Rite of Passage

I had known that Mr. Kutsov was old, for all that my father had lived several years longer than he had, and I had suspected that his mind was no longer completely firm, but now at last his age seemed to catch up with him. He backed away and said in a voice that shook, “Get out of my house!”

The policeman took another step inside. I was fascinated and frozen. Why exactly, I cannot say, but I couldn’t speak or move. I could only watch. It is the only time in my life that this has ever happened and since then I have felt I understood the episode on the ladder with Zena Andrus a little better. But in my case, it wasn’t just fear. Events got out of control and rushed past me, something like watching a moving merry-goround and wanting to jump on, but never quite being able to decide to go.

The policeman lifted his gun from its holster and said, “You be coming if I have to shoot.”

Mr. Kutsov hit the policeman and in retaliation the policeman clubbed Mr. Kutsov to death while I watched. The policeman hit Mr. Kutsov once and if he had fallen that would have been the end of it, but he didn’t and the policeman hit him again and again until he did fall.

I must have screamed, though I have no memory of it. Jimmy says I did and that’s what brought him. In any case, the policeman looked up from Mr. Kutsov and stared right at me. I remember his eyes. He raised the gun he’d hit Mr. Kutsov with so many times and pointed it at me.

Then there were three reports at my elbow, one on the heels of the next. The policeman stood for a moment, balanced, and then the force of life keeping him upright was gone, and he fell to the floor. He never fired his gun. In one instant my life was his to take, and in the next be was dead.

I passed him by without even looking and bent over Mr. Kutsov. As I bent down beside him, his eyes opened and he looked at me.

I was crying again. I held him and cried. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sony.”

He smiled and said faintly, but clearly, “It be all right, Natasha.” After a minute, he closed his eyes as though he were terribly tired. Then he died.

After another minute, Jimmy touched my arm. I looked up at him. His face was pale and he didn’t look at all well.

“There’s nothing we can do. Let’s leave now, Mia, while we can.”

He blew out the candle. As we mounted our horses, it continued to rain.

18

We rode north through the night rain for hours. At first we stuck to the road, but when the ground started to rise and the country to roughen we cut off the road and followed a slow route of our own into the hills and forest. It was a tiring, unpleasant journey. The rain came down steadily until we were wet inside our coats. When we left the road, there were many times when we had to dismount and lead our horses through wet, rough brush that scratched and slapped. The noise of the cold wind was shrill as it blew through the trees and tossed branches. The only satisfaction that we had .was knowing that with the rain as it was, following us would be close to impossible. Considering the route we took, following us would have been difficult at the best of times.

At last we decided to stop, feeling ourselves beyond pursuit and knowing ourselves within another day’s ride of the military camp where Jimmy’s gear might be. We were both tired and bruised by our experience. Jimmy had had no practice in killing people and no stomach for it. The books I used to read made killing seem fun and bodies just a way of keeping score, but death is not like that, not to any normal person. It may seem neat to point a gun, and keen to pull a trigger, but the result is irrevocable. That policeman couldn’t get back up again to play the next game, and neither could Mr. Kutsov. They were both dead for now and always. That fact was preying on both Jimmy and me.