Years passed, their boy grew up. Called Vadim. The boy is already eight years old, and looks like an adult with serious eyes. Alexander Fedorovich always saw in his son an excellent employee and brought him up accordingly. Elena Nikolaevna spoiled the boy and allowed him to do almost anything. Parents quarreled on this topic more than once, but they quickly ended, because the parents loved each other madly, and the hostess of the house was pregnant again.
Vadim wanted a brother to play with and fight with the neighborhood boys. Elena Nikolaevna wanted a daughter, and Alexander Fedorovich also wanted a son.
Vadim liked to play with the boys on the street and always came late and with bruises. Sometimes I went fishing with them or with my father. The boy was strong in health and body and already helped around the house. He carried barrels of water home, dug in the garden and climbed on the roof to fix a leaky roof.
«That’s not how you hold an axe,» my father once said when they were chopping wood together in the yard of the house.
– And how? Vadim asked, looking at the axe.
Alexander Fedorovich wiggled his mustache and roughly turned the axe point down.
– That’s it, – the father replied with a sneer, «chop it up.
Vadim started chopping firewood. At first, it was difficult for the boy to do this. Iron got stuck in the wood, and splinters flew in spite of the face and eyes. Alexander Fedorovich took out another axe and began chopping wood together with his son. An adult man did it much better and faster. After a few minutes, Alexander Fedorovich’s pile of firewood became larger than Vadim’s.
«Remember, son,» he said later at home over a plate of borscht, his black moustache stained with red broth. – the axe should be held firmly, and the blows should be smooth and strong so that the wood gives in better.
Vadim grew up from childhood as a smart boy
My father was often not at home, and my mother stayed late for a part-time job in a store, then it was tight with money. Alexander Fedorovich reproached his wife for this, because she is in a position, and to work harder than he himself at work. Elena Nikolaevna was a fragile woman, but strong in spirit, and also too stubborn to put her own good in priority.
«Remember, son,» he said later at home over a plate of borscht, his black moustache stained with red broth. – the axe should be held firmly, and the blows should be smooth and strong so that the wood gives in better.
My father was often not at home, and my mother stayed late for a part-time job in a store, then it was tight with money. Alexander Fedorovich reproached his wife for this, because she is in a position, and to work harder than he himself at work. Elena Nikolaevna was a fragile woman, but strong in spirit, and also too stubborn to put her own good in priority.
After that, Alexander Fedorovich showed Vadim how to slaughter chickens. To do this, he took out an axe and sharpened it properly. The boy by this time was incomprehensibly holding a chicken in his hands.
– Are we going to chop wood? – he asked then.
– No, something else,» he shook his head and took the bird by the neck.
The chicken let out a hoarse sigh and tried to escape by flapping its wings.
– I’m holding a chicken, and you hit her in the neck with the sharp part of an axe. – said Alexander Fedorovich, opening a view of the chicken’s thin neck.
«She’s going to die,» Vadim said in surprise, clutching a heavy axe to his chest.
– Yes, but it will serve us well, think about it this way, – the father raised his eyebrows, shrugging his shoulders. – Well!
Vadim hesitantly raised the axe and hit the chicken in the neck. Her blood immediately flowed down the stump, but the bird itself had not died yet, but was making death cries.
– Well, who cuts like that! – the man roared and the boy shuddered from this cry and hit much harder.
The chicken died, and its head lay apart from the body and vomited blood.
Then it was a cold autumn day, and Elena Nikolaevna sent her son to the first grade to study. Vadim didn’t like this business, but he received only good grades in Russian. His father flogged him for bad ones, and his mother tried to somehow mitigate the punishment.
Months passed, and Elena Nikolaevna’s stomach swelled even more. She was already sitting only at home, and Alexander Fedorovich worked for two. One day, coming home, he gave Vadim a red, good ball. The boy immediately went to play with friends near the house. Then a dacha of some rich man was being built nearby and trucks very often drove along the roads of the village. They raised whole clouds of smoke that smelled terrible, and their engine roared very loudly in the street.
Vadim was playing with friends right by the road, on a patch of land. There was no grass growing there, only bare earth was here. The boys thought it was a great place to play and started kicking the ball very far away. Alexander Fedorovich then sat on a bench near the house to watch his son from afar, he rejoiced at his victories and was sad from failures. And so the red ball rolled out onto the road, Vadim ran after him, and a truck with bricks was passing on this road. The father immediately exploded from the spot.
– Vadim! Vadim, my mother! My father was shouting, he was angry and panicked. As a man at war, he gathered himself and ran to his child, who did not hear his screams and hoped that he would have time to take the ball from the ground.
The driver clearly did not see where he was going and did not pay attention to the people who were crawling like bugs under his wheels. Alexander Fedorovich pushed Vadim hard in the chest, and the frightened boy looked at his father, who was angry. The car hit him, running over a massive wheel. Blood and open fractures were visible. Vadim’s friends fell silent, and someone even screamed and cried.
Vadim did not cry or scream, he was in shock. The driver of the car got out and cursed loudly, Elena Nikolaevna ran out of the house.
– Sasha! Sasha! – she kept saying, throwing herself under the wheels of the truck. She grabbed the driver by the breasts and started screaming and fell from powerlessness.
She became ill and went into labor. The driver swore again and ran to the doctor immediately. Vadim was still in the same shock, he dropped the ball and fell to his knees next to his mother. She kept repeating her husband’s name as if she had a fever.
Vadim did not remember this day very well, everything was like in a fog. The fate of the driver did not bother him, just like the birth of his sister. He remembers his father’s funeral very well. A wooden coffin, a priest, a cold father’s body and a pale face. Elena Nikolaevna sobbed loudly and buried her nose in her mother’s shoulder. Tears were also streaming down her wrinkled cheeks. Many friends of Alexander Fedorovich came to this funeral, as if the weather was also mourning Vadim’s father, sending heavy raindrops and cold wind on people’s heads. Then they said goodbye to his corpse and sent him on his way. Buried, left lush bouquets and left a cross.
The wake began. The closest people of the deceased gathered for lunch to Elena Nikolaevna, who rushed around the house and managed to set the table for the guests and calm her daughter. On the table with a white tablecloth were pancakes, rice with raisins, porridge and borscht, a plate of bread and tea…
After all this, the mother could not see her son next to her. She blamed him for