From the Road Jack and Bebu By Stosh Mintek Jack was bleeding out of his ass. There was a lot of blood on the concrete step just outside the house, spattered in fat droplets in the mud of the front yard. No one was sure how long he’d been bleeding. Maybe a week, Dali thought. It was also hard to say what was causing it, whether it was issuing from an external wound on his hindquarters or genitals, or whether he was suffering some kind of internal complication, a digestive ailment of some advanced nature. Dali said it was from a wolf attack, though this seemed pretty unlikely. Jack wasn’t saying anything on the subject, of course. In the farmhouse, Uncle Nukri was loading a .22. We gathered around him, shivering in the cold morning light. Great angelic bodies of mist were passing through the village, filling the air with chilled moisture. Hannah 58 • versant
crouched low, examining him, but Jack remained seated directly on the injury, his face noble and solemn despite the indignities being suffered. Austin scratched his head and stroked his graying muzzle, then recoiled from the smell of his own hand. “Fishy,” he said, and ducked inside to wash. Dali went about her chores, shuffling from barn to farmhouse to kitchen-house, bearing sacks of potatoes, shoveling manure patties out of the courtyard in the wake of the cows’ breakfast march to pasture. Harried with the tasks of the day, and the constant delightful burden of her big-stomached American guests, she had little time to attend to Jack’s condition, and showed little concern as she scooted by, all shawl and rubber boot. And Nino, who’d guided us safely to the village along a perilous sixhour drive into the heart of the Western Caucus Range, over collapsing roads and between sheer canyon drop-offs, was similarly demure on the subject of Jack. Treatment of any serious kind wasn’t an option, she shrugged, as no veterinarians resided in the village. Whatever the cause, there was no specialist to diagnose it — and traveling across Svaneti in search of one was too expensive and time-consuming for the taxed family. But this wasn’t the reason that Jack continued to suffer untreated, or that Nino’s uncle Nukri was preparing to kill him today. No, the root cause sat inside the kitchen-house, nursing a cup of warm fresh milk and regarding us keenly through smudged window panes. Bebu was ninety and the senior member of the household, and while her feelings and opinions remained unspoken on most matters these days, there was one subject about which she was both fiercely expressive and decidedly uncompromising, and that was Jack. When he came close to the kitchen house, she rasped a sharp rebuke and rose, trembling, to her feet. When he persisted, lingering by the doorstep, she produced from a darkened corner a naked broomstick, and, raising it high over her squat frame, brought the weapon down full-strength on his thick skull. He took the hint, withdrawing into the courtyard, where it had begun to drizzle. There, he seated himself oh-so-gradually in the mud, while Bebu returned to her stove-side bench and eased onto her haunches. Jack, very simply, was Bebu’s nemesis, and vice versa. It was in certain ways a fitting pairing. They were of similar size and length, Jack having perhaps 10 pounds on her, Bebu maybe 6 inches in length. Their dispositions were also markedly similar: in states of repose, both Jack and Bebu possessed a great ruminative capacity, and one might happen on either of them staring off into the middle distance, body still, expression engaged and vacant somehow at once. But they shared a fierce and instant temper, too — one which, once triggered, could send Bebu railing against offending chickens or cows (or, on many occasions, her sad-eyed squatting rival) with a naked broomstick, and which sent limping Jack roaring off against transgressing cars on the dirt street just up the hill from home, snarling and biting at the rattling metal hulls of Ladas and Marshrutkas with furious abandon. And there was the matter of their respective maladies. Jack’s wound was the more glaring, to be sure, and responded badly to his automotive assaults, issuing unrestrained spurts of bright red blood from his rump as he trotted back to the courtyard. But Bebu’s left hand was nothing to dismiss: sheathed in a cracked, oversize ski glove at most hours of the day, it would emerge at rare moments to be soothed by her right hand’s firm grip, revealed in the pale light to be nearly double its natural size, inflated from within by some malignant force, arthritis or cancer or Godknowswhat, plump and near bursting beneath taught frail skin. With no proper diagnosis or medicine on hand for Bebu’s condition, it stood to reason that she begrudged the loathed Jack any better. And surely his sanguineous leakage posed a sanitary issue that demanded a certain amount of domestic diligence. But even as simple a thing as an affectionate stroke of his forehead’s dirty scruff triggered a look of sour disdain on her face. What might have once transpired between them, months or years ago, in a state of youthful misbehavior, it was impossible to imagine. But it needn’t have been much. For here, in the wilds of northern Georgia, was a place of grudges everlasting. Blood feuds that divided households for centuries, that racked up bodies as steadily as families could conjure them forth. Too far removed to be troubled even by the most ambitious of feudal lords, the peoples of Svaneti engaged in their own domestic warfare, waged among handfuls of wind-hardened souls over offenses long forgotten and never forgiven. (Until the 20th century, a proposal was made when a young man threw a bullet into the front yard of the family of his desired girl — a promise that if such a wedding was not accepted, there would be much blood shed.) In this place, dogs were not bred for affection but for utility. They lived among the livestock, fending off ravenous mountain creatures and silhouetted thieves alike, trading their lives for scraps and the shelter of a damp barn. The only recreational function of Svan dogs was their engagement in organized fights, which were both legal and exceedingly popular in the high-country villages near the Abkhazian border. In this setting, too, affection for a dog was an inconvenience at best, a dangerous limitation at worst. And so Bebu marveled at the kindness her nemesis received at our hands, gloved hand flexing absently in her lap, while Dali and Nino maintained the comfortable indifference appropriate for such an occasion as Jack’s execution dictated. It was, in the end, Uncle Nukri who caved. Emerging from the farmhouse empty-handed, he looked us over, the expectant foreigners, and muttered in Svan. Nino’s translation was similarly pointed. “Jack looks better. Not killing him today.” Uncertain whether celebration was warranted, we looked down to see how he took the news. A single tail-thump sounded on the hard slate path. Inside, Bebu’s eyes twinkled. We patted his gnarled furry head goodbye, and set out to climb a mountain. versant.com • 59
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