A stronger curiosity pried my eyes from the Tarasievs, and urged me to see what reaction Lukyan had on my Father.

A coldness darkened my Father’s eyes, though his face remained calm as usual. A bit harder, I thought, though.

I then saw Lukyan, face-front for the first time.

My throat felt parched, even though just a moment earlier, I took two full ladles from the water barrel Auntie packed on the wagon.

What unnerved the boy in me, wasn’t that Lukyan fit the image I patched together from Grandfather’s rantings. No, Lukyan Kirianovich appeared cut from the same swarthy, sturdy fiber like my Father- dark-haired, dark-eyed, sun-browned yet dry and lean. They both even had their curls on the side to cock their caps on the side, though on opposite sides, I guess.

Yet Lukyan gave off a deadening seriousness, I wager what the artistic types call “gravity”, but it struck me like a stake driven into the ground, a stake of fear. His whole face seemed darkened, like a storm approaching, with a sort of judgement of silence, or a rumbling thunder of anger that you felt threaten the very life out of you with only a glance.

His lips were drawn into the tightest frown- even his mustache, those nice thick ones the officers like he and my Father proudly wore, obscured half of his steely scowl.

Upon seeing each other, both men resumed their swaying of their scythes, along the divide line- a line marked with several gnarled, thunder-scarred trees, more earth than tree, and a weather-beaten fence hewn from river driftwood. It marked the divide since anyone could remember, but perhaps, in my eyes, the greatest divide was borne by the glowers exchanged by these two hard men.

It rattled me a bit, seeing my gentle Father steel up so suddenly, like a winter gust bursting upon the open field.

Watching this silent exchange between my Father and Lukyan, it called in my memory of last Winter, when Grandfather took Kolya and I wolf-hunting. While Grandfather took out his pipe as we waited for a wolf or their pack to cross over the Donside slopes, Kolya and I finally spotted two lone wolves, on opposite sides of one slope.

“Patient now! Let them closer, we’ll see which one we get first!” Grandfather chuckled and puffed on his glowing pipe.

Eagerness seized us, like it does any boy on his first hunt, but I noted how the two wolves accosted each other.

Both seemed to be carefully watching each other, each wolf taking one paw on the slope with what seemed like a mix of caution and deliberate threat. They paced in a circle around the incline and vale of the slope, like two enemies assessing each other in silent timing. Their hackles raised, but I could see or hear no growls, no snarl of teeth bared, but their heads were lowered and leveled in something like direct warnings towards each other.

In my boyish impatience, we only shot one of the wolves- the one on the incline- it was an easy shot, though Grandfather reproached my impatience. “We could have got them both, Andreika! You act too quickly!”

The encounter, wordless like that icy morning hunt, between Lukyan and Father, was no different than between the two wolves on the steppe.

This would be another lesson into manhood. And it would prove one I would not understand until I was an actual man. 

My father kept good on his word. He and Lukyan had no quarrels, no outbursts. Irina emerged, like a quail from her den, and offered the olive branch, if you will, of neighborliness to my Auntie.

Auntie was surprised by the gesture, when Irina Larionevna brought us a basket of eggs.

“Fresh from this morning!” she added, hoping to, I sensed, to earn my Auntie’s good graces. Auntie was something of the head of our Stanitsa’s kazakatchi, so perhaps Irina feared Auntie’s rejection, for it meant rejection into the circle of the other women. 

Women have their sisterhood, I learned, like we men did in our brotherhood. 

Whether from scheme or genuine respect, Irina then praised my Auntie’s new rug on the loom.

As I said, Auntie’s weakness was flattery. 

No sooner had Irina finished her praise, my Auntie insisted on serving a hot cup from the samovar. She took a liking to the young wife, and though Lukyan kept his distance, Irina and Dasha visited each morning, exchanging eggs, cream, or gossip. 

(In little Dashenka’s case, she brought her marble collection and her little ball-and-cup, which, Kolya, still a tender lad, enjoyed playing with her more than his boyish pride would confess.)

Kolya bade his time wisely, now, thanks to my advice. I had to advise the lad now, it was my duty as his brother!

“How do you tell a girl you like her?” He asked me one morning, after Sunday service. Chewing on a grass stalk, Kolya propped his small, booted leg on the fence stile, trying to imitate the men.

I beamed- he seldom came to me for advice. Pride made my head swell. I had yet to truly master the art of courtship, as we were boys still, but nonetheless, I made my way with girls my age, as children our age could do. I fancied myself an authority back then, something of a Casanova passing his hard-won knowledge unto willing acolytes. 

“Simple- just give her gifts, if you can’t think of anything to say! Girls like flowers, you know. Pick her a bunch of riverside flowers, I bet she’ll like them, Kolenka!” I advised. 

Koly scrunched his nose in scrutiny. “But she says likes frogs and newts instead. What if I gave her a bright red newt instead? Or a nice, fat bullfrog?”

I balked. Apparently, Dashenka wasn’t the delicate, pampered elegant thing I assumed her to be. What an odd pup she was!

“No- she’s got to be a lady, a real fine kazakatcha- you’ve got to give her something she can be elegant with- flowers would be best.” I firmly insisted. That morning, I whisked my little brother under my wing and took him down the shallow, sandy shores of the lazier crook of ol’ Father Don, a stone’s throw from our homestead. 

Taking care not to ruin our Sunday’s best, we made our way on the stones and I picked an assortment of wildflowers. Kolya, probably piqued at my help, had to grab a handful of yellow-dotted spikes and tuck these into the nosegay we fashioned for Dashenka. 

“I sure hope that’s not itchweed, Kolenka…” I warned him. It sure looked like it. 

“She likes yellow flowers, Andreika!” growled Kolya, and he grabbed the nosegay and went off to find his sweetheart. 

It was itchweed! 

Kolya came back, before lunch, mad as spice, kicking a bucket into the farmyard. Hollering at our orange calico cat, Kolya stomped with his little boots onto the porch boards. I woke up from my lazy, sun-drenched nap from the chair.

“I told you-” I began.

“It was itchweed! She got all red and itched all over. Now she’s mad at me! I told you I should have gotten her the frog!” 

I put my hands on my side, asserting like a man, or what I thought men did. “Now! It’s hard work, earning a woman’s love like that, Kolenka! Just because one thing didn’t please her, doesn’t mean you can’t try again!”

“I think your ideas are stupid, Andreika! I’m gonna do what I think she’d like!” Kolya insisted, biting his and taking his cap angrily, as testy as a wasp. 

“Kolenka! You go off and do something dumb, why, it won’t go anywhere with your Dashenka!” I reasoned with him, though Kolya glared fearsomely at me, as much as a young lad can do unto an older lad. 

I rubbed my hand under my chin, trying to wrack my head for an idea. It hit me. 

“Try something bold- take her on a boat ride! Ask Father to take you two, maybe if the two of you ride on a boat, you can tell her you like her.” I conjured up. It should work, I assured myself.

The next morning, I went out to the yard, to grease up the harness for the plough. Kolya was nowhere to be seen.

Auntie came bustling out, demanding an inquiry where Kolya was. No one saw, not Father, not Grandfather, and definitely not me!

At that moment, Irina flew out of her own door, wailing little Dashenka vanished- so frantic did she burst from her house, she nearly tripped over her gaggle of hens pecking in her yard!

A sickening sourness hit my stomach- did Kolya take Dasha out on the river by himself? I ran to the barn, hoping our rowboat was still there. No- just a skid trail where two small, clumsy people would have dragged it to the riverside.

I ran back, and in my panic, confessed my stupidity to my elders. To my chagrin, I confessed this, too, to Lukyan Kirianovich, who peered at me with the grave reproach of an Apostle on Judgement Day.

“That was very foolish, Andrei Danilovich.” His low voice rumbled like thunder distant in a field. “I should hold you accountable if anything happens to my daughter.”

My Father began his own upbraid, quiet but stern as God Himself, “He’ll certainly be held accountable-” my Father began, frighteningly stern. I nearly trembled, for I had never seen my father in such a state. 

“Were you my son, I ought to hide you for cramming such madcap notions into little Kolya’s head! Who knows where those two are now!” railed my grandfather, stomping his heel into the dusty ground.

By now, I’d have welcomed a thrashing, since my guilt weighed on me heavier. My head filled with omens of Kolya and Dasha floating face-down in the currents, and the blame laid on me and my own stupid, stupid arrogance.

But I gaped dumbfounded what happened next. 

Stepping over our fence diving our yards, Lukyan came between me and my father. In a deliberate motion, Lukyan laid his strong, sun-browned hand on my father’s broad shoulder. 

“Yes, maybe he should be held accountable,” began Lukyan, “But then we should be held just the same- we’ve grown careless with our children, Danil Nikonovich- just as we did with our youth.”

For a moment, my father averted his eyes, shifting them onto the distance, as though wanting to find answers or a good reply in the fields. Later, as I became a man, I learned that odd expression on his face was that stinging mix of humility and regret men often find rising in their hearts when they reconcile with their wrong-doers. 

My father took a deep breath, and finally set his eyes level with Lukyan, who now, it seemed, searched my father’s face for his answer. 

“Yes, perhaps our past comes back to reprimand us, perhaps God is telling us to bury the axe.” My father took another breath, lowering his head a second time, and then looked up. “I would like us to be good neighbors, too, Lukyan Kirianovich. We should let the past die.”

Lukyan nodded. “But can you forgive me, Danil Nikonvich?”

“I can, since I did wrong by you, too, Lukasha-I took Mashutka from you. Perhaps that was the greater wrong in this mess.” My father admitted. 

I later learned the crux of these two men’s feud. In their youth, fresh from academy and tender cadets, my father fell in love with Lukyan’s girl, Masha, who actually loved my father. Needless to say, I realized my mother was the same Mashutka, and that my father “stole” Lukyan’s girl. 

Well, Lukyan, like any Cossack with blood beating in his heart, in his jealous and fury, confronted my father, and thrashed him soundly with his own horsewhip till my father was a bruised pile of misery right in the town square. 

But my father, stubborn, like a decent Cossack, too, married Mashutka, while Lukyan settled for another, Irina. Lukyan, in trouble for his actions, left our stanitsa and got a position in the city. Once that fell through with the new changes in the military, he came back, all 14 years later. 

And now here we all were. 

My grandfather opened his mouth, but my father shot him down with once look. “Not a word, Father!” 

“Perhaps- but I’m happy with my Irina, and happier with my Dashenka now. Let’s forgive and help each other, Danya…” Lukyan stepped back and offered his hand to my father. 

“It’s good to see you again, Lukasha.” My father accepted the other’s hand in a firm shake. To think, throughout the Spring and most of Summer, these men begrudged each other like two wolves threatening each other with growls, sneers and raised hackles, if you will, and now they reconciled right before my eyes. 

The search began. By sunset, as the bells rang out for evening vespers faintly from town, we found Kolya and Dasha- they were caught in an eddy of reeds along the bank, not having gone far because Dasha insisted rowing with my brother. 

Their small arms barely reached the water, and ignorant of how rowing work, she rowed one direction as my brother rowed in the other!

A bit of sunburn was all they suffered- the castor oil my Auntie and Irina made them take,  and going to bed without supper was the worst of their sufferings that day. 

Grandfather switched my rump, but I was content, knowing my headstrong little brother was safe in his bed, albeit with a stomach sick of castor oil and a sun-red face. 

It was here I learned the value of reconciling. And I would learn it again, much harder, though, after that ugly mess in ‘18.