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He's renowned behind the stick as an ace pilot, a smuggler, and a blowhard. They call him an adventurer and a sociopath. When he’s in his cups, he will speak openly about his hatred for almost everyone. He’ll talk about his johns, he’ll brag about the amount of drugs he moves every month and the profit he pulls. Without considering who’s seated next to him, he’ll announce loudly that he’ll fly wherever he likes, whenever he likes, and land anywhere he likes - damn any government that tries to lay down the law or blow him out of the sky.
No matter how much he has had to drink, though, he won't speak about that Russian girl. Money, drugs, threats, he won’t open his mouth about her operation for anything. It’s not that…. Well, it’s not for nothing that he won’t talk.
It’s two things, exactly.
Honor among thieves - that is upmost.
Not every criminal is going to get this kindness, of course. Not every crack peddler, dope fiend, cop killer, and spy is deserving of honor, but there are a few out there that have earned a sense of loyalty. It’s rare to find a thief that never comes looking for a favor and settles up without being asked. She doesn’t speak too much. There is never any undue sharing about her side of an operation; it begins and ends by pointing at a map and he doesn’t ask any questions.
She is Russian - that is the second thing.
Maybe she’s never said it explicitly and maybe he can’t exactly place her accent, but his is a difficult and nuanced language. No one can speak it just right unless they were born to it.
Not a lot of Slavs make it out West, fewer still can find any Western Europeans to work under them. With old suspicions still circling, it’s best to keep to their own. Somehow she’s risked it and made it out here, and that’s worth his respect.
He only knows that there exists a third reason he’s never said a word about her or her crew in that moment: in that flash second when she believes that he has betrayed her and her eyes flash like the devil’s.
“It wasn’t me,” he says. “It wasn’t me. I swear. I wouldn’t.”
“Climb,” she says. “Climb or I’ll kill you.”
He draws the nose of the plane up and the metal body creaks, strains, groans, and all the little - tinktinktink - bullets dust up the wings and spine. 1,800 kilos of Afghan opium jumps off the tracks, gaining freight train momentum as the totes slide towards the tail. He only levels out to keep the totes from slamming into whichever of her men might be standing back there. He gets his own Makarov pressed into his neck for his consideration.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m shifting cargo.”
“Go up.”
“I’m at max altitude.”
“Go up.”
“Listen, the--”
“Joe.”
Andy scruffs him; the gun clicks back in the holster slung over his chair. Unbuckling his belt with a free hand, she drags him out of the pilot’s seat. He thrashes, kicks out, and tries to get out of her chokehold - not without a fight will he relinquish his controls, and if he kicks the throttle on his way out, well, damn every soul on board.
One of her crew members takes the cabin controls with grace. Joe is able to bring them out of a decaying nose dive without breaking a sweat. Immediately, he lifts them up again and begins spinning the plane evasively - like she’s some sort of fighter jet and not a slow, bellied cargo plane. He’ll rip her apart, flying like that.
Andrei barks at him, “She’s not a goddamn Messerschmitt!”
But, as far as he knows, no one else on her crew speaks Russian.
She pushes Andrei out of the way and he knots himself into the overhead cargo netting just so he’ll keep on his feet.
“Nicky,” she says.
The Italian, alert as a hunting dog, is a mask of obedience.
She says something in his Italian and then he’s off to the back of the plane on a mission. He has to work against gravity as it tries to tear him down, tries to bring him to the earth which is sometimes below, sometimes backwards, sometimes right, sometimes left. He makes it to the storage chest between two large totes as a spray of bullets punctures the side of the plane like a can opener. He’s lost in a spray of powdered narcotics and returns looking like he’s been caught in the snow.
Meanwhile, Joe reigns in the controls. He slows down and Andrei can feel his plane sigh with relief. By then, Nicky drags Andrei towards the carriage and pulls open the cargo door.
The ground is swimming beneath them. The tundra oranges and olive greens look like algae blooms in a great, brown sea. Behind them are two sharks, two real dogfighters in the sky. They’re closer than they had been three minutes ago. They’re getting closer still.
Nicky presses a parachute to Andrei’s chest and leans against the hatch of the plane to get a good vantage on what’s incoming. He shouts updates to the rest of the crew in Italian or Greek or French or something.
Barely able to muscle into the parachute, Andrei’s breaking into a cold sweat. The air that’s pouring into the plane is like that from a broken dam. It’s hard to breathe, the air is thin, it’s as loud as a concussion, and all the moments that get him closer to this terrible decision feel choppy.
The Italian runs his hands over the parachute straps, tightening them at Andrei’s chest and back, making sure the tether is where it’s supposed to be and that everything has been packed right.
Andrei asks, “You’re stealing my plane?”
“Borrowing,” Andy calls.
“You’re going to destroy her.”
His desperate plea is ignored; she turns from him as if he’s hardly a breeze.
Punctuating his fears, the plane shudders. A high-pitched cry is cut off as quickly as it starts and, from the hatch, Andrei watches as metal sheds off the wings. The engine sputters, almost stalls, and kicks back into overdrive with a choking cough. Black smoke trickles out from beneath them. A fire sparks and takes root at their feet.
One of the fighter jets pulls up on their flank. It’s a little one-seater Spitfire, older than his grandfather but still whipping along. Each wing has a cannon and a machine gun, but neither is pointed in their direction. Instead of firing on them, the plane pivots.
The Italian shouts a warning and Joe barely avoids it. They keel almost onto their side trying to evade the crash and Andrei and Nicky go sliding deep into the cargo bay and land against the same tote. Joe corrects and draws the plane up, pushing their smoking engine hard into a turn.
An unanchored tote, all 900 kilos, is drawn towards the other side of the cargo bay. Nicky gathers Andrei into a very calculated location just before the tote hits the wall. It would crush them both if they weren’t in the same place as the open hatch.
There is a good 20 centimeters between them and the open sky. Nicky grabs the inside of the plane’s frame and holds on like a vice with Andrei caught between his body and the tote. Even when the plane levels out, it’s not enough force to draw the tote away. They are stuck, clinging to the edge of the plane and buffeted by winds, though not far enough out of the plane to be ripped off by the current.
Andrei can see over the top of the tote that the Frenchman and Andy are trying to free them. Andy barks something to Joe who glances back, panicked, and begins teetering the plane in the opposite direction.
The tote begins to let off, pulling inwards a good step’s worth. At the same time, the Spitfire comes up beside them, nearly silent, and unleashes a string of .303 caliber bullets into the side of their plane.
Nicky drops. He falls away.
Andrei tries to grab his arm but it happens so fast that Nicky - snap - vanishes.
The engine stutters again and the whole plane hitches. Andrei, already hanging off the edge looking for Nicky, loses his footing, is swept off the lip, and is left behind by the dogfight.
Falling from such a great height feels the same as being sucked into space. At first, there’s no telling up from down. The wind batters from every direction and spins him in circles, head over heels over head. He is light as a feather. He is heavy as a meteor. The earth below is growing larger and larger and larger and all the little things are coming into ice cold clarity. The river and the creek bed and the black stones and the bramble trees and houses in the village and the roads come into focus.
Wind whips at his face, brings tears to his eyes, numbs his hands with cold so he cannot tell anymore if he’s gripping the ripcord. Above his head goes his plane and the braid of black smoke and trailing dogfighters; they peel off towards the white capped mountains and the prairies beyond.
All week, he’s been traveling with this group and it’s not until today that something catches up to them. They were east on Monday, south until Wednesday, west by Friday, and north before the weekend, all with minimal trouble. His plane goes down on the seventh day while God is resting.
With all his strength he pulls the chute and is caught in the chest with all that stopping power. At his feet - left, right, and center - there are cabbages. Rows of them stretch as far as the eye can see until the black shape of a barn works as a bookend. On and on goes the landscape, varied and rich and exultant and melancholy. He lands hard at its center.
A crater is very noticeable in a world of repetition. All the patterns of the upturned dirt and new sprouts are suddenly disrupted by the death of Nicky. It looks almost like his body has bounced, or skipped like a stone, and landed in a final cave-in of gray dirt.
Andrei curses savagely under his breath and he is certain it sounds exactly like a believer’s fervent, muttered prayers. As he approaches the crater, his desire to continue walking dies to embers within him.
Nicky’s eyelashes are motionless, his eyes are without life.
Andrei is face to face with a corpse and it is an ugly sight. Nicky’s skin is gray, he’s bruised all over as if he has been beaten, his skull is malformed and split down the middle. There are two big bullet holes in his torso that have, no doubt, bounced around in his insides. One shot had entered above his right hip while the other is square-center in his back. Not only that, but all of the bones in his ribcage have absorbed the fall and have buckled in at different points along his chest. At some angles, he looks like a deflating balloon or like a white sheet that’s been thrown over strange furniture.
He closes his eyes, but the fragments of what he has seen are impressed into his memory like a diamond engraving glass.
The ground is too hard and too cold to dig him a grave. The pastures are too long and straight and there is no kindling to build him a pyre. Andy, though, she’d hate Andrei forever if he were to just leave her crew member here.
Andrei cuts the parachute into a flat sheet and lays it out. Rolling the body, he feels bones grinding together and skin giving in ways that turn his stomach. Andrei manages to get Nicky onto the parachute and wrap him up, covering him completely before tying the corpse up with paracord.
Hooves beat down the cabbage patch and, atop an old horse that nickers and goggle-eyes at him, a boy arrives. He’s ten, or a small twelve, and his hair is cut right down to the skull. There’s no real weight on him but he carries a rifle and holds it well.
Andrei stands and shows his empty palms.
The kid considers him carefully, “Who are you?”
“No one,” Andrei says.
Hearing Russian, the kid visibly relaxes, “Was that your plane?”
“It was .”
Now it’s nothing but black smoke on the horizon, and it’s not even his black smoke anymore. It’s her’s .
“What’s your business?”
“Falling from the sky.”
The kid can’t help but smile, “Does that pay well?”
“Not as well as you’d think.”
“What happened to your friend?”
“He fell the same distance I did,” Andrei says. “He just forgot his wings at home.”
“That's a shame.”
“Real shame.”
The kid lowers his rifle slowly and then throws it over his shoulder with a shrug, “This thing is just meant for chasing wolves away.”
“Could have fooled me.”
“I will go get the wagon and we can bring your friend into town.”
The corpse weighs heavy on everyone's soul. As soon as they arrive in town, the parachute is cut away and grace is rushed to be restored. Women come with buckets and rags to wash blood and dirt from the body. It lies surrounded by fresh flowers and by a priest who stands beside it, murmuring blessings under his breath as he presses a hand to Nicky’s forehead.
The knives and guns are lifted from his pockets and sheaths and holsters and placed in boxes. They are presented to Andrei with soft, mourning touches, as if this were the passing ons of a loved one's most precious things.
Andrei leans against the horse stables and watches the spot where his plane disappeared. He is interrupted, now and again, with gentle visitors - farmers and simple groundskeepers who press his hands and offer condolences.
When they fall asleep tonight, Andrei will steal a horse and take off towards the mountains and if he cannot find any evidence of a crash, he will make his way back towards the closest major city and make good work of disappearing. There will be a lot of money burned up in that crash and a lot of powerful people who will soon begin hunting for their payout.
“When the dead are gone, they’re gone. Unfortunately,” says the priest. “I am sorry for the death of your friend.”
Andrei says, “Do you have a cigarette I can bum off you?”
As far as Andrei is concerned, seeing that the Italian is given a final resting place is the closest he’s going to get to squaring things away with Andy. Her whole crew has probably perished in an inferno and he doesn’t owe her anything, but he respects her name, the way she did things….
The locals show him the grave. They hollow out shallow pits in the earth every spring to accommodate their corpses in fall and winter. It’s bad luck, in their community, to leave their dead unrested. The earth is thick and cold and mixed with ice and Andrei’s breath spins in the air like clouds of cigarette smoke.
If Andy were to somehow survive the crash, if that Joe fellow had managed to put the plane down on her belly somewhere in those mountains, they would no doubt be back around here looking for their friend. A friend, maybe, to most of them - to all but one.
The eyes are so important. Within which it cannot be mistaken who has a good soul and who would kick an animal with their boot for no reason and who is afraid of everything. It is hard not to notice, even when they do not want him to notice, who in the world is in love. What is harder for them to hide, of course, is that everything around them wants them to be in love - the sky, the trees, the birds, the grass, the breeze, the rooms they stand in, strangers, everything in the world is so pleased by their love.
Joe and Nicky’s story should be told like a fairy tale.
Once upon a time, the world had watched them fall in love for the first time but they both had seemed to have a distinct understanding of love as if they had already lived through it twenty times.
Maybe the first time it had been that the stoic Nicky had realized that he was charmed by the young man who waited for him persistently, expectantly. Perhaps it was the persistence that Nicky feared most of all. Nicky must have seen that Joe was not afraid and would not hold back and, while consciously resisting with all his might, Nicky was also making excuses to place himself in Joe’s path.
Andrei minds his own business, he always minds his own business - but he is also observant. He knows that Joe peacocks when Nicky is watching, that he loves the feeling of Nicky’s eyes caressing him. Andrei would ignore these little scenes, and he might also smile and think to himself, without knowing why, that every day can be a happy day.
Who they were hiding it all from, Andrei does not know. It may have been Andy or the whole team or the whole world or just themselves. It may not have been hidden at all but subtle and comfortable - Andrei had only known them for moments at a time throughout the years. Maybe he only assumes it was a quiet love because he had not known them without the bearing entity of a mission.
It’s over now, anyway. No need to take it all apart and put it all together. Andrei and Nicky and Andy and Joe, they’re in the business of getting over it.
Maybe for the last week, Andrei had stopped minding his own business long enough to say a prayer for that team. When he had dropped them into fields and deserts and jungles or drug dens or into the compounds of militia leaders, Andrei had reached for God and asked Him to keep the team safe.
He knows only one prayer. It is a Cossack’s prayer, the prayer of his father:
“All is before me, the slave of God who bid that all iron shall go away from me and all arrow shafts shall plunge into the forests. He shall defend me from lead, zinc, steel, and from bullets and from cannon fire and from spear and knife. May my body, and the body of those I fight alongside, be stronger than bullets and swords.”
Men used to write those prayers down and conceal them under their shirts or tie them to the icons which their mothers had blessed or to little bundles of their native earth. Andrei has no icons or dirt or trust in God like he should. His father had told him that death comes to all alike. It comes to those that do not carry prayers and those that do and whether or not they are a slave to God, their bodies rot on the fields.
So he may not have prayed like he was supposed to.
The villagers have plied him open with expensive cigarettes and chocolate. He lets them come and press his hands, present him with flowers, and make the sign of the cross over his forehead and lips. But he is not the one in need of condolences.
Joe might come. He may need to kneel on the spot where Nicky’s face will be and he will kiss and kiss and kiss the dirt of his grave. Hell, he might dig down toward Nicky and bend his fingernails back and cut up his palms on these course stones.
For Joe, in case he might be alive and for the certainty that he or his forsaken soul will come looking, he leaves a marker on Nicky’s grave. As he leans forward to place the knife there next to the tree branch cross, Andrei holds his breath as if Nicky is asleep below and he is afraid of waking him.
Even while the locals look upon him with pity, Andrei feels nothing but the ringing in his ears and a pain in his left foot where he landed funny.
He wants to steal a horse and cannot.
The villagers have fallen asleep and there is but one boy up and watching the land for wolves and rabbits. No one is watching the stables but, overhead, where the barn roof is crumbling in, stars glitter beautifully. The smell of earth and grain and stale grass and mouse droppings mix with the cobweb smell of a place never lived in. A dog wanders in around midnight, seeking warmth, and stretches out beside him.
It’s almost as if….
It’s ridiculous to even think.
It’s almost as if his consciousness is killing him. If he had shot him or pushed him or caused Nicky’s death in some way, it would make sense, but he’s sick at heart because of him, the swine. He doesn’t even know Nicky or his team that well, and has only spoken to Andy.
Only, the bastard comes haunting him behind his eyelids. If he tries to sleep he sees, smells, and can touch that flattened corpse. Each time, he opens his eyes, turns onto his side, and strokes the fine hair of the herding dog until the intensity of the feelings pass.
This goes on in a circle like a carousel well into the night, until he’s nauseous with exhaustion and ready to punch and strangle his pillow. Dawn nears and so do his final moments if he is going to bolt, but no sooner does he finally build up the courage to go does the dog suddenly sit up and stare at the far corner of the barn where shadows render the world wholly black.
Andrei jolts and, underneath his borrowed pillow, he fumbles for his loaded gun. No shadow looks more distinguishable than another. Parts are neither darker or lighter and so whatever scared the hound must be gone….
But the dog stares at that same dark patch.
He squints. Trying to make sense of the nothing threat, he turns his head, and pushes himself onto his knees to lean closer - and gasps!
There in the darkness stands not a man, but a smoldering fire. Here is the curse of Hell that has come to nip at his heels for all eternity now that he has lived a life that has brought him to this point.
“Are you here for vengeance?”
The corpse asks, “Vengeance?”
He has something in his eyes that tells Andrei too much. They have a sea tint to them. They are very unpleasant.
When he takes a step forward, Andrei lifts his pistol - or really, it’s Nicky’s pistol and he’s caught red-handed pilfering it. “As you can see, I have taken up arms.”
The corpse asks, “And?”
“And that’s all…. You think it’s nothing?”
Unfortunately, this dead man has a sharp tongue and seems to think himself moderately clever. He waits, patiently, considering Andrei as if he were a horse at auction.
“Buzz off,” Andrei commands.
“You are a good lad,” Nicky’s corpse appraises. “You marked my grave, and for what?”
“Well,” he considers what it might mean to appease the spirit and decides there is nothing wrong with trying. “I thought your friends might come looking for you.”
“I thought so. Why not steal a horse and flee?”
“I will. I am going to. Any minute.”
“Any minute,” Nicky trails off expectantly.
A dangerous silence splits the space between them - it thunders in like the forming of a canyon and threatens to cave the earth beneath them. Andrei cannot stand it a second longer.
“You are dead,” he explains.
“But, I am not dead.”
“You are a half hatched chicken, is what you are. You are buried. Why is your soul not at rest? What are you waiting for to die?”
“Death.”
“But death was given.”
“Yet here I am.”
“Are you…?” Andrei sets the pistol down in the hay and reaches out dumbly, abandoning the movement all at once. “Are you really here?”
In answer, there is an uproar outside as the child, the boy standing watch, calls the townspeople out of their homes.
“Come, come!” He shouts, “The grave is turned and the body is gone!”
Nicky’s eyes move, though all the rest of him is very still. The entrance to the barn is just a sliver of dawn purple and frost in the grass. Tense as a spring, he watches for any incoming people. He is a dog on a chain who will growl at anything. If he bites a man, he might give them rabies.
He whispers, “Which way did the plane go?”
“East. Between the mountains.”
“Down?”
“I think so.”
“I am going east.”
“I’ll come.”
“Then come.”
The order holds Andrei back a second, like a horse bit. Nicky’s quick take over of the lead works as a spur. Andrei follows, taking a second to gather what he can: knives and guns and the blanket and jacket he had been given.
Before they can get to the back exit of the barn, before they reach or take shelter in the goat stall, the barn door is thrown open and there stands half the village beaming with excitement.
They see Nicky and freeze, though only for a second - then they leap forward and present Andrei and Nicky with tight hugs and handshakes and claps on the back.
An older woman, knotted up in blankets and kerchiefs, takes Nicky’s face in her hands and kisses him on the lips. A sweet man embraces him like he would a lost brother. Two little children approach sheepishly and offer him a welcome back before they race back to their mother who is standing outside, pink-cheeked with joy.
The priest walks down the middle of his people, takes Andrei by the hand, and recites a prayer.
“Our Lord, our forgiving and merciful Lord, has given you back a fellow soul,” he says. “It’s as we always pray: let us rest in Thy beautiful Kingdom unless our work on Earth is incomplete. Let us celebrate your safe return and then see you off towards your journey.”
After the impassioned speech, the priest begins to kiss each person in the village on their cheek. He weeps and, when he throws his arms around Andrei, there is a dew drop hanging from his nose. The old priest reels Andrei in and kisses him and kisses him again.
“You’re a fool,” Andrei whispers into his ear.
In the end, this message is laughed at and, like a child, Andrei's forehead is touched and his heart is touched and he is looked upon with pity.
Andrei understands that the only ones who know now are him, Nicky, and Heaven. Heaven won’t tell his secrets. If Nicky’s end goal is to make sure no one finds out, it’s best to start by shutting Andrei up.
These people are no threat to him. The rural people are often lost in their superstitions and faiths. With their whole hearts they will believe that God has performed a miracle here so that one man can return to his mortal body to execute some final undertaking so that his soul might rest in Heaven. Or whatever it is that they believe.
To them, it seems this sort of thing is worthy of a banquet.
All the finest foods are prepared and the best chicken is slaughtered and the best goat is milked and women mix their best grain and pull dough into pasta and then the music kicks up and then the dancing. Hours into the festivities, twelve hours into the celebrations, Andrei meets Nicky’s eyes across the table, makes a pistol of his thumb and forefinger and blows his brains out.
Nicky glances at him reproachfully, “You have to change your ways.”
“There are other ways?”
Homemade vodka has been drugged up from the dusty shelves of someone’s floorboards and men and women and the priest come along periodically to toast Nicky’s good health and Andrei’s good luck and the richness of the local soil that is so miraculous, so singular as to bring to life all seed and nut and soul planted within.
Even after death, Nicky seems to be a good-natured fellow. Anyone who comes along, he’ll entertain and drink with. If he’s asked, he will help with preparing more drinks or bringing out food or cleaning up plates.
The sharpest of all Andrei’s senses is the sense of the ridiculous. Standing amongst these people, Nicky does not look like anything special. A miracle should not come back from death to wash the dishes and sit to learn a dice game. He should be in Heaven or Hell or just dead in the cemetery, most likely, but instead he sits next to Andrei and looks at him with all this weight. He comes with two, three libraries burdening his eyes.
Andrei shakes his head dumbly, “This cannot be the only time you’ve come back to life.”
“Why do you think that?”
“I would think the whole process would be very confusing.”
Although Nicky says nothing, it’s answer enough.
“With that sort of power, you could rule the world. If I had what you have, if I could do what you do, I would have everything I’ve ever wanted.”
Nicky stares into his cup, then lifts his eyes to watch the dancing and the conversations that occur around them. He stares at the stars and at the little light bulbs at each window that want to reach up and join the night sky.
From behind, a man approaches and asks, “Would you like to dance with me?”
Looking back, a smile graces Nicky's lips and reminds Andrei that he is young, very young; he's younger than Andrei because he is dead.
Andrei shifts to see who would be so forward and, in the frost hard grass, there is a cheery man with curled, black hair and a sweet smile. A cold breeze rushes in and with it comes the clean smell of fresh snow.
“Nothing is worse in the world than to see someone so beautiful without adoring company,” Joe says.
“I would love to dance,” Nicky says and passes his cup to Andrei. He stands, lets himself be taken and dragged off, but before he leaves he says to Andrei, “I guess we are the same, for it is true that I have gotten everything I’ve ever wanted.”