Red Ticket: Easy Rider

In the last chapter of her Moscow memoir, Robin goes home

This weekend in Red Ticket, Robin comes to the end of her story.

Chapter 36: Easy Rider

by Robin Whetstone

Days later, things had changed. I was sitting on the floor in the living room, listening to Thelonius Monk and putting the hundreds of pages from my spiral notebooks back in order. My experience with Yuri had scared me more than anything that had happened in Russia so far, even more than the men who’d attacked me on my second day. Back then, I’d had no idea what I was getting into. I had an excuse. But I’d been here long enough to know better by the time I went home with Yuri. It was hard to feel any sympathy for me, making decisions like that on purpose.  

“Who says I’m looking for sympathy?” I thought. I’d come here because I’d wanted depth and authenticity, things I knew not to look for at Disney World. There was a reason Solzhenitsyn wrote about his time in the gulag instead of about that vacation in Odessa. A good story was about suffering and overcoming, or not. And more than anything else, I wanted a good story. That was really why I had come here, but the cost was too high.

I smoothed a page on my knees, written back in February, when I was thinking about going to Chechnya. The idea was laughable now. I was kidding myself if I thought I was going to be a foreign correspondent. “You don’t have what it takes,” I told myself, “and maybe that’s not a bad thing.” I knew some journalists in Moscow. The male ones talked about trying to cover a dangerous story. The female ones talked about fending off men while trying to cover a dangerous story. There were probably some stories these women had that they didn’t tell people. Was it worth the cost of being here?

There was a reason Solzhenitsyn wrote about his time in the gulag instead of about that vacation in Odessa.

On the other hand, lots of men met bad ends on their adventures, too. Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper, murdered by rednecks in Easy Rider. Kurtz, off his rocker in the Heart of Darkness. Shackleford, eaten by polar bears. The cost of doing something risky and dangerous was high, and not just for the protagonist. 

“You don’t even know who that is anymore,” I thought. The dead man on the ground had hijacked the narrative. The dead man on the ground wasn’t my story. He was someone’s son, someone had loved him. He didn’t die in the road so I could write it all down. 

I thought about Hussein, whom I’d made myself not think about until now. “The cost of your adventure was high for him,” I thought. 

***

I was an only child, growing up in the middle of nowhere. Every morning, my mother would drive 35 miles into town to take me to school. We’d leave before dawn, driving down one-lane county roads past fields and trailers. There was one place I waited to see every morning: a washed-out pink single-wide on a sandspurred lot. Through the living room window of this trailer, I could clearly see a Christmas tree. It was an artificial, silver tree, and it was there every day, year after year, no matter the season. It drove me crazy, this tree. My 7-year-old brain seized on it and would not let go. “Why was it there? Why didn’t they take it down?” I asked my mother the same questions every morning. 

Maybe mom could see that not knowing was causing me pain, or maybe she just couldn’t stand another morning of questions. “That tree’s up because an old couple lives there,” she said. “They had three daughters who went out to make their way in the world. Before they left, the old couple made them promise to come home for Christmas. The daughters said they would, but they never did. So now, year after year, the tree stays up. They’ll never take it down until their daughters come back.”

I was astonished. “How come you never told me this? What happened to the daughters?”

“Nobody knows,” said mom.

I was so relieved. I knew there had to be some sinister explanation for the tree, and I was right. What a great story this was. So tragic, and compelling. Calm washed over me. My questions had been answered. 

I thought this story was about what happened to the daughters, but I was wrong. The worst thing in the world is to not know the fate of someone you love. That’s what it was about.

***

One day two weeks after Yuri, there was a man on the path I took through the woods to buy my bread. He was a dead man, wearing a light blue track suit and the ruined expression of someone who has been shot at close range in the face. He lay there slightly off the path, partially obscured by leaves, and I passed him twice a day on the way to and from the bread store. Others walked on this path, too, and I hoped that one of these people would do something about this, that one day when I passed by he would be gone. But there he was, day after day, a mafia hit or random robbery victim who had been dumped in our quiet suburb.

Finally on the fifth day I couldn’t stand it anymore. This man was probably a bad man. He was probably a criminal. But he probably had people in his life who missed him, and who were beside themselves right now with fear and sorrow. I called the Russian equivalent of 911. The phone rang and rang, and finally a woman answered. “What,” she said gruffly.

“Hello,” I said, “I need to report a shooting in my neighborhood.”

Click. 911, the number you call when your house is on fire, when you’ve accidentally ingested poison, the one thread between you and your impending mortality, had hung up on me. I called right back.

“Hello,” I said to a different gruff woman, “Someone has been shot on my street.”

Click. The same response.

I put the receiver back in its cradle, and made my decision.

“Fuck this,” I thought, “I’m going home.”

***

There was one thing I had to do before I left. I wouldn’t have much time, maybe 30 minutes at most, but I had to see Lyosha. Our relationship had been strange, but I knew that he cared about what happened to me. I wanted to thank him, and to say goodbye.

I’d called his work the day before, and we’d arranged to meet on a corner. I got there at the time we’d agreed on and leaned against a building, waiting. There were no pedestrians on this street, and few cars passed by. I waited for ten minutes past the time we’d agreed on, then 20. I only had ten minutes left, then I had to leave to catch my flight. What had happened? Was I on the wrong corner? I couldn’t believe he wasn’t coming.    

Finally, a car pulled over and a back door opened. I took a few steps forward, relieved.

“Devushka,” said a man who was not Lyosha. “How much?”

“How much what?” I said, confused.

The man looked irritated. “For you,” he said, waving his hands at me. “How much?”

I picked up my suitcase and turned around, walking in the opposite direction from the man in the car. “Too much,” was the answer to the man’s question. For me, it was too much. 

Epilogue

Jason Stanford lives in Austin, Texas. He has a family, writes books, and works in communications.

Betsy Burdick-Verhij lives in Stuttgart, Germany. She’s married to a Dutch man she met in Moscow, speaks four languages, and has a black belt in Karate.

Bradley Peniston lives in Washington, D.C. He’s a journalist and an author and is married to a former Obama White House official.

David Schlosser lives with his family in Arizona, where he fends off bobcats and works as a nurse.

Stuart Hollander lives in Mexico, where he’s a fixer for the movie industry.

I am a writer.

I don’t know what happened to Lyosha.

I don’t know what happened to Hussein.

If you have been reading along, please post a review for Robin Whetstone to see here, please. Robin Whetstone is a writer based in Georgia. If you need to catch up, go back and read chapters 1, 2-3, 4-5, 6, 7, 8-9, 10-11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, and 36.

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