“However you please,” Mrs. Kasparian said. “Some people don’t care to do the killing themselves. They would rather not think about that-only the eating.”
“They’ve never raised livestock, then,” Aaron said. Mrs. Kasparian nodded again. If you ran a farm or even kept a few chickens for eggs and meat, you couldn’t get sentimental about your critters. Of course, most city folks knew animals only as pets. Aaron steered Leon toward the gate by the side of the Kasparians’ house. “C’mon, kiddo-shmiddo.”
Leon bounded ahead. Aaron wouldn’t let him watch when the chicken met the hatchet. He was too little for that. But he sure did think live chickens, and especially ducks, were fascinating as all get-out.
Krikor Kasparian had a graying mane of wavy hair and a mustache bushier than Joe Stalin’s. He was shorter than Aaron, but wider through the shoulders. He puffed on a stogie foul enough to fall under the Geneva Convention rules against poison gas.
“Hallo, Aaron,” he said, his accent thicker than his wife’s. “Eggs this morning?”
“A dozen, yes, and a chicken. That one, I think.” Aaron pointed at a plump bird pecking corn and bugs from the dirt. Leon ran past the rooster toward the muddy little pond the ducks used. He stared at them, wide-eyed. He didn’t bother them or anything-he just stared. He really did seem to be paying his respects. He got muddy doing it, which wouldn’t thrill Ruth, but he was a little kid. Little kids drew mud the way magnets drew nails.
“Feed has got more expensive since the bomb fell,” Krikor said gravely. “And we have more demand, because the supermarkets that get birds from far away cannot do it so easily. So it will cost you half a dollar more than last time.”
I’ve got you over a barrel, was what he meant. He was one of the price gougers big shots in Sacramento and Washington went on about. But he was also a neighbor, and he could have tried to extract more than he had. Aaron paid him without haggling. Life was too short. As long as you had the money, life was too short. For the moment, he did.
“Hey, Leon!” he called. “Come on! We’re going home!”
Pretty soon, from what Ruth said, Leon would start saying no whether he meant it or not. He hadn’t done it yet, though. He started back toward Aaron, but stopped to go eye-to-eye with the rooster. Maybe he enjoyed doing that with something that was shorter than he was. The rooster’s golden eyes bored into his brown ones. Leon reached out-Aaron was convinced he was experimenting, not being mean-to touch the bird’s red comb.
“Careful, kid,” Aaron said. He knew, as Leon didn’t, that a rooster was boss of the henyard and had no use for intruders-especially not for intruders who weren’t much bigger than it was.
He spoke up just too late. The rooster hauled off and kicked Leon in the shin. Since Leon was wearing short pants, it hurt even more than it would have otherwise. He let out a squeal that literally ruffled the rooster’s feathers, then dashed back to his daddy. Aaron picked him up to inspect the damage.
“I am very sorry about that,” Mr. Kasparian said.
“Doesn’t seem to be much harm done,” Aaron said. Leon had a red mark on his leg and might get a bruise, but the rooster hadn’t broken the skin. “You have to watch out for things like that,” Aaron told him.
Leon had no idea what he was talking about. He’d keep finding out the hard way how the world worked for quite a while yet. But, as long as Aaron had hold of him, things couldn’t be too bad.
After a minute or two, Aaron set him down. He paid Krikor Kasparian, took the eggs and the chicken, got hold of Leon’s hand, and went home. He’d have a new story to tell Ruth.
–
They said you never saw the one that got you. As far as Sergeant Konstantin Morozov was concerned, they said all kinds of silly crap. This once, though, they happened to be right.
Morozov was frantically traversing the T-54’s turret so the tank’s big gun would bear on an English Centurion-he thought it was a Centurion, anyhow, since it looked more angular than the American Pershings. Next thing he knew, something slammed into the T-54 hard enough to smash his face into the periscope eyepiece. Blood ran down his cheek.
“Fuck your mother!” Pavel Gryzlov bawled. “We’re hit!”
“Fuck your own mother,” Morozov said irritably. “I never would have known without you.”
From the front of the tank, Mikhail Kasyanov reported the situation in two words: “Engine’s dead.”
“Oh, fuck your mother, too,” Morozov told the driver. If that round, wherever the hell it came from, had hit the turret or bored through the hull into the fighting compartment, they wouldn’t still be here banging their gums about it. With luck, they would have died before they knew they were dead. Without luck…Morozov didn’t want to think about that, so he didn’t.
“What do we do, Comrade Sergeant?” Mogamed Safarli asked.
Morozov marveled that even a blackass could be so goddamn dumb. “We get the hell out, that’s what,” he answered. In his mind’s eye, he pictured an American or English tank commander ordering his gunner to put another round into the Red Army tank with the black smoke pouring out of the engine compartment-he couldn’t see that smoke, but he knew it had to be there.
Out they went. The driver had a floor hatch behind his seat. The others escaped through the one in the floor of the fighting compartment. They crawled forward as fast as they could-burning diesel fuel was dripping down from the stricken engine.
“I feel naked,” Gryzlov said.
“Tell me!” Morozov exclaimed. Under the tank wasn’t so bad. But they had to get out, get away. That meant exposing themselves to bullets and shell fragments and all the other things the T-54’s thick, beautifully sloped armor had held at bay…till it hadn’t.
Sure as hell, as soon as Morozov came out from between the tracks, a bullet cracked past him. More rounds stirred the grass in front of the tank. Staying as low as he could, he slithered along to put the T-54’s bulk between him and those unfriendly strangers out there. How the devil did any infantryman live longer than a minute and a half?
Misha Kasyanov yipped in pain. He clutched at the calf of his left leg. Red began to soak through the khaki of his coveralls. “Keep going if you can,” Morozov called to him. “We’ll get you bandaged up as soon as we find cover.”
“I’ll try,” was all Kasyanov said. That was as much as anyone could do. Morozov knew how lucky he was not to have stopped something himself.
Another armor-piercing round did hit the T-54 then. It brewed up. Flame and smoke shot from all the turret hatches. The turret itself didn’t blow off, which was also a matter of luck. One perfect smoke ring did come into the sky from the cupola, as if the Devil had paused in the middle of smoking a cigar.
“Heh!” Pavel Gryzlov said. “They wasted ammo there. That pussy wasn’t going anywhere anyhow.”
“I don’t know,” Morozov responded. “If we recovered it, we might have been able to slap in a new engine.”
“I don’t believe it for a minute,” the gunner said. Then, remembering to whom he was talking, he quickly added, “Uh, Comrade Sergeant.”
“Right.” Konstantin Morozov’s voice was desert-dry. He pointed to the east. “I think those are our men in the holes there.” He hoped like anything those were Red Army men there. Neither he nor anybody from his crew carried anything more lethal than a Tokarev automatic. That was fine if you were shooting somebody trying to clamber aboard your tank. If you had to hit anything out past twenty meters, you might do better throwing rocks.
The tankers made for the holes. They all yelled “Tovarishchi!”-Comrades! — at the top of their lungs. Bullets kept cracking past and clipping the young, so-green grass-with April here, everything was sprouting like mad-but none hit any of them. And whoever was in the holes didn’t slaughter them, which would have taken next to no effort.