Blood and Salt (50 page)

At the beginning
of April, they start Taras working half days. He doesn’t feel ready, but it does help him push away the picture of Viktor in what he imagines as an all-white room, in a white-covered bed, staring out the window at snow. Or the vision of George Luka Budak’s bloody death.

He’ll be leaving soon, but he doesn’t think about it much. He can’t stand to feel anything too strongly. He keeps an image in his mind of thick grass in the hills near Spring Creek, touched only by the trails of wild animals.

One afternoon
near the end of April, Taras is sent back to full-time work with a new gang, cutting brush and trying to dig roots in the Banff recreation grounds. Damn stupid thing to be doing when the ground’s still frozen, but he’s stopped expecting his orders to make sense. Luckily they’re close to camp, so he won’t have a long march to and from the work site.

He thinks the guards are going to go easy on him. He sees them talking together, can almost hear their words
:
“That’s the one who got stabbed.”

He doesn’t know the men in this gang, except for one. God knows why they had to end up together. After an hour or so he finds himself working near Zmiya the snake. He tries to widen the distance between them, although he can’t believe even Zmiya would attack a recently wounded man.
Yet why does he now move closer again? Taras stops digging.

“Your wound,” Zmiya says. “Has it healed?”

Taras has a mind to ignore the question but after a time he says, “It’s mainly healed. I can’t do heavy work.”

He’s answered. Some kind of conversation has begun.

“I couldn’t believe it when that guy stabbed you.”

Being watched by Zmiya is like being watched by a wolf, or a fox.
There’s always something in the eyes you can’t understand.

“Why not?” Taras asks, suddenly angry. “Isn’t that what you wanted to do?” He pulls at the root but it won’t come out.

“Yes. It is what I wanted to do.” Zmiya moves closer, takes hold of the root and pulls with steady force until it comes out of the cold earth.

“You’re happy, then.”
Taras starts in on another root.

“At first I was mad,” Zmiya says calmly. “He took away my chance.”

“At first.”
Taras isn’t sure why he’s bothering to keep this going.

“I thought you were going to die. After a while I saw that wasn’t what I wanted.” Zmiya’s pale, unevenly coloured eyes never waver.

“What did you want?” Now Taras really needs to know.
This whole stupid thing has gone on too long.

“To hurt you.”
The eyes glitter.

“I see.
A noble goal.”
Taras tries to keep his voice even, but he can’t disguise his contempt. He goes on digging. But he can tell the snake isn’t finished.

“I was afraid you’d die and that I’d made it happen.”

“It wasn’t you. How could you have made it happen?”

“I hated you,” Zmiya says, as if his words are totally reasonable. “I thought he might have caught that from me.”

“Oh, for God’s sake.
Viktor hated me from before. From the old country.”

“So did I.”

So. This must be what he’s been wanting to say. It makes no sense. Taras takes a step toward Zmiya. “You’re crazy. I never knew you.”

It’s loud enough to make a guard look up.

Taras makes several quick jabs in the dirt. Zmiya grabs hold of the root and pulls. Surprisingly, it comes out easily.

The guard has already lost interest.

“I knew you.
You took my job.
”
Taras hears anger growing in the man’s voice.

“How could I do that? I only had one job outside the village. I got it because I looked after the colonel’s horse.”

“
Tak,
I heard you tell the story.
To your friends.”

Taras smells a sourness on the man’s breath as if acid works away in his belly.

“Before it was your job, it was mine. I looked after horses in the garrison.” Zmiya cuts a root off below the ground and pulls it out. Goes on to the next. “Then they fired me.”

“Fired you. Why?”

“One day a horse kicked me while I was braiding her tail. I grabbed a chunk of wood and hit her.” He goes on digging. “Krentz saw me.”

“He fired you for good reason, then. And you blamed
me?
” Now
Taras is angry.

“Normally, I’m very good with horses.” Zmiya speaks in a matter-of-fact tone. “But I used to see my father beat our horse at home, and when she kicked me, I didn’t think.”

“It had nothing to do with me.”

“But listen. My job meant everything to me. It got me out of our shithole of a farm. When I lost it, I had to go back. Had to obey my father. And wait for him to die and leave the shithole to me. I couldn’t afford to get married. Finally I couldn’t stand it, so I left.”

Taras tries not to, but he can see it all in front of him. He knows about cruel and bitter men because, again, there’s somebody like that in every village.

“And here in Canada?”

“I worked on the railroad. I was doing all right until I got laid off. I had nothing to live on, so they sent me here.”

“That’s too bad.”
Taras speaks without much sympathy.

“When I saw you, it was too much.
You took my job.” Zmiya stands still, one foot on his spade. “Krentz liked you.”

Taras remembers a night shortly after he came to camp. “That night at Castle the Germans and the Ukrainians got fighting? I suppose it was you who hit me.” He sees from Zmiya’s face that he’s guessed right.

“Do you still hate me?” Might as well know where things stand.

“Not any more. None of it was your fault.”

Fine, Zmiya admits the truth. It doesn’t make up for what he’s done. “You don’t think this makes us friends all of a sudden?”

“Oh no. Just thought I could clear the air a bit. So I can stop carrying this around.”

He pulls out a kitchen knife sharpened to a wicked point. Never mind how he got it or how he sharpened it. Being a prisoner can bring out that sort of ingenuity in a person.

Taras remembers the ride in the icy water. Zmiya could stab him right now.

Zmiya makes sure the guard isn’t looking, then hurls the knife in a high arc, twisting end to end. It plummets into the trees, flicks against
branches, sinks harmlessly into snow.

“I won’t bother you again.” He waits for some kind of answer, but none comes. “I wish I was more like you. I wish I was a better man.”

Taras makes himself answer
.
“Maybe when you get out of here.”

Zmiya shrugs. “Maybe.”

Still the snake waits. What does he want now?

Taras plants his spade, raises his right foot. A thought flares in his brain like lightning, and before his foot touches the spade it resolves into certainty.

“It was you, wasn’t it?”

“What?” But he knows.

“You killed Budak.”
Taras sees the shadowy figure, the sudden movement into the trees. He looks into Zmiya’s marled eyes
.
“I saw you by the guardhouse.”

Zmiya’s eyes blur with tears. “I only wanted to scare him. I wanted him to know, wherever he went I could find him.”

“You killed him with that knife.” The knife lying in the trees maybe thirty feet away.

“No! The guardhouse door was open. He saw me and he thought I’d come to kill him. He tore his guts out with the straight razor.” Pain twists Zmiya’s gaunt face. This must be what he sees when he tries to sleep.

“I never planned to kill him.”

“You never went for help.”
Taras feels as if he’s stumbled back into the icy maze.
This is what he’s been trying not to know.
“You cut his throat.”

“He was going to die anyway. I couldn’t let him talk.” Zmiya’s eyes gleam in the late afternoon light. He seems to want Taras to believe him. “I get sick when I think of it.”

Budak is dead and buried, and nothing can help him. He should never have been here. But Zmiya should never have been here either. Is it possible Zmiya wouldn’t have hurt anybody if he hadn’t been in this place? There’s no answer to that question.

Another memory presses itself into Taras’s thoughts. “Once, in the bunkhouse, when the heavy snow fell and we couldn’t get out...you touched me.”

Zmiya seems to grow smaller, to wither in his shell of bone and flesh.

“I could have killed you, but you would never have known why. I saw that was no good.”

Taras can’t stop the shudder that shakes his body.
The air feels colder. He knows he hasn’t yet recovered from his wound.

“Don’t ever come near me again,” he says.

Zmiya shakes his head. “Are you going to say anything?” He doesn’t speak in a threatening way, but more as if he just wondered.

“No. It wouldn’t help. But when you get out of here...”

“I know.”
The cat’s eyes watching Taras still hold some spark of light. “I suppose it’s the last time we’ll talk.”

Taras nods. The light fades. Zmiya turns away.

“When I die, who will care?”

“I don’t know.” Taras tries to force his spade into the cold ground. In a moment Zmiya goes back to work. Soon it’s dark and the guard calls them to march back to camp.

PART 5

CHAPTER 37

Goodbye Bullshit

May, 1917

The bunkhouse
already looks deserted, bunks stripped to their frames, stoves sitting cold along the central aisle. Men gather their things and stuff them into knapsacks. They wear new summer jackets and tweed caps and have recent haircuts.
They look like a bunch of Ukrainian Englishmen, Taras thinks. He and Tymko grab their knapsacks and head for the door.
Tymko sings in his deep bass: “Oh, I’ll be working on the railroad, all the livelong day...” They’re going to Edmonton, where Halya might be, to work as trainmen for the Canadian Pacific Railway.
Tymko’s done this before, walking the tops of the cars as they’re shunted around the yards. He says Taras will learn how to do it in no time.

Outside, the sun seems uncommonly bright.
All at once they see what people who aren’t prisoners see: a magnificent mountain valley.
They have lived in the midst of unfathomable beauty – too cold, too hungry, too sad to notice
.
Too angry.

Taras remembers Ihor looking for Castle Mountain’s spirit. He thinks the mountains are too remote, too pitiless, to notice the troubles of a few hundred men. Maybe they’ve simply been waiting for the prisoners to go. He used to think that if he got out of this place he’d never go near it again, but maybe he’ll come back one day and climb to the clouds.

Myro’s pale, serious face glows in the sun.
Yuriy counts the hours until he can go back to his farm. Ihor’s going to work for his friend, a rancher near Pincher Creek.
The fiddle makes a bulge in his knapsack, its neck and scroll sticking out the top.

Sergeant Lake steps forward and takes Taras’s hand in his own with sudden, rough warmth. He’s been standing near the bunkhouse door, shaking hands with each man as he leaves. He gives Taras an envelope with a small photograph inside: Taras and a group of other prisoners sitting on a ledge in the snow.

Men climb into the back of large trucks with canvas tarpaulins on metal frames over the boxes.
They’ll be driven to Calgary and sent on trains to their various destinations
.
The trucks take Taras back to the day the Austrians came to Shevchana. A seed of war planted in every heart. He escaped that war and became a prisoner in Canada. But he’s alive.

Tymko pulls him toward the trucks. “Let’s get out of here.”

Taras takes a last look at the camp. “Goodbye, stinking prison.”

Tymko grips his arm. “Not just prison.
Shkola.
Here you became a man, a leader. Like Myroslav, you have now been to university.”