“Yeah, well, give ‘em time, he will.”
Woo-jin leaned against the barn and watched the tank pivot and promenade down the driveway. His stay was brief as Major Chaek barked at him again, and Woo-jin dashed to the back yard and out of Winston’s view.
Winston grabbed the Twinkie he had stolen away and ate the snack without looking at it, his eyes fixed on the cadre of soldiers gathered to watch the tanks move through the gate and down the driveway. The first tank idled past the port-a-potties and rolled into the back yard where it spun around to face the street. As it did so, it drove up and onto the bed of Winston’s 1972 Chevy Cheyenne pickup and crushed it, instantly rendering it scrap metal. Soldiers clapped enthusiastically at the destruction and cheered loudly when the tank’s crew emerged, waving back as if they were celebrities. The second tank hobbled down the driveway backwards, its gearbox stuck in reverse, and stopped dead in its tracks ten feet away from the barn.
Winston could no longer tell what day of the week it was or how long they had actually been in the apartment. Neither of them had kept track since they both thought they’d only be in there for a few days to a week, or two at most. He assumed they would keep track of their days by marking the calendar, but they stopped marking it. Now, many weeks later, Winston was lost as to what day it was, but it was getting cold. May swept up the broken glass from the floor and rehung the photo on the wall, pausing momentarily to admire the smiling faces staring back at her. She felt hopeless.
The Russian general emerged from the back door of the house, stretched, gazed with pride at the big T-14 Armata, and marched down the steps past Med’s skull. The Russian mechanic who serviced the vehicles that sometimes gimped down the Sparrows’ driveway joined the general and together they admired the damage to Winston’s truck. Behind them, Woo-jin pushed the mechanic’s heavy tool chest, which was slightly taller than he was, across the lawn. The scrawny boy could barely move it, with its drawers laden with hefty tools and instruments, and when he reached the junction where the grass met the driveway, he turned his back to it and gave a sturdy heave-ho onto the pavement. But the front wheels dug into the soft grass and the chest fell over on its back. Though he tried, Woo-jin was unable to prevent the chest of tools from falling over, and it went down with such a loud racket that it echoed over the constant din of the generators and the idling T-14. Drawers filled with hefty forged and power tools opened and scattered their contents onto the pavement, some up to ten feet away. The mechanic rushed to the chest and pushed Woo-jin to the ground when he tried to help collect the strewn tools. He stayed on his ass watching the mechanic frantically gather his beloved tools, eschewing all offers of help from fellow soldiers. Woo-jin spied Major Chaek speeding toward him, and he rushed to his feet and bowed his head in submission. Woo-jin tensed up, expecting to be hit or otherwise punished, but the Major only spoke in a soft, compassionate voice.
“Tomorrow we play football. We win,” Major Chaek said.
“Yes, sir,” Woo-jin said with eyes trained downward.
The Major stormed away, saying to the mechanic, “hurry to clean up this mess and fix the tank,” and he disappeared inside.
The mechanic eyed Woo-jin with such contempt that Woo-jin slinked away in embarrassment, back to his tent to change his soiled uniform.
The mechanic pushed the tool chest to the rear of the T-14 Armata with the busted drivetrain, chocked its tracks directly in Winston’s view, and silently went to work. Within an hour he had the tank’s drivetrain eviscerated onto the ground, grunting and standing with arms folded, assessing the trouble, and making a plan. After only two hours, he buttoned it up, and the tank was back up and running. Winston watched the entire process with his engineer’s curiosity, and May read her book in defiant silence.
The mechanic stood behind the tank while its commander climbed in and fired it up. Black diesel fumes and smoke bellowed from the T-14’s exhaust and into the barn, burning Winston’s eyes, and he felt the uncontrollable urge to cough. He fell to his knees to cough into the blanket, hoping that his hacking was drowned out by the T-14. May didn’t fare much better, her eyes burning and tearing.
The mechanic didn’t flinch, being used to such offensive odors. He unchocked the tracks and waved to an assistant who then gave the signal for the commander to put the tank into a forward gear. The mechanic bent to listen for any odd-sounding click-clacks coming from the transmission, and as he did so, the tank rolled backwards slowly, as if it weren’t in any gear at all. The mechanic, disappointed, motioned to shut it down when the transmission suddenly lurched into reverse gear and launched the tank backwards. The mechanic, unable to scuttle out of the tank’s way, was pinned against the side of the barn. Luckily, his beloved chest of tools, combined with the strength of Medusa’s timber, kept the tank’s heft from crushing him.
Winston, choking into the blanket as quietly as he could, felt the barn shift with the weight of the tank resting on it. May dog-eared the book, bounded out of bed, and shrank behind the curtain. Suddenly, a seam between the plywood boards fractured just above the metal hurricane shutters. Winston, who was still on his knees rubbing his wet eyes, felt as though the tank was going to burst through the wall and into the apartment and their ruse would end with their executions. As he launched a futile effort to push against the wall, now making splintering noises, a fissure opened several inches, allowing the mechanic’s horrified eyes a peek into the apartment. In an ephemeral moment, his and Winston’s eyes met, the exchange of information omnipotent. Suddenly, the mechanic’s tool chest failed him, its shoddy Chinese construction yielding and buckling under the tank’s weight. Tools erupted from the chest like a Christian eviscerated for medieval crimes. The tank’s shifting weight swiftly decapitated the mechanic, spraying blood and brain matter onto Winston’s face. Just before the metal hurricane shutters buckled and bent inward, the tank’s commander shifted it into a forward gear and pulled up the driveway. Medusa’s springy lumber frame rebounded back into its original position, although there was now a two-inch gap in the plywood sheathing that covered the outside wall. If a prying eye peered upwards and into the gap, they just might see the goings-on inside the apartment.
The soldiers outside whorled into in a frenzy, rushing to aid the mechanic only to collectively gasp at the sight of his decapitated body flailing like a slaughtered chicken. It was unfortunate, really, since he was knowledgeable with any type of vehicle, regardless of its make or model. An officer sent two Russian flunkies into the barn to check on the crate that was stored inside. They rushed in and inspected the crate — it was centered inside the empty barn — and ran their eyes along Winston’s false wall thinking that it was the real, outside wall. It passed their inspection and they reported their findings back to the officer.
Winston would somehow have to fix that gap in the wall, but it was still early and the morning light was bright. He wiped the mechanic’s gore off his face and found May, who was still crouched in the corner. She remained stoic as he silently assuaged her into going back to the bed, gently leading her by the arm. They paused briefly at a small pile of dirty clothes near the toilet, and he selected a ripe black t-shirt. They lay down on the bed, held each other, and listened to the cacophony just outside the wall, too scared to make too much noise. When he felt it was safe, he carefully twisted the t-shirt along its length and pushed it down into the gap just enough to keep some sort of sound barrier between them and the outside, and cautious not to let any part of the fabric fall below the five inches from inside to outside. He was thankful that he had sprung for the more expensive eight-inch-wide pine siding boards instead of the six-inch planks — the shorter boards surely would have splintered and broken, revealing their hiding spot.