This Land is no Stranger

by Sarah Hollister

  “The most stolen model in the frigging country, this guy can’t put two wires together,” Urrico said, wheezing with laughter.

  At the present moment Brand possessed no slim jack lockout tool, no tools at all. She forced a passenger window on the truck, because that side was shielded from the residences across the road. She managed to gain entry without busting the pane entirely. Climbing inside, lying on her back beneath the steering column, Brand faced a nest of wires worthy of Medusa’s hair. She tried every possible combination.

  The truck resisted, remaining stubbornly inert. Brand finally found and connected the hot wire to the starter motor. The engine turned over, but only weakly, stunned by the cold along with everything else in the country. After that first miracle hint of success, the starter showed no life at all.

  Cursing volubly, damning American manufacturing, engineering, and Henry Ford himself, Brand risked discovery by getting out and popping the hood. She worked to clean and tighten the battery cables as best she could, skinning her knuckles in the process.

  “The job’s not complete unless there’s blood,” she recalled her father Nick Brand saying about working on cars.

  She got back into the truck and touched the wires together again.

  Nothing.

  She forced herself to stave off despair. Backtracking, she tried to trace her path to the fäbod where she had slept. She got lost, found her way, then lost it several times more. It took an hour to locate the abandoned house, remove the Saab’s tiny battery, and haul it back with her to the Ford pickup.

  The Saab operated on a six-volt electrical system. Such a limited battery would never serve to run the big Ford. But it might turn the engine over. Then the truck’s generator would take up the slack. Brand jury-rigged the two batteries in series. Then she tried the hot-wire again.

  Again, nothing.

  Then, something. The truck rumbled and bucked to life, coughing, spitting smoke, flirting with dying again and again. If Brand’s trespass wouldn’t nail her, the random braap and bang of the engine would.

  Complaining all the while, the vehicle took her away down the deserted, snow-packed road.

  She got lost in the puzzle of lanes again, doubled back, found the highway. The accursed owner of the stolen Ford had parked it with only a quarter tank of gas. She didn’t know how far that would take her. South, anyway, always south. The broken passenger window bled in cold air.

  In a collection of villages huddled beside an immense frozen lake, Brand found a roadside truck-stop type restaurant that looked anonymous enough for her to venture inside. She killed the truck engine without knowing if she would ever be able to revive it. She didn’t care. Her mouth watered with the scent of cooking. Hunger made her reckless.

  The place proved nearly empty. No one looked up as she entered. She ordered and consumed a plate of waffles with cream and something called cloudberry jam. What a wonderful name for a sweet, Brand thought, lapping it up. She ordered another plate, and refueled with more hot coffee at the same time.

  She was out of cash—possessing no love, as the Romani would say. No credit card either. She would have to beat the check somehow. Brand did not like the cashless society, not one bit. She needed the feel of money, the non-digital kind, the look of it, the exactitude of it. The restaurant had three exits, including one near the restrooms. But the whole dine-and-dash dodge was complicated by the fact that her getaway vehicle would have to be hot-wired.

  She turned to a fellow diner, a woman with a young child in the next booth. First she tried in Swedish, slowly, painstakingly sounding out the words.

  “Jag undrar om jag kan…,” she began, but the woman interrupted her almost immediately.

  “I speak English,” she said.

  “Your cell phone, please, for a short call to Stockholm.” Brand understood she looked like a total bum, what with random scrapes and bruises visible on her face from the hospital room beating. One of her eyes had turned various shades of purple and red. Her swollen upper lip resembled a half-flat tire. The formerly white parka had turned gray and looked as though she had slept in it, which she had. The topper was a watch cap that any homeless person would have rejected as beneath his dignity.

  Even so, the woman gave up her cell to her.

  Brand took the phone, then looked at the woman helplessly, “I don’t have the number!”

  The woman took the phone back and tapped in some letters. “What’s her name?” she asked.

  “Lehtonen, Aino Lehtonen. Stockholm.”

  The woman worked a bit of magic on the phone and handed it back to Brand. The line was already ringing.

  “Are you calling from a secure line?” Lehtonen asked immediately when she heard Brand’s voice. “I’m afraid the police might be listening in.”

  “What does that mean?” Brand asked. “I borrowed a cell.”

  “Listen, I can’t be mixed up in this,” Lehtonen said. “I’m seeing the whole mess all about to blow up. At least one of us has to stay clean.”

  She tried to ring off.

  “I need help,” Brand said. “I’m out of money. Please, I’m alone out here.”

  “We have had two visits from snuten recently. The detectives asked after you and Krister. You aren’t in the newspapers or on the television yet, but that will come. Don’t contact me again.”

  The line clicked dead.

  Brand handed the cellphone back to its owner. The woman examined her as she did so. Was it a look of suspicion, or was Brand only imagining it? She sat and sucked down more coffee, feeling sleepy from the food but at the same time jazzed from caffeine and anxiety. Fear rose in her gut as she felt an Adderall crash coming on.

  Lehtonen was right, the wretch. The Roma photographer hadn’t signed on for this. But who had? Murder and mayhem, multiplying dead bodies in a country that had the lowest murder rate in the civilized world. Her allies were meeting bad ends—Lehtonen frantic with paranoia, Hammar near death in a hospital bed.

  Slip out, move on, sleep in the stolen truck. Brand vividly pictured how this would all end, with her waking in the freezing cold to see a SWAT team—they called them piketbilar here—creeping up on her, assault rifles raised, screaming about getting her hands where they could see them.

  The woman at the next table fielded a call on her cell phone, listened for a moment, then signaled to Brand.

  “Excuse me? It’s for you.”

  Moro Part.

  With a flood of relief Brand realized Lehtonen had come through after all, and had given the number to the Romani godfather.

  By the time she finished the conversation with Moro, the woman had risen and stood next to her, ready to leave. Her child flung himself around at the end of his mom’s arm as if he thought Mama might be a piece of playground equipment.

  “Tack så mycket,” Brand said, thanking her in Swedish and returning the cell.

  “American, yes?”

  “Yes,” Brand said.

  The woman placed a two hundred krona bill—twenty bucks in U.S. terms—on Brand’s table. “I keep this for emergencies,” she said, smiling sympathetically before dragging her child out of the restaurant.

  50.

  Moro Part showed at the roadside restaurant later that afternoon. Darkness had already fallen. Brand knew she should be honored that such an eminence would send not a lackey but come himself. He arrived in a shiny black Mercedes.

  “I need to drive,” Brand told Moro when he pushed open the passenger door. “I get carsick otherwise.”

  “In the back,” Moro commanded, waving his hand dismissively. “There’s an ice bucket back there if you need to puke.”

  Brand had made her request more feebly than she usually did, and was too tired to argue with a man not to be argued with. She climbed into the back seat.

  “You are all right?” Moro asked. “You look like home-made shit.”

  “Thank you,” Brand said. She lay down as the car eased out into the highway traffic. Immediately she began
to feel nauseous.

  “Varzha Luna?” she asked. “Is she…?”

  “She is very well,” Moro answered. “Though not everyone appreciates her methods. Some say she is ruinate bunuri, soiled goods. But you will be happy to know she has fielded a proposal of marriage.”

  “So she will wear a wedding gown for real.”

  “Yes,” Moro said. “And a Roma marriage festival, well, it goes on for days, in some instances lasting longer than the marriage itself.”

  “Gadje not invited.”

  “Exceptions can be made,” Moro said magnanimously. “In your case and in that of Krister, should he come back to us.”

  “He’s in Stockholm by now, at some sort of a rehabilitation center.”

  “You are well informed, though I would not advise a visit.” Moro lifted his arms from the steering wheel. He crossed them and spread the fingers of one hand and formed a circle with the other, making the “five-oh” street gang signal for police.

  Throwing a sign looked comical on him. “That’s backwards,” Brand said.

  “How does it feel to be on the other side of the law for once?” he asked.

  “Uncomfortable.”

  “How’d you get here? I didn’t see the famous blue Saab anywhere around. I hope you had enough sense to ditch that thing.”

  Brand stayed mute. Moro made a face. “You stole another car!” he exclaimed.

  “A truck actually,” Brand said.

  Moro’s rolling laugh filled the interior of the Mercedes. This was not the same gruff Romani godfather she had seen on the street corner in front of Åhlens. That man was an ominous presence, unpredictable, dangerous. Here was the flip side of the coin. The man could actually appear personable.

  “See any snut along the way?” he asked. “Police always cause trouble.”

  “I’ve noticed that,” Brand said gamely. “It takes a fuss to settle a fuss, is what my old partner Willie Urrico used to say.”

  “Such a crazy place, your hometown. Too many animals crammed into a too small zoo. I hear the crime rate is skyrocketing without you there to keep things in line.”

  Brand smiled. “I have to say that lately I’ve been missing the peace and quiet of New York.”

  “Forgive my manners,” Moro said. “I have a Scotch whiskey with me that’s worth invading Europe for.”

  “Sure,” Brand said. The speed was fading on her. She wanted sleep more than anything. A drink would send her to dreamland. Moro handed back a flask.

  “You want a Coke with it? Coca-Cola always settles the stomach.”

  Brand took a pass. Taken straight, the alcohol hit her stomach like a sucker punch.

  She leaned forward to pass the flask back to Moro and gestured around the lavish fittings of the luxury vehicle. “All this from street begging, huh?”

  Moro cocked his head. “Among other endeavors. I know what it looks like. But I take care of my people. Which is more than I can say about most governments in Europe.”

  “Where’s my pistol?” she asked.

  “Which pistol is that?”

  She stared. “I was afraid you were going to say that. I want my sidearm back. I’m off my game without it.”

  “With or without a weapon, you are doubtless very game. Do you still have the charm I gave you?”

  Brand pulled the little stone amulet from her pocket. “You know, I’ve always wondered why you saw fit to gift it to me, not Aino, not Krister.”

  “You realize it’s a phallus symbol, right?”

  Brand colored. Moro again laughed. “A fascinum,” he said. “The Romans used them to ward off the evil eye.”

  “I see it now.” Jesus, Brand thought, the little dingus really did vaguely resemble a penis. “Here, you can have it back.”

  “Oh, no, no, you still have need of it.”

  “My part in this is done.”

  “You never know,” Moro said.

  “You could just leave it alone, you know,” Brand said, thoughtful. “Bygones be bygones, water under the bridge, let sleeping dogs and every other cliché I can’t think of right now. Let it rest.”

  “We understand that Jarl Voss is still alive and well.”

  Brand hesitated, uncomfortable with the vision of revenge rolling out endlessly. “I recall Gandhi or somebody, saying an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”

  “The great man and I share the same great-great-many-greats-in-the-past grandfather,” Moro said brightly.

  She didn’t exactly believe him. But Brand knew that the Romani people had originally migrated out of India at some distant point in pre-history. Setting themselves on the road that they traveled still.

  “You know,” Moro continued, “whenever I hear what my cousin the Mahatma said, I think, an eye for an eye? When someone takes an eye from me I take two from him. That leaves me with one and him blind. And you know what they say about the country of the blind.”

  As if, Veronika thought, as if the blood spilled on the banks of the Hede River had nothing to do with Moro.

  “Well, I know what they always say about revenge. Dig two graves.”

  He swiveled his head around, ignoring the roadway in front of him. Just for a moment, Brand caught a dark glint in his eyes, a quick flip from the mammalian to the reptilian. Then it was gone, and he was once again the jolly man concerned about her well-being.

  “You look tired, Detective. You look like Santa Claus the day after Christmas. We will have you back in Stockholm, in a safe apartment I know of, very nice, flat screen, Netflix, all yours until we see how this all shakes out.”

  “And is it? All going to shake out?”

  “Of course. You will see. Hammar will come back and all will be well. Plus you’ll be happy to know I have an invitation for you from Varzha Luna. Her engagement ceremony will take place near to Storkyrkan, the big cathedral in Gamla Stan.”

  “Near the church?” Brand asked. “Not inside?” Inwardly she was dismayed that a sixteen-year-old girl on the cusp of adulthood would be married off.

  “We Kalderaš Romani aren’t allowed on such occasions. Third of March, keep the day open.”

  A shadow stirred in Brand’s mind at the mention of the date, like the reflection of a dark cloud passing over the surface of a pond. But she was tired and didn’t want to think beyond the here and now. She stretched out and closed her eyes.

  “I have music,” Moro said. “Some nice flamenco guitar, very soothing.”

  The acoustic melodies lulled Brand to sleep. She dreamed of drowning, then violently of murder and mayhem. She woke once in darkness. She leaned over, upchucked into the ice bucket, and realized Moro had covered her with a rough wool blanket. Then she fell back asleep.

  51.

  A great saucer-flowered magnolia stood on the Dalgren farm in Jamestown, New York, spreading shade on a hill overlooking the farmhouse. The tree served as Brand’s refuge during her childhood, when family tensions got too intense for her. She would climb into its limbs with a book, or just lie beneath it and gaze at the sky through its generous branches.

  As a child she wasn’t often at the farm in spring. But once she was, and the vision of the magnolia in extravagant bloom stuck with her later in life. Beautiful, yes, but beauty in such profusion that it toppled over into excess.

  “Too much of anything is never a good thing.” The two sisters, her great-aunt and grandmother, had always emphasized the point. The message was largely lost on Brand. She came of age in the increasingly excessive lifestyle of American culture at the end of the millennium. She found that too much vodka, for example, could be just right.

  But the vision of the magnolia stayed with her well into her adult years. The tulip-like pink-white blossoms garlanded every branch, their perfume sweet, overpowering, a little sickly. Then, in the space of less than a week, it was over. The petals sprayed down like baby pink snow, or they turned brown and died while still attached the limbs. Rotting on the ground, they formed a thick, slick mass, slippery underfo
ot.

  “It seems a lot of effort to go through just for a couple of days of being pretty,” Veronika said to her great aunt Alice. “I’m going to have to change my opinion of that tree.”

  Alice gave a gentle laugh. “It is trying to attract a mate.”

  “Really?”

  “That is what flowers are for, yes. You know that.”

  Brand was then thirteen years old. Her mom and dad’s marriage was crumbling. She thought she understood all about the birds and the bees. Not the physical act but the boy and girl thing, as she would sardonically come to refer to love and romance later on, remained a stubborn mystery.

  Her mother said she was sending Veronika to the Jamestown farm every summer “to keep her out of trouble.” She meant to save her daughter from the influence of the fast kids on the streets of New York City. Brand believed it was more a case of Marta parking her somewhere, anywhere. She needed to go about her business, whatever it was, unhampered by a tagalong child.

  Her mom grew up on the farm herself. Evidently she didn’t recall that farm kids were in a way a lot more advanced than city kids. The example of the barnyard taught them all about sex. Plus there were many more places away from prying eyes in the country than in the city.

  As an adult she rarely thought of her childhood loves. But that tree near the farmhouse, flowering so extravagantly, lingered in her mind.

  “There’s not another magnolia anywhere around here,” she commented to Aunt Alice. “I don’t think there’s one within fifty miles.”

  “No, dear, they’re not that common.”

  “So that means all the frou-frou about putting out blossoms is for nothing.”

  “I guess so,” Alice said. “But the tree doesn’t know that.”

  “Poor thing.” The idea struck Brand as unbearably lonely.

  She was that tree. Putting out her flowers for nobody.

  Her grandfather died the spring she turned thirteen. There were three barns on the property. He perished by fire in the oldest and smallest one. A few minutes past eleven o’clock one night that year, Brand woke from sleep to women screaming. A disorienting orange-yellow glow turned dark to day outside her bedroom window.