Under This Unbroken Sky (18 page)

Teodor doesn’t blink. “I’m just talking to my sister.”

Ivan rushes in with twigs in hand. His cheeks glow, he smells of cold and snow and spruce. Stefan nods his best officer’s nod and shuts the door.

“Petro and I are having a contest, to see who can get the most wood fastest.” Ivan wipes his nose with his mittens. He has to get back or he’s going to lose again and he likes his hat.

“Come here,” Teodor orders abruptly. “You too,” he addresses Lesya. They gather around the table. “You two are witnesses.” Ivan doesn’t know what the word means but hopes it means he can leave soon.

“I want to settle between us.” Teodor retrieves the ten dollars from his pocket.

“You don’t have to do that now.”

“Yes, I do.” He unfolds each bill and lays it flat on the table. “I’m paying for the land tomorrow.” He counts it out. “Ten dollars. The full amount.”

Anna touches the flimsy paper. “It’s not due until the spring.”

“I need to pay now. I need us to settle.”

“Stefan should be here.” She’s worried that he’ll walk in and see
the money. Last time there was money in the house, two dollars she had hidden in the flour tin, he took it and didn’t come home for three weeks.

“He’s got nothing to do with it. You took the claim out for me.”

Ivan shuffles through the bills. He’s never seen paper money before.

“Pay attention,” his father warns. The adults keep talking above his head. He can see the bag of candy from here. He thinks his favorite will be the white ones with the red stripes, like an apple.

“I need it in writing, that you received ten dollars from me to purchase this land. It’s my land, Anna.”

“I know it is.” She looks hard at her baby brother and wonders when he became so old.

He sets a pencil nub on the table and smooths out a piece of brown wrapping paper saved from the sausage. “Write it, so everybody knows.”

Anna picks up the pencil.

“Watch this,” he orders Ivan and Lesya. Anna scrawls the words in a cryptic, flowery script
: Teodor Mykolayenko has payed me ten dollars for the land.
She signs her name. Teodor picks up the paper.

“What does it say?” he asks Anna.

“It says it’s your land.”

He nods. He looks to Lesya. He knows she is listening.

“Did you hear that?” he asks Ivan.

“Yes, Tato.”

“What did she say?”

“She said it’s your land.”

“Why?”

“It’s on the paper.”

“Why?”

Ivan hesitates. It feels like a test, but he doesn’t know what will happen if he gets the answer wrong.

“Why?” Teodor asks gruffly.

“Because of the money.”

“So tell me why it’s my land.”

“Because you gave her money and the paper says so.” He looks to his father, hoping he’s done good.

“That’s right.”

Ivan grins. Teodor slaps him hard across the face. “Don’t ever forget this.”

ON THE WAY HOME, IVAN DOESN’T HOLD HIS FATHER’S hand. He lags ten feet behind. The sting of his handprint still on his cheek…he tries to forget about the land, the money, and the paper…but he can’t.

He wishes there was never any land. He wishes his father never came back. He wishes he still had his hat, so his ears wouldn’t be freezing right now. He wishes he hadn’t got the answer right.

STEFAN LAUGHS WHEN ANNA TELLS HIM WHAT SHE HAD to sign. He tells her that doesn’t mean a thing, the land is registered in her name and that’s all that will ever matter. He basks in the aroma of the roast and wishes he had a glass of whiskey to wash it down, and a big cigar. Anna fights waves of nausea from the smell of the cooking meat. When she tells him he didn’t give her the money, that he paid the office himself, Stefan hurls the tin cup across the room.

THE NEXT DAY, IT SNOWS LARGE, FLUFFY FLAKES. THEIR heavy wetness quilts the land a foot deep. To the children’s delight, Maria has kept them home. It is the perfect snow for making
snowballs and snowmen. Katya and Ivan throw themselves into its softness, chase each other through the drifts. They let themselves fall backward to be caught by the earth. They stick their tongues out. The flurry of flakes misses their mouths, hits their cheeks, and clings to their eyelashes. They spread their arms and legs wide and fly. They roll away, leaving a chain of snow angels strung across the field. The snow falls so thick and straight, with not a breath of wind, that it curtains the prairies and they can’t see fifty feet ahead.

Teodor went to town early this morning, despite Maria’s protestations that he could lose his way. The snow would obliterate his prints, landmarks would be hidden, the road would be covered…he told her he would be back soon. He slipped his hand in his pocket to check again that the money was still there, and left.

Maria knits compulsively. She has finished one mitten and is already adding the red band to its mate. He should have been back by now. Another couple of hours and it will be dark, and no sign of the snow letting up. What if he’s not home by dinner? Is she supposed to wait until dark? If she waits until dark, how will they find him then?

Her anger mounts. She knits faster. She’ll have to go to Stefan. How is she supposed to wade through this snow four months pregnant? What if she falls? She could send Myron, but then she’s left waiting and wondering. They’ll need a search party. They’ll probably go to Josyp Petrenko’s and get his dog, try to retrace Teodor’s steps, so long as he hasn’t wandered too far off trail or went too far east and crossed one of the ponds. If he broke through the ice…

She drops a stitch. He doesn’t think about the consequences of his actions. What would happen to her and the children if he…she stops herself from thinking the word, afraid that she will conjure the reality.

He could have waited until next week to pay. He could have
waited until the spring. He could have waited until next season, after the next crop. They could have used that money this year. Sometimes she wants to scream at him:
Think of us! Forget your pride, forget being right. Being right sent you to jail. Being right forced us to leave everything we knew. Being right brought us here. Being right sends you out in the middle of a snowstorm and gets you lost and we find your body next spring in a gully or under a spruce tree curled up like you went to sleep!

She gasps, terrified that she might have just conjured a curse. She spits over her left shoulder three times. She clutches her cross and gets down on her knees. She prays with all her might that Teodor is a good man, a good husband, a good father, and that she’s the one who should be punished for her sinful thoughts. She prays to the Blessed Virgin to keep her family safe, she opens her heart so that God can see how much love she has inside her and not to listen to her momentary weakness. She prays to bring him home safe.

She stays on her knees, even though the baby in her belly digs against her ribs and presses against her bladder. She stays on her knees when Dania kneels beside her and prays that her mama will tell her what’s wrong. She stays on her knees when Sofia pulls on Lesya’s hand-me-down long underwear, with the bulging worn-out ankle, dons her winter coat with the burlap patches, and clomps outside in her cracked boots to sit in the snow, refusing to pray. She stays on her knees as a pot full of snow turns to water and boils on the stove. She is still on her knees when she hears Katya and Ivan screeching with delight and Teodor’s laugh as he hammers them with snowballs.

MYRON TRAMPLES A PATH THROUGH THE SNOW ALONGSIDE the stone wall. The trail reaches all the way back to the lake. This is the best snow for trapping. When there’s just a dusting, the
rabbits wander all over—willy-nilly. They’re almost impossible to catch; you can’t predict their route. But when it’s deep like this, they tend to follow the easiest route.

Myron sharpens the end of a willow branch and drives it into the snow. Rabbits love to eat willows. He pulls off his mittens and untangles the coiled wire. The cold metal sears into his warm palms. He straightens the wire, loops it once, threads it through a washer, then ties the end to a poplar stump. He bends the snare so that the noose is camouflaged among the willow twigs, adjusts the height until it skims the snow, then pulls it tight so the loop is six inches across. Wide enough for the rabbit to enter, but narrow enough to catch its haunches. He could rig a spring pole that yanks the animal up and strangles it. Some swear that method’s quicker and the meat doesn’t taste as strong, because the rabbit struggles less. Fear has a taste. But he’s never seen a difference in the killing method. Nothing makes dying easier.

He prefers to check the snares more frequently so they don’t suffer long. He goes out at dawn and dusk, the most likely time they’ll be feeding. He always carries his father’s .22, a little club made from white ash that he keeps in his back pocket, and his hunting knife. His father made him carry the rifle as a safety measure, in case he ever met with coyotes on the hunt for easy food. Last year, Myron saw plenty of tracks but never a coyote. They got half a dozen of his rabbits. Sometimes he’d find the snare, sometimes he wouldn’t. There’d be tufts of fur, spatters of blood, some entrails, but nothing else. Just tracks leading away.

His dog used to come with him. He could smell rabbits a hundred feet away. He’d tense up and point one leg, his whole body shaking with anticipation. Myron would crouch down low and scope the horizon. He’d see only white snow. He’d look harder where the dog was fixated and finally see a black nose and eyes,
and then the shape of the rabbit would separate clearly from its white camouflage. Myron would give the signal and the dog would chase it down, until the rabbit veered in the wrong direction and the dog would snap its neck. He’d carry it back and lay it gently at Myron’s feet. He was a good dog. Then the coyotes got him.

Myron dusts the snow with his mitten, obliterating his tracks. He wishes that when the rabbits got caught, they would sit still and wait for him to come. But they always fought. Twisting and kicking, wrapping the wire tighter. He’s found them with their paws cut off; or with their bellies cinched so tight he’s had to cut them open to get his fingers around the wire. One was almost decapitated. The wire caught around its throat.

He doesn’t understand why they just don’t give up. Realize that there’s no escape. Sit peacefully and he’ll come by shortly. He’ll speak gently and make them feel that everything’s going to be okay. Then with one quick rap on the back of the head, hold them until their feet stop twitching. But it’s never like that.

He hears them crying before he reaches them. A sickening squeal that shivers through his bones. He finds them throttling their bodies, flailing and twisting. Their eyes bulging with fear, bubbles of blood dripping from their noses. They look him straight in the eye as he holds them down,
You did this to me
. He cracks their heads until their eyes empty. Sometimes it takes three or four blows, because his own eyes are closed. If he was rich and didn’t care how much a bullet cost, he’d shoot them, one shot behind the ears. Then he wouldn’t have to see their eyes.

Myron sits on the stone wall. The world darkens gray with the approach of night. It is so quiet, he can hear the silence. It has a sound, this quiet. A low, hollow pulse. Empty, yet all-embracing. Snowflakes flutter down, coating him white. He pops the lemon drop in his mouth and holds it on his tongue. Tart and sweet, it dissolves.

IT IS DARK BY SIX O’CLOCK. IVAN AND KATYA HAVE BEEN given permission to stay outside but aren’t allowed past the third spruce tree with the crooked top, about twenty feet from the house. They stand on twin boulders. Ivan’s rock is slightly higher and rounder. At the top of their lungs, they singsong
Myron, Myron
, pausing only to hear if he is answering. They call high and sweet.
Myron
.

It was a game they started last winter, when Myron was only twelve and the .22 was still too large for his hands. Maria started the chant one night, when he didn’t come home at the expected time. It was February. There was three feet of snow. It had been bitterly cold for weeks. Rabbits were scarce. All that week, the coyotes had been close. Howling through the nights. In the morning, their tracks passed by Anna’s. The snow was stained yellow where they had marked the corners of the house and shack.

That night, the children were already in bed, fully clothed. The stove was burning, but there was no warmth. The lamp had been blown out to conserve kerosene, but the shack was bright from the full moon stealing through the cracks. Maria was sitting beside the door, wrapped in a blanket, bundled in her coat and boots, listening for Myron when she heard the coyotes. One near, one far. A short, yelping howl answered by a long, plaintive wail.
I’m here
, they moaned
.

She waited breathless for the crack of the .22, and when it didn’t come she stepped out into the night. Her heart pounding in her chest, her ears straining to hear, she willed her eldest son to come home. The night was frozen. The horse and cow, safe inside the barn, were quiet. Her little boy’s tracks led into the darkness.

Myron?
she quietly called, as if she could make him emerge from the night’s veil. He would appear dressed in his father’s wool
pants rolled up at the hems and wearing his father’s leather jacket that had been left behind for safekeeping. The shoulders too wide, the cuffs hanging past his mittened hands. The .22 slung over his shoulder. A little boy pretending to be a man.

The coyote wailed again, closer this time. With all her maternal senses electrified, her entire being strained to feel her child; to feel any sense of him being ripped from her heart.

Myron.
Maria called as if he was on the other side of the barn and late for dinner. In the distance, a second coyote answered and, to the east, a third. Rage filled her belly. He’s mine, she screamed inside.

Myron!
She hollered, reaching for him across the field, not caring who she woke.
Myron!
She screamed until her throat hurt. His name stretched into a long howl.
Myron!
Her call filled the night.