Forcing himself to push the feelings aside, he beheld the Russian: a white starched dress shirt, unbuttoned, sleeves rolled up. Snakelike, the tattooed image of a bluish chain disappeared underneath the cuff of his shirt. His hands were freakishly large—even for a man his size—and the teal tinge of the tattoos and the sloppy outlines yelled prison makeshift ink. Brady had seen dozens if not hundreds of tattoos during those years, crude ink made by burning the heel of a shoe and mixing the soot with urine; once a concentration camp number, numerous tears on cheekbones, various baby footprints, mermaids, you name it, he’d seen it. The cross around the Russian’s neck identified him as a Prince of Thieves, a highly honorable tattoo. Brady imagined the man’s back adorned by cathedrals and towers, two, maybe three steeples with spires on top, representing the number of prison terms served.
Instead of You have a phone book? Brady lowered his eyes out of respect: “May I borrow the phone book, shishka?” Shishka was an informal word for a person of great importance.
The Russian’s eyes showed no emotions, his body didn’t move, not even shift in place. He reached under the counter and dropped a phone book on the counter with a thud.
“I want it back.” Robot-like, he finished one word before he began the next one. His accent was deep and weaved itself through each syllable and every word. He placed his hands on top of the phone book and slid it slowly and deliberately across the counter. “Do not leave it outside. People steal around here.”
Outside, Brady sat on the bench. He looked up landscaping and moving companies and wrote their phone numbers on the back of a business card he’d grabbed from the counter. He emptied his pockets: just enough money for a week in a seedy motel and a couple of meals.
Calling one of the numbers, business hours Monday through Friday, he realized it was Saturday morning and he’d have to wait until Monday.
He pondered his next move but not much came of it. He got stuck on the past: the bad checks he’d written—his lust for gambling was another thing all together—the stint in prison, the bone breaking job as a ranch hand, and maybe, just maybe, he should have stayed put. Should have apologized, should have found a way, maybe should have just taken the bantering of the men twice his age at the ranch with a grain of salt, the way they called him names, should have made peace with the fact that he did the work of three while they stood around flapping their gums and smoking, kicking dirt off their boots while he worked his fingers to the bone.
And then there were the women. He couldn’t remember the last time he had touched one, hadn’t had a remotely romantic moment since he’d been out of prison, didn’t want to do the math on that one. Years it had been, years. There was that one girl at the ranch—she did the weekly payroll, handing out envelopes thick with bills—but he had never pursued her. He loved the way her hair touched her shoulders, how she tossed it back right before she handed him his money. Brady felt mostly awkward around her but he still thought fondly of her. Everybody seemed to have a story about her and maybe it was true what the men had said about her even though she didn’t look like one of those women.
He felt the old rage rise up inside of him—he had always called it the old rage because it seemed to come from some sort of ancient place that reached so far back he hardly remembered its origin. That familiar temper had gotten him in so much trouble over the years, it churned inside of him as if a bucket was filling up—without any outward sign of fury—but once the liquid reached the top, all bets were off. He saw his father’s face in those moments, smelled cheap whiskey, felt some sort of way about him. He had been at odds with his father since he could remember, and in return his father used the belt. He used it often and hard. It wasn’t the welts on his skin, wasn’t his swollen shut eyelids, wasn’t the pain that seared itself into his brain, it was the tears that he swallowed that made his life unbearable. He attempted to wipe those images aside like condensation on a mirror. It didn’t always work.
By the time he dropped out of school—he was fifteen then—rage overtook him frequently. He loved to fight, taunt other guys, most of them taller, heavier, much older. He didn’t care. The pain they inflicted on him felt real, unlike his life. Unlike the—
No. His whole childhood was a can of worms he didn’t want to open. He wanted to keep a lid on it, maintain a poker face—swoosh, he imagined a hand air-swiping from his forehead to his chest, done! Nothing to see here. He thought of the horses, how they showed signs of edginess, squirming and prancing, and there, there, he’d say, calm now, calm, and he’d blow air on their nostrils. Within seconds they stood serene, waiting for his command. He didn’t have that same power when it came to his temper.
He sat on the bench by the pay phone for the better part of an hour, staring at the cracks in the concrete and an occasional weed fighting its way toward the light. Reality intruded, snapped him out of this state of contemplation: a man checking tire pressure and a woman bent over a screaming infant in the backseat, changing a diaper.
He froze when he spotted the dent in the door of the Bronco. It was the size of a boot, as if someone had kicked the door just for the fun of it.
He studied his likeness in the window of the Bronco: unkempt, worn out, a man in the body of a twelve-year-old boy. Those kids had done that, he knew it. They had no respect for a man’s property. That car was all he had, old as it may be, he had always tended to it, kept it clean and maintained, and it had another ten years in it, if not more.
Anger rose to the top but the red Mustang was long gone. Brady counted—remembered a trick he had heard of in prison: first, anchor yourself, look around, find something you can see, something you can touch, something you can hear, something you can smell, and something you can taste—to slow the scorching heat behind his eyes. A sign in the door—one of the things he forced himself to see—made itself known: Help Wanted, it read.
* * * *
Three hours later the Russian knew his life story: his love for horses and his hate for ranch work, his gambling habit, the stint in prison, the dent in the Bronco.
His name was Igor, he said, just Igor.
“Listen,” Igor said, “I need someone to stock shelves. Scan merchandise, that sort of thing. You can sleep and shower in the back. There’s a cot in the back room. Good enough, you are young. Not so good for an old man.” He smiled and exposed his upper teeth encased in gold.
Brady wanted to somehow indicate his level of trustworthiness but came up empty—had just told him about the bad checks and the gambling habit—but Brady knew to steal from him, to take anything without asking, would result in dire consequences. Even Texas wasn’t going to be big enough to hide from a man like Igor.
“I know you understand. Your time here will be what you make of it.” Igor’s eyes focused on some invisible target in the distance and his thoughts seemed to trail off to memories not meant for the faint of heart. “We need to talk about what I expect from you working here, living here, money and customers. Following orders.” He spoke without contractions, his English grammatically flawless yet it was the accent he couldn’t shake, substituting the ‘w’ for the ‘v’-sound.
“One more thing,” Igor added and pointed at the curtain below the counter. With a swift swipe of his hand he parted the fabric and exposed the wooden barrel of a shotgun. “Under this counter, there is a gun. Never touch my gun. Never. Do not speak of it, do not handle it, do not even look at it. Just know it is there and leave the rest to me.”
“You’re the boss, shishka.” Brady shrugged and lifted his hands, palms facing out.
Three rooms in the back of the gas station: Igor’s office—a desk and a chair, a few shelves stuffed with papers, boxes piled up on the floor, and a pin-up calendar—and a square room with a cot and a shelf. The third room was next to Igor’s office, rectangular and tiled from top to bottom. It contained two showers without partitions or shower curtains. Igor referred to it as the freezer room because it contained two sub-zeroes with large stainless steel doors reaching