"Two hours, three hours. I guess," he said.
We asked him his name and he told us. Taavi Mets. Taavi was in a band. He played drums. He and Hand talked details for a while, brands and years. Hand used to play guitar in a band called Tomorrow's Past. Taavi asked for the name again. Hand told him: Tomorrow's Past. Taavi didn't get it and it was just as well.
Did Taavi's band have a tape out? Yes. A CD? Too expensive.
We asked the name of the band. He took the piece of paper back and wrote both his name and the band's:
We wanted to please Taavi so we put in the Foo Fighters – the best we could do. Taavi was a student at a vocational school in Tallinn, on his way home. It was good to have him in the car. Three felt good. Three felt right. He was studying mechanical engineering and lived in Parnii.
"So listen," said Hand, turning in his seat to face Taavi. I assumed he'd start asking about the current economic situation in Estonia, the conversion to the free-market, the privatization of industries, but something else was on Hand's mind.
"I have question about this the fighting of bears and dogs."
I laughed in one quick grunt.
"Excuse me?" said Taavi.
"Why do they fight bears against dogs?"
Hand was being very serious. Taavi didn't understand. Hand elaborated.
"You know, they take the bear, yank his teeth out, chain him to a post and sic dogs on him."
"Who?"
"Estonians!"
Taavi shook his head. "Where do you see this?"
"On the TV."
"When?"
"Actually, a friend sees it. A friend sees it on TV for real."
"A bear fighting dogs?" said Taavi, "I have not seen this."
"They do not do this?"
"No," Taavi said, with a little chuckle.
"They take the [long e] bear, and take its claws out?"
"Bears? I have not seen this."
"Not popular in Estonia?"
"No, I have not seen this."
I was relieved, but it was obvious Hand still suspected or even hoped that the Russian dancer, Olga, was right and that Taavi, the Estonian drumming engineer, was wrong. Hand wanted it true that they fought bears against dogs. To be deprived of this was cruel – it would have become part of his fascinating fact library, a cherished and much-polished object in his grand wing of animal cruelty anecdotes, though he had too many already.
We asked Taavi what he did for fun and he told a long story about he and his buddies drinking illegal vodka – not stronger, he said, but cheaper – out in the forest the week before -
"We call it moonshine," I said.
"Moo-shy?" Taavi said.
"No, mooooon-shine."
– around a fire. It sounded like fun; it sounded like Wisconsin, we said. Only certain people drink outside in the winter: people from the Midwest and people from Estonia.
"I think I like Wisconsin," he said, grinning.
"You miss the Soviets?" Hand asked.
He laughed. "No. Not so much."
He told us how he and his friends, as kids, would throw rocks at the army convoys. We told him how we'd thrown acorns at cops. He thought for a second. He stuck his lips out in an elaborate thinker's pucker. It was good to have Taavi with us, but awful, too. The landscape around us, wooded and dusted with snow, was too familiar. Taavi was too familiar.
"You like it much better now? Since 1989?" Hand asked.
"Yes, yes," he smiled.
– It's your mouth maybe, Taavi.
"Estonia, the economy is very good?" Hand asked.
"[With chuckle] Starting to be good."
– It's the laugh.
– What about it?
"But it's doing well, in a short time, no?" Hand asked.
"Yes. I think so."
"But Tallinn is wealthy town, no? We hear everyone has the cell phone."
"Who says this?"
"The book." Hand showed him the guidebook. Taavi scanned the page, his fingers touching the paper like you would a crystal ball.
"[Chuckling] Oh no, not me, not me."
Nothing was true. Nothing in the guidebook was true but the maps. Are maps true? Nothing else was true. The word fact could not exist. All facts changed on the way to the printer.
Taavi pointed to a small factory, up ahead a half mile.
"I used to work there, during the summer." His English was better than Hand's.
"Right there?"
"Yes. I was… we build bridges."
"Right here?" I said. "They build the bridges there?"
"Yes."
The place didn't seem big enough.
"Like a factory? You did welding?"
"A little."
"So there's a big factory there?"
"Eet's not very big. Small bridges."
If this was true – that there were factories that built big bridges and others that built small ones – I knew my life would be richer and more intense in its pleasures. Hand was filing away this information, too.
"You want to see?" Taavi said, gesturing his hand like a paddle, in a way that meant we could pull off at the next exit.
Could we do this? We could! We should. It'll take too long. Where else are you going? Riga. We're going to Riga. But what's in Riga? Riga is in Riga, and we decided we'd see Riga.
"We better just keep going," I said.
"So tell us" said Hand, now in the booming voice of a generous host, "you want to be the engineer, or the drummer?"
The answer was quick: "A drummer, drummer!"
We all laughed. Hand and Taavi talked about studio time, what it cost in Estonia, where they had their tapes made, about how Metallica came to play Tallinn and drew over 30,000 people – the biggest ever concert in Estonia. We liked Taavi and he liked us. I wanted to ask so many questions – I wanted him to tell us about Soviets with tanks stationed in Tallinn – to paint us that picture. And were there ever mini-revolts, mini-riots, an organized underground resistance? Did he have friends in the Soviet army, and if so had that created conflict – had any of them been punished or killed after Estonia was liberated – were there reprisals?
But we talked mostly about music and drinking. Hand had been to New York and that's where Taavi wanted to be. Hand had seen both the Who and the Sex Pistols reunion tours, both in Milwaukee, and that just about killed Taavi. That Taavi Mets seemed in every way someone we knew in high school was a natural thing and a reductive and unfortunate thing. Or maybe this was good. What did we want? We want the world smaller and bigger and just the same but advancing. We don't know what we want. I wondered if Taavi would want to come with us to Cairo and thought of asking him but thought against it. There was something so familiar about Taavi, maybe just something in the way he listened, or his little snorty chuckle, or probably it was the way he listened. His presence had begun to unsettle me. I liked Taavi but having him there, in that space between the front seats – it wasn't right, really. I was afraid someone would see him there. He would know -
This landscape was so familiar. The pine, the birch, the frosted road, the crows -
Oh fuck we tried. We could have gotten there sooner. He was still alive when we got there. When we got up to that godforsaken hospital in Fond Du Lac, he was still alive. When I first knew and believed he'd been in the accident, that a truck had crushed his car, I thought he was gone but then Pilar said he was alive, he was hanging on, on respirators, and I gasped. Hand and I drove up at 8 P.M. and got to the hospital at ten.
Jack's mom was there, but his father was in the car getting a blanket. Why was he getting a blanket? Hand asked. "He gets cold so easily," she said. We couldn't see Jack. We weren't family and it was too soon. The room was crowded with doctors. Most of Jack's vertebrae had been crushed and his spine had been nearly severed. There was almost no chance of repairing it. But was there or wasn't there, for fuck's sake? We stood in the hall. We sat in the hall. I rested my head on the floor. Was there or wasn't there? The floor beneath me was cold but it was still and clean. The hospital was immaculate. I tilted my head and squinted across the floor, thinking I could make my sight travel the floor like a low-flying bird. The floor shone in a dull stupid way. Was there or wasn't there?