Under This Unbroken Sky (32 page)

The snow is driving sideways. Ivan presses against his father’s leg. They round the corner of the house and are lashed by the wind. They duck back behind the shelter of the building. “How about here?” Teodor suggests.

Ivan hoists his nightshirt. Snowflakes tickle his ankles. Modestly, he turns his back to his father. He pees lazily. A hot, steady stream. Teodor looks the other way, into the white, driving fury. The trees bend and sway, groan under the crush of snow. The wind howls.

“I’m finished,” Ivan yawns. Teodor rubs his head. “Back to bed.”

He opens the door and takes off Ivan’s boots, hangs up his coat. Ivan shuffles back to his room. “Ivan…” Teodor calls after him. But Ivan doesn’t hear.

Teodor stands at the doorway, waits until he hears the creak of his son crawling back into bed. The house is dark, but with his eyes shut he can see every child, every log, the blanket on the wall, the washbasin, shelves laden with preserves…Maria. They are safe here. He picks his jacket up from the floor.

“Teodor?” Maria’s voice wavers. She sees him as a shadow across the room.

“I have to check the horse.” He clutches his coat in front of him. “It’s bad out there.” He slips out the door.

Maria jumps from the bed and runs to the window. She sees him heading toward the barn, not putting on his jacket. Then the snow devours him and he is lost from her view.

TEODOR UNWRAPS THE .22 FROM HIS JACKET AND PUTS on his coat. There are two bullets in his pocket. He loads one.

I
F YOU ASK THEM WHAT HAPPENED THAT NIGHT, MARIA will say her husband said he was going to the barn to check the horse. She waited for him to come back and when he didn’t, she went looking for him. The storm was at its peak, and she could barely open the barn door. When she saw he wasn’t there, she ran back to the house and woke her eldest son. That’s when she realized the .22 wasn’t hanging over the door and that he must have taken it earlier and hidden it in the barn. Ask her if she knew where he was going and what he was going to do, and she will refuse to answer, saying only that he was a good man.

Myron will say that he was woken by his frantic mother, asking, “Where’s the gun?” He told her it was by the door, leaning against the wall. When she said it wasn’t there and they had to find his father, he knew. He knew where his father was going and what he was going to do. If pressed to answer how he knew, he will reluctantly answer, “My aunt turned him in.”

Myron will say that he tried to stop him. He ran as hard and fast as he could. But the wind was screaming and the snow was blinding and he couldn’t find the stone wall. Everything was black and white. The snow kept swallowing him, pulling him down. He hollered,
Tato! Tato! Tato!
But his voice was drowned by the shrieking gale. And then he heard the shot. One shot. He couldn’t tell from what direction. But he knew.

The girls didn’t wake until first light. The fire had gone out and they were shivering in their bed. The house was quiet. They
couldn’t hear their tato stirring his coffee or smell his morning cigarette. They didn’t hear their mama preparing breakfast or smell bread baking in the stove. They found her sitting at the window, staring out at the sorrowing prairies. When they asked her, “What’s wrong?” she told them to get on their knees and pray. Pray for their father. Pray for his soul.

Katya will say that she tried to pray, but the fire was out. She looked inside the stove and there were only ashes. Cold and gray. She will say the fire took her tato. It was only pretending not to be hungry.

Ivan didn’t see a gun; he remembered going to pee. The wind tried to take him away. His tato held his hand and told him to go back to bed. He didn’t say anything else.

Lesya will say she was asleep and there was a crack—like thunder. The window shattered and wind and snow shot into the house. Her mother, who was standing at the window, exhaled, looked down at her chest, and sank to the floor.

Petro will say he knew his uncle would come and kill them. He said that he’d be back to kill them all. No one will understand him when he says the crows took the quarter and that he can’t take it back. He didn’t mean to see the secret in the wall, but Ivan stole his hat. He didn’t see Teodor, but he heard him crash through the window, a wild dog that tore out his mother’s heart. He will ask over and over when his tato is coming to get him.

If Anna could tell you, she would say that she couldn’t sleep because of the wailing storm. It sounded like a baby crying. She had the lamp burning because she didn’t want to be alone in the dark. She doesn’t know what made her look outside, maybe the snow hitting the window, like fingers tapping. She rubbed the ice from the pane and through the wind and snow’s frenzied dance she thought she saw her brother.

He was standing in the storm, looking at her, and it scared her.
She thought he was a ghost, a forerunner, and that something terrible had happened. But then she noticed the snow accumulating on his shoulders, on his hair, and drifting over his boots, and she knew that he was real. She lifted her hand to tell him to come in. Come in out of the storm.

The window cracked and the wind whistled through a perfect round hole in the glass. And she felt warmth spilling over her heart. When she looked down, blood was blossoming on her chest and her lungs were gurgling. And she had to sit down, because it was snowing inside and the wind was carrying her away. And the coyotes were howling.

Teodor would have said that he saw his sister come to the window. She looked at him and smiled. Smiled as if none of it mattered. He pulled the trigger. He didn’t hear it fire. He didn’t hear the children screaming. He saw red on her white shirt. He saw the question in her eyes. Like she didn’t know why.

He saw her shudder and crumple.

WHEN TEODOR STOPS RUNNING, HE IS NO LONGER A MAN. He has outrun himself. His legs quiver, muscles taut. His chest heaves. He pants wildly. He has followed the tracks of the others like him—into the woods, toward the water, under branches, into the deep smell of spruce to the place of quiet. Here, the snow is packed down from their sleeping bodies. Smooth hollows. The storm roars around him, but he no longer hears the wind.

He takes off his leather jacket, his numb hands paw at the zipper, and he sheds the unfamiliar skin stinking of sweat and fear. He stares at the remains of the man and can’t imagine it was ever him. He neatly folds the skin, crossing its arms over its chest. He places the man in the crook of two twisted trees. He removes his boots, clawing at the strings caked with snow and ice; he slips off his heavy
feet. The soles are rough, the tops creased and scuffed. He tucks the shoelaces inside and places the feet side by side on top of the man.

He kneels down. He puts the gun under his chin and looks up.

He has never seen such

snow.

1939

T
HE MORNING SMELLS MUD-GREEN. BARN SWALLOWS dart in and out of the rafters. The horse stands patiently hitched to the cart, flicking away flies with its tail. The stove is lashed down. Bed frames dismantled. Blanket boxes, crammed with clothes and linen, are piled atop the inverted table. Chairs and benches are stacked. Two rolled mattresses are slung over the sides. A barrel holds a jumble of pots and dishes and the last few jars of borshch and sauerkraut. Tools, tack, rabbit pelts, and a deer hide are stuffed along the sideboards. The .22 is tucked under the bench.

Hidden deep within the everyday are their secret stashes. Nestled in a pail crammed with mittens and scarves is Ivan’s
WINCHESTER
box containing a rabbit skull, a penny, a broken pocket watch, a wasp’s nest, a rock shaped like an egg, and his father’s pocket knife.

In the bottom of Katya’s blanket box is a pressed wild rose, a carved wren whittled from birch, one lemon candy, and her tato’s tobacco pouch, which holds a partially smoked, hand-rolled cigarette and a burned wooden match.

Between the pages of Sofia’s English primer are two front-page newspaper clippings.
Woman Is Slain. Famed Dog to Assist Mounties in Search for Farmer as Sister Killed.
A half-page photo of a grinning German shepherd—“Dale of Cawsalta”—accompanies the story
.
The second reads:
Suicide Following Murder—Dual Tragedy in Land Ownership Dispute
. It is offset by a grainy photograph of a window and a mustached officer pointing to a single bullet hole.

In a coffee can, Dania has packed recipes jotted on brown paper wrapping—one in her father’s hand, for
Wheat Wine
—a thimble carved from poplar, a half a skein of red wool, one dollar and seven cents she earned laundering hotel bedsheets, and a pair of her father’s socks with the heels worn out. Wrapped in his handkerchief is a small handful of rich black earth.

Myron doesn’t have a secret stash. His possessions are out in the open. His father’s tools. Sharpened and oiled. The handles worn smooth. Each one marked with the initials T. M.

Between the folds of her linen, Maria has layered in seed packets, the picture of the Blessed Virgin, two wedding bands, a lock of Teodor’s salt-and-pepper hair, and her carved cross. Her mother’s Bible is there too. The pages loose in their binding. The cover page is scrawled with names and dates reaching back a hundred years. The most recent additions are written in Maria’s careful, ornate hand.

Maria Choma b. 1907 wife of Teodor Mykolayenko b. 1905.

The last entry, written in loose, careless script with a wide pencil stub reads:

Teodor Mykolayenko, died December 17, 1938, of the flu

Of the flu
is heavier. The letters have been traced several times to make it true.

Marking the page is a black-and-white photograph taken six years ago by a traveling photographer. They are standing in front of a granary on their first farm. They couldn’t afford the ten-cent fee, but Teodor traded three carved birds and two smokes.

They dressed in their best Canadian clothes and pretended there wasn’t snow on the ground. It was the first time Myron wore a tie. He didn’t tell his father that the knot was too tight. Ivan, still a baby, wouldn’t stop squirming. Sofia cried, because her dress didn’t fit and her hair had been cut short a few months earlier to get rid of the lice.

When Teodor crossed his legs to pose, that’s when Maria learned that he had also traded his socks. The spring chill leached through their summer clothes as they sat unmoving. They looked into the black eye of the camera and held their breath until the photographer said, “Breathe.”

It is their only photograph. Maria has studied the image a thousand times, searching his eyes. But there is no hint. No tell of what will come. In the moment between “Breathe” and the children swarming the camera, Teodor turned to her. He was smiling. His eyes glistened. And she saw such pride.

Myron hoists Katya onto the cart. Sofia clambers over the wheels and perches herself on one of the lashed-down chairs. Dania, cradling Maxim, tucks in between the stovepipe and a blanket box. A month old, the baby is fast asleep, oblivious to the life he is leaving. A brown birthmark, like a pawprint, marks the top of his right hand. Ivan hops onto the backboard of the cart. He holds on to the twine lashing down their hill of belongings. His legs, too long for his trousers, dangle over the edge, exposing bare shins.

The children look to their mother.

Maria stands in the doorway of the empty house. She memorizes its smell, its shape, the way it looked when it was full of life. She notices how well-built the frame is, how strong the timbers. She sees the clean, sharp lines etched by the hand planer, the sure, deep cuts of the saw and ax. This house would have stood a lifetime.

But this is not the time for good-byes. Those have happened already. They happened when they took her and the children into the woods to identify the body. His face had been covered with a piece of burlap. The heels of his socks needed darning. The .22 still in his hands. Perched in the fork of two twisted trees, his coat neatly folded, boots resting on top.

She said good-bye when they carried her husband’s frozen body into the house. He was curled up as though he were bowing. They laid him on the table. She washed him, put on a clean shirt. Waited for him to thaw to straighten his legs. He never fully uncurled. They buried him on his side in a wooden crate.

She said good-bye when the police, field agents, medical examiner, witnesses, and newspapermen streamed in and out of their house and Anna’s for three consecutive days, as if they were no longer there.

She said good-bye as she watched from a distance as they buried Anna on newly consecrated land, on the edge of the north quarter. Half the town came to pay their respects to a woman they never met. They erected a solitary wooden cross, a name, dates, nothing more, paid for by Josyp Petrenko. They wrote her name in English. They spelled it wrong.

She said good-bye to Lesya and Petro as best she could. She went to the neighbors and pleaded through closed doors. She made the trek to town, ignored the stares and slurs. She got down on her knees, kissed the hem of the priest’s robe. Told him that Lesya was a hard worker, a good girl who could clean and cook, and was
blessed with a voice from heaven. She said Petro was strong and could keep the church stove burning. She pleaded with him not to let Children’s Services take them, that they needed God’s protection. But it was Anna’s silver hairbrush and mirror that swayed the priest to take the girl. Not the boy.

It was Josyp Petrenko who offered to take Petro in as a farmhand. He also took the cow, Lesya’s hens, and the store of seed grain. She watched from the other side of the stone wall as the children were taken away. Neither had proper winter coats.

She even said good-bye to Stefan, though nobody knew where he was.

She said good-bye again when they refused to grant her the land in her husband’s name and told her she would have to leave in the spring.

She said good-bye yesterday as she cleared away the thistle choking Teodor’s unmarked grave, just outside of the cemetery’s holy land, condemned even in death. Brother and sister still separated by a fence.

She has said a lifetime of good-byes.

Maria props open the door with a large rock to let the souls wander in and out.
I give it back
.

She looks to her children, who are watching her, waiting for a sign that everything will be all right. Her low heels sink into the mud. She looks down over the field, past the matted thatches of winter grass and wildflower sprays of purple, white, and blue to the black tilled soil. Its furrows already softened and collapsing. Prairie fireweed beginning to heal its scorched wounds. Soon the wild grasses will reclaim the soil and all that will remain will be the stone wall. A pile of rocks that kept nothing in and nothing out. She looks no further.

She kneels down beside the stoop and for a moment the chil
dren think she is going to pray. Instead, she takes hold of a large rock nestled against the riser and struggles to push it aside. Myron steps forward, uncertain whether he should offer to help.

The hem of his mother’s long skirt wicks the dew from the grass. He can see wisps of gray, like fine threads woven through her dark hair, escaping the tight binding of her red khustyna. Her waist is larger, her arms fleshier. Her hands dry and chapped. Large, strong hands. The nails, short and chipped, permanently stained with earth. A pale indent brands her ring finger. The rock rolls away.

Maria looks to her children, watching impassively, no longer surprised by secrets. She scans the empty horizon, then pries away the barn board propped against the side of the stoop. She looks up at Myron. He crouches down and peers under the step. He looks to his mother. Her eyes betray nothing.

He drags out a bundle swathed in his mother’s soiled blanket. Maria unwraps the faded woolen cloth, exposing a bulging burlap sack. She checks for mouse holes. No rot, no dampness. She unties the twine binding and opens the bag. The smell is dry and sweet. The seeds of grain are golden. For the first time since that night, she feels as though she might cry.

She stands brusquely. “Put it up front with the .22.”

Maybe someday his mother will tell him how she covered her tracks following the tangle of men’s boot prints into the moonless night and how still the horse stood at the stone wall as she went ahead. Maybe someday she’ll tell him how slowly she unlatched the granary door. Or how quietly the bag slid across the snow as she dragged it, harnessed behind her. A low, soft scrape. Maybe someday he will be brave enough to ask if she was afraid. Maybe someday he will tell her that he followed her there and then they will talk like only a mother and son can.

Myron pushes back the too-long sleeves of his father’s leather
jacket, freeing his hands. His arms, all muscle and sinew, strain under the weight of the future. He hoists the bag on his shoulder and carries it to the cart.

Maria turns toward Ivan, squirming to keep his bum from sliding off the narrow back edge. Soon he will need new pants. She places her hand on his chest to calm his sobbing heart. “Hold on tight.”

She walks to the front of the cart, counting their heads.

“My hotovi?”
Are we ready?

The children nod their assent.

Myron picks up the reins to lead the horse. They watch their mother. The morning sun in their faces. Maria lifts the hem of her skirt and walks.

Myron rubs the horse’s nose. His feet slide in his father’s oversized boots.
Tch-tch-tch.
The cart lurches ahead.

The children sway to its roll, their eyes fixed on the graying house and the prairies unfolding between them.