Bohemia Village Voice  Bohemia Village Voice

For bohemians everywhere

Ian McCormick – Short Story Competition 2007

Sweet Tea for Micha

“We thought it would all be different, back then,” the older man offered. “Back then we mixed it with lead. Can still smell it.”

How old? Piotr didn’t hear.

“It’s in me lungs now.”

Piotr whistled at his work. Songs from the old country. When Piotr whistled Micha danced, vodka bit his lips, the aroma of sweet tea made him giddy.

“Come far fer yer work, then?”

Poland. Micha would come from Poland when Piotr had saved enough.

“Makes yer hay when yer sun’s ashinin’, heh?”

Piotr would save enough before the rain came and the work dried up. Enough to tide his family over, with sweet tea for Micha and milk for little dzieci.

“We drank milk of a mornin’ back then. Keep the fumes from yer mouth” the older man remembered. “And ale after, just enough to kill the taste, you understand?”

The older man smiled till his chest caught and tore his face. Winter made it worse. Damp filled his lungs on Hastings’ hills. And he could still remember how it used to be, and how it could have been, before Piotr came. Before the poison thinned his blood.

Now Piotr painted the town.

“S’pose you’d like to go back one day. Poland. Home I mean. I was like you once. Never meant to stay but I did.”

He coughed and spat.

Piotr rested down his brush. One foot on the ladder now, you say, he thought. It would all be different soon. Then Micha would come.

 

 

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