The Corrections

Gitanas had been thrown around and bludgeoned by loose luggage. He was bleeding from wounds on his chin and forehead. He spoke to Jonas urgently, apparently telling him to cut the lights, but it was too late. There was a sound of great downshifting on the road behind them. The pursuing Jeeps pulled up at the elbow curve, and uniformed men in ski masks piled out.

“Police in ski masks,” Chip said. “I’m struggling to put a positive construction on this.”

The Stomper had crashed in a frozen-over marsh. In the intersecting high beams of two Jeeps, eight or ten masked “officers” surrounded it and ordered everybody out. Chip, pushing open the door above him, felt like a Jack emerging from its box.

Jonas and Aidaris were relieved of their weapons. The contents of the vehicle were methodically dumped on the crusty snow and broken reeds that covered the ground. A “policeman” pressed the muzzle of a rifle into Chip’s cheek, and Chip received a one-word order that Gitanas translated: “He’s inviting you to take your clothes off.”

Death, that overseas relation, that foul-breathed remittance man, had suddenly appeared in the immediate neighborhood. Chip was quite afraid of the gun. His hands shook and lost feeling; it took the entire sum of his will to apply them to the task of unzipping and unbuttoning himself. Apparently he’d been singled out for this humiliation because of the quality of the leather goods he was wearing. Nobody seemed to care about Gitanas’s red motocross jacket or Jonas’s denim. But ski-masked “policemen” gathered round and fingered the fine grain of Chip’s pants and coat. Puffing frost through O-shaped mouth holes with their weirdly decontexualized lips, they tested the flexure of his left boot’s sole.

A cry went up when a wad of U. S. currency fell from the boot. Again the gun muzzle was in Chip’s cheek. Chilly fingers discovered the big envelope of cash under his T-shirt. The “police” examined his wallet as well but didn’t steal his litai or his credit cards. Dollars were all they wanted.

Gitanas, with blood congealing on several quadrants of his head, lodged a protest with the captain of the “police.” The ensuing argument, in which Gitanas and the captain repeatedly gestured at Chip and used the words “dollars” and “American,” ended when the captain pointed a pistol at Gitanas’s bloody forehead and Gitanas raised his hands to concede that the captain had a point.

Chip’s sphincter had meanwhile dilated nearly to the degree of unconditional surrender. It seemed very important to contain himself, however, and so he stood in his socks and underwear and pressed his butt cheeks together as well as he could with his shaking hands. Pressed and pressed and fought the spasms manually. He didn’t care how ridiculous this looked.

The “police” were finding much to steal from the luggage. Chip’s bag was emptied on the snowy ground and his belongings picked through. He and Gitanas looked on while the “police” shredded the Stomper’s upholstery, tore up its floor, and located Gitanas’s reserves of cash and cigarettes.

“What exactly is the pretext here?” Chip said, still shivering violently but winning the really important battle.

“We’re accused of smuggling currency and tobacco,” Gitanas said.

“And who’s accusing us?”

“I’m afraid they’re what they seem to be,” Gitanas said. “In other words, national police in ski masks. There’s kind of a Mardi Gras atmosphere in the country tonight. Kind of an anything-goes type of spirit.”

It was 1 a.m. when the “police” finally roared away in their Jeeps. Chip and Gitanas and Jonas and Aidaris were left with frozen feet, a smashed-up Stomper, wet clothes, and demolished luggage.

On the plus side, Chip thought, I didn’t shit myself.

He still had his passport and the $2,000 that the “police” had failed to locate in his T-shirt pocket. He also had gym shoes, some loose-fitting jeans, his good tweed sport coat, and his favorite sweater, all of which he hurried to put on.

“This pretty much ends my career as a criminal warlord,” Gitanas commented. “I have no further ambitions in that direction.”

Using cigarette lighters, Jonas and Aidaris were inspecting the Stomper’s undercarriage. Aidaris delivered the verdict in English for Chip’s benefit: “Truck fucked up.”

Gitanas offered to walk with Chip to the border crossing on the road to Sejny, fifteen kilometers to the west, but Chip was painfully aware that if his friends hadn’t circled back to the airport they would probably be safe now with their relatives in Ignalina, their vehicle and their cash reserves intact.

“Eh,” Gitanas said with a shrug. “We might have got shot on the road to Ignalina. Maybe you saved our life.”

“Truck fucked up,” Aidaris repeated with spite and delight.

“So I’ll see you in New York,” Chip said.

Gitanas sat down on a seventeen-inch computer monitor with a stove-in screen. He carefully felt his bloody forehead. “Yeah, right. New York.”

“You can stay in my apartment.”

“I’ll think about it.”