The Sherpa and the American shiver and blow on their hands. This isn’t a night to be out and they both know it. They’re also aware the vehicle isn’t going anywhere for a while.
“How long before someone comes along?” the American asks.
The Sherpa says on a night like this, it might be hours.
The American doesn’t like the answer. He pulls out his phone.
I let him look for service without saying a word. I know there is none. We’re far from any tower that might provide a connection.
“What a fucking country,” he says as he puts his phone into his pocket.
The Sherpa tells us that we cannot stay in the vehicle. Even if we conserve the fuel, we will eventually freeze. We must find a better shelter.
The American disagrees. In America, people stay with their cars because it’s stupid to roam out in the thick of a storm. We could be going in circles. The Sherpa doesn’t care. He tells us that he noticed a lane as we left the road. While the lane is unused, it must lead to some kind of shelter. And that shelter cannot be far. It will be better there than here since the snow will soon cover the tracks we made. No one will notice till the storm is long gone.
The American doesn’t like the message, but he has little choice. This is Russia, and the Sherpa is in command. The American agrees to go a little further, but not too far. If we don’t find something in fifteen minutes, we should come back while we can still see our footprints.
Fifteen minutes in this snow will take us perhaps a kilometer, and I agree that if the shelter isn’t within a kilometer, we should return. Wandering around in the dark and snow will certainly kill us. The Sherpa doesn’t agree, but he doesn’t have to. The American seems to have taken over, even though this is the Sherpa’s territory.
The wind is strong, but it isn’t yet at blizzard speed. We can walk and going single file along our own tracks is fine. The Sherpa finds the lane, and turns into the unmarred snow. I bow my head into the blowing, thick snow and slog after the Sherpa. As he plows ahead, I follow, stretching my legs to land my feet in his tracks. That makes it easier. I know the American is behind me even though I can’t see him.
For a moment, I wonder if dying in a blizzard will be my fate, but I know the American is keeping track. I’m pretty sure the snow is not falling so thickly that it will cover our tracks in fifteen minutes.
The American shouts that we have reached our time limit. The Sherpa stops and looks back. The American comes around and stands by the Sherpa who points up ahead. I follow the direction he is pointing to. There in the snow is the dark outline of a house, or, barn or some kind of wooden structure.
We all see it. But it’s the American who takes the lead now. I move around the Sherpa who takes up the rear gratefully. Leading through the snow is a job for a dog, not a man. I find it slightly easier to step into the American’s prints. It is as if he is deliberately keeping his stride small to make it less demanding for me. In minutes, we reach what was once a house, is still a kind of house. As I step onto the porch, the American tries the door. It’s locked.
He pounds at it, but there are no lights, and I’m certain no one is inside. This is just the remnant of some dream, the last dregs of a wish.
The Sherpa joins the American and between the two of them, they manage to force the door open. I hurry past them into the house, thankful for the shelter. The Sherpa closes the door as the American turns on his phone and shines its light around the room.
What we see is encouraging.
The room isn’t completely bare. There’s a table with chairs and beyond that a kitchen with cabinets and a sink with a pump. On one side is a fireplace, and beside it, a few old logs. There are two other closed doors that must be a bedroom and perhaps a bathroom. I have no hope of running water, but we have lots of snow that we can melt. If we are lucky, the pump will work. If we are unlucky, we will do our business outside in the snow. I do not relish that probability, but it is a small matter compared to freezing to death in a ditch.
“Check out those rooms,” the American tells me.
As I head for the door, I hear him talk to the Sherpa. “Get your lighter out. We need to start a fire.”
The first room is the bedroom. While the bed and other furniture are gone, there is an old mattress on the floor. It’s not much, but it might be something we can use. I check the small closet. It’s bare. I had hoped that perhaps a blanket or two might be left behind. We aren’t that lucky.
The second room is the bathroom, and while there is a sink, bath and toilet, there is no water. If the pump in the kitchen doesn’t work, the bathroom is useless. In the half light from the other room, I look at myself in the cloudy mirror. I don’t look so good tonight. I laugh. The sound comes out wild and a little scary. “Get a hold of yourself, Katya,” I tell my reflection sternly before turning away.
Back in the main room, the Sherpa and the American have managed to light a small fire from some paper scraps. The Sherpa takes an old log and slams it on the floor, trying to split it. It is dry and breaks apart easily, then he adds the small pieces to the fire.
I know that in five minutes we’ll have enough light and heat to survive—at least for the time being. And it’s only the time being I’m worried about. I move to the fire and crouch in front of it. It will take a lot of fire to heat this house, and we don’t have enough logs, but I am guessing there will be some outside.
The American goes to the pump and jacks the handle up and down several times. No water comes out, but he doesn’t seem disgusted. The Sherpa tells him the pump needs to be primed. The American isn’t quite sure what priming is, and I realize he’s never experienced a pump before. He’s a city man. He’s never dealt with life in the country. That might be a very bad thing at this point.
Luckily, the Sherpa knows what to do. He looks for something that will hold water, and he finds nothing but small glasses and cracked cups. We can melt snow, but he’s not going to worry about that. Instead, he climbs into the sink and pees down the pump, priming it with piss.
I turn away. That’s the last thing I want to see.
But it works.
After he pees, he works the pump, and rusty water comes out. He keeps pumping until the water turns clear, and he turns to us with a smile on his face. He’s managed to give us the thing we need most—water in the toilet.
The American smiles.
We’re making progress.
“There’s a mattress in the bedroom,” I tell the American.
The American doesn’t need to be told twice. He goes into the bedroom and drags out the mattress which he sets before the thriving fire.
I sit on it because it’s softer and will be warmer than the floor.
The Sherpa tells us he’s going to walk around the house and see if there’s wood or something else useful.
After he’s gone, I turn to the American, and I speak softly. I don’t think the Sherpa can hear, but I want to be careful, “I don’t think this is good.”
Hunter
She looks at me with real concern on her face, and I know what she’s thinking. This is crap. Yes, we have water and shelter and a fire, but there’s no food, and no one is looking for us. Even if someone finds the vehicle, they probably won’t find us. We’re too far away, and our tracks are probably snowed over already. But there’s nothing to be done at the moment, we can’t go back to the vehicle and we can’t contact anyone. We’re stuck, at least till the snow stops.
“It isn’t good,” I tell her. “It’s terrible, but we can’t do anything about it. We’re lucky to have this much.”
“If we run out of wood, we’ll freeze to death.”
“We have a table and chairs that will burn and if need be, we’ll rip up the cabinets. I think we have enough for a day or two. That should be enough. We won’t starve in a day or two.”
“What will your boss say when you miss your flight?”
I shrug. “Anakin will be pissed, but that doesn’t matter. We have
a good excuse.”
“And when he discovers I’m no longer a virgin?”
It is the one thing I cannot stop thinking about. Anakin will be royally pissed, enough to hurt not just me but the girl too. He won’t kill me, I’m too useful to him, but it may be worth a few broken bones and new scars. “He’ll accept it,” I lie.
“Unless he thinks you did it.”
She thinks she has cut to the heart of the matter. She thinks Anakin is a reasonable man. Once it is discovered she isn’t a virgin, well, then, I’ll be the culprit whether or not it is my fault. I’m the whipping post, the little kid with his hand in the cookie jar. “Well,” I say with a shrug, “If you’re up to it, you can tell him how I picked you up while you are at it.”
She considers that a moment. “Then, my parents will suffer. They won’t get the stipend. I will have to say you forced me.”
“You can try saying that if you want, but he won’t believe it,” I say softly. Anakin knows I’d rather die than betray him. “I’m sorry, Katya. No matter how you spin it this story will not have a happy ending.”
She stares at me in astonishment. “So you’re just going to hand me over to a complete monster.”
Something primitive inside me growls at the thought, but I nod slowly.
“I was wrong about you. I thought you were a gentleman. I thought you were different than all those men in that bar. But you’re not different, are you? You’re just a selfish pig. You care only about your own skin. What kind of man—”
She stops abruptly when the front door is suddenly kicked open and the Sherpa comes through the door with an armload of snowy firewood. He staggers to the fireplace and dumps them on the ground.
I close the door against the snow and cold. He mutters something in Russian that I don’t catch, but Katya tells me that there’s more wood by the side of the house. It looks like I won’t have to rip apart the cabinets.
The Sherpa leans against the mantle for a moment before he pulls out a cigarette. He lights it and inhales then starts across the room. That’s when the cigarette drops from his hand. For a second he does nothing, just turns to me with a bewildered expression almost child-like expression on his old face.
“What is it?” I ask.
He opens his mouth and a string of colorful curses unfurl from his mouth. Suddenly, his hand rises up to clutch his chest and a strangled cry of pain emits from his swearing mouth. Before I can do a thing, he keels over, his body falling on the hard floor with a dull thud.
I recognize a heart attack when I see one, and I move as fast as I can. I roll the Sherpa onto his back. He looks up at the ceiling in wonder as if he could see the stars in the sky while the muscles of his throat moves valiantly as if trying to express his vision.
I open his coat and his shirt then start compressions. I’m not sure I’m doing them correctly. This is a new one for me. I have no experience reviving a man, only taking his life. I stop pumping for a second and listen for a heartbeat, but I don’t hear anything.
When I look up, the girl gapes at me. I don’t think she’s ever seen anyone die. We all do it, but most of us are a little more polite about it than the Sherpa. I learned a lot of new curses in the last minutes of his life.
“Get some water,” I tell her.
She doesn’t move. She stands there frozen.
“Water!” I bark.
She moves jerkily away, and I keep working. I don’t think we really need water, but it gives her something to do besides gape at me. I was once told that in an emergency, everyone should be given some sort of job to do to keep that person from freaking out. One disaster is enough. I don’t watch her. I keep pressing on the Sherpa’s chest.
“Come on,” I tell him. “Come on, you’re not ready to die yet. No one is. Take a breath. Kickstart that pump. Get the blood flowing.”
My talk is more for me than for the Sherpa. His eyes are open, but there is a blankness to them that gives me the impression he has already gone to join his ancestors, but there is always a possibility that he could come back with a cough. I’ve seen that happen in movies.
Katya returns with a glass of water. Her face is as white as a sheet. She kneels beside me. “What do you want me to do?”
“Put down the water,” I tell her. “And feel his neck for a pulse.”
She feels for a pulse. If his heart is working, she’ll feel something. She shakes her head, her lips are trembling.
“Put another log on the fire,” I say, giving her another job to do.
Then, I go back to pumping. Come on old man. I could really do with your guidance in the back of nowhere. I hear the log land on the fire.
“You can’t conk out,” I tell the Sherpa. “Who is gonna drive that pile of bolts you call a damn car? It can’t be me. They catch me driving without a license and they’ll send me to a gulag.”
“There are no more gulags.” Katya stands and frowns. “At least, I don’t think there are any.”
I’m not going to argue. I save my breath for the pumping. She comes back and kneels next to me.
“Feel for a pulse again.”
As she feels, I strip off my jacket. The pumping is making me sweaty, and sweat isn’t a good thing in this environment.
She shakes her head again.
“I’m going to give him two more minutes,” I tell her. “Then, we’ll just see what happens.”
She nods and I go back to work. We don’t speak as I drive down on his unresponsive chest. The Sherpa doesn’t start to breathe. His eyes remain fixed on the ceiling. I’m certain he’s dead, but if you don’t want someone to give up on you, you don’t give up on them. I keep going for the full two minutes. At the end of the two minutes, I listen for a beat.
Nothing.
I lean back and look at her. “He’s dead,” I say just to make it final.
She knows the truth, which is plain. “I know.” She sounds very calm. It could be shock or a Russian thing. I’ll find out soon enough.
I move away from the Sherpa and walk to a chair. I don’t need to sit by the fire. I’m already too hot. Katya doesn’t join me. She slumps down on the mattress by the fire. We are both lost in our own thoughts for a while. We’ve lost our guide, and that’s a bad thing—a very bad thing.
Yes, this is her country, but she’s young and I’m a fish out of water. I have no idea how to navigate through this desolate, snow covered terrain. Obviously, there is nothing like the equivalent of AAA. The wind keens around the corners of the house, reminding me that old man winter is hungry, and we look like fresh meat.
“What should we do?” she asks in a small voice.
“Well, for the next few minutes, we’re not going to do anything. Then, we’re going to take the Sherpa’s coat because he won’t need it, and we do. Staying warm is our number one priority for the next day or two. I’ll take the Sherpa out and leave him in the snow so when he is found after the snow melts it will appear he got lost and died in the storm. When I come back, we’ll figure out what we need to do next.”
She pulls up her knees and hugs herself. The firelight dances on her cheeks making her look vulnerable, young and incredibly beautiful. Even as the Sherpa lies dead on the floor, the sight of her naked flashes through my mind, I can’t help the lust rising inside me. My sick mind wants me to go over to the mattress, strip her naked and have sex with her in front of the fire. I push the terrible idea out of my mind. I never imagined I’d be the kind of man who’d think of screwing in front of the dead.
“I—I’ve never …” she starts.
“I know,” I tell her. “And the first time is the worst.” I thought about my first dead body. I was eight. Anakin made me watch. I stand. “I better take him out.”
“You’ll do it alone?” she asks.
“Yeah, I’ll do it alone.”
“I don’t mean to be a baby, but I, well, I …”
“Don’t worry about it. In fact, don’t worry about anything. You may as well go to sleep.”
&nb
sp; “I have to pee, first,” she says.
I laugh. “Yeah, there’s that, and neither one of us wants to go outside. Here’s how I see it. We can spend half the night filling up the toilet tank with snow and seeing how well it works … or you can pee in the sink. It isn’t like we’re going to be washing dishes there.”
She makes a face at the prospect. “But that would be rude to the people who own this house.”
I scratch my jaw. Principles are postures taken by those that can afford it. When your very existence is on the line, you lose everything except the need to survive. “If I were you. I’d go for the sink. We can save the toilet for the other number.”
She nods slowly. “All right. I’ll go while you are out.”
I haul the Sherpa’s lifeless body up and throw him over my shoulder. Then I go out of the front door. The wind and snow assault me. I duck my head and take him far enough away from the house and lay him on the snow. Then I strip his coat off and look through it. I find a passport for the girl in his inside pocket. After I put it into my jacket pocket, I position his body into a fetal position so it looks as if he froze to death to the people who find him. That is, if the animals don’t strip his flesh and move his bones away.
I turn away and start to retrace my steps back to shelter and Katya. My toes are already going numb, and my face feels half-frozen. It’s amazing how quickly one loses heat. It is a relief to see the flickering orange light in the windows of the house. As I reach the side of the house, I can’t help looking in.
Katya back on the mattress, hugging her calves, her back to the door, and her chin on her knees. She looks lost and scared.
I know death has placed a large, cold hand on her heart. It always does, because it’s not the death of someone else that grabs us, it’s our own death. Every time someone dies, we are reminded of our own mortality, and accepting that mortality is the hardest lesson a human has to learn. We’re finite, and until we understand that, we’ll waste our lives and chase the things that won’t make any difference. I’ve seen death enough.
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