Michael Bunker - WICK

“Stay with me a while,” said the stocky young man, pleasantly, and in Russian. “They’ll be back in a moment. I have no doubt that Vladimir will be persuasive.”

He led Vasily to one of the graves and indicated with a wave that they should have a seat on the pile of earth next to it. Vasily sat down, and Mikail sat beside him in an almost friendly way, as if they were old friends just relaxing on a break from their labors.

They watched the group of youths in the distance, trudging across the snow with Vladimir at the head, and Vasily reflexively inhaled the night air, waiting for whatever Mikail had planned for him. There has to be a plan. Mikail wasn’t here sitting with him next to an open grave just to chit-chat. Idle conversation was not the bulldog’s forte. Since they’d been boys, Vasily had come to expect that, while he could almost never predict what it was, Mikail always had a reason or a plan for whatever he chose to do. So when he finally spoke, Vasily was surprised.

“Did you know that I had a brother?” Mikail said, matter-of-factly, reaching down into the cold dirt with his bare hand and letting the soil sift through his fingers.

Vasily looked at him, his eyes indicating that this was new information, and puzzling at the sudden weariness in Mikail’s voice. He waited for him to go on, and in time, he did.

“Yes, comrade,” the bulldog said, nodding his head. “You and I, we have something in common… we’ve both lost loved ones. You, with your father when you were young… and me, with my brother when I was younger still.”

Vasily didn’t answer. The subject of his own father’s death to disease was common knowledge in Warwick, as was the fact that he’d been raised by a single mother until she, too, had died, but he didn’t even think about it much anymore, and he certainly didn’t speak of it.

Vasily never suspected that Mikail was anything but an only child—raised by a man with a love of drink and a woman without even the most basic of motherly instincts. He’d always thought this to be the root cause of Mikail’s aggression. Even as a boy, Mikail was known to lash out at everyone around him, probably because he’d never truly felt love at home, but maybe that was just more of the world’s philosophy that would disintegrate in the presence of an open grave. It just seemed to make sense to Vasily that, being treated like a bastard child by his parents, Mikail had inevitably become a bastard.

“Yes. It’s true. I had a brother. A twin. Not identical, but a twin nonetheless. My brother was born dead, after me, with the umbilical cord tight around his neck.” Mikail took a handful of dirt, and stared closely at it as he let it tip from the side of his hand. It shushed down the incline of the pile.

“I don’t think my parents ever forgave me.” He sighed. “They treated me as if I strangled him myself…” Mikail grabbed another fistful of dirt before continuing. “… And maybe I did. I don’t have the luxury of any memories of the time.”

Vasily looked over at Mikail and suddenly realized how small this bulldog was in stature, despite his obvious attempts to build himself up. He was heavier than Vasily, muscular and fit, but about the same height, and both were much smaller than almost every other youth in their circle. He had a tiny red scar at the base of his forehead, just above his left eye.

“My brother’s death was the reason my father began to drink,” Mikail declared with certainty. “Did you know that at one time my father was one of the most promising candidates here at the charm school?” Mikail lifted his eyebrows as if the thought of it was surprising. The dirt slid from his hands yet again. “Oh yes! Such potential lost to empty bottles. And my mother… well… I’m told she was lovely. Not loving, perhaps, but lovely. But that was back before the bottles began to fly.” Mikail scooped up two handfuls of the cold, cold dirt and rubbed them together in his hands.

“Then I came along, and then my brother did not, and somehow my parent’s whole world fell apart, and mine did as well. It was a shame, you know? To be born in amongst the pall and aroma of death, and to have life cut down in front of you before it’d even begun. Surely you know something of that.”

Mikail fidgeted with his hands, which were now empty of dirt, and contradictorily he now began picking at a string that had come loose on his shirt.

“It’s the reason I have to be so tough, you know. Being small, like you, like me, one has to fight all the time. Just to get people to pay attention, you have to throw a fit and raise hell.” Mikail punctuated this statement with a fist, clasped tight and brought up before his face.

“But not that damned Vladimir. All he has to do is walk into a room and everyone pays attention. I suppose it has its benefits, all this fussing. It makes you find other ways of bringing focus. Vladimir just won’t listen to reason. He just wants to shoot people. It’s all he knows, the use of force. But I don’t want to shoot people, Vasily. I would rather reason with them.”

Mikail kicked some dirt toward the graves, in the direction of the body bag with the name Volkhov. “Lev, there. Take him, for example. Do you think it was necessary that he died? Or this man Clay? Could they not have been reasoned with?”

Vasily looked at the bag in front of him, and then at the bag in the next grave over, and thought of the traveler he’d met in the cell with Volkhov. He remembered the light in the two men’s eyes as they had discussed plans for their escape; the clarity they’d had in that moment; a crystalline notion of who they were and what they were about. He’d not often been in the presence of men who seemed to their purpose so clearly. He remembered the way they’d taken him into their conversation and plans, and how they had treated him as an equal… or something close to an equal. And then he felt the grip of regret that they’d not been successful in their escape.

Mikail didn’t seem to notice that Vasily’s mind was elsewhere. “Todd… now he was another matter altogether. Do you remember how close he’d been getting with the outside guards? That was not a coincidence, Vasily Romanovich. He was dealing black market goods, having them bring drugs in from outside, giving our food and perhaps more to our captors. He was evil, Vasily. Believe me. I didn’t shoot him without cause. In reality, it was an act of mercy. You weren’t there when I discussed Todd’s crimes with Vladimir. He wanted… no…” Mikail paused. “There is no way he would have been so merciful. If I’d left the decision to him, Todd’s whole family would be dead right now. Believe me, executing Todd was a merciful act. Sometimes…” Mikail paused for another moment, choosing his words.

“Sometimes you have to manage events and men in a way that serves everyone in the best way possible.” His voice trailed off for a moment, and Vasily wondered why he was telling him this. He was just about to ask that question, almost feeling as if the young man was reaching out to him for understanding, when Mikail interrupted his thoughts.

“Where is the backpack, Vasily?”

Vasily swallowed, and tried not to show on his face that he was going pale. He wondered whether, in the limited light, the nervousness in his features could be detected. He remembered something Volkhov once told him in one of their long afternoons together back when the old man was teaching him English. That was when Lev had slowly taken him under his wing, showing him kindness that few others in the town ever seemed to. He’d said, “Never answer an open question with anything but a question when there is danger at hand.” Solid advice that seemed to apply to the current situation. He turned his head slightly towards Mikail, attempting a blank, dull expression on his face.