The smokestack belched orange flame. But the cab's interior remained in darkness, and their view of it was blocked by the coal car.
Sgt. Berk checked the roof of the baggage car for signs of ambush. Katya began climbing.
Atop the coal car, she felt the wind of the Train's passage in full force. Peering into the cab, she still could see nothing of consequence. “Sergeant!” she called. “Your light, please!"
The Machinist's mechanical arm snaked over the edge of the car, shining an intense beam into the cab. There, sitting with his bare back mere centimeters from the open door of the furnace, his spread-eagled arms chained to it, was Andrei. His head lolled on his chest.
Katya resisted the urge to run to him. She looked at the coin. Silently, she assigned heads to Andrei, tails to herself. “Sergeant,” she called out, “Andrei is here. I need your help."
Sgt. Berk hoisted himself fully onto the coal car as Katya inched toward Andrei. But then a blinding spout of flame erupted from the furnace, impaling Andrei between the shoulder blades. His screams were drowned out by contemptuous laughter.
The flames rushed around Andrei, gathered at a spot a meter in front of him. They merged, coalesced...
...and resolved into an Engineer.
Like the others, it looked like Olga. But this one stood taller than the engine and was crowned with orange flame. It looked at Katya with pure derision.
"You are so damned predictable!” it said. “You had to go after him, like a heroine in a cheap novel.” Flames leapt around it. “How pathetically romantic."
Katya stood firm. “Why are you doing this?"
The Engineer looked at Andrei. “Well, he isn't going to tell you, is he?” It put a hand to its chest. “I am Lt. Olga Mikhailovna Golikova. I once served in Andrei's unit ... and I'm sorry to say, Yekaterina Aleksandrovna, that things got a bit more than friendly between us. But he...” It jerked a thumb at Andrei, who was gibbering in excruciation. “...didn't want you to know about it. So he had me transferred to another unit—which, as it turned out, stood in the teeth of the German invasion. I was the first to die. And all because he...” It punched the air, and flames again enveloped Andrei. “...didn't want to be found out!"
"That's not true!” said Olga, from atop the coal car.
The Engineer froze. The indignation vanished from its face and was replaced by mortal dread. “What...? How...?"
"The transfer was my idea!” Olga went on. She had unholstered her weapon, and now brought it to bear. “Andrei only signed the papers.” She stepped forward. “If you're going to accuse him, do it in your name, not mine!"
The Engineer began to tremble. Its face melted, dissolved, its features blurring.
"Who are you?” Olga demanded. “Show yourself!"
"No!” the Engineer spat. “I am Olga Mikhailovna! I—"
"Show yourself!” Olga fired a warning shot into the air.
The Engineer retaliated with a shaft of fire—but wildly, almost hitting Katya. Startled off balance, Katya teetered for a moment, then fell off the Train.
She screamed—but something caught her ankle and she collided painfully with the side of the coal car.
She heard Olga's voice over her agony. “I can't pull you up by myself! Help me!"
Pain beat against Katya's skull like a piston. “Save yourself, Olga!"
"I'm already dead! Hurry, before the sergeant loses more ground!"
Finally, straining against pain and weariness, Katya struggled upward and caught Olga's free hand. Olga dragged her back atop the coal car just as Sgt. Berk fell dead, disemboweled. The lead Engineer stood over him, talons slick with blood.
But the Engineer, face twisted with rage and bitterness, now looked like Katya. And when it saw her standing there, it once again began to tremble. “No!” it whimpered. “No, I killed you! Stay away!"
Its face melted again, dissolved from Katya's semblance to Olga's, then back, rippling, boiling. And Katya finally understood. You must find both halves of his soul.
"I'm not going anywhere,” she said. “And you're not going to harm me."
"Get back!” The Engineer raised its talons as its face strained for definition. “Or I'll—"
"Andrei!” Katya stepped up to the Engineer and slapped it hard. “Stop it!"
And there was Andrei where the Engineer had been, crumpling to the floor, weeping.
"Stop punishing yourself,” Katya whispered.
The engine's fire had died down, and they could see only by the stars. Katya looked at the chains binding one half of Andrei's soul to the furnace. They were rusted, brittle, fragile as Andrei himself. Katya climbed into the cab and broke them with her bare hands.
"Help me get them to the baggage car.” She and Olga carried the two Andreis across the coal car to the ladder, stepping gingerly over Sgt. Berk's body. Mariya held the baggage car door open, and they laid the two on the floor.
"Katya?” one said; the other moaned incoherently.
Katya spoke in soothing tones. “It's all right, Andrei. You're not to blame."
The two Andreis sobbed in unison.
Someone knocked politely on the rearward door. “Come in, Mother,” said Mariya.
The door opened and General Ada entered. Behind her were two Machinists and two Engineers who looked like Andrei.
"See that the engine is running smoothly,” she said to the Machinists, and they rumbled through the forward door. To the Engineers she said, “Wait outside.” She closed the door. “Well done, Katya.” She looked around. “Sergeant Berk?"
"He's dead,” said Katya. “He followed your orders, General."
Hearing this, General Ada blinked slowly. “He was never one with the other Machinists,” she said. “He valued integrity above obedience. Perhaps that was why we understood each other so well."
"General.... “Olga indicated the two Andreis. “What is to be done here? He has suffered so much because of me."
General Ada rolled between the two Andreis and put a hand, one of flesh, one mechanical, on each of their foreheads. After a moment, she addressed Katya and Olga, saying, “I understand he leapt ahead of his unit, firing his weapon at any German within range. It was only a matter of time before they got him. But his spirit was broken, so the body was almost irrelevant."
Katya looked at her husband's bodies. Finally she reached out and caressed the nearest face. “Andrei?"
His eyes opened. “Katya...."
His spirit is broken, so the body is almost irrelevant.
She looked at the coin in her left hand. Then at Olga. “You loved him enough to let him go,” she said. “How could I do less?” She assigned heads to Andrei's soul, tails to his body. Then she slammed the coin to the floor. Heads up.
Olga buried her face in her hands. “Oh, Andrei...."
General Ada touched Katya's shoulder. “Andrei's soul will still require time and work to mend,” she said. “But we who remain on the Train will do that work.” She turned to Olga. “Will we not?"
Olga, speechless, hidden, simply nodded.
Katya wept. She wept for Andrei. She wept for Olga, the innocent cause of so much heartbreak. She wept for Marko and Sgt. Berk, caught in the crossfire. She wept for Andrei's child, the little bear, who would never be.
And she wept for herself.
When all tears were spent, Ada reluctantly put her daughter, and Katya, off the Train.
* * * *
Years later, after the war, Katya and Mariya returned to Stalingrad. Katya brought her locket and Andrei's letter. She read it once or twice, but mostly she looked at the bears.
The city had recovered well. People walked to the factories, shopped in the Univermag department store—where Katya went to see the plaque commemorating the surrender of the German Sixth Army in 1943—or strolled along the banks of the Volga. But Katya saw no one she had known before the siege.
After touring the city, Katya and Mariya went to Mamaev Hill. As they strode upward, surrounded on either sid
e by sculpted battle scenes, depictions of both soldier and civilian, they found their forward view dominated by a statue, more than fifty meters tall, of Mother Russia. Sword held aloft, cape billowing from her shoulders, she voiced a silent battle cry, urging Soviet soldiers everywhere to charge.
Katya and Mariya looked at each other and smiled. The statue looked more than a little like Olga.
Holding Mariya's hand, Katya gazed up at it and thought of Olga, and Andrei, and Marko, and Sgt. Berk, and General Ada ... and the coin.
The coin. She couldn't help wondering....
Hitler. Stalin. After Stalingrad, one had fallen to his utter ruin, while the other lived on to expand his mighty Communist Empire.
Was the coin tossed, Katya wondered, or brought down deliberately in Stalin's favor?
Midnight Sun by C. Nelson
* * * *
* * * *
Flower as Big as the Sky by Matt Dennison
Early one morning near the beginning of summer, Mister Jones opened the back door of his house and stepped into the light. He angled the brim of his hat to the sun, lit, tamped, and relit his pipe, then picked up the shovel that leaned against the house and continued on to the far corner of his lot. Once he'd begun, he dug without pause, stopping only for lunch and the lemonade that Mrs. Jones brought out every hour or so, for it was, I recall, a frightfully hot summer. Our backyards were separated only by a low fence that Mr. Jones had put in several years before, and we had a full and easy view of this seemingly commonplace event.
"Looks like Mister Jones is putting in more roses for Mrs. Jones,” I remember Ma saying as she looked out the window by our breakfast table. Only now am I able to appreciate the wistful tone of envy for the fortunate Mrs. Jones that I heard whenever Ma and her lady friends spoke of our neighbors—and my father's sinking a little deeper into his chair, shaking out his newspaper, and making vague grunting noises in reply. But as the days passed and the digging continued, our curiosity was turned a little to the side of confusion, for it became obvious Mister Jones was not planting roses this time.
"A swimming pool!” I heard Ma excitedly telling Mrs. Crenshaw on the phone one Saturday afternoon, while my father grumbled and shifted about in the next room until he finally yelled out that no man, not even Mister Jones, would dig a swimming pool all by himself.
"Well, then, Harold,” Ma shot back, her hand clamped tightly over the phone, “if you're so smart, what is he doing out there?” When all we heard was the snappish flip of a newspaper page, she said, “Just as I thought,” and raised her hand from the phone. “As I was saying, Eunice, he's building a swimming pool. Of course, all by himself! That's the kind of man he is. Yes, she most certainly is.... “She shook her head in sorrowful agreement.
"He is not building a swimming pool!” we heard my father call out as he marched into the kitchen, trailing sections of newspaper behind him. Ma sighed and slowly covered the phone once more.
"You couldn't force a convicted child killer to dig a swimming pool all by himself in this heat. They'd call that cruel and unusual. Now, I'll tell you what he's doing.” He moved to the window, pulled back the curtain, and stood there, his angry look dissolving, softening into one of simple bewilderment. “He's digging a hole."
"And in the hole goes...?” Ma said, her smile as stiff as her freshly-done hair.
"How would I know?” he asked, calmly spreading his hands. “Why do I have to know? Why does anyone have to know? Maybe he just likes digging holes. Not swimming pools, but holes.” He pointed at both of us. “A pretty big hole,” he added, his finger beginning to conduct some wavering melody, “but.... “He frowned, spun with the curtain in his grip, and looked outside once more before quickly turning back. “Well, God forbid that a man dig a hole without all you women going crazy,” he finally muttered as he shuffled past us on his way back to the den.
Ma rolled her eyes and slowly removed her hand from the phone. “Eunice, darling, I'm so sorry you had to hear that. No? Well, Harold just now informed me that Mister Jones is digging that hole simply for the fun of it. Why, yes! Me too! As if a man like Mister Jones would ever do something that silly. I'm telling you it's a swimming pool."
When the hole was so deep that all we could see was the top of Mister Jones's shovel as it tossed out the dirt, the digging stopped and the building began. A strange-looking platform like a miniature diving board started to grow from the edge of the hole, which only added credence to the swimming-pool theory, much to my father's disgust. Of course, no one would do the sensible thing and ask Mister Jones what he was building. Instead, the neighborhood men would gather in our backyard in the evening, slowly gravitating toward the fence as they talked about baseball, wives, and the weather, until one of them would suddenly lean his head back and call out, “When you gonna get that thing done ... Mister Jones?"—the ‘Mister Jones’ part coming just a bit late.
And Mister Jones would smile, wipe the dirt from his hands, and say, “Oh, any day now, any day."
Soon, The Thing—as we kids took to calling it—reached a height of about ten feet, still without revealing its true purpose. And although this was starting to cause quite a bit of consternation among the adults—what with the wives already starting to want one and the men, on top of having to pretend to know what it was, now having to think of reasons for not building one themselves—we kids thought it was the greatest thing that had ever happened. It had angles and arms sticking out every which way, ropes and pulleys and winches—just about every mechanical gizmo we could imagine. All anyone could say for sure was that it was put together by a true craftsman, that possibly it was the finest, sturdiest, most practical thing Mister Jones had ever built. Ma had to give up her conviction that it was going to be a swimming pool, but the satisfaction of knowing my father hadn't the slightest idea either of what it was going to be soon restored her spirits.
As the days passed, Mister Jones's early-morning whistle began sounding downright jaunty when he walked out of his house at precisely 8:05 a.m.—upon hearing which my father would drain his coffee, yawn once, and stand, and my mother begin to clear the breakfast table. And when he stopped work at 6 p.m., Ma and I would start setting the table for dinner. Never even thought about why; we were just moved by the spirit of correctness that emanated from next door. Simply put, Mister Jones had become the calming clock and measure of our existence.
* * * *
One day near the end of that summer, I was sitting on the fence watching Mister Jones drive nails into The Thing with stronger-than-usual strokes of his hammer when he looked up and asked if I wanted to give him a hand. Did I! For the next two hours, I carried lumber, fetched nails, and held boards as he sawed and hammered, trying hard to give myself a splinter or at least a blister to show the guys as proof of my involvement with The Thing. Finally, Mister Jones put down his hammer and considered his work.
"Well, Billy, I think that about does it,” he said as he took off his hat and slowly fanned his face.
At first I thought he was only through with me for the day. But the way he stood there and looked at The Thing made me feel he meant something more.
"Do you mean it's done?” I blurted. I had come to believe that he would work on it forever, continually adding to it until it was simply thick with mechanical beauty and wonder.
"Yep.” He placed his hat back on his head at a slightly higher angle, then lightly slapped his hands together. “I believe that's that."
Suddenly I felt like running in circles and yelling, ‘It's done! It's done!’ but something held me back. I think it was mostly that I still had no idea what it was. To tell the truth, I didn't really want it to be anything in particular, especially not anything practical. I don't think any of us kids did. That way it could be whatever we wanted it to be. But then I thought of how no one had been brave enough to ask Mister Jones what it was, and how he might feel bad about that. So, with fingers crossed, I asked.
"Well, if I had to name it,” he said, feeling
for his pipe, “I'd call it a rocket."
"A rocket! Wait till the guys hear about this!” I cried out. “Are you gonna fly in it?"
"Yessir, I believe I will,” he said, and crossed his arms.
"Would it be all right if I watched? I could help you just like I did today and I promise I won't get in the way and it'd be ... good!” was all that came out as I froze and boiled in my excitement.
He looked down at me, then turned back to the rocket while he filled and lit his pipe. “No sir,” he replied, smoke curling around his words, “I'm afraid it's going to be too late, much too late at night for that."
"Oh,” I said, the very life in me stilled by his simple words of denial. And though I already knew that the best things were always happening when I couldn't be there, because it was too early or too late, too hot or too cold—always too much or too little of something—this refusal hit hard. “Will you come back?” I asked, shading the sun from my eyes as I looked up at him. He turned around, and, though I couldn't see him very well because of the smoke and the hard shadows, I could tell he was studying me.
"Tell you what,” he said. “I'll bring you some flowers. Would you like that?"
"Oh, Mister Jones, they don't have flowers in space,” I said, thinking he was making fun of me.
"I wouldn't be too sure of that if I were you,” he said, and briefly smiled at me for the first time I could remember. Just then Ma called me in for lunch. Mister Jones and I looked at each other. “This stays between us, son,” he said, releasing me back to the world.
"Okay,” I heard myself say. I struggled with the possibilities of this impossible turn of events, slowly backing away and then turning and running to my house. Not only was I not going to get to see him take off, now I couldn't even tell anyone about it. But my spirits lifted a little at the thought of having a homemade rocket practically in my own backyard. Of course, the first thing I wanted to do was tell my parents, but at the thought of breaking a promise made to Mister Jones, I knew I would have to be strong. Real strong, as I was about to find out.
GUD Magazine Issue 3 :: Autumn 2008 Page 14