The Jehovah’s fucking Witnesses.
She saw them canvassing, maybe they even ding-donged her wherever she is and she charmed them.
Got them to deliver her magic payload.
It’s only starting.
I could run, but where?
She found me here, she’ll find me again, only next time I won’t be in my own house, on my land. Terroir isn’t just important for grapes; it’s important for users. We take strength from our own land; it’s why so many here have at least a pinch of Indian blood.
Flee or dig in?
I could abandon my books, give up magic, go back to Ohio. Or anywhere. She’d like that… to take my library without a fight, then find me cowering in Enon and pinch me between her thumbnails like a flea. Crucify me and hang me upside down at the Apple Butter Festival as a big Fuck you to Christ, Ohio, and apple pie. I could fight her on the Adena mound, but with what? Dead porcupine guy wouldn’t help me; I peed on his grave.
Chancho nudges Andrew, whispers in his ear.
“Hey, brujo, you dreamin’? At least look like you care—this guy’s talkin’ about his mom who beat him up.”
A guy with a curly red frizz of hair and one of those necks that looks like it has an extra joint in it,
a neck like the pipe under a sink
is talking about his mom who would huff gas and drink cheap gin and sometimes work him over with a toilet plunger, but he got away from her and went to college, where he, too, started drinking and found out he couldn’t stop.
Andrew writes on his coffee napkin.
Chancho grunts, then writes back.
Andrew flips the napkin.
Now they’re both trying not to laugh.
Chancho bites the inside of his cheek so hard a tear falls down his face.
After the meeting, the DUI guy from before, the ejecta from the Lexus, approaches Andrew at the doughnut box. Andrew isn’t hungry, but he’s standing next to Chancho, who is tucking half a cruller into his mouth.
“Andrew? Right?”
“Yep.”
“I don’t know if you remember me, but I’m Jim. Here’s my card. Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you.”
Now it clicks.
He’s seen this guy’s obnoxious commercials; his billboards are all over Rochester.
An ambulance chaser of the first house.
Probably sidestepped the DUI conviction, used his own dark magic to transmute it into reckless driving, but the AA meetings?
Judge wouldn’t budge.
I got a card because I look like a PORPLE TURD.
He manages not to laugh.
He manages not to say three words in Aramaic that would make Jim Simko have a minor seizure in court tomorrow, voiding bladder and bowels.
Ten years ago he would have said those words.
Last night, in his tiger suit, he would have cheerfully batted half the lawyer’s face off, then sat on his legs and watched him expire, because tigers are all about impulse.
Now he just takes the card, puts it in his back pocket where he knows it will get mushed into a ball in the washing machine.
I don’t like this guy, I don’t have to like this guy, but I have no right to judge him. He’s doing the best he knows how, just like me.
Oh, but he is a smug bastard, isn’t he?
Stop hanging good or bad on everything.
He just is.
Like that killing bitch who’s after you.
No, you can’t suburban-Buddha your way out of this one.
No gray area on her.
She’s bad.
She’s really, really bad.
And she’s not going to walk away from this unhurt.
He should give her the card.
“Thanks, Jim,” he says.
Follows still-chewing Chancho outside to smoke.
Pats Bob gently on the back on his way out.
I’m not running.
I’m digging in like a goddamned badger.
73
Andrew hasn’t been on the Internet in a while.
He logs in, holding frozen okra to his head.
He’s had the okra for a while because he’s meant to make gumbo, but hasn’t gotten around to it. Okra works almost as well as peas, but he ate the peas.
It delights him to see an e-mail from Radha in his inbox.
Chicagohoney85: The car is bombdiggity. Radha is a happy girl. Do you know, I parked it past the ‘no parking to corner’ sign right on Clark Street and left it ALL DAY. No tickets, nothing. Just some dude who saw me going into the coffee shop left me a note on the wiper, drew a flower on it, a good flower, and his phone number and website. An actor. Has his own website but hasn’t really done anything yet except for some wretched naked musical at the Bailiwick. Which my friends call the Gailywick because everything there is Gay-oriented and sucks. Not very PC, but it’s kinda funny. Gay people call it the Gailywick, too, so it’s probably OK.
Anyway, the Cooper?
You killed that car.
The zebra skin seats really gave you most favored nation status.
And this is how Radha does gratitude.
INFORMATION!
And you want this.
It’s interesting.
This is about Daddy Bear, Yevgeny Dragomirov.
Two things.
One: I dug around in Soviet military archives, not the kind of thing Americans get invitations to see. But I have inroads and people. Dragomirov fought in Stalingrad and Kursk, really heavy fighting, really nasty, some of the most brutal stuff of the war. Kursk was huge, 5,000 tanks mixing it up, more than two million combatants. Hitler was trying to double down after losing his ass in Stalingrad, but he lost more ass in Kursk.
My point is, this was survival of Mother Russia shit, not the kind of fighting you get leave from, and Yevgeny and his T-34 were tangled up in it from November 1942 until at least August 1943. Mikhail Dragomirov was born in December 1943. You might think you see where this is going, but you don’t.
I don’t think Mama Dragomirov had herself a fling; she was a mousy little thing loyal to her husband and scared of him, too. Busted her ass in a factory that made soldier’s boots, belts and satchels.
No, it wasn’t her.
There’s a twist.
I found record of a soldier, a Gennady Lemenkov, an illiterate farmer from the Urals, who, with the help of a friend who could read and write, sent a letter of complaint to a superior officer about comrade D.