This is an ongoing serialization of an unfinished novel I wrote and Carson illustrated in 2001. New chapters will be published every Friday at 10 a.m. Read: Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, and Chapter Five.
Chapter Six
To her relatively young memory, the week that followed was perhaps the most bizarre and lonely week she had ever traversed, for by the end of it, when a seventh day had turned into a seventh evening, there was still no sign whatsoever of the Chateau’s ever-present consort. The first three days she had spent in making an in-depth, room by room investigation of the entire house, from the disused guestrooms in the west wing with their contents all shrouded in wraithlike white cloth, to the main chamber’s onion domed turrets, to the heretofore unexplored reaches of her father’s bedchamber, and still she found no explanation, no reasonable evidence to support one theory or another as to why the house had so mysteriously emptied itself of all its denizens. The fourth day was spent raiding the kitchen pantry’s food stores in an attempt to cook up something for supper that was somehow more appetizing than a bowl of cold oatmeal and a few pieces of dried fruit. She spent the fifth day trolling about the grounds, searching for footprints in the snow, but found only the muddy pockmarks of her own shoes and the occasional Llama scat. The sixth day was spent crying, for the most part, and staging pebble hurling contests with herself out on the snow blanketed front patio. By the seventh day, she decided she had really had enough, and dug out her old school book bag to use as her luggage for what she presumed to be an epic journey: to walk to the road, hitchhike into the nearest village and alert the authorities of her family’s disappearance. She decided it was, after all, the only decent thing to do and something that her father, for all his pragmatism, would have recommended that she do. She was not, however, particularly excited about it. She took a good three hours to fill her book bag with traveling amenities, continually unpacking and repacking them, all the while praying that if her father was to return, he should do it now before she embarked on such an intimidating journey. Having never really packed a bag for such a reconnaissance mission, she used as an example various story book heroines who’s adventures she had followed and filled the small tote bag with dried fruit and meat, a pen knife, a book, and a short stretch of rope. She had no idea what she would use the stretch of rope for, but it seemed like a necessity for any adventure-bound heroine for those particularly nasty scrapes where a fallen bridge must be mended or an unconscious foe must be subdued. And, dressed in her warmest clothes, with her packed book bag by her side, she fell asleep that night in her father’s bed. When the sun cracked brilliantly through the windows the following morning, she rose resiliently, walked downstairs, and headed out into the snow towards the front gate and the main road beyond.
The first several miles were actually quite pleasant. The road meandered through the tree-lined pastures of her father’s plantation and she felt a calming feeling of recognition as she walked by areas where she had played in the summers, or a certain stretch of road where she had ridden her bicycle before the winter’s first snowfall. The wind had died down considerably and the sky was immaculately clear. A llama had followed her out the front gate and down the road a distance, ignoring Ruthie’s constant hissing and feet stamping attempts at making him return to the fold, but when she had arrived at the far end of the field where the trees began to grow asymmetrical and the road became less recognizable, the llama hesitated and turned around on his own accord. How Ruthie wished then that she could follow him back to the sweet comfort of the Chateau, to the roaring fire of her father’s study, to the piping hot cooked meals that Masha would prepare on such a beautiful winter day. She began to hum a song that her father had sung to her when she was younger as she reached the far stand of birch trees that separated the Baumbaum’s developed park from the unruly steppe of the estate’s tenanted acreage. As Ruthie surveyed the vast and wild landscape, peppered here and there with a knobby hedgerow or a pine tree, she noticed that, strangely, the land seemed to be completely absent of human bodies. Normally, one could not walk ten yards without seeing the figure of a rag-clad peasant woman, diligently digging through the ground for the modicum of potatoes or barley that the land provided, even in the winter months. Rather, the land stretched on, undisturbed, for as far as the eye could see, the horizon only obscured by the occasional rise of trees, and all covered in a common blanket of bright, white snow.
After having walked what seemed to her like the entire length of a country, Ruthie paused in the middle of the road and began digging about her tote bag for piece of dried fruit. ‘I hope the nearest village isn’t too far off,’ she thought to herself while munching on an apricot, ‘This walking business does not appeal to me in the slightest. All it seems to do is make me more and more hungry with every step.’ She surveyed her surrounding, noting sadly that there was not a single trace of any civilization. A chill wind rose suddenly and made Ruthie shiver and pull her coat around her tighter. She finished the piece of apricot and prepared to continue her journey when her stomach rumbled a little.
‘Still hungry,’ she thought to herself, ‘Pooh! I shan’t make it three more miles.’ She began digging about in the bag again for more food when she heard her stomach rumble even louder than before. “Hold on, hold on," she said aloud, “You’ll get your food.” But before she could scrape together a handful of dried fruit from her bag, her stomach let out a deep, prolonged growl that sounded more like a terrifically angry beast than a little girl’s stomach and she flinched with surprise. The growling continued at such a pitch, however, that she soon realized that it was not her stomach at all, but rather the sound of an approaching automobile, or something much larger. She began scanning the horizon frantically for the source of the grumbling noise, but still saw nothing. The sound grew and grew to such a volume that it nearly deafened poor Ruthie and made the ground below her feet tremble. She stood stalk-still, clutching her bag at her chest, her eyes darting from one side of the road to the other. The trembling grew worse and worse until the smaller pebbles on the snowy road began to jump around like dried corn kernels in a frying pan and it was much to Ruthie’s chagrin to all of a sudden see a gigantic behemoth of a military tank come rolling over a hillock and out onto the road.
Having only seen sketched renderings of such massive machines in the daily paper her father took, Ruthie was completely aghast. It easily stood fifteen feet taller than Ruthie’s somewhat diminutive form and was cast in a dark green steel, rudely adhered by gigantic metal rivets. The wheels’ traction was covered in snow and mud from cutting the enormous swath it had left in its wake across the unsuspecting pasture. A twenty foot long cannon jutted violently from the tank’s swiveling turret, which was rotating in quick circles a little too freely for Ruthie’s taste. Perhaps the oddest thing about the picture, though, was the fact that the tank had about fifteen clamoring soldiers on top of it, all trying desperately to hang on to the tank’s free swinging gun turret. The tank pitched heavily as it rolled over the embankment that separated the fields from the road and tossed several of the soldiers off the vehicle, like so many parasites kicked from a bucking mule. A few more soldiers came running out of the field, their trousers muddied to the thigh, their arms wheeling wildly as they jumped down on to the road. A few of the tagalongs carried bottles with them, the liquid within splashing all around, hardly kept contained inside their vessels for all their carriers’ jumping about and shouting. As the motley entourage rolled closer to Ruthie, she jerked herself from her astonishment and gave out a load shriek, inciting such a collective shock of surprise through the reveling soldiers that several more were thrown from atop the tank. The tank itself wheeled to a halt and the gun turret swiveled slowly around so that its cannon pointed directly down at Ruthie. Ruthie gasped, her shriek suddenly stuck in her throat, and she dropped her bag at her feet. There was an awkward moment of silence before one of the soldiers who had been tossed from his perch stood up from the ground uncertainly, weaved a bit and clambered back up to the top of the tank. Leaning against the cannon’s arm, the soldier, a young man with mussy, jet black hair and a wine-stained grin, grabbed a bottle from one his comrades and took a long swig. Throwing the bottle away, he pointed triumphantly at Ruthie and shouted, “Enemy engaged, men! Prepare for battle!”
Ruthie’s eyes widened and her bones froze in place as each of the fallen soldiers regained their footing and climbed back up on the tank. “Ensign!” the young soldier shouted to one of the men still on the ground, “What intelligence do we have of the enemy’s position?” The man to whom the soldier spoke dusted the snow from his khakis and wandered unsteadily over to Ruthie. He marched slowly in a circle around her frozen form, studying her up and down. Ruthie could smell the reek of alcohol on his breath and the stale sweat emanating from his weathered khaki coat. After inspecting her thoroughly, he swaggered back over to the tank and sloppily saluted his commandant.
“Appears to be a young girl, sir. Fourteen, I’d say. Relatively unarmed, though there’s really no saying what sort of arsenal she’s got in that bag of hers.”
“A clear and present danger, sir?” said the former.
“Oh, definitely sir,” said the reporting soldier, “Obviously a very real threat to the platoon.” The soldier paused and took a few steps towards his better. “And if I may say so, sir. . .”
“Yes, private?”
“I would recommend immediate annihilation. We just can’t be taking chances with these sorts.”
“Very good, private. Job well done. There well may be a promotion in your near future,” said the man atop the tank.
“Oh, thank you sir,” said the obliging soldier. “All in a day’s work.”
“Gunner?” shouted the black haired soldier, “Prepare to fire.”
And just as the muffled response “aye sir!” sounded from within the tank, Ruthie leapt from her reverie, grabbed a rock from the road, and threw it with all her strength directly at the commanding soldier on the tank. With an unanticipated accuracy, the rock struck the soldier full force in the forehead and sent him toppling from the tank to the ground below. The entire gang of soldiers erupted immediately into action, some dropping their bottles in preference for their shoulder-slung rifles, some diving towards their comrades’ discarded bottles. Ruthie merely knelt down and picked up a handful of rocks and stood at ready.
The young, fallen soldier, stemming a small trickle of blood with a hand against his forehead, slowly picked himself up to his knees and raised his one hand, shouting, “I’ve been hit, men! Attack! Attack! Attack!”
The rabble immediately bore down on poor Ruthie, who began throwing rocks as fast as she could, but only was able to hit a few of the inebriates before she found herself pinned to the ground by several of the seething infantrymen. She kicked and screamed with all the energy she could muster, but to no avail: she was held fast. The soldier whom she had struck first with the rock clambered through the crowd and grabbed her by the throat. Blood dripped from a sizable gash in his forehead and he brought his dirty face very close to Ruthie’s.
“You’re a feisty lot, aren’t you?” the soldier intoned softly, saliva bubbling through his purplish teeth. “I have it in mind I ought to just kill you, right here.”
Ruthie’s lower lip suddenly began to tremble and her eyes squinted and strained and she began to cry. The sobs came slowly at first, but soon her whole body was heaving and the tears flowed freely down her cheek. Much to her surprise, she felt the hands against her wrists loosen their grip and the weight of the young man who had been pressing against her chest lift a little. From beyond her shuttered eyelids she heard one of her captors speak.
“Aww, Franklin,” the voice intoned, “It puts me in mind of my wee sister back home.”
Another voice followed: “Why don’t we just leave her alone?”
And another: “This is boring. Where’s that bottle?”
Hearing the sound of a myriad of shuffling feet, Ruthie opened her eyes to see the entire crowd slowly dispersing, the gentleman Franklin having removed his hand from her throat.
His comrades-at-arms were now clambering back up on to the tank, arguing bitterly over who got to drive this time. Two of the soldiers were exchanging shoulder blows over the cockpit of the tank, gesticulating madly between punches. A small group had gathered sitting at the side of the road, where one of the remaining bottles of wine was in the process of being passed around. It seemed as if Ruthie had been all but forgotten, though she herself was still reeling from the encounter. A young soldier of about eighteen ran over to Franklin, still kneeling.
“Dimitri is insisting on driving the tank, lieutenant,” he paused here, as if inviting a response from Franklin. When none came, he continued: “And I would invite you to recall, sir, that Dimitri was just driving the tank before Alexander. And we had all agreed at the last checkpoint, sir—you will recall—that Henri was to follow Alexander and I,” here he paused again, swallowing, “was to follow Henri.” He smiled sheepishly, revealing a similarly wine-stained set of teeth as his lieutenant.
Franklin took a deep breath and frowned. “Tell Dimitri that if he doesn’t let Alexander drive the tank he will be deprived of his rations for a week and may possibly face a court-martial back at base.”
“Oh, yes sir!” cried the soldier, ecstatically, “Will do so, sir!” He saluted sharply and ran back to the growing commotion around the tank.
Franklin feebly saluted, flinching when his gloved hand came in contact with the gash on his forehead. He looked at Ruthie. “You really got me with that rock, you know,” he said.
Ruthie was breathless. The tremendous fear that had only moments ago wracked her entire body was slowly dissipating, revealing instead a growing feeling of anger and disgust. She stammered through her disbelief: “Y-you’re a-a l-l-lieutenant?”
Franklin seemed oblivious to Ruthie’s chagrin, and saluted again, this time taking care not to make contact with his forehead. “Lieutenant Franklin Malevich, Servant to the Tsar, twice decorated for valor at the Battle of Budmouth, thrice recognized for moments of conspicuous bravery at the Battles of Marseille and Novosibirsk. Recipient of the Royal Postal Service Medal of Honor for Marked Displays of Nonchalance Around Moderately Stressful Circumstances. At your service.”
Ruthie was aghast at the officer’s declaration, desperately trying to muster words to give voice to the enormous feeling of anger that was rolling about madly in her stomach. The lieutenant evidently read Ruthie’s silence as her being awestruck at his accomplishments, and continued his monologue unabated.
“The last one was nothing, really. A trifle. Happened to be in the right place at the right. . .” He was suddenly interrupted, however, when Ruthie, having finally returned to her senses, fired a large ball of phlegm from her lips, striking him squarely on the left side of his nose, just above the nostril. A bit of it found its way to the tip of his nose and dripped lazily to the ground below. Closing his eyes, Franklin slowly wiped the stuff from his face with a shirtsleeve. “Well, that was unnecessary,” he said.
“You bullies!” Ruthie yelled, bringing herself to her feet, “You’re a bunch of dumb bullies!” She stamped her feet in agitation and screamed: “You’re supposed to be protecting the country but all you do is drink and fight eachother and here I am and I’ve lost my father and our house is empty and who knows what’s happened to everybody!” Ruthie, in the midst of her tirade, did not notice that the entire platoon had stopped their skirmishing and were staring at her in silence.
“Hold on,” said Franklin, standing up. “What’s happened?”
“Everybody’s disappeared!” Ruthie cried, “They were there the night before and then in the morning they were gone! You all are the first people I’ve seen in more than a week!”
Franklin casually looked around at the soldiers and then back at Ruthie, saying calmly: “Have you been abandoned, little girl?”
Ruthie stared at him, horrified, the idea never having crossed her mind before. “I-I don’t think so,” she said. She regained her vigilance. “They must have been kidnapped!”
Franklin laughed softly and shook his head, “Kidnapped,” he repeated, “No, I doubt that. We’ve been patrolling this area for the last two weeks and we haven’t seen anyone being carried off. Have we, gents?”
“No, sir,” came the response from his soldiers.
“No, I imagine a household of people being kidnapped would’ve been rather difficult to miss. I personally have inspected every carriage to travel down this road in the last two weeks and I certainly don’t recall seeing any hogtied travelers or potato sacks with feet sticking out of them — sure signs of a kidnapping in process.”
“Really?” Ruthie asked, stunned.
“Really. Would’ve told you if I had,” said Franklin, “Nope, my guess is that you’ve been abandoned. Orphaned. Tell me, before your parents ‘disappeared,’” he said, emphasizing the last word with an air of sarcasm, “Had you done anything that might’ve made them angry? Disappointed them in anyway?”
“Well,” said a bewildered Ruthie, “Perhaps. I did go against my father’s wishes and I stayed up later than I should have and eavesdropped on a conversation he was having with someone.”
Franklin snapped his fingers. “That’s it. Sometimes that’s all it takes, you know. I see it all the time. Believe me, you aren’t the first abandonee we’ve run into on this road. Seems to be going around. Why, I think it was just two days ago that we ran into three children not much older than you. Complained of the same things: parents gone, disappeared, looking for them, no sign, et cetera et cetera. They reacted the same way as you, thought they’d been kidnapped. Well, they were a bit shocked when we explained to them what undoubtedly had happened, that they’d been abandoned, and just then a interesting bit of information surfaced. Seems one of the children, a little girl about your age, had broken one of her mother’s favorite wine glasses only a few days before their disappearance. Well, the verdict being as it was, we comforted them best we could, and then took them off. I mean, we’re not social workers or anything.” With this last retort, he chortled and looked back at his comrades, who all shared in his laughter.
Ruthie was still very perturbed. “Where did you take them off to?” she asked.
“Oh, to the place we take child abandonees.”
“You won’t be taking me there, will you?” asked Ruthie.
“Well, you do fit all the criteria,” said Franklin, shrugging his shoulders empathetically, “No parents. On the road all by yourself. Seems pretty simple.”
“But it’s not!” cried Ruthie, desperately trying to organize her defense, “My father would never abandon me. Masha would never have it! And Pyotr, he’d be worried sick if he knew I was out here all by myself! It’s just not possible!”
Franklin approached Ruthie and put his hand on her shoulder. “I know it’s difficult to understand. But you must realize that it is often by their kind charity that parents let their children stay in their homes and the smallest thing can often make a father or mother want to leave for warmer climes. Think about it: if you were someone’s mother, and your thoughts were constantly bent on how happy you were when you were an attractive, single lass, unencumbered by maternity’s many responsibilities, and how wonderful it would be if you were free of that little person who was constantly breaking your treasured valuables and spilling grape juice on your grandmother’s velvet divan; wouldn’t you, too, want to escape to that summer dacha on the shores of Lake Baikal where you’d spent so many carefree days filled with drinking wine and waiting on those persistent suitors who were constantly bringing you flowers and sweets and promises of picnics in the woods and lazy boat rides on the lake? Wouldn’t the smallest trespass of that deadbeat imp you called your child send you fleeing to said dacha in the dead of night in a heartbeat? Seems reasonable to me.”
Ruthie could not find the words to respond. “I suppose so,” were the feeble words she finally conjured. She was overcome by an overwhelming feeling of disappointment and sadness. Her shoulders felt so heavy that she could almost feel them in her ankles. Her mind desperately grasped for an explanation--anything in the past which would grant credibility to the idea that her father had abandoned her for better prospects. The reasons came flooding in: the time she stayed out in the woods past lunchtime and Mr. Baumbaum had become so distracted with worry that he sent Pyotr to the village to organize a search and rescue mission; the time she threw a cricket ball through the chateau's Victorian French windows; the time she stuffed the collared greens Masha had made for dinner down her skirt rather than eat them. Indeed, the reasons became more and more telescoped until she could scarce remember a single time she had actually pleased her father. It suddenly dawned on her that she must be the single worst daughter in the entire world and M. Baumbaum, wherever he was at that moment, was undoubtedly infinitely better off than squandering his life in the guardianship of such a hellion as Ruthie.
Franklin was studying Ruthie intently as she considered her predicament. She noticed this and snapped out of her reverie. “I suppose you'll be taking me to some orphanage, then,” she said, dryly.
“Of sorts,” said Franklin.
“I won't go,” said Ruthie, “You will have to drag me kicking and screaming.”
“Really?” said Franklin. He let out an exhausted sigh. "It's really been too long of a day for that." He paused and looked around, his hands on his hips. "You mean you really won't come peacefully?"
“Nope,” responded Ruthie.
“Okay, how about this: let's forget the orphanage altogether. Forget I even mentioned anything about it." He bit his lip and looked around behind him at the waiting soldiers hanging in disarray around the tank. Turning around, he spoke again to Ruthie, this time in hushed tones: “These days everybody and their brother has been conscripted. I've got men in this platoon who couldn't be trusted holding a mop, let alone a loaded rifle. And they wonder why we've been stuck in this damn war for so long. I've seen better discipline in pigs fighting for a melon rind. Look: I saw how you held your own back there. You're a tough little girl. I’ll give you an option: we can either take you to the orphanage where undoubtedly you will be treated with the care and respect deserved of someone who has been forsaken by their mother and father; or,” and here he paused, eyeing Ruthie thoughtfully, “Or, we can enlist you.”
Ruthie squinted her eyes and sneered until her entire face was puckered like a raisin. These, indeed, were possibly the worst two options she had ever been given the opportunity to choose between. What sort of fate could possibly be awaiting her in either of the directions? Both seemed equally unappealing, certain to be fraught with an equal amount of loneliness and despair, slavish labor and cold gruel. Though Ruthie had never actually been inside an orphanage before, she had always trusted the description given her by the books she had read involving a hero or heroine’s unfortunate situation in foster care. Necessarily, they were descriptions of the most doleful of all environments, filled with abusive matrons and bullying, desperate children. The beds would inevitably be infested with lice, the walls teeming with bloodthirsty rats, and the food of the most unappetizing consistency and content. Naturally, after several horrific years, she would be adopted by a miserly, cold couple who would force her to be their housemaid for the rest of her days, and she would perish old and lonely in some servants quarters in her foster parents’ home. No, the orphanage was certainly not for her.
The alternative, however, did not strike Ruthie as being any more tempting. She despised the idea of having to wear a uniform and march miles and miles in a day wearing a back breaking rucksack filled with ammunition and stale bread, of sleeping briefly and uncomfortably in some distant foxhole half filled with muddy water as the enemy fired mortar shells over her poor, exhausted head; of keeping company with no one but a platoon of dirty, hungry boys with no respite save for a leave of absence every six months when she would be forced to cavort drunkenly through the dirty streets of some foreign city, berating the natives and goosing prostitutes. The thought sent chills down her spine.
“Well?” asked Franklin, “What do you say?”
“I don’t know. . .” said Ruthie, trying to buy time, “I really don’t like either idea, to be honest.”
“Listen, I’m giving you the deal of the century here,” Franklin said, “Those other kids we’ve run into this week definitely were not so lucky. No, it was straight off to the orphanage with them. And believe me, this is no common orphanage. I know what you’re imagining: the patched rags for clothes, the fat drunken matron, the daily beatings. But let me tell you, this orphanage is the very worst. In this place, they give preference over the rats in the dinner line. And the bedbugs are so plentiful that they have to bolt the beds to the floor to keep them from scurrying off.”
“Errgh!” said Ruthie.
“It’s that bad,” said Franklin, happy to see that his description had had the desired effect. “Tell you what, why don’t you just come along with us back to camp. It’s getting late and today’s security tour is just about done. ’ll show you around a bit, introduce you to some of the fellows. Maybe it’ll help sway your decision.”
Ruthie looked suspiciously at the lieutenant. It would certainly buy her some time, she thought, and maybe a soldier’s life wouldn’t be so bad after all, especially considering the alternative. “Okay,” she said, forcing a smile. Straightening her face again, she looked Franklin directly in the eyes and said, “But I still think my father has been kidnapped. Whatever you say.”
Franklin grinned widely, revealing a row of purplish brown teeth. “Believe what you want to believe. Now, come on.”
And with that, the young lieutenant led Ruthie back to the awaiting squadron of soldiers, lolling in disarray around the tank, and irretrievably towards a destiny that even she, with the imagination of a gifted young mind, could scarce have foreseen in a million years.