets were firing in from the outside, piercing the walls. The voices seemed to be coming from everywhere. Will desperately looked for a way to help. Another jar exploded, completely obscuring his view of the barn door. He realized they had not noticed, or perhaps could not even see him amid all the clouds of colored dust. He decided to try to sneak out the back and circle around to surprise the attackers from behind; he could possibly tackle one and maybe get a gun. He didn’t understand how Zoya was able to survive up in the loft; they kept shooting at her and she kept shouting. He knew he had to act fast.
He grabbed a garden hoe leaning against the wall and ran to the small door at the rear of the barn. Opening it, he found himself standing nose to nose with a little girl holding a chicken. The girl wore a deep scowl and was busy chanting, “Fish coin, fish coin, fish—” Remembering her from Zoya’s apartment, Will went into a sudden rage, quickly grabbing the chicken by the neck and hitting the girl over the head hard with it. “Get the fuck out of here!” he shouted at her in English, walloping her again while the chicken wildly squawked. “Get the fuck out!” The girl went shrieking off across the yard, holding her hands to her head as she scurried into the thick woods. Will dropped the chicken, which looked up at him menacingly, aggressively clawing the ground as if readying for a fight. Without a thought, Will kicked the bird, sending it off after the girl, flapping and fluttering its wings.
There was the simultaneous crack of a bullet and a stinging on his ear. “Ow!” He felt the warmth of blood down the side of his neck as he ducked around the corner. Checking, he found it was only a scratch of a wound. Mike Mitchell poked his head around the corner of the barn and took another shot with the pistol. It missed. With a leap, Will lunged back inside the barn and ducked to the side. He didn’t think Mitchell was stupid enough to come right in after him, but a second later that is exactly what Mitchell did, stepping cautiously across the threshold and getting clobbered in the face with Will’s hoe. It split Mitchell’s nose and sent blood spurting out as he collapsed. Will grabbed Mitchell’s gun as he fell and shot Mitchell twice in the head with it. Will had never killed a man before, and it stunned him how quickly Mitchell went from being alive to being dead. He quickly lay down behind Mitchell’s prone corpse, using it as a shield as he carefully aimed and fired toward the figures in the doorway.
Under attack, his assailants reacted immediately. Brandon leapt to the side while Will fired two more shots in his general direction. Will then turned in time to see Bendix slip off as well, leaving the woman still chanting while firing her revolver up into the loft. Hearing Zoya’s shouting and her footsteps jumping around on the floorboards above him, Will realized she was, against all odds, still alive. He tried to get a sense of where in the cloudy, dusty barn Brandon was, but he couldn’t see him. The sound of electricity crackled all around him. He couldn’t figure it out. He stood up and aimed the pistol at the old woman, but his chamber clicked empty.
Suddenly another figure slipped up behind her. Will paused. Who is that, he thought, the priest? There was a quick motion and the old woman’s arms flew out. Caught mid-shout, she gargled a scream and fell forward into the dirt.
Before he could react, Will suddenly felt a great weight pushing him to the ground, as though a sack of potatoes had landed on him. He collapsed beneath the mass of it. Will rolled to the side, desperate to avoid the next blow, adrenaline coursing through his veins. He was literally naked and defenseless. He suspected that the man who had been standing in the doorway had slipped away and had somehow come up behind him. The bullet would come any second. Again, he thought of Zoya. She was silent now, there were no footsteps in the loft, it was all over. He shut his eyes and winced, ready for the end.
“Hullo, hullo? What have we here?” a voice said.
Will opened his eyes to see Oliver standing over him, pointing past his shoulder. Will turned and saw another man lying in the dust about ten feet away. The man was also naked, his body curled up against the wall, and he was vomiting violently. Will got up and gave the man a closer look. “I think I know him from someplace.”
Oliver eyed the two of them. “I certainly hope so.”
Will felt bruised, probably from the initial fall. He looked around. There was shattered glass and liquid all over the ground from where a hail of bullets had torn through Elga’s collection of concoctions. Brinish and brackish liquids dripped down from the rafters, and the air hung thick with sulfur.
With his remaining strength, Will scrambled up the ladder to the loft. There he found Zoya lying on the floor, unconscious. He put his ear to her lips and listened for a breath while his hand felt around the top of her chest, desperately hunting for a heartbeat. It was there, faint but present. He looked around the loft; bullet holes riddled the ceiling and the back wall, as poxed as the Milky Way, yet she didn’t seem to have a scratch. He smiled in grateful wonder.
He found his pants by the pallet’s edge and pulled them on. Then he gently lifted Zoya and heaved her over his shoulder. Stepping with care, he cautiously made his way down the ladder to the barn floor. There he laid her down on the straw-strewn ground. Oliver came up to his side. “How badly is she hurt?”
“It’s hard to tell,” Will said.
