Now All Three Gathered…

Out of all three, Mishatka, inherited the most from his mother. This made him the second favorite. 

Quiet, calm, reliant Mishatka as all knew him. If Matvei clashed with Andrei Danilovich, adored Pelegeya, he trusted Mishatka the most. Mishatka knew this, and like the Virgin, kept and pondered this quietly in his heart. In other words, he kept it to himself. 

His father called early that morning, seemingly daydreaming. Andrei Danilovich claimed he heard those old guitars, “the way the old people knew how to play them, simple” faintly at the Railway. Mishatka did not perceive his father on the verge of a stroke- his father daydreamt like that, just he, his youngest son, did. 

Mishatka lived south of Novocherkassk, right in Shatky.

“Now Dad, you must stop at Shatky- we want to see you something fierce, especially your little Tomochka!” Mishatka urged his father on the other end. 

“You better come, Grandad!” a bold girl of six and thick dark braids grabbed the phone from her father. “I got a dog now! You gotta see him!” Tomochka boasted. 

There was a distracted promise of the next day, when the train left for Shatky, Andrei Danilovich would be on it. 

But he did not. 

He collapsed from a stroke, some ten minutes after he hooked the Railway customer phone back in place.

Who knows if the stroke killed him? The pavement, upon which he crashed his head, not as hard as many would disparage, certainly did.

The paper in *******, thanks to his children’s efforts, held an obituary. It was as their father wanted. A name and a date.

“Comrade Polkovnik (3rd Cls.) Andrei Danilovich Novokshonov, born in 1893 in *****, from ****, died on May 19, 1963. He was 70 years old.”