The Altar Girl: A Prequel

by Orest Stelmach

Mrs. Chimchak studied the terrain. “This is good,” she said, ignoring Nadia’s question. “Good spot for a fire. No branches overhead. You won’t burn down the entire forest, will you?”

  “Uh-uh,” Nadia said. “Why are you here? I mean, it’s an unexpected surprise.”

  “I wanted to make sure you put the right stakes in the fire. You must use live trees. You must cut down two saplings to stack the logs that will roll into the fire and feed it when you sleep. If you use dead trees, they will burn, your fire will die, and you will be at risk.”

  “I know.”

  “And be careful not to suffocate the fire with too much brush. Let it breathe when you light it.”

  “A-huh.”

  “And your mess kit. When you boil water from the stream, don’t touch it with your hands until it’s cooled down. Use a stick to lift it off the fire. Young people get all excited, sometimes they forget and they make mistakes. I’ve seen burns on hands like a roasted pig’s behind.”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “You have your poncho? Packed at the top in your knapsack?”

  “A-huh.”

  “Good. Good.”

  What was up with Mrs. Chimchak? This was basic camping stuff. Nadia knew it cold, forward and backward, like the number pi rounded to eight decimals.

  “PLAST was abolished in 1922 when the communists took Ukraine. It survived in secrecy until we brought it to America. You’re the best girl scout we have in this troop. You and others like you are the only hope for a free Ukraine someday.”

  Nadia cringed. Why was someone always telling her she was the future? She wished she had a Mounds bar. She wanted to run away but nodded instead.

  Mrs. Chimchak’s eyes grew larger as though they were tearing up. Nadia couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Everyone knew that Mrs. Chimchak didn’t have tear ducts.

  “I want you to know how proud I am of you,” she said. “If I had a daughter, I’d want her to be just like you. Will you remember that?”

  “Yes,” Nadia said. She had no choice but to be polite, but the comment weirded her out. It was hard enough having two parents. She didn’t need to worry about pleasing someone else, too.

  Mrs. Chimchak pulled a small tin box out of her pocket. “Here. Take these mints. Keep them close to you. When a person doesn’t feel well, a mint will always improve her spirits.”

  Nadia wanted to roll her eyes but didn’t. Stupid Altoids. What she needed was an industrial-sized Hershey’s Mr. Goodbar, not a box of mints.

  Nadia thanked her.

  “Now, my young and fearless warrior, would you share a sip of water from your canteen with an old woman before she sets off on her journey home?”

  “Of course.”

  Nadia hustled over to her knapsack and grabbed her canteen. When she turned around, Mrs. Chimchak was gone.

  No noise. No sign that another human being had been there.

  Nadia stored the Altoids in her knapsack and went in search of two saplings to act as the feeding mechanism for her fire. Mrs. Chimchak’s words rang in her ears: Nadia was the only hope for a free Ukraine. Great. And she was her father’s only hope, too, given he considered Marko to be a hopeless delinquent. Her father worked on the assembly line in a gun factory. His daughter had to do better. Terrific. Oh, and let’s not forget her mother, who had told her she regretted ever marrying her father. Nadia was the only hope for her mother, too.

  Couldn’t all these people get a life? It was hard enough to survive a school year or a summer camp. How could she make everyone happy at the same time? Did they have no clue that she was a person, too?

  She cut down two saplings with her knife, stripped them of leaves and branches, and sharpened them to a point. Once the stakes were ready, she began to build a textbook campfire. Nadia loved building fires. So much attention to detail was needed to make it come out right.

  The sun slid behind the peaks of the giant oaks. The forest darkened. She picked a flat spot in a clearing away from trees where sparks and flames were less likely to ignite a tree branch. She fell to her hands and knees and cleared the area of leaves and brush until the ground was bare. When she stood up, she was caked in sweat and dirt, but she didn’t care.

  She built a mound of dry twigs and created a long fuse of white birch bark. She lined strip after strip in an overlapping fashion so that once she lit it, the flame would zip toward its target the way it did in the last scene in The Bridge on the River Kwai. Marko loved that movie, and she watched it with him whenever it was on TV. In three days, she’d be able to tell him she’d been thinking about it when she’d built her fuse. He’d love it. That would be so cool.

  Nadia gathered wood into piles based on thickness. She crafted a wooden square around the kindling, using small branches from the second pile. Afterward, she erected a tepee around the square. She moved on to each successive pile of thicker wood, alternately building squares and tepees. When she was finished, Nadia admired her quadruple-layered bonfire with its long, white fuse snaking out on one side.

  The final step was to take the two live stakes and nail them into the ground at a forty-five-degree angle to the center of the fire. She’d stack logs from the sixth pile against the stakes. A fresh log would roll into the fire before it died. That way, if she fell asleep, her fire would keep burning. When she was done, she treated herself to another swig of warm water from her canteen.

  Dusk had arrived. A pileated woodpecker hammered at a tree in search of ants. Its drumming reminded Nadia that the seconds were ticking away. A cool wind blew through her sweaty clothes and body. She shivered. She needed fire. She needed fire now.

  Nadia pulled a baggie from her pocket. It contained her lifeblood: three matches. They were the strike-anywhere kind that could be lit by scratching against any hard surface. At summer camp, Roxanne Stashinski could hold one in her right hand and strike it off the nail of her thumb without using her left hand. Nadia wished she could do something that neat, but those types of things didn’t come naturally to her.

  Although the matches could be struck anywhere, she grabbed the same clean gray stone she’d used to bang the stakes into the ground to make sure it lit. As she swiped the match against the rock, a mosquito flew right into her ear. The matchstick snapped in her hand before it lit. She quickly reached down to get it, but the stick had broken so close to the head that it was useless.

  One down, two to go. If tonight’s fire went out, she’d have only one more chance to relight it during her three-day test.

  She took a second match and struck it on the same stone. Nothing happened. She tried again. Nothing. She tried again, and again, and again, but it wouldn’t light.

  She stared at the head. Most of the red lighting compound was gone. There was a tiny spot left. Nadia aimed it at the stone, and with a shaky right hand, snapped her wrist one more time. Nothing. The second match was dead, too.

  She was staring at three nights alone with one match left. That reality shook her to the bone. She took two long sips of water from her canteen to try to calm herself, and realized there were only four ounces left. Not enough for one day, let alone for two.

  One match, no fire, and soon, no water.

  Nadia pulled the last match out of her bag and took aim at the stone.

  The match lit on the first try. Nadia cupped her palm around the flame to keep it alive and lit the fuse. The birch bark sizzled. A flame rolled forward like it did when they blew up the bridge on the River Kwai.

  Awesome. Nadia wished Marko were here to see it.

  She dropped down on all fours and crawled up to the fire. She didn’t care if she bruised her knees. This was survival of the fittest, not the prettiest. She waited for the kindling to light, and fanned the flame with her breath to keep it from dying.

  A flame rose from the smoke. The kindling crackled and spit.

  Nadia sat up and watched
as the fire came alive. It was glorious, maybe the best feeling she’d ever had in her life, except that time she’d scored the winning goal in a soccer game at PLAST summer camp. All her teammates had cheered for her. Daria Hryn, the most popular girl, had actually hugged her. Even now, alone in the wilderness in the middle of nowhere, the memory brought tears to her eyes.

  With the fire blazing, Nadia built her shelter. She took three long branches and placed them beside a pair of sturdy young saplings that were growing parallel to each other. She tied one branch perpendicular to the two saplings, making sure it was at neck height.

  She secured the other two branches at the same height, one to each sapling, letting them fall to the ground at forty-five-degree angles. A lattice of smaller branches created a nice roof for her home. Nadia also stuck a few sticks in the ground on the sides of the lean-to so she could seal those holes up, too.

  When she was finished with the skeleton of her shelter, she spread her poncho on top and connected it to the branches with twine. The poncho had holes in each corner for exactly that purpose. She wove ferns into a roof over the poncho, and did the same along the sides where she’d put the sticks. She also spread ferns on the floor of the lean-to, creating a mattress for her sleeping bag.

  Her shelter built, Nadia sat down by the fire’s edge. The heat from the flames penetrated her clothes and dried her uniform and her body.

  She ate a small piece of the buckwheat bread and went to sleep. She was so exhausted she packed it in after dinner and slept through the night. When she awoke the next morning, the sun’s rays poked into the entrance to her lean-to. Nadia stuck her head out and saw that her feeding mechanism was working well. A total of three logs had rolled successively into the fire. Its yellow flames still reached two feet high.

  Awesome. She and her fire had both survived. That was key because they were both dependent on each other.

  The sound of human feet bounding through the brush toward her broke her concentration. They didn’t sound like her brother’s and father’s long strides. They were short, crisp, and purposeful. They echoed through the forest.

  Mrs. Chimchak.

  Nadia pushed herself up and burst out of her lean-to, a smile already etched on her face. It would be good to see a familiar face, even if that person was there to remind her she was the only hope for one person or another, or some such painful thing.

  She saw the strangers and realized there had been no echo of footsteps. She’d assumed one person was approaching, but there were actually two of them. A man and a woman.

  They were both young. The woman reminded Nadia of a giraffe, a towering beauty with outrageously long legs, an elongated neck, and golden hair with streaks of caramel halfway down her back. She’d probably been popular in school, like the girls that terrorized Nadia on a daily basis. The man looked more like a kangaroo, much shorter with smaller features than the woman. He fidgeted beside the woman, wired with nervous energy. Both of them wore knapsacks on their backs and frowns on their faces.

  Nadia’s survival instincts sent a wave of fear through her body. There was something wrong about these two. They looked scared and out of place. More than that, they looked desperate.

  Either something bad had happened, or was about to happen. And Nadia didn’t come to this conclusion based on the strangers’ faces.

  It was the gun the man pulled from behind his back that told her this.

  CHAPTER 5

  BLOOD DRAINED FROM my face. I realized my breathing had turned shallow.

  I focused on extending my exhalations. Cursed at my self-delusion. I’d fooled myself into thinking I was managing a man who could not be managed. Then I cursed at myself for cursing at myself. I needed to relax. There was still a way out of this van with my life and body intact.

  There is almost always a way out of trouble. The woman who keeps her emotions at bay can find the way.

  Donnie looked down at me with a concerned look. I had no idea if it was mock or real. It was time to give up trying to read him, and buy time until a means of escape occurred to me.

  “You okay?” he said.

  “Yeah, I’m all right,” I said.

  I closed my eyes and pictured myself walking through the local park, my brother at my side, both of us in our teens. Nothing could touch us. We were young, resilient, and most of all, a pair. We could rely on each other.

  “You want a glass of water?” Donnie said.

  “No. I don’t want any water. I don’t need anything. You want to ask me more questions? Let’s get on with it.”

  He pointed a finger at me. “Hey. You don’t know how lucky you are. Be nice. I’ll get you some water.”

  The biggest joke of all was that his first name wasn’t Donnie. It was Bohdan. Most Ukrainian-American kids were tolerant of their given Ukrainian names. Most grew to be proud of them over time. But those who couldn’t handle childhood abuse often adopted other English translations to assimilate into American society more easily. For instance, a Pavlo might become a Paul. But how a Bohdan became a Donnie was beyond my comprehension.

  His last name wasn’t Angel, either. It was Angelovich. I liked shortening it. For obvious reasons.

  “I don’t want any water, Donnie.”

  He stopped near the refrigerator. Sighed as though I were being an uncooperative guest.

  “Suit yourself.” He returned to the contraption. The stool was two feet off the ground. He towered over me. “So answer the question. What do you know about your godfather’s business?”

  “He was known for his expertise in antiques all over the East Coast and beyond. Everyone in the Uke community knew who he was. And he had a good reputation. So whenever a Uke had an antique for sale, he got the call. Death in the family, house full of furniture for sale, he got the call. A farmer with a barn full of old stuff, he got the call.”

  “What else?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  I looked up into Donnie’s eyes to make sure he could see mine. “Nothing.”

  It was the truth. I didn’t know anything else about my godfather’s business, though now I knew there was something else to know. Which struck me as a potential problem, because it made me a liability to Donnie and his organization. Didn’t it?

  “You’re lying to me again,” he said.

  “I am not . . .” I infused some ferocity into my voice. It came easily under the circumstances. “I am not lying to you. Do you think I’m that careless? Am I in any position to be playing games with you? You ask the questions, I give you the truth. The truth. I don’t know anything else about my godfather’s business.”

  He started nodding before I finished talking, in a mechanical way that suggested he didn’t believe a word I was saying. “The truth . . . right? You’re giving me the truth?” He grabbed me by the collar of my shirt and lifted me off the chair. “Then why were you asking people if his business was doing okay? If he’d had any disagreements with people at work?”

  “Let go of me,” I said.

  He didn’t.

  “I’ll answer the question, if you let go of me and act like the boy my godfather said was good.”

  My words might have sounded preposterous if it hadn’t been for the emotion that had flashed on his face when I made up the story about my godfather liking him. I knew it had left a mark. At least in this regard, Donnie was no different from any other person. No matter what our paths in life, we still remember moments from our childhood when we longed for a single word of praise.

  His lips quivered, his eyes softened, and he lowered me gently back to the stool. Started fixing my collar but pulled his hands away before he could finish, as though he realized his touch was toxic.

  I continued with my current strategy, telling him the absolute truth and looking him in the eyes as I did so. “I was asking if his business was okay because at the ti
me I wasn’t certain his death was an accident.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because the story I heard at the wake was that it was raining hard and his cellar leaks. He went down to the cellar to check the flooding, slipped on the stairs, and hit his head.”

  “What’s wrong with that story?”

  “Nothing is wrong with it. Did you notice I used the past tense? I said ‘at the time I wasn’t certain his death was an accident.’ I’m certain now. I buy it. I’m a believer.”

  “Why the change of heart?”

  I glanced from Donnie to the machine and back to him again. “Because I understand the situation better now.”

  “What situation?”

  “My situation. I’m still thinking there’s a way for you to let me walk out of here in one piece.”

  “You’re saying you asked questions then that you wouldn’t ask now.”

  “Obviously.”

  One of those questions was, what happened to you, Donnie Angel? Except that was a lie. I didn’t need to ask the question. Nothing Marko or I did was ever good enough for our parents, in school, at home, or in the community. I was sure Donnie had experienced the same single-minded pressure to excel. Only the exact details of what he had suffered were a mystery.

  Donnie narrowed his eyes at me and then nodded. This time it was a slow nod, the kind that said he believed. He really believed. At least for the moment.

  “You are going to walk out of here in one piece,” he said. “Answer me one more question, and you got my word on that.”

  “Name it.”

  “I get that you had a change of heart. Nothing will change a man’s mind faster than the sight of this here machine. But before you changed your mind, back at the wake, the funeral, the reception . . . why did you think the story of how your godfather died was bullshit? Didn’t his cellar flood when it rained?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Didn’t he drink?”

  “Nightly.”

  “So why don’t you believe it happened that way?”

  “He was too careful.”