Voroshilovgrad (25 page)

“So what do we do now?”

“I don't know, Herman,” Kocha replied candidly. “We gotta shut down the station for now.”

“Get outta here with that shit!”

“Buddy, they'll be back, and nothing will be left by the time they're done—I'm telling you. They'll stop at nothing. They saw Petrovich was in truck and they went right ahead anyway. And Petrovich has been working this area for the past twenty years or so.”

“I'm not going to shut the place down—no way,” I declared.

“Sure, sure, whatever you say,” Kocha said.

“Are you going to stick around?”

“We'll see. I'm too old to get knocked around like this.”

“What are we going to do about the gas?”

“We gotta have some more delivered.”

“Do we have any dough?”

“No, Herman, we don't have any dough, and I don't see how we're gonna get any for a while, either.”

Kocha had had another sleepless night, it seemed, as he kept nodding off during our conversation. I went over to see Injured in the garage. He looked a bit distraught too, and he agreed that we needed to shut down the station for a bit. The corn guys had already blown up the gas tanker; it was highly unlikely they would stop there. That's just not how they did things—they never left unfinished business. Obviously, the fuzz weren't going to do anything, and it didn't seem like city hall was on our side, so Injured couldn't see any reason to be optimistic.

“Well, what if we don't shut down the station?” I asked.

“We don't actually have to,” Injured answered. “You think I'm scared of them? I don't give a fuck. It's just that
you
can pick up and leave anytime you want. Kocha and I are staying, and they'll roast us in our sleep.”

“What makes you think I'm going to leave?” I asked, a bit offended.

“Your past history,” Injured replied.

“What do you know about my past history?”

“Herman,” Injured said, patiently, “who are you trying to fool? It's easy for you to say you're gonna stick around, because you know you can always leave. But what about Kocha and me?”

“Here's how it's gonna go down, Injured—I'm staying put and we're keeping the station open.”

“You're staying put?”

“I'm staying put.”

“Well, we'll see. Today you're staying, tomorrow you could be miles away.”

“Injured, I said I'm staying—that means I'm staying.”

“Well, we'll see,” he repeated.

“But what are we going to do about gas?”

“We'll have to buy some, but we don't have any dough. Don't think for a moment we'll get any insurance money for the last delivery.”

“Well,” I said after thinking for a bit, “how about I pay for it out of my own pocket, and then we make that money back.”

“You've got money?”

“Yeah, not much, but I've got some.

“All right, sounds like a plan.”

I asked him for his phone and called Lyolik.

“Lyolik,” I yelled as soon as I made out his sullen breathing on the other end. “How are my pals doing up there?”

“Herman!” Lyolik began a bit anxiously. “Man, you're unreal. You've been gone forever and haven't even called. Who does that? When are you coming back?”

“Lyolik,” I said, “hey, listen. I'm in a bit of a jam here.”

“You getting married?”

“Nah, not yet. But I need my money.”

“How come?”

“Lyolik, it's for the station. For the business.”

“You have a business?”

“It's my brother's business—remember? I already told you all that.”

“And?”

“And nothing. I need my money. Can you bring it down?”

“Herman, do you realize what you're asking me to do? I can't just drop everything and bring you your money.”

“But I really need it,” I said. “Otherwise, I'll be in even more of a jam. Lyolik, help me out, this one last time.”

“Herman, what do you need the money for?”

“I just told you.”

“No you didn't. I don't know, man. Come back home and we'll talk. You can count on us, we've been through thick and thin.”

“That's exactly what I'm saying. How soon can you get me the money?”

“But why do you need the money? You're not making any sense.”

“They torched my tanker, okay? I don't have any money here to pay for the next delivery. So Lyolik, get your ass moving and bail me out here.”

“Well, I don't know,” Lyolik said. “I'll have to talk to the boss first. I definitely can't leave right now. Maybe in a couple of days or so.”

“Come on, bro,” I yelled into the receiver. “Any minute now they'll torch me too! You know where I keep my money, right?” I asked.

“I know, “Lyolik answered gloomily. “In Hegel.”

“Yep,” I confirmed, “volume two.”

“I know, I know, don't worry,” Lyolik said, and signed off.

“Who were you talking to?” asked Injured, who had heard our whole conversation.

“Some Party colleagues,” I replied giving him his phone back.

“Should I wipe their number or keep it?” he asked.

“You can wipe it. These guys can find anybody they want.”

Injured picked up a hammer and started bending some piece of metal. I went outside and looked up at the sky. It was deep and cloudy. The clouds looked heavy and overloaded. Just like a tanker truck.

9

That day the conversation kept drifting back toward the burned truck. Katya and the dog were sent home and instructed not to leave the tower grounds. I felt like a real businessman, and somewhere deep down I was even glad that everything had unfolded
the way it did. Now nobody could be like, “Brohan, you're just getting in the way, so step aside and let us handle the real work.” It was my gas tanker too, after all. Moreover, I had decided to invest my modest savings in the business, so now I was putting my own neck on the line. Kocha, who had bounced back after a morning bout of weakness, just sat there in his catapult chair, smoking one joint after another, shooing away customers, listening to my MP3 player, and telling tall tales about the emergence of small business in our region. Petrovich sat next to him, chain smoking cigarettes, and treating his cuts and his sorrows with grain alcohol. Evidently, the alcohol was demolishing him—after lunch he was piss drunk, and around three Injured called the ambulance. They came and took Petrovich back home to rest. That's just the way things were done around there. I sat there listening to Kocha. I was still on an emotional high, and the old-timer, having found an appreciative listener, started going on about one particularly tough gang that worked the highway about ten years back.

“Yeah, that's how it was.” Kocha inhaled deeply, making his voice even more hoarse and thick. “Herman, I knew all of them. They were a great bunch—working-class guys. It's just that they smoked shitload of weed, and that costs a lot of money, you know? They picked up a bunch of Kalashnikovs. They thought about selling them, but then the default hit, back in '98. Well, what were they supposed to do with the guns? It's not like they could just throw them away. So, they started hijacking Kharkiv buses. Two of them would buy tickets and ride in the bus. The other guys would be waiting outside the city in their car, right around here,” Kocha said, motioning at the highway. “They'd steal old cars so
they could just dump them afterward. I'm telling you, they were real good guys, ya know? They'd wear those goofy ski masks. Well, they'd flag down the bus, put the masks on, and clean out the whole thing. They'd even rob their own guys that were on the bus, so they wouldn't blow their cover.”

“Why'd they have their own guys ride the bus anyway?” I asked.

“So they could jerk the detectives around,” Kocha explained. “They'd purposely contradict each other and feed them a real line of bullshit.”

“Ah, I see.”

“This was all during the winter and they'd walk around in the same ski masks they wore on jobs, that's how they got busted in the end. Still, they got three buses under their belts,” Kocha concluded, looking out toward the highway, at the shadows from Rostov. They were holding athletic bags stuffed with large bills and nodding to Kocha, like he was an old friend.

We decided that we had to take turns watching over the pumps to make sure they wouldn't get blown up too. “Uh-huh, pal,” Kocha remarked, “they'll burn the pumps down in the blink of an eye. Just so you know, I'm not going to sleep at all tonight. What am I, stupid or something? Buddy, I got no intention of letting them fry me.” He had already biked down into the valley, brought back a few bottles of port, settled in on the catapult, and built himself a barricade of booze. He went on and on about how he wouldn't
let them tie him down in his sleep or barbecue him, about how he'd seen much worse as a paratrooper, about how he could handle “these civvy brats.”

“Don't worry,” he said, passing me a bottle. “If I gotta, I can take them out with a knife or my nunchucks.” In the evening Kocha lit a bonfire right by the pumps. I tried stopping him, but he got all worked up, shouting that he knew best: rolling over empty metal barrels from somewhere out back, filling them up with old newspapers, and setting them on fire. The newspapers stank more than they burned. Injured ran over, berated Kocha for a while, and asked me to put the fire out. Before heading home, Injured tried convincing Kocha to go to bed, but the old timer stubbornly refused; his behavior was getting more and more erratic. He called Injured an old fag and then tried kissing him the very next instant. Finally, Injured gave up and he took off, his eyes shining angrily in the dark. Kocha cursed him up and down, all the while blowing him kisses and drinking straight out of a bottle. I settled in next to him, gearing up for a long, sleepless night. Kocha conked out at ten o'clock on the dot, though, and all of my attempts at waking him were futile. I picked him up as though he were a child and carried him over to the trailer. Then I locked the door from the inside and fell asleep too, without a care in the world. As I was falling asleep, I thought to myself, “They'll be able to identify my body by my headphones.” And then, “They'll identify Kocha's by his paratrooper tattoos.”

Injured woke me up early in the morning and stood there leaning over me judgmentally, taking in my rumpled and disheveled appearance. Kocha was gone. It was seven o'clock by my watch.

“Where's Kocha?” I asked.

“How would I know?”

“Why are you here so early?” I asked, staggering to my feet, barely awake.

I was wearing Olga's yellow-rimmed sunglasses. I had slept in them. Which might explain why I didn't have any dreams. I took them off and put them in my jacket pocket, next to my MP3 player and headphones.

“I couldn't sleep.”

“You were worried?”

“Yeah,
real
worried,” Injured said, instantly offended. “I was at this girl's place. In the early morning I thought to myself, ‘Maybe I'd better go check to make sure those bastards haven't burned everything to the ground.' Well, I ditched my girl—acted like a real jerk and kicked her out. All because of you guys, Herman,” he added, spitting. “And I couldn't tell you why the fuck I did it.”

He got a call right then. Startled, Injured put the phone up to his ear.

“Ah, it's you. Where are you? What?” he asked. “Why? Okay, fine.”

“It's for you,” he said, handing me the phone.

I took the phone from him, no less startled.

“Hello?”

“Yeah, buddy,” it was Kocha, even more hoarse than usual. “This isn't good. Open up the gate.”

“Where are you?”

“It's Masha . . .” Kocha said.

“Who's Masha?”

“Masha, you dope,” the old man hissed back. “Tamara's mom. She's dead. They called me last night.”