Judgment call, p.11
Judgment Call, page 11
"Well," Erkan shrugged. "I don't know. He got Dunya and the baby out of Camp Peace."
"He did?"
"Long story."
"You said that before."
"All stories are long."
I grabbed Mother's red shawl off the hook beside Erkan's jacket and we went out to his car together.
He watched me take in the vodka bottles scattered in the back seat, the dirty clothing, the stained seat cushions.
"I'm mostly sober these days."
"Then why—"
He stuffed his hands into his pockets, making the cheap yellow fabric crackle. "Except for when I'm not."
I shook my head. He thought his drinking didn't hurt nobody but himself. Why couldn't he see he was wrong?
"I'm leaving soon," he said.
I glanced at his car. "So...?"
"I mean leaving Sevia. The Canadian government is running a visa lottery for Tur victims of war crimes from this conflict. Dr. Neyrev suggested I apply, so I did. Mrs. Neyrev helped me write up my case in English and submit it. And I won."
I gasped. "You're going to Canada?"
"Yes. Seems kind of like cheating though, since I don't remember much of what happened to me. At least not when I'm awake."
"I thought other countries weren't taking anybody who'd been part of Rayad."
"The countries in the European League ruled against it, but Canada's not a European League country. But they might change their minds when they see what a threat to national security I am!" He flexed his arms and threw out his narrow chest.
When I tried to smile, it felt fake. I wasn't sure if I should be sorry or glad. "Canada's a long way off."
"Indeed it is. Maybe that's a good thing."
"When are you leaving?"
"In less than a month, if all goes according to plan."
A loud squeal from Sitabi cut him off. She raced barefoot across the dusty yard toward us, a train car clutched in each hand.
"Mama! They came apart!" She pushed them at me. "Hook them together!"
I took the little red cars and slid the metal hook through the loop. "There." I handed them back. "Now get inside. It's too cold to be out here barefoot."
Sitabi drew her dark eyebrows together. "But you're barefoot."
Erkan chuckled.
I gave him a look and turned back to Sitabi. "I'm grown. When you get grown you can run around barefoot, too."
She tiptoed back to the house, holding her trains out in front of her so they'd stay together.
"When we met at the fair, I already knew I'd be leaving for Canada soon," Erkan said quietly, looking after Sitabi. "I shouldn't say this—it was a completely idiotic idea—but I was going to ask you to come with me."
I froze, staring at him. What to say? "You...were?"
"Yes." He took a long breath. " Of course it was crazy—much better for you to stay here with your family. And Kiva. I shouldn't even have thought for one second about asking you to give all this up." He waved a hand around us at the farmhouse, the almost-bare beech trees, the hill. "But I love you, Preen. I've loved you since always and I'd hate to leave you behind if I thought you weren't happy."
I pressed my hands to my ears. "Erkan, no. Stop. Please stop."
Why couldn't he have kept pretending that he was just a good friend until he went off to Canada? Maybe if he'd stayed sober a few more weeks, he would have.
"I'm sorry." He bowed his head and rubbed the sleeve of his jacket across his face. "I shouldn't have said anything. Forget it, please."
"Don't say sorry. I'm the one who's sorry. I wish—" He'd saved my life and my only thanks was to give him more pain. But what else did he expect?
My eyes filled, and his yellow jacket blurred into two. I wiped tears away with the end of Mother's shawl. "I hope you like it in Canada."
"Sure." He gave me his crooked smile.
The breeze carried a rooster's crow down the hill toward us. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mother's green dress fluttering in the wind as she walked up the path from the barn, a milk jug on her shoulder.
"Your Kiva would be a wonderful guy, if he wasn't so full of himself," Erkan said. "You'll be good for him."
He opened the car door and climbed in, stabbed the key into the ignition and started the engine. As he reached for the gearshift, the bottle of vodka he'd wedged between the seats tipped over and spilled onto the passenger's side floor mat. He swore and fumbled to right it.
"Dump it out," I said softly, but he didn't seem to hear.
"Oh! Almost forgot." He pulled a leather wallet from his jacket pocket and handed me a twenty-dinar note. "Will you give that to Kiva for me? And remind him that tattoos last a lifetime, so choose the artist carefully."
Chapter Nineteen: Kiva
I'd planned to visit Dr. Neyrev when I was at the hospital, but I ended up not even seeing him.
Down in the waiting room, I found Mrs. Neyrev and Arjun sat together by the window in those sticky vinyl chairs. Mrs Neyrev had her hand on Arjun's knee and he kept patting it, like he was soothing a baby. They told me Dr. Neyrev was asleep and the doctor said he shouldn't be disturbed. I gave them the bread and apples and thermos of milk tea Preen's mother had sent, and headed back to the Rastikar farm in my truck.
Since the tires looked a little low, I stopped by the gas station on the way back and got them pumped up in preparation for our trip to Moltoy.
I hadn't told Preen beforehand, but I'd decided to stop by the Sind farm, too. Next time Preen brought it up, I could casually mention I'd already spoken with the Sinds and take that weight off her mind, at least. It didn't seem right that Sanjit should get away free to Tur Fen, but it seemed even less right that he should be hunted down and killed without ever getting a trial or a chance to speak for himself.
I'd never understood the Neyrevs' request that the man who'd stabbed their son not be turned over to the police. Now that I found myself in a similar situation, their choice was beginning to make sense.
Back in Dor, the police weren't nothing more than a bunch of White Horse thugs, and any Tur—let alone any Rayad member—would be lucky to get to prison alive. Now Alexander's killer might walk free, but Dr. Neyrev could take comfort in the fact that he hadn't sent a man to his death without first hearing his side of the story.
The track to the Sinds' farmhouse lay between two low hills. No telling how long since they'd put gravel down—it was so pitted and washed-out that I'd have had a smoother ride through the pasture.
The farm itself was just as bad. The house and barn had both been dark green once, but the paint had faded and peeled away in big patches, showing warped, rotten siding beneath. A hole gaped in one corner of the barn where big pieces of the sheet metal roofing had slipped off, like a snake casting its skin.
I parked beside the rusty skeleton of a tractor with hay baler still attached and started for the house. Even in the sunshine, it looked a miserable place—saggy front porch and broken windowpanes stuffed with towels.
Clumps of brown grass, mixed with thistles, stood knee-deep in the house yard. Nothing stirred except for the wind breathing through the weeds. I missed the sounds of a live farm—generators rumbling, cattle lowing, hired men yelling to each other. Maybe Manish and Rani couldn't afford farm help anymore.
Back in the spring, Arjun had gone to help Manish out when his hired hand broke his leg at the start of calving season. Shame on me that I hadn't gone, too. I'd been so took up with Preen running off at the beginning of April, I hadn't thought much on what trouble our neighbors might be facing. Not long after, Manish had gotten sick, and as far as I knew, he hadn't been about since.
"Hello?" I called, knocking on the front door. "Manish? Rani? Sanjit? Anybody home?"
No answer. I crossed the creaky porch and peered in through the window. The kitchen looked stale, like nobody had used it for a day or two.
A skinny orange cat came streaking around the corner, leapt off the porch and disappeared into the grass. I spun round so fast I almost fell over. When the jitters stopped running up and down my spine, I crossed the yard. Stepping over the rail fence on the far side, I headed toward the barn. In spite of what I'd told Preen, I was not easy in my mind about meeting Sanjit, especially if the meeting ended up being just the two of us.
The big double doors stood open. I walked inside. "Hello? Sanjit, you here?"
Pigeons rustled on the beams overhead. A couple fluttered down to the floor, hoping I'd brought grain, maybe. Hay dust drifted down from the loft above like thin smoke.
I sensed movement behind me, and looked around.
A dark-haired man about my age took a step forward through the doorway and stopped dead. His face turned almost as gray as the dirty shirt under his jacket. The cannister he held dropped from his hand and tipped over. Clear liquid gushed out, and the reek of kerosene filled the barn, blotting out the smell of moldy straw.
"Hey," I said, "You're Sanjit, right? Manish and Rani's nephew?"
"Yes...?" He made it sound more like a question than an answer.
I hadn't gotten a chance to get a good look at Sanjit last time we met, because he was shooting at me. But this had to be him. Medium height. Thin. Brown dreadlocks bound with wire nested on the top of his head. And a look of blank terror on his face that slowly changed into an expression I couldn't read.
We stood for a minute, sizing each other up.
Sanjit spoke first. "It's a good place, this farm. Just a little run-down."
I nodded, since my mouth had gone dry.
"All it needed was some time and money." Without taking his eyes off me, he bent and picked up the cannister.
"Watch it with that kerosene, man! You're going to burn the place down."
"So?" He upended the cannister and the last bit of kerosene came gurgling out onto the floorboards. He threw the cannister into a corner. "It's my place. I can do what I want with it."
"You can't go sloshing kerosene around the—"
He waved for me to be quiet. "Uncle Manish died Friday night. And Aunt Rani's with her people in town. It's my place now."
"Better poor and alive than rich and dead," I said. "Which is why I came—"
"Poor and alive, rich and dead," he mocked. "How true." His lips curled back showing the missing incisors. So Sanjit was somebody's eldest son.
"If you have any sense you'll—"
"Sanjit Sind, rich and dead. How many men can say they had a big farm and a death sentence come to them in the same night?" He laughed softly—an ugly sound.
Did he already know Rais Padmi had ordered him killed? Who would have told him?
I tried again. "I came to warn you—"
"You're Preen's man, aren't you?" Sanjit's dark eyes narrowed as he studied my face. "I saw you with her at the clothing store."
"So what if I am? Your trouble is your trouble. Got nothing to do with me, or her."
"Not true," he said. "Unfortunately for you." One hand went into his coat and came out with a little handgun made of some dark, slick metal.
My heart jumped into my throat. "Hey, put that back. I never did you wrong."
"Preen Enda's new boyfriend, of all people." His smile wasn't a smile—just a baring of the teeth. "Makes me think God hasn't forgotten me after all." He pointed that little gun of his at my chest.
When Preen had been with me, I'd charged him without a second thought, gun or no gun. Alone, I lost my head, turned and ran for the big window at the back of the barn instead.
His pistol cracked. A bullet punched through the barn wall just ahead of me. I jumped for the windowsill, missed, hit a rotten place in the floor, and crashed down through it, bringing handfuls of dry-rotted wood with me.
Two meters or so down I hit packed earth. I'd tried to break my fall with my right arm, and it somehow ended up twisted beneath me. Pain shot from my wrist to my shoulder. For a minute I lay on my stomach, wheezing for breath as sparks danced behind my eyes.
I felt my arm up and down. Couldn't tell if it was broken or not, but it sure hurt enough to be broken. I couldn't hardly move my fingers. I got to my knees and squinted up at the jagged hole I'd made. If I stood upright, my head would almost touch the floor which was now my ceiling.
Sanjit bent to look down inside. His shape blocked out the light.
I scrambled as far back under the floor as I could go.
"Come out, you," he called down. "Preen's man, if you're alive down there, come out."
Since I was alive, and planned to stay alive, I stayed put.
Sanjit couldn't see me, but he started shooting into the hole anyway. Crack! Crack! Crack! I lay flat as I could, with my back against the barn's stone foundation wall and my good arm over my head, shaking like a dead leaf.
After a minute or two, he moved away, muttering to himself, something about, "Didn't think she'd do me like this."
Did he mean Preen? He couldn't possibly know she'd let his name fall at the Council House. Maybe he'd have laid the blame on her no matter who found him out. His hatred of Rama hadn't faded when Rama died, it just spread to hurt the people Rama cared about.
The floorboards groaned as Sanjit crossed them, walking back and forth through the barn inches above my head. He seemed to be carrying on a one-man argument with somebody named Mosin. A metal cannister rang as he threw it against the wall.
I gave him time to get well away from the hole, then pulled out my phone. The screen had cracked, but the flashlight still worked. I got up, turned it on and shone its beam around the underground room.
Against the near wall lay a bag full of soft lumps that might once have been potatoes and the worm-eaten carcass of a rat. The light on my phone caught the eyes of a couple of live ones on the far side. Those tiny red balls glaring back started me shivering all over again.
I brushed off wood fragments and hay dust and started scanning the ceiling for a trap door. If they used to store root crops down here, there had to be one.
But what if Sanjit found it first and was waiting for me on the other side?
I cradled my throbbing wrist against my chest and stood still for a minute, thinking. Even if I did find a trap door, I couldn't hoist myself up one-handed. Maybe I could find a ladder or a couple of crates, or something I could use to climb out. I started toward the other end of the cellar, moving as quiet as I could.
A dry, bitter smell began to fill the place. The dust in the air seemed to be getting thicker, catching in my throat and burning my eyes. Took me a minute or two to realize it wasn't dust, but smoke.
Chapter Twenty: Kiva
When I found the trap door, I reached up and pushed it with my good arm, but couldn't raise it. Casting about for something to lever it up with, I stumbled over a long pole half-buried under a pile of feed sacks against the wall. They'd probably used the pole to prop the trap door open for ventilation when they stored potatoes down here. I lifted it clumsily with one hand and tried to shove the door open. Didn't budge it an inch. They must have parked a tractor overtop of it, or a generator, or something. What to do?
I'd have thought twice about coming to the Sind farm if I'd suspected Sanjit would decide to send his future up in smoke around us. At least I hadn't asked anybody to come along with me. The thought of what might have happened if I'd brought Arjun, or my sweet Preen, sent chills down my back.
We'd have been safer if we'd let Rais Padmi's people deal with Sanjit after all. But safer didn't mean better. Didn't mean right.
Even though I stood trapped under the floor in the reek and heat, I couldn't feel that I'd been foolish to warn Sanjit of his danger. If he'd listened to me, he'd have lost the farm, but escaped with his life—justice and forgiveness both.
All the same, I was in big trouble.
The pain from my arm made my head spin, and the smoke that leaked down through the floor ate into my throat and eyes like hot pepper. With the smoke this bad below, it had to be twice as thick above. Sanjit must have left the barn. I could phone for help without fear of him hearing me. I slid to the ground, leaning back against the wall.
My mobile phone signal showed only one bar. Coverage wasn't very good outside of Duna, and being underground didn't improve it any. Holding the phone stable against my knee with my injured wrist, I dialed the Emergency Department code with the other hand. The call failed. My phone slipped to the ground and I fumbled to pick it up again.
The pain in my arm blurred everything, turned my stomach sour, made the simplest things like where to tap on a phone screen seem almost impossible. Or maybe the smoke in my lungs did it. My fingers moved like they were wrapped in thick bandages.
Call back. Call failed. Call back. Call failed. Oh, God...
That little lone signal bar disappeared. My heart sank.
Gritting my teeth, I stood on tiptoe right under the hole I'd broken in the floor. Didn't seem like that would make much difference, but I got one bar again. I called Arjun. He didn't answer.
As panic built like steam inside me, I paced the cellar on shaky legs. What if I couldn't get out? What if the barn fell in? What if I died down here? Would my family ever find my bones? Oh God, give me one more call...
Chapter Twenty-One: Preen
Not ten minutes after Erkan left, my phone rang and Kiva's picture flashed onto the screen. I'd snapped that photo of him a few weeks before—caught him mid-yawn—eyes closed, mouth wide. When I showed him I'd used it for his caller ID, he about fell over laughing.
I took my phone away from Sitabi, who'd lost interest in her train and started fiddling with it.
"Are you headed home yet?" I asked. "Did you get to speak to the Neyrevs?"
A buzz of static. Silence.
"Kiva, can you hear me?" I stood and started for the front door for a better connection outside.
"Preen, call the..." A loud hissing noise cut Kiva off before he said more, but that raw, scared voice made my stomach cold.
"What's wrong?"
".... the Emergency Department." He started coughing worse than Dr. Neyrev. "Preen, call the....I'm not getting through....fire..." Static blotted out the rest.
