Page 1 - Good News January 2012 paper
P. 1
he weeks in the harvest fields, living afternoon sun on his back, the smell of the
in tents and under the vast Ukrainian earth, the sound of voices calling back and
Tsky passed far too quickly for Ivan. forth in the open air sometimes made him
Many of the others, especially soldiers forget where he was, and he would
from the cities, had grown tired of the straighten his back, expecting some of his
drudgery of harvest and the bleakness of brothers or his mother to be working
the bare countryside. The agricultural nearby.
workers on the state farm, with their It had been a good time of rest and spiritual
simple speech and muddy hands, were refreshment, over too soon, Ivan thought.
uninteresting to them, and in the evenings He sat watching the tow truck ahead of him
they yawned restlessly in the tents, as it pulled his own Zil-164 with its disabled
reading or playing chess and hoping that driveshaft. The convoy of army trucks
the harvest would soon be in. filled with earth and returning soldiers
But for Ivan, it was home. Not that the snaked over the rolling hills of the evening
collective farm on which his parents countryside toward Kerch.
worked was as large as this one, nor was Suddenly the peacefulness of Ivan's
the harvest similar. But the feel of the hazy thoughts was dispelled by a loud banging
under the truck. He honked for the
attention of Fyodor Tarusov in the tow
truck. They were approaching the foot of a
hill. Fyodor eased the tandem to the side of
the road and jumped out, along with Alexi
Kuprin.
“The universal joint?” Alexi guessed.
Ivan nodded, hopping out into the cold
Continued on p. 6
Continued on p. 6
