Voroshilovgrad Read Online Free

down. Shortly after, Lyolik came over.
    â€œAll right,” he said, “we can go now. How much ground do we still gotta cover?”
    â€œAbout two hundred kilometers,” I answered. “We’ll get there in a few hours.”
    â€œWhat are you listening to?” Lyolik asked, pointing at my MP3 player resting on the table.
    â€œA little bit of everything,” I told him. “Why don’t you get yourself one?”
    â€œI have a CD player in my car.”
    â€œAnd that’s why you can only listen to what your cousin burns for you.”
    â€œI burn him good music,” Bolik said defensively.
    â€œI listen to the radio,” Lyolik chimed in.
    â€œIf I were you, I wouldn’t trust the radio’s musical taste,” I told Lyolik. “You need to listen to the music you love.”
    â€œWhatever you say, Herman,” Bolik said, unconvinced. “But hey, we need to trust each other, isn’t that right Lyolik?”
    â€œUh-huh,” Lyolik said timidly.
    â€œGood,” I said, “I couldn’t care less. Listen to whatever you want.”
    â€œHerman, you don’t trust people enough,” Bolik added. “You don’t trust your partners. You shouldn’t be like that. But you can still always count on us. Just tell me—where are we actually going?”
    â€œHome,” I answered. “Trust me.” Thinking, “It’d be better if we got there a bit earlier. Nobody really knows how long we’ll be stuck there, after all.”

    Bolik pushed some Parker CDs on me. I played them, obediently, one after another. Parker’s alto ripped through the air, exploding like a chemical weapon wiping out an enemy camp. He was blowing out a golden flame of divine wrath. His black fingers buried themselves deep in the toxic wounds of the air, extracting copper coins and the dried fruits of his labor. I threw the CDs we had already listened to into my tattered leather backpack. In an hour we passed the nearest town, popped onto a bridge, and found ourselves on the scene of a pile up.
    A tractor-trailer was stuck smack-dab in the middle of the road, completely blocking traffic in both directions. Cars were driving onto the bridge and falling into a craftily constructed trap—it was impossible to go forward or backward. The drivers were honking their horns. The ones who were closest to the action got out of their cars and walked ahead to see what had happened. There was an old semi-trailer caked in feathers and leaves and filled to the brim with poultry cages: there were hundreds of them—hundreds of these cages full of large, clumsy birds, flapping their wings and pecking away, all on top of each other. It looked like the driver had crashed into an iron barrier separating the pedestrian walkway from the road. The trailer had flipped over and formed an impromptu barricade. The top cages had spilled haphazardly onto the asphalt and now the bewildered chickens were chilling out around the trailer, jumping on car hoods, standing on the rails of the bridge, and laying eggs under the truck’s tires. The driver had fled the scene immediately, taking his keys with him, no less. Two cops were circling around the truck, not sure what to do next. They drove the chickens away furiously, trying to find any scrap of information about the missing driver. The witnesses gave them contradictory answers: one claiming that the man had jumped off the bridge, another saying he’d supposedly fled the scene in a waiting car, while a third witness stated in an insistent whisper that the trailer never had a driver in the first place. The cops were at a total loss, so they tried to radio in to the precinct.
    â€œWell, this will be a while,” Lyolik said, returning to the car after talking the matter over with the police. “They want to bring a crew in to clear the road. Trouble is, it’s the weekend, who thefuck is going to