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They trudge out of Nashville’s visiting locker room ready to get the kind of drunk that only happens after a loss to a shit team. Ilya isn’t the biggest fan of Nashville to begin with because it’s a party town where none of the parties are particularly fun. He has no interest in the themed American country music bars that line downtown, and the gay bars are way too public, unlike New York or LA where there’s enough of them to pick something more discreet. But they lost 4-1, and the entire team wants to get wasted, so shitty Nashville bar it is.
That is, until their rookie d-man, Rice, raps his knuckles against his stall and announces in his thick, hard to understand drawl, “If y’all want, we can get a ride outta town for a real party.”
Carmichael squints suspiciously. “How far out are we talking?”
“Only an hour,” Rice defends. “My folks live in Smith County, and this is the first barn party of the season I can get to. Anyone wants to, they can come with. Plenty of booze, but chiller than a club.”
Ilya, who has mostly been listening to the room chatter but otherwise willing to go with whatever the team decides, isn’t actually sure what’s being suggested here. “Barn party?”
Rice lights up and grins at Ilya. “Yeah, it’s a huge heated barn with a sound system and flat-screens. Only thing to do in the boonies.”
Boonies? Ilya mouths to himself, but ultimately he thinks he gets the idea. “Is an hour away from here?”
“Yeah, but our flight’s not ‘til three. I’m going anyway ‘cause my mom wants to make fun of me for losing, and it’s the only place to get good shine, now that I live in Boston,” Rice says.
Some of the boys hoot at that, though Ilya isn’t sure what shine is, but he has no better plans and isn’t in a hook-up mood. (Hasn’t been since so much lately, which—whatever. It’ll fix itself eventually.)
In the end, only six of them, including Ilya, take Rice up on his offer: Marlow, Carmichael, Cheveski, St-Simon, and Benson. Ilya follows everyone around back of the stadium to a where a rusty old SUV is parked on the sidewalk behind the staff lot. They all squeeze into the stained gray bench seats, and Rice takes shotgun, introduces the driver as his cousin Danny.
Danny is a guy ambiguously in his 20s wearing a holey baseball cap and ashing a cigarette into the cupholders. He tells them there’s a styrofoam cooler full of Coors Light and PBR in the back, if they want to get started on the way, and lights another cigarette from the filter of the old one before flicking the butt out the window.
They go for it. Cheap American beer is far from Ilya’s favorite way to get fucked up, but he downs three Coors anyway while his teammates badly sing along to country music he’s not familiar with. All he really cares about is getting as drunk as possible, as fast as possible.
Most of the drive is the highway, but once off, Danny winds them around badly paved two-lane roads and eventually a long, winding gravel driveway. When he cuts the engine, Ilya isn’t even buzzed and hoping there’ll be something stronger inside this fucking barn.
Everyone stumbles out of the SUV and follows Ian into this giant gray barn which looks much too expensive for how shitty the car they got out of is. He expects it to be a pigsty inside, but Danny wasn’t lying; there’s three giant flatscreens against the wall, a dry bar near the entrance, and massive sectionals in the middle of a scuffed up wood floor. A few folding tables are laden with slow-cookers containing unknown foods, half a dozen bags of chips, and miscellaneous utensils and paper plates. Underneath is a dozen cases of different types of beer, though Rice immediately tells them that the fridge near the dry bar has all the cold ones, and they should feel free to take whatever they want.
There’s already a couple dozen people there, and they holler hellos from wherever they’re milling around. Rice does some brief introductions, but Ilya doesn’t remember a single name and only cares about getting fucked up.
He pulls Rice aside to ask if there’s any vodka. Rice grimaces apologetically and tells him that there’s Tito’s in the freezer, but otherwise the only liquor they have is bourbon, Scotch, and moonshine.
Ilya can drink whiskey, but it’s just not very efficient, and he hates shooting it. Especially Scotch. “What is…ah, moon shine?”
Rice raises his eyebrows and grins. “Aw shit, you never heard of moonshine? Well you got to try it now. It’s a clear corn liquor. Now you can buy it in the store, but used to be, y’had to buy it from someone making it themselves. Goes way back to Prohibition an’ shit.”
“What’s it taste like?”
“Depends on who ya talk to. Kinda like vodka, really. Somethin’ ya like, and an’ you can tell the difference, but most people say it tastes like lighter fluid.”
Ilya’s intrigued, now. “How strong?”
Rice shakes his like so-so. “Hard to say. My pa checks each batch and labels the jars, but it ain’t the same every time. Ours is stronger than whatcha get in the store, but that stuff’s usually 80 proof. Pa likes it 120 proof thereabouts.”
Ilya’s been here long enough to know this stupid country’s stupid imperial units, but he has to think about how 120 proof would stack up to vodka, and then he grins. “This is what I want. You drink it straight?”
Rice pulls open the fridge and pulls out a clear jar with a metal screw-top and a handwritten label. “Mostly, yeah. Ain’t a half-bad mixer if you’re in a pinch, but if y’like strong liquors, it’s real nice on its own.”
The way Americans say lick-er never gets any less funny, and Rice has such a pronounced southern American accent that it’s got even harder of an R at the end. “Okey. You have cup?”
Rice sets him up with a another glass tumblr like he’d normally use for vodka, tells him there’s ice just outside in the chest freezer near the back door, and leaves him with the jar of moonshine. Ilya’s hoping this shit’s as promising as it looks.
Now, he doesn’t drink his vodka over ice. Some people do, but he was always taught that that was pussy shit, not to even mention Americans’ weird obsession with ice that he’s never understood. But when he screws off the top of the jar and pours himself a couple fingers, he gets a full whiff and balks just a little. He wouldn’t admit it on pain of death, but fuck does that smell strong. And he enjoys vodka neat.
So, ice. Just to start.
He tucks another Coors into his pocket just in case this moonshine stuff is foul and weaves his way through the guests for the back door. Carmy and Marly slap him on the back and laugh when they see what he’s holding, and Cheez-It’s already drunk enough to try and steal his beer as he walks by. Ilya retaliates by elbowing him in his bruised ribs.
When he steps out back, he’s hit by a completely unfamiliar smell. Nothing bad—really fucking nice, actually—but new. It’s earthy, heavy almost. Kind of like rain, but entirely lacking in the chemical edge that always accompanies it, a mix of asphalt and smog and, in Moscow, cigarette smoke. American cities doesn’t smell as much like cigarettes, but they reek of car exhaust and diesel instead.
None of that out here. Underneath a flickering yellow porch light already swarmed by moths, he suddenly feels like he’s somewhere wholly different, somewhere he’s never been before but can recognize, somewhere that curls into his lungs, welcoming even to a stranger.
He doesn’t realize he’s been standing in front of the freezer, still and staring out into the treeline, until someone clears their throat to his left and says, “Ever been out this way before, boy?”
Ilya startles and looks over to find an elderly woman in the most stereotypical rocking chair he’s ever seen. She looks ancient, with deep lines carved into her skin and hair so white it seems to glow. She’s wearing a loose-fitting floral dress and slippers, a lit cigarette in-between her fingers, one of those long, low tar ones marketed to women. She’s eyeing him, blatantly knowing even though he can’t imagine what she could possibly know.
“No,” he says finally, opening the freezer and using the red plastic cup inside to scoop out some ice. Hopefully she’ll just leave him alone if he’s rude enough.
No dice.
Her eyes narrow, pulling at her crow’s feet and casting shadows across her face. “That’s sure an accent ya got on you. Long way from home, ain’tcha?”
He slams the freezer lid shut. “What do you think?”
“First time in the mountain air, then,” she says. Her voice is barely more than gravel, the kind of grit you only get from a lifetime of cigarette tar. “Really is nothin’ like it.”
Ice acquired, he screws the lid off the moonshine and gives himself a generous pour. He fucking needs it tonight.
“Bring that here, boy. I need somethin’ strong m’self.” She takes a drag and blows it away from him.
He considers just turning around and going back inside, but he realizes that the last fucking thing he wants right now is to sit next to a bunch of drunk strangers while they bitch about this shitty late-season loss. Still such a lazy, impudent failure, Ilya, aren’t you? Everything I’ve given you, and you still disappoint me.
So fuck it. He takes his moonshine and his dignity and tucks them close to the chest, takes the other rocking chair next to her and sets the jar of moonshine on the little wood end table between them.
She’s already got a glass, and she slowly pours herself two fingers with hands that only shake a little. “Yer one of them hockey boys?”
“Yes.”
“Where ya from?”
He scowls into his glass. “Moscow.”
She laughs rougher than gravel. “Try that moonshine, then. I think you’ll like it.”
He doesn’t need to be told twice, and he’s no pussy, so he takes a bigger swallow than he normally would. Gets it down before he can regret it.
And regret it he does. It burns like fire going down, hits his stomach sideways the way it would if he was already good and drunk.
It’s exactly what he wants. A kick to the teeth, closer to gut rot than anything good, but bracing, numbing. A lover that makes him feel all night but leaves him ashamed and nauseous in the morning.
“It’ll get better as ya go,” she says, amusement loud in her voice. “You want a cigarette?” She says it like seg-are-ette.
Ilya eyes the pack she holds out. “Is what you call it? Less nicotine in those than the gum for quitting.”
She shrugs. “Ian’s daddy’s got Malboros ‘round here somewhere, but you’d hafta track ‘im down.”
He slides a cigarette out and accepts a cheap plastic lighter. He’s right, of course; it’s like sucking on a fucking straw when he tries to take a drag, but whatever. He’s had worse in worse places. This continent doesn’t even sell tobacco shitty enough to displace Беломорканал as the most vile thing he’s ever been desperate enough to smoke. Compared to that, this is downright pleasant. It’s hilariously long, though, dainty almost. He guesses that’s the whole point.
“Name’s Bertha, but everyone calls me Ma. What’s yours?”
“Ilya.”
“Ilya,” she repeats, the American pronunciation even thicker in her mouth—El-ee-yuh. After so long, it’s mostly stopped bothering him. Although he thinks he might’ve heard a fourth syllable in there somewhere, and she went hard into more of an eh sound at the beginning rather than a short I.
“Close enough.” He takes another drag.
She’s right about the mountain air. As they smoke and drink in silence, his tolerance for the moonshine building with each swallow, he closes his eyes. The trees rustle in the light breeze, moths buzzing away near the porch light, and he breathes. Bertha wordlessly offers him another cigarette once he’s worked his way through the first one, and he pours her another couple fingers of moonshine when she runs dry. The shouting and excitement from the party is muffled out here but strangely comforting anyway.
He never met any of his grandparents, but he imagines that maybe it could’ve been like this. In some other life, even one with Mama still gone, maybe he would sit with them, smoke with them, remember her with them.
Father didn’t tell them Mama passed until after the funeral; he remembers the screaming match over the phone. Ilya doesn’t have their address, just the village Mama was from, and doesn’t know if they’re dead or alive. Father wouldn’t tell him if he asked, and Alexei wouldn’t, either, if he even knows.
When he hauls himself up to get more ice, Bertha asks, “Why aren’t you inside with the rest of ‘em? Or at some Nashville bar? Yer too much of a looker to be shootin’ the shit out here with me.”
He grips the edge of the open freezer and tries to unclench his jaw. “Maybe I am tired. Is this not allowed anymore?”
She chuckles as she exhales a cloud of smoke. “What d’you know about tired, boy?”
Ilya’s temper flares and he slams the freezer shut hard enough to echo out into the night. “I am not a boy.”
“Everyone’s a child to me,” she says, but when he walks back over and she catches sight of his face, the amusement fades from her expression. She watches him sit back down. “But I reckon with a face like that, you ain’t a boy no more.”
God, he really must have his pathetic angst written across his face, huh? How humiliating. But the moonshine must be starting to hit because he says, “I am Russian. My face shows nothing.”
Bertha raises an eyebrow at him. “Naw, you’ve seen some shit. I can tell it. But that’s what the corn liquor’s for.”
And really looking at her, he finds himself certain that whatever she’s seen, whatever she’s lived through, he probably doesn’t want to know it. If he asked her if she remembers ‘the war,’ what war would come to mind? If he wanted the great tragedy of her life, what decade of the 20th century ruined her worst?—what decade first?
Ilya’s own answer rots at the center of him, putrid and festering. They brought him screaming into this world in the last gasping days of the CCCP, during a summer of hope for a future so few ever thought they’d see. Democracy on the horizon! they all said. Russia free! Free at last! Father had hope, too, hope that August would restore order, restore discipline and patriotism and pride. Instead, Western Christmas came, and the Soviet Union went.
He was ruined before he ever drew breath. Father saw in him every international humiliation visited upon the homeland, saw the embodiment of modern cowardice, of 21st century petulance and laziness. He can never make Father proud because Father bled proudly for an empire that no longer exists and for sons that he had too late to inherit it. Ilya is to blame, but there is nothing to be done.
The loss to Latvia was no mere embarrassment, professional or otherwise. It was proof that their greatness had died, that this new generation has none of their predecessors’ rigid spine. They passed that fucking propaganda law as Ilya proved to them all that they were right to do it, right to stomp out Western decadence like one would cockroaches. Could they see it on his face, when they demanded he explain himself? That he sucks cock, that he is the traitor Father made him?
Good, he says. Let it all fucking burn. Let the whole emaciated corpse be buried so he doesn’t have to keep fucking smelling it.
Fuck, the liquor’s hitting him. He’s done with another pour, done with his cigarette, lightheaded as fuck.
He takes the next cigarette Bertha offers and rests his head against the back of his chair. And now that he’s good and drunk, he no longer cares about what he says and to whom. “How do you just…” He waves his hand vaguely. “Keep going.”
She’s quiet a while. Long enough that he wonders if she’s going to answer, if she even can. He thinks he couldn’t, if their roles were reversed.
“I didn’t want to,” she says finally. Takes a drag.
On the exhale: “They buried my oldest brother in France. 1942. All we got back was a flag. Youngest brother went in Korea, in ‘51. They had half a body to send us that time.” She stares out at nothing, the buzzing of the lights and freezer loud in his ears, nearly overwhelming. “My boy, my oldest boy…”
Ilya can guess.
She finishes her cigarette. “My oldest boy, Willie. Killed in Vietnam. 1968. One of the first drafted, those goddamn sons of bitches.”
“All fucked,” he says, half slurred. He pours himself two more fingers anyway.
The corner of her lips twitch as she lights up again. Snick, snick, snick. “I never forgave ‘em. Swore I’d live to spite ‘em if I had to.”
His visions swims, the porch light a smear of yellow on gray. “Who?”
“This whole goddamned country.” She ashes her cigarette, now looking over at him. “Whole damned world. Most times y’won’t want to, but y’got to decide whether yer gonna live anyway. I say, make ‘em kill you theirself.”
Ilya’s heart slams against his ribs as if he’d played a two minute shift. Into the quiet, he chokes out, “They killed my mama. Almost me, too.”
Because sometimes he wonders if he’ll be able to stop it. Sometimes he’s on top of the world, and he can’t even imagine wanting to kill himself. He can see the life he’s built in Boston, shining atop the hill, and he knows he’s made it; he’s escaped; he’s won. But then he comes crashing back to earth, a flaming meteor destroying everything in its path as it self-destructs. He doesn’t want to but he does. His nails gouge anyone nearby as he panics and tries to hold on for dear life.
Sometimes it feels so fucking inevitable that he wonders if he should just get it over with.
Without warning, Bertha wraps her weathered hand around his wrist, surprisingly strong. Her eyes are so dark they’re black, sunken with age and grief, but stubborn, stubborn, stubborn. Like recognizes like.
“Don’t let ‘em kill you,” she demands, will iron and spine steel. “It ain’t gonna be fun. But don’t let ‘em kill you, y’hear?”
Ilya thinks he does.
Then his stomach lurches and he stumbles out of his chair to vomit off the edge of the porch.
A pause, and then Bertha laughs, loud and genuine, scraping its way out of her smoke-stained vocal chords. He pukes again, the last of whatever he’d eaten coming back up, before dry-heaving a few times into the grass. Once he’s got nothing else but bile, he falls back against the porch, leans his forehead against cool wood.
An indeterminate amount of time later, the back door to the barn creaks open, sound and light spilling out into the night.
“Rozy! There you are, where the fuck have you been?” Marly says about ten decibels too loud. “Are you—oh shit, you’re already puking?”
He thinks he hears Bertha say something to him, but he’s so out of it now that he doesn’t pick up any of it, can’t decipher her already difficult accent. He rolls to the side slowly to get a better look.
“Alright you fucker, up we go,” Marly says right before there’s hands underneath his armpits and he’s being heaved upright.
His stomach twists, but at least he doesn’t hurl again. He’s clutching Marly’s shirt, breathing heavily through his nose, but it’s nothing Marly hasn’t seen a hundred times. Ilya’s got quite the reputation already.
As he’s half dragged, half walked across the yard, he looks back at Bertha, sees her staring out over the hills that stretch into the distance, pitch black and comforting for it.
He’s not coming back here again. That’s as sure as his drafting to Boston. This season is his fucking season; he will make it so if he has to haunt the rinks of his opponents all on his own. There will be no time for ease, for rest—no time for partying until the prize is in-hand.
His new life is born, while his old life struggles to die. If—to prove himself, to survive—he has to finish killing it with his bare hands and parade its carcass across Boston, across Moscow, across an ocean and two continents and a million TV screens, then he will find a garrote, and he will relish its last, desperate gasps. They will sound like his own, and he will be satisfied.
It has to be enough. There is no alternative. He won’t mope around, mourning losses for people that care only for the perception of glory, who will only ever taste it by proxy.
Marly herds him into Danny’s shitbox along with the rest of the guys, half of whom are also valiantly trying not to puke. As they pull out of the driveway and onto the gravel county roads, Ilya sticks his head out the back window and vomits bile down the side of the door. The guys, drunk and stupid as they are, holler at him obnoxiously. Marly slaps him on the back sympathetically.
The poison leaves him, but he keeps his head out the window the rest of the ride. His last taste of mountain air.
He barely remembers the drive back to Nashville, nor Marly maneuvering him to his hotel room. But he does know when it goes quiet, when he’s left alone, drunk, on the floor of the bathroom, cheek pressed against the toilet seat just in case. It’s a bad fucking place to be, always has been. But even knowing how bad he is when he’s drunk and alone, the grief hits him like a fucking truck.
Now he’s crying for no fucking reason, the deep, gasping sobs that start somewhere more immediate than memory, more primal than the mind. He ruthlessly bites his own tongue, containing the noise that can’t be allowed to escape. It doesn’t exist if nobody hears it, and he cannot afford to hear it.
I’m sorry, he mouths, directs to no one, to everyone, to Mama who couldn’t stay. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry. You wouldn’t like the person I’ve become, and I’m sorry.
And she wouldn’t. She used to say that she loved his big heart, how he was so much better than Father. She wanted him to be a good a man, a kind one, because she’d been shown so little kindness in her life. And look what he’s become instead. Callous, aggressive, hit first and apologize never. The Russian Menance. Everything she never wanted for him.
Drunk on the bathroom floor, still alone. Like he deserves.
Last December was 12 years. On the 14th of this last December, he had officially lived longer without her than he did with her. Does he even remember the exact color of her eyes anymore? The smell of her perfume? He thought he remembered the brand of cigarettes she smoked until he bought a pack to piss off Father over the summer, and Alexei looked at him funny, told him she smoked Winston Golds. That that was why he smoked Winstons because she’d send him out to buy them for her when Father got pissy about it and let him keep a couple as reward.
He fucking misses her, and his piece of shit brother is the only one that remembers what cigarettes she smoked.
Maybe his chest will just cave in from the pressure and he won’t have to feel this anymore. Whatever piece of herself she left with him is fading from the inevitable decay of time, but the spectre of her only grows, drapes its shadow across his mind, winds itself between his ribs to stay. And even if her ghost outgrows him, expands until his heart no longer has room to beat, at least he will still have her. He’ll go the way she went. They can rhyme.
Ilya stumbles onto the charter plane the next afternoon still kind of tipsy. The team teases him, tells him they know what to buy him for his birthday next year, and Marly hands him a pair of sunglasses and some ibuprofen.
He warns them immediately, while still half-drunk, that he won’t accept another shitty loss like yesterday. He tells them they’re going to regret ever making him captain, that this year will be their fucking Cup year if he has to beat them into submission to do it.
But they’re his goddamn team, and they have his back. They hoot and cheer; Carmy whistles.
This will be Ilya Rozanov’s year.