“Wrong shoes for a funeral,” he called back. Andy looked down at the waterlogged tops of his discount beaters. He hadn’t considered his jeans and branded tee against Oto’s green trousers and faded full-zip jacket. Cabs and airport terminals. Country trains and highland trails. “Here,” said Oto from beneath the brim of his newsboy cap.       He stooped down to snap off a chubby summer cep at his feet. “Dubák.” Leaning on his walking stick, Oto used a paring knife to clean the stipe bottom before tossing the squat fruit into his basket.

      “Special capacities, Andy, eat enough of these. Me? At least one thousand dubák. Two? Two thousand dubák.” He lit a cigarette and exhaled. “Us three here? Maybe ten thousand, what with Jolana.” Here he used his cheeks and eyeballs to monkey her impressive girth.

       Hard not to know where this was going, troublesome as Oto’s Carpathianisms were for Andy. It would be the same as it was every summer, his mother waiting for him back home or not: the search for edible fungus would lead to a derelict oil well, its casing pipe another forgotten stump on the forest floor. To Oto, it was material proof that this ought to have been a rich land and prosperous people. Free of money woes, foreign occupations, and physical deformities. “Us and the Venezuelans,” he said. “But here come the filthy Germans and their Panzerkampfwagens spitting feathers.”

      “Reactor Four. Big cloud.”

      “Also, the Russians.” He made a large explosion with his sun-beaten arms. White smoke drifted from his cracked lips as he stretched out his hands, regarding them side by side. Machine oil and dirt caked every pit, wrinkle, and scar. “I Superman now.”

      He raised a thumb into the damp air, its joints disfigured from past hammer blows.

      “Napriklad.”

      For example: Oto is the only person in Medzilaborce brave enough to enter these woods at night. Blotto, of course, to ward off what he describes as flesh-hungry packs of radioactive gray wolves with farseeing fluorescent eyes.

      His extended index finger made two: Only Oto can see the dry oil deposits beneath the valley that stretches toward Kalinov, every well they placed when black gold still saturated the buried rock upon which he now stood.

      Finally, his middle digit made three: Oto is singular in his ability to spot every wild mushroom cap for a square kilometer in any direction, morels and chanterelles that glow pink and orange in the man's clouded eyes. Come morning, he returns to harvest the edible species he scouted the night before, monkey on his back, but never so bad that he forgets the location of a single sporophore. Maybe in his memory he sees it as Andy does in his imagination: Oto standing akimbo in a quiet clearing while a column of conscripted red infantry pushes west, the sweeping wall of radioisotopes still decades away, but faintly visible on the eastern horizon.

       As good a place as any, it occurred to Andy. Oto looked away as his late sister was repatriated.

§

Sitting in the grass with his arms clasped around his knees, Miro watched as father and cousin prepared the morning’s yield. Jolana hobbled by on her bad hip, grumbling as she laid sheets of cardboard for drying the mushrooms in the midday sun. Now and then, she’d stop to sip from a tall glass of pressed raspberry juice that rested on a stack of milk crates.

        “Joli, I need the tractor tomorrow,” said Oto.

       Without looking up, she again reached for the juice as he dumped a basket of sliced porcinis onto the cardboard, quickly drinking the remaining nectar. She cussed under her breath before disappearing into the outhouse with the empty glass still in hand.

        “Special capacities,” said Oto. He turned to Andy with a wink and a smile. Miro rubbed his neck before hacking up a fubsy wad of phlegm into the grass. Soon, Jolana returned, her glass brimming with deeply amber piss. But she didn’t seem bothered. Coupled to men like Oto, in forgotten outposts like Medzilaborce, Jolanas were never bothered by what didn’t matter. She just handed the glass to her husband with a snort. He brought it to his nose and grinned.

      “Clean diesel,” he said.

      Oto walked over to the tractor, unscrewed a cap on the engine manifold, and whistled long and rising as he emptied the fuel into the filler inlet. “Tak,” he said, and turned over the ignition. After a few grating sputters, the derelict vehicle rumbled to life.

      “Mirko,” he called over the din. His son shielded his eyes from the sun. “Kill the chicken.”

§

Before sunset, Jolana prepared the bird for paprikáš. Andy’s mother had recorded the recipe after her last visit. On a laminated notecard, he remembered. He could picturethe handwriting. He knew the old cookbook in which it was still stored.

       “Barborka’s favorite,” said Jolana as she prodded Andy toward a small table covered with daisy-print vinyl. About as much affection as he could expect from his aunt.

      In the failing light, Oto fixed a flood lamp to a rusty bedding fork that he’d stuck in the ground shaft-wise. Soon, iIt barely illuminated his face as he sat back down and refilled each glass with plum brandy, all except for Miro’s. The black emptiness of the forest’s edge had swallowed the boy’s despondent stare.

       Still, Oto raised his glass.

       “Cheer up, dear. What did Barborka use to say, Joli? ‘To Palach, death, and statistics!’”

       As yet another bolt of liquor took savage hold of Andy’s pillaged brain, he realized in a flash of clear-mindedness that he hadn’t said a word all day. Jet lag was no excuse. It didn’t exist here.

       Without asking, Oto poured another.

       “Enough, you cockeyed fool.” Jolana stood up in a huff. “Christ, but I have to make water.” If his cousin was crying, or how hard, Andy couldn’t tell in the low light. Oto, he didn’t have to see.

      “Tractor healthy, blood like the Laborec,” he sang.

      Andy toasted the sky. “Long live,” he said, stumbling on the second word. Time enough for his uncle to disappear into the trees again.

​