by Meg Jackson
But some things were too sacred to give up, no matter how ancient the ritual, how dated the practice.
The Volanis family: Kennick, Cristov, and Damon, stood in Baba Surry’s trailer. Kennick, the rom baro, or “big man”, leader, of the kumpania, had stood vigil the previous night with the Surry clan. Candles lighting the main room helped guide Baba Surry’s spirit to the other side; white sheets and wildflowers adorned the walls to cleanse the place where she’d died. She had been the group’s phuri, a sort of matriarch who acted as the feminine counterpart to the rom baro. That title would be passed down, in time, after the mourning period.
Now, the brothers watched in as the closest members of her family came to leave coins in her over-sized casket, already full to brimming with her personal belongings – anything that might be necessary in the other world, included new dresses, old photos, and jewelry. Each of her sons, daughters, nieces, and nephews bent by the casket and whispered to her, telling her their sins so that her spirit might forgive them.
Notably absent was Jenner Surry, one of Baba Surry’s many grandchildren, who was the most in need of absolution from his late grandmother. He wasn’t missed, either. The man had long plotted against the Volanis brothers, thinking that the Surry name should be given a place at the head of the kumpania.
The title of rom baro was, traditionally, an elected one; but the kumpania had trusted in the lead of Volanis men for so long, the election had become more of a formality than anything else. The Volanis men trained their firstborn sons to take up the helm. It was how things were. No one thought it would be better otherwise; except Jenner Surry.
He’d gone so far as to burn down one of their own trailers – whether he knew that there was a child inside when he did it was a matter of some debate. And then he’d collaborated with a vicious biker gang, the Steel Dragons, to take down the gypsy’s marijuana business. It had resulted in a hell of a lot of trouble for everyone involved – and the kidnapping of Tricia Garland, who wasn’t really involved at all.
Jenner had skipped town after that plan fell apart, and now even his own mother spat on the ground when his name was mentioned. The only people who wanted him were the police; there was a warrant out for his arrest, on counts of aiding and abetting, conspiracy, and arson. Even Baba Surry’s spirit could not have washed his own soul clean.
Soon, the entire gypsy horde would take to the streets of Kingdom, carrying the casket to its final resting place. The trailer park was barely large enough to hold everyone. The three neat rows of trailers, set near the woods, had turned into a helter-skelter crowd of RVs, trucks, sedans and tents as relatives and kin poured in. Coffee and strong liquor passed amongst the mourners, some of whom elected to follow the tradition of not bathing or shaving during the mourning period – a tradition not well understood by the few gaje in attendance.
Kim and Ricky James stood by their men: Kennick and Cristov, respectively. Damon, standing at a slight distance, admired, not for the first time, the poetry of their differences. Kim and Ricky were sisters, but their similarities ended there. Kim was voluptuous, with light auburn hair, deep blue eyes, and freckles that dotted across her nose like constellations. Ricky’s body was long and lean, and her hair was so blonde it almost looked white, while her eyes were so pale blue they could be grey at times. Her porcelain-white skin was clear, like milk.
And their personalities were even less alike; Kim was mayor of Kingdom, and she had a good deal of tact, a rational mind, and a careful, quiet way about her. Ricky was a journalist who didn’t shy away from speaking her mind, regardless of the circumstances; her vernacular was far more colorful than Kim’s, too. She could be scatter-brained, was prone to losing things, listened to music at volumes that would lead to tinnitus, and was far more interested in poetry than politics. Damon liked them both equally, thought they were perfect matches for his brothers.
Kennick, the rom baro, benefitted from Kim’s own leadership skills and business-oriented attitude, and vice-versa. He might not look like he was groomed to lead, with his long brown hair constantly looking tousled and his reddish beard often grown out past the time it needed trimming, but he was an excellent adjudicator, and he always put the kumpania before himself - except, perhaps, when it involved his wife.
The people trusted him, and for good reason. His presence invited openness, honesty, and instilled confidence. It was all a result of being trained for the position from the moment he was born: as the eldest son of Pieter Volanis, the former rom baro, Kennick had always known his fate, and never tried to fight it.
By contrast, Cristov was the youngest brother, and though he was bigger in stature than Kennick, he was far less restrained and way more volatile. His light blonde hair and clean-shaven face made him the most traditionally attractive of the brothers, but he’d always been the loneliest, too. Until Ricky. Damon had worried that the girl, who seemed to have even more screws loose than Cristov, would bring his brother down. Instead, they seemed to balance each other out, both of them able to save the other before things ever got too far.
Theirs was a tumultuous relationship, for sure, but they thrived on that. And it was good for Cristov to have a woman to spend his time with; he’d been in charge of the marijuana growing and sales until they decided to shut the business down for good. Now, Cristov spent more time at his tattoo parlor, which was gaining more popularity by the week, and at Ricky’s apartment.
As for Damon? He didn’t envy his brothers their happy relationships. He had his own feelings about women and love. Women who attracted him – really, truly attracted him – were few and far between. He had always been the stoic brother, the careful one, the controlled one. He was the one who Kennick went to for guidance when things were particularly bleak. Before Ricky, he was the one everyone trusted to pull Cristov back from the brink.
The strong silent type – though he wasn’t really that silent, just careful with his words. He was strong, though, there was no mistaking that. He’d been fighting since he was old enough to be taken seriously in the underground betting circles; his name was fairly respected among the lawless, violent, bloodthirsty crowds of basement brawling. Scars decorated him like badges of honor, his knuckles forever swathed in red. He was big, and he was brawny, an intimidating sight to anyone unlucky enough to end up on the opposite side of a ring from him.
But unlike many of his opponents and cohorts, he didn’t live his whole life like it was one big fight, or one big after party. He wasn’t much of a drinker, didn’t care for drugs, and didn’t blow his money on women. He went to the movies. He played guitar. He spent a lot of time alone.
He didn’t let his desires get the better of him, and he didn’t waste time on women that he wasn’t sure about. Years of cultivating this had left him an exceptional judge of character. The last woman who’d shook him, made him look twice, had been Tricia Garland. And she’d left town, for obvious reasons.
But he could remember every inch of her, from the few times he’d seen her. Her tanned skin, her tall, bountiful body, her hair like honey and her eyes warm and golden. Her hair had been so straight, her body that perfect ratio; she looked like she walked off the set of Easy Rider, or some other 70’s classic. He could see her in hip-huggers and a tight-fitting striped, collared shirt, sunglasses like Twiggy and her sandy skin glowing. Her face was clearly made for smiling, and he could spend hours remembering how her button nose scrunched when she laughed.
He’d dreamed about her plenty. Thought about her plenty. She wouldn’t leave him alone, even when she was miles and miles away.
And, according to Mina, the youngest Volanis sibling and the only girl, she was coming back to Kingdom. Mina had told him this after hearing the news from Ricky, with whom Mina had struck an unlikely but fast friendship. Mina was only 18, but she was wise beyond her years, and though she and Ricky had clashed in the past, they wound up bonding over their shared inability to cook and love for bad mystery novels.
The fact that this news had
trickled down to Damon through Mina, instead of his brothers, was a matter that bore some rumination. Damon knew that he’d lost a lot of his brother’s trust and respect in the past year. He’d been doping the whole time the kumpania was under siege by the biker gang, using steroids to try and halt the aging process in his well-used fighter’s body. He’d been erratic, angry, acting spontaneously, without thought; none of his trademark characteristics.
He’d stopped using, but it was too late. He’d lost something precious and fragile between himself and his family.
And he was on track to lose even more. Things had been strained for a while. He was still keeping secrets. They were beginning to wear him down. And everyone knew it. The family was suffering for it.
So no wonder Cristov and Kennick hadn’t told him about Tricia. They probably didn’t want him to have anything to do with her. They probably thought he didn’t deserve her. That she wouldn’t be safe with him…or he wouldn’t be safe with her. Even though he’d already killed for her.
In fact, he realized with sad surprise, this was the first time in a long time that all four Volanis siblings were in the same place at the same time. Damon didn’t want to believe that it was all his fault, the way things had begun to split and separate. Kennick was married now, Cristov practically engaged, Mina had her own girlfriends and life. It wasn’t Damon’s job to organize monthly family reunions.
Then again, Damon was supposed to be the rock. The strongest link in the chain. The stable one.
He hadn’t been fulfilling that role.
But the fight in Miami would change all that.
One thing at a time, he thought, trying not to let his mind get ahead of him. Focus on Miami. Focus on finishing what needs to be finished, before you think about starting anything new.
He thought he’d be fine, as long as he didn’t see her before he left. But he wanted to see her. He wanted to see her so badly it hurt…
Damon pushed these thoughts to the side as his aunt Ana approached, having said goodbye to Baba Surry, with whom she was close. Ana pecked his cheek and wrapped her arm in his.
“She was a strong woman, my mother will be happy to see her again,” Ana said solemnly.
Damon’s own grandmother had died a year ago, just after his father had passed.
“Sar'shan, Ana,” Damon said, using a traditional family greeting. Her eyes, the trademark Volanis green, flashed up at him, her long, drawn face illuminated by the candles.
“We’ve had too many funerals recently,” she said. She’d buried her own husband eight months ago. Something about the way she said it had Damon stiffening in her loose hold.
“One funeral is too many,” he said, slightly guarded. She studied him, patted his arm, sighed.
“That is true, palesko. I’ve been watching you, Damon. You’re troubled. Don’t be afraid to put your troubles down before they put you down,” she said. Though she called him palesko, nephew, Ana had stepped in to act as mother to the Volanis brood when their mother left. She knew Damon as intimately as anyone could.
“Yes, Ana,” Damon said, nodding obediently. She sighed again, reached up to pat him on his cheek.
“Jekh dilo kerel but dile hai but dile keren dilimata,” she said, shaking her head. “One madman makes many madmen, and many madmen make madness”: she meant that his worries weren’t his alone, that his suffering was an infection.
She gave him one last look before moving on to embrace the rest of her brood. Damon watched her lean up to kiss Cristov’s cheek. Ana babied Cristov, was deferential to Kennick, and treated Damon as an equal. Her son, Pieter, was proving to be a little hellion, though, admittedly, a frustratingly forgivable one. Still, Damon knew that the kumpania was anxiously awaiting one of the brothers to produce a son; no one could see little Pieter taking Kennick’s place as rom baro when the time came.
Outside, a bonfire crackled, though the sun was high and the day was warm. Another tradition. Damon reflected on why they kept doing the same things, over and over again, when so many other things had changed over the years. The highly-assimilated gypsies scoffed at the idea of not telling a gaje your forename, an old Romani superstition, yet they still gave coins to the deceased for use in some nebulous afterlife.
Tradition gives you solace, peace, connection, he thought. Tradition gives you a home.
And yet, more and more, Damon had found himself feeling homeless on his own soil.
3
Tricia looked over her desk at the library. Pencil holder, framed photo, knick-knacks gathered over the course of months. Papers she was done with. Papers someone else would need when they came. A computer, now wiped clean of her log-in information and e-mails and files. She didn’t take anything.
Tricia looked over her apartment. All the clothes she cared about, all the things she cared about, fit into a duffel bag at her feet. There were books on the shelves, still. Flowers in a vase on the little desk next to the bay window. DVDs haphazardly arranged in a pile beside the TV in the living room. Pots and pans and plates and glasses and all the detritus of a human’s need to eat in the kitchen. The comforter still on the bed. She looked for anything else she might take. She didn’t take anything.
Tricia looked over the Main Street of Duvall, Massachusetts. Tiny and bucolic, and not entirely unlike the town she was returning to. Now, in the first true blush of a Northern summer, potted flowers hung from the streetlamps and stores left their doors open to give passers-by a reprieve from the heat, a brief blast of air. There was no litter on the sidewalks. There were people walking to and fro, looking happy or unhappy; either way, it was no business of Tricia’s. She hadn’t made many friends. She didn’t take anything from Duvall.
All she had to take – all she could claim as new – was the feeling that she was better off than she was when she came. That she spent most of her days functioning perfectly normally. So perfectly normally that if you were to sit her down at a bar and swap stories over drinks, you’d be aghast and struck with disbelief when the truth came out.
Tricia thought that might be the reason she hadn’t managed to make more friends in the little town. Her coworkers at the library were pleasant and unscathed, all with decent marriages and simple stories. When she’d finally opened up about what had brought her there, they were sympathetic to a fault. And they never really treated her the same. They treated her like she was an orphan, or something too tender to touch. They meant well. They meant exceptionally well. She didn’t blame them for making things worse.
She loaded her duffel bag into the trunk of her car and sat behind the steering wheel. In a movie, she might have paused before starting the car and driving off – a long and poignant moment where she gathered her courage and everything else inside her into a tight bundle, prepared herself to propel into the past and the future at the same time. But she didn’t, just turned the key and pressed down on the pedal and left the town behind.
It had all started the previous autumn, when a motorcycle club, the Steel Dragons, came to the Volanis brothers looking to take over the marijuana business in Kingdom – they wanted to start introducing some more heavy-duty drugs to the small town, and didn’t want any competition from the gypsies. When the brothers refused, the Steel Dragons fought back, and they fought dirty.
Tricia’s involvement in the affair was pure, unfiltered bad luck. That bad luck had a name, incidentally; its name was Paul Tiding.
Paul was Tricia’s boyfriend that season. And he liked to show his affection with his fists. Tricia never thought of herself as the sort of girl to fall in with a man who’d abuse her, but there she was, being choked by her boyfriend outside the local bar. Cristov Volanis acted as her savior, running Paul off and bringing Tricia back to his trailer to spend the night in safety. The next morning, as she was leaving the trailer, someone saw her and made an assumption – an assumption that would change her life forever.
The bikers had confused Tricia for Ricky, thinking that it was Tricia who Cristov loved; they kidn
apped her, intending to hold her hostage until the gypsies promised to leave town for good. For one awful night, she was at their mercy, tied up and bound. When she struggled and screamed, they punished her by putting her out in the frigid cold. Tricia had truly believed they would kill her. But they never got the chance.
Because Damon Volanis killed one of them first.
And, in doing so, Damon made sure that she would never forget him. He’d been the one to wrap his arms around her, offer her the first bit of warmth in that cold hell. Released her from her ties. Carried her to safety. When she thought of him, though, those weren’t the things that she thought of.
Instead, she thought of a joke he told her when they first met, before the kidnapping, when Cristov brought her back to the trailer he shared with his brothers. It had been a rough night for her, though nowhere as rough as the nights to come. Damon offered her the first thing that made her feel better. As it happened, it was also the last thing that made her feel better.
“Why was the nihilist dating service such a success?”
That’s what she remembered. That, and the way just being around him had seemed to make things calmer. The way his eyes held hers like a steel trap, and told her that it was going to be okay. The things he said without saying them. And the way she felt sure that she would meet him again. That something was going to happen between them. That something was meant to happen.
Of course, she could never have predicted the circumstances that led to their meeting again, when he saved her with a bullet on a cold November dusk. And, compared to the kidnapping, her abusive boyfriend seemed like a walk in the park, making Damon’s ability to comfort her afterwards far less significant. But still…when she thought of home, now, she thought of him.