Backpacks and Bra Straps (4 page)

“The Russians were severely ill-equipped, hardly able to provide food, shelter, clothing, or artillery for their men. Their strength was in large numbers, but it must have been absolutely hellish. They sent young teens out to the battlefields without weapons. Two soldiers shared a single rifle, the unarmed man trailing behind, at the ready to pick up the weapon of his fallen comrade. Can you imagine? At least nowadays our Canadian and American troops have enough supplies and equipment.”

As Ammon’s horror stories continued, I felt a heaviness in my chest that could almost be classified as guilt. How could I complain about anything when these men had marched to their deaths in the freezing winters, barefoot, with no shelter? Missing my friends and pets was nothing compared to losing family members to such a cruel war. My personal interpretation of suffering was insignificant compared to the unfathomable pain this land had suffered.

“So, do you think the statue is representing that? Two soldiers to one weapon?” I asked, looking up at them.

“I didn’t think of it that way,” Ammon said, “but maybe. There’s no information on the statues in my book, and all the signs are in Russian. To be perfectly honest, I don’t know what or who they represent. I guess they leave it open to your own interpretation.”

“Well, I can’t imagine the pain this block of stone represents.” Mom placed her hand on one. “Reading Sky’s name on a plaque would never fill the hole of his loss.” Her simple statement resonated with everyone. The thought of my own brother’s name etched into stone sent chills up my spine. There was a defining power behind her remark that really hit home. For all of us.

Sorcha
5

“Y
ep, this sure brings back memories,” Ammon said, turning around to face us just as the ticket window was slammed in his face. He slapped his small Russian phrasebook shut in frustration.
Back to the drawing board,
I thought, despairing over the hardship of this language barrier. But before we had time to consider a Plan B, Bree said, “Oh, look over there. Missionaries.”

“No way,” I said.

Mom smiled. “See? Just when we need help, it always shows up.”

Recognizing them by their distinctive white dress shirts and matching black backpacks, we took action. This was the second time we’d run into young Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints missionaries in Russia. The organization’s young men are typically assigned a mission and spend two years, most often in a foreign country, to learn the language and proselytize. They were probably American and would be a great help in translating.

Bree approached them with an outstretched hand. Reading their name tags attached to their right shirt pockets, she grinned. “Elder Timmons, Elder Jones. It’s so nice to meet you.”

The two twenty-year-old American lads looked as if they were seeing double as they shook our hands in formal greeting.

“Whoa, dang! A whole Canadian family. That’s out of this world,” Elder Timmons, the senior of the pair, said, shaking his head in disbelief after hearing our story. They couldn’t stop smiling as they looked us up and down. “This is really something. I haven’t heard English in a year and a half. This is crazy.” His familiar and much missed Californian accent was equally appreciated.

“I can’t believe you guys are here,” Bree said.

“Good thing, too, because it’s a bit of a nightmare with everything being sold out,” Ammon grumbled. “They keep shutting the window in my face, and it just feels like it’s impossible to get the heck out of here.”

“Yeah,” Elder Timmons laughed, “I remember when I first came and couldn’t speak a word of Russian. But they treat everyone like that. Try not to take it too personally.”

“Where are you guys trying to get to?” Elder Jones asked, pushing up his glasses.

“We want to go south as soon as we can, and head into Kazakhstan. I know there’s a direct train there, but they won’t help me at all.” With the elders’ assistance, we went back to the ticket window, and Ammon explained as they translated. While the woman searched for availability, the two young missionaries barely took time to breathe between questions.

“So, what are you guys doing here? Are you just on vacation? What made you choose Russia?”

“Well, sort of a vacation, but not really. We sold everything we had left back home and are on a one-year backpacking trip,” Mom answered.

“Really? Dang. You’re way braver than my mom. She’d never do something like that. She cried when we found out I was going all the way to Russia for my mission,” Elder Jones said. “What do you think of it here?”

Mom said, “I don’t know, we’ve heard some pretty scary stories, but so far everyone has been really nice.” Ammon gave her a doubtful look. “Okay, except for the window getting shut in our faces. But I’ve never felt unsafe, and people have been unbelievably friendly, for the most part.”

“So far, the only dangerous thing for us has been the verbal abuse of drunks on the streets. The old grandmas can be pretty aggressive too, especially with their canes.” Elder Timmons chuckled. I could definitely relate to seeing men drunk and swaying in the streets as they drank from paper bags. But why wouldn’t they drink a lot, when vodka was cheaper than bottled water here?

“Oh, and don’t forget about the man who swung at us with a hatchet that one time. Maybe our moms were right to cry.” They laughed to put a positive spin on what must have been a pretty nerve-wracking time.

“Seems that might be a common occurrence here,” Ammon said, referring again to a similar story he’d heard from a tourist who was chased down the street by a crazed, axe-wielding babushka the first time he’d visited Russia.

“You guys are headed out of Russia then?” Timmons, the more talkative of the pair, asked. “Have you got the rest of the route planned, or are you just going with the flow?”

“At this point, we planned the first six months based around the trekking season in Nepal. We’re just working our way down to Kazakhstan, then we’ll pop back into China from the west to reach Nepal in late September, early October, just before it gets busy on the trekking trails.”

“Wow. That sounds amazing. I’d love to do that one day,” Timmons said.

“But it’s all still pretty vague, kind of like now.” Ammon indicated us standing there looking slightly lost, with all our baggage weighing us down in the heat. “We’re just kind of trying to wing it to the border. We want to get to Almaty. We never have anything pre-booked; we just kind of find our way as we go with a general direction in mind.”

“How long have you been out now then? Where did you start?”

“We started in Hong Kong after flying out of Seattle on May 5.”

“Yup. 05/05/05!” Mom added, always eager to share her interest in numerology. This specific numbering was special because the number five represents freedom, a value that was quite indicative of her new direction in life.

“It’s August 5 today. So you’ve been out exactly three months now. Do you think you’re going to last the full year? Like, would you say you’re getting tired of it yet? Or is it more like you never want to go back?”

“It’s all gone by so fast, I just can’t imagine being ready to stop after a year. I want to keep going for as long as the money lasts.” Mom smiled, oblivious to the fact that her revised timeline might not be welcome news to everyone concerned.

“That’s what I was just going to ask. How do you afford all this travel? Do you stop along the way to work?”

“No. Or not yet, at least,” Mom replied. “We’ve been travelling on a pretty tight budget.”

“A
really
tight budget,” I emphasized.

“Yeah, and so far, it’s cost a lot less than we thought it would,” Ammon began. “I’ve only spent eighteen hundred dollars so far. At this rate, I’ll be able to last a lot longer than a year. I don’t know about them, though,” he said, nudging us off. “They like to splurge on luxuries.”

“Luxuries?” Bree objected. “You call ice cream a luxury?”

“Well, you didn’t need it. And what about upgrading to second-class seats on the train?”

“That was only one time…” The elders’ laughter interrupted our sibling banter.

“Oh man, you guys are great. It sure does make me miss my brothers and sisters.” Interrupted by the ticket lady, Elder Timmons turned to give us the bad news that all of the international trains were booked for the next week.

“Okay, I guess we’ll have to just get as far as we can and figure out what to do from there. We sure can’t sit here for another week, so we don’t have much choice,” Ammon said, pulling open his map. He searched for the major towns along the route before inquiring so he could make up his mind based on whether we could get tickets.

“Could you ask when the next one is going in that direction and how far it will take us? I think there is likely one that goes to Barnaul.”

“Yes, there is one going there tonight,” Elder Timmons said after asking. “It leaves at 7 p.m., and it’s a fifteen-hour trip.” This way was inevitably slower. Instead of one direct train, it would be a three- or four-step journey on various buses and trains that would take days. But we didn’t have a lot of options, so we traded our rubles for tickets, feeling grateful to at least be heading out in the right direction. The elders were reluctant to say goodbye, but they were on a tight schedule and had only minutes to catch a train of their own.

“It was so great to meet you. Boy, a Canadian family…” They shook our hands vigorously as they bid us a hearty farewell. “Oh, and if you last the year, you guys should definitely write a book.”

The next morning we dragged our tired bodies off the train in Barnaul. Once again, there was no room left on the trains going to Almaty, so we walked across the street to the bus station. Apparently our luck hadn’t expired, as we were able to snag the last four seats on a ten-hour bus ride to Semipalatinsk, just beyond the Kazakhstan border.

Half an hour later, I was sitting beside Bree, travelling on yet another one-way ticket, wondering where in the heck we’d end up that night. I had my
Gone with the Wind
open on my lap, but I was busy reflecting on our chance encounter with the elders. Just as my mom had said, it seemed that whenever we were in trouble, someone was put in our path to help.

I had no idea at all what to expect from the next two countries on our itinerary; I could still hardly remember how to pronounce them. Only a few months earlier, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan didn’t even exist in my vocabulary. I had the sense that we were stepping out into the complete unknown, sort of like it might feel to go to Atlantis.
How would anyone ever find us if they had to? Sure, we’d found help when we needed it,
I reasoned,
but could that just be coincidence? What happens if help doesn’t come? Will it really come again and again, or have we used up all of our lucky breaks?
None of the others seemed to have any worries. They were excited and anxious for the road to reveal itself. Conversation and storytelling continued as normal: just another day of adventure.

Ammon finally told us the rest of his short-lived, could-have-been, Russian romance story. I secretly enjoyed hearing him tell his old travel stories, and they distracted me from inventing more reasons to worry. When he’d gone to Russia with his university buddy, Ammon had fallen for the receptionist at the hostel.

“When we first got there, she actually reported us to the police and had us thrown in jail for arriving without the proper registration,” he said.

“Jail?” Mom said, raising a disbelieving eyebrow at him.

“Okay, so it was just the police station, but still… They threatened us with arrest and big fines, which we ended up somehow talking our way out of. It was kind of intimidating. But man, she sure was beautiful,” he said. By the time they’d finally been released, he’d decided it wasn’t really her fault and went to apologize. He ended up talking with her until 2 a.m. Despite their earlier mishap, her subsequent actions made it clear in every way that she was flirting and coming on to him. Keeping to his schedule, though, he’d said goodbye, leaving his friend speechless except for calling him a complete fool.

“We just need to find you a Russian bride to join the trip,” Mom half joked at the end of his tale.

“Well, you’ve got all of,” pausing to look at his belt watch, “two hours to make that happen. Oh, and good luck. So long as I have the three of you around, I don’t have a prayer. I’m just glad to be getting out of here,” he concluded. Ammon had changed since we’d arrived in Russia. For the first time on the trip, he wasn’t walking a block ahead of us. He’d spent days dragging his feet and trailing in our wake, leaving a visible trail of drool behind him.

He’d even stated more than once, “This might be the only country where I won’t complain about going shopping.” These women had him wrapped around their pretty little fingers. I mean, Ammon? Staying behind to shop? It wouldn’t have happened anywhere else, that’s for sure.

“Oh look,” he would say, waving his hand in the direction of yet more ladies wearing skirts that just barely covered the curve of their cheeks. “More pretty butts to torture me.”

“Ammon!” Mom had no problem correcting her eldest, fully grown offspring, given that we were one step away from having to peel him off the pavement and carrying him the rest of the way.

“What butts? You mean those toothpicks wearing skirts?” I asked.

“I want to scream or just jump out of my skin and die! It’s so frustrating to see such beauty. If this is how Sky and Dad feel all the time, because they actually like how the girls at home look, then it’s no wonder they are so crazy.”

Ammon rarely talked about women, and he had always been too busy to have an official girlfriend. It was Skylar, two years Ammon’s junior, who was the heartache-inducing chick magnet. They say you can figure out a lot from a person by taking a peek into their bedrooms. Well, you didn’t need to look much beyond that to know my brothers are complete opposites.