Jason Overstreet: Beneath the Darkest Sky

“They will not shoot you, Abram,” I said. “You’ve given them no reason. So don’t give them one going forward. All of us are going to be okay as long as we listen and do as they say.”

“You can tell you’re an American,” said Yury. “Your Russian is excellent and quite… how should I say… quite Russian , but your optimism is quite American.”

“I have been accused on more than one occasion of being naïvely hopeful. Yes!” I turned to James. “Are you feeling okay, son?”

He nodded, his lips powdery dry. His cream-colored, long-sleeve, repro chambray shirt was still tucked into the brown herringbone pants Bobby’s wife had purchased for him in London. I knew he was in shock still, the look on his face hollow. But I’d made sure he’d eaten his bread and water. And I had a good feel for his well-being. He’d always taken his cues from me. As long as I projected strength, he’d be okay. Did I want to shield him from all of the horror around us? Of course. But that was now an impossibility. I’d have to fix later whatever trauma he’d experience. He was going to become a hardened man overnight.

“To think,” said Abram, coughing, “that this train, known as the Trans-Siberian Railway, all five thousand eight hundred miles of it, the longest in the world, would be used for such evil. You see… I was born in 1866, so I was there when everyone believed that the idea alone of building the railway was absolute insanity. Construction was ordered by Tsar Nicholas II in 1891, and not completed until 1916. Twenty-five years! A marvel to the world! Built and rebuilt over and over again because of ungodly terrain having to be exploded, snow and rivers having to be dealt with, only to now be used to torture its own. My God!”

Abram closed his eyes and made a cross on his chest, then looked to the heavens. He was truly distraught at what had become of his country.

“Look!” said Yury, pointing to the car behind ours.

We watched as three guards began pulling a dead prisoner off of one of the many long metal spikes that had been placed under the cars. He’d obviously tried to escape through the toilet hole while en route, only to have the stake driven straight through his stomach. The officers were having a difficult time removing the poor soul—his limp body slouched over the long, bloody rod like a dead man on a horse.

“Don’t look at this, son,” I said to James. “Look at the river. Think of Paris. Think of your mother and sister and the good times we had. They will come again.”

“This part of their master plan seems to be working,” said Yury, as the rest of us watched the blood ooze from the dead man’s stomach. “They don’t seem to miss a thing. I wonder if it was Stalin himself who came up with this… this… how have I heard you Americans say it… this doozy . This is truly barbaric. Quite the appetizer for whatever food they plan on serving us.”

“And to think,” said Abram, coughing, “I actually thought of jumping through that toilet hole several times. I think they want us to try such things. I think they enjoy coming up with sick ways to kill us. They don’t want to grow bored.”

“How could they?” said Yury, pointing at the river.

We all watched as a tall man sprinted toward the river about one hundred yards away. Where in God’s name did he possibly think he was going? An officer casually followed, as the prisoner entered the river and tried to wade across. None of the officers were yelling for the runner to stop. They just watched, as their fellow officer calmly walked after him.

I pulled James in tight and covered his eyes. The prisoner hadn’t made it five yards across before the officer raised his rifle, took aim, and shot the man in the back of the head. It was a kill shot and his body was left floating there, no one ever attempting to retrieve him.

I watched the prisoner’s beige newsboy hat drifting downstream, a symbol of a life taken far too soon, of a man’s hopes and dreams buried at the bottom of a mysterious river. I stayed fixed on the hat until it was out of sight. Who would find it? And when he did, might he wear it, never knowing that it belonged to an innocent man who’d likely left behind a young family, a family who would never learn of their loved one’s true fate?

“I’m going to protect you, son,” I said, my hand still covering both eyes, his head pressed against my ribs. “Put all of your trust in me. You don’t have to worry. You will always be safe because I am your daddy. Think of this as a nightmare. Do you remember what I’ve always told you when you’ve had nightmares?”

He nodded into my shirt.

“That you always wake up from them.”

The rest of us were still looking at the body as it began to sink. It was difficult to not see ourselves in this man. And I wanted to believe what I’d just told James. But I wasn’t so sure that our nightmare would end any differently than this escapee’s had. Maybe it was just a matter of whether we’d take our bullets from the front or from the back.

“Not all of the train cars have seats or compartments,” said the old man, breaking the silence. “Many are just cattle wagons. We are fortunate in that sense.”

“LISTEN UP, CAR TWENTY-EIGHT!” yelled one of our car’s officers. “There is beet and cabbage soup here for you. You get one ladleful per person. One! And a piece of bread! After you have eaten, you are to remain outside. Feel free to walk over to the river and wash your filthy selves. There are rags near the rear of the car for you to use. You stink like pigs! And if you want to join that piece of dead waste floating in the water over there, just try to cross the river. But, if you want to live and get back on this train, stay at the river’s edge. Do you hear me?”

“DA!” we collectively said.

“And one more thing before you line up here, zeks !” he said. “You worthless scum need to squat lower when you shit down the hole inside. The floor is a mess. If you can’t squat because you have old, bad knees, lay down on your back with your ass over the hole. And you better fucking get on your knees when you piss. That toilet rug is filthy. I hope you understand all of this because we are going to have to start watching you relieve yourselves until we find out who the clumsy shitters are. Now! Line up!”

“I’ve been meaning to ask you something, Abram,” I said, as the six of us squeezed into the line of desperate souls. “What exactly is a zek ?”

“There really is no appropriate translation,” he said. “It is, in essence, a person who is a forced-labor camp prisoner, I guess you would say. But a zek has come to mean more than that even. It has intrinsic qualities… is deep-rooted. It is so unique to the Soviet Union. If you want to tell Americans one day about your horror story, assuming you live, you can translate most of it from Russian to English, but certain words like zek shouldn’t be translated. A zek is a zek . The word is wholly painful, an ungodly amount of death and pain associated with it, and must be respected as such.”

“I see.”

The soup was barely warm. James and I stood at the river’s edge sipping it, just the two of us now. I’d told him not to gulp it down. We had to savor each drop. They called it beet and cabbage soup, but there weren’t many beets or cabbage. Maybe a couple of root fragments in my bowl at best, and only a few rotten-looking strands of cabbage. I could taste a hint of beef stock, but it was basically warm pink water with a lot of salt. I hated beets, but the moment the officer had mentioned the soup, I was craving it.

“Swish it around in your mouth, son,” I said. “Don’t swallow it fast. Let it soak into your tongue.”