The Last Hiccup

The Last Hiccup

Christopher Meades

ECW PRESS

To Hanna

Wendy Meades for (still) supporting the dream, for baking me Smarties cookies and helping me revise the ending of this book. Wendy believed that I could become a published author long before I ever believed it and I never could have written this novel without her encouragement and support.

Hanna and Claire, my two little girls. Daddy loves you . . . now seriously, try to be good.

Jen Hale, my editor, took a true leap of faith in signing up this novel on spec. Jen changed my life a few years ago when she picked
The Three Fates of Henrik Nordmark
out of a pile of hopeful manuscripts and decided to work with me. I will forever be grateful and in her debt.

The staff at ECW. Without their hard work and dedication to publishing emerging Canadian authors, this book would still be an MS Word file on a disc in a drawer under considerable layers of dust.

Brian “Bear” Simmers, my best friend of 20 years and (at minimum) the fourth person I would save if the zombie apocalypse were to come this week.

Jamie Rothney, a true friend, for his enthusiasm and encouragement.

Nicole Harvie Simmers, Vancouver's style guru, for being a trusted confidante all these years. Not often is your best friend's wife also one of your very best friends, but in this case it's true.

Joan Witty and Anne Craig for taking care of my mom when she needed you most.

Margaret Helsdon, my mother-in-law, for her boundless encouragement and her tireless promotion of
The Three Fates of Henrik Nordmark
.

Nick Komick and Ann Mariscak for always having my back.

My dad, Larry Meades, for his timely advice.

My first readers: Christina Sielsky Adams, Angela Kruger, and Steve Mason.

My cousins: Traci Meades, Brian Craig, Katherine Craig, Nance Craig, Will daSilva, Joanne Witty-Knox, Derek Knox, Michael Craig, Ellie Vitello, Scott Meades, Sandra Witty, and last but certainly not least, Jim Witty.

During the writing of
The Last Hiccup
, my mother, Susan Meades, lost a brave battle with pancreatic cancer. Mom, I love you, the girls miss you more than you could ever know and I wish you could have lived another 30 years.

Russia,
1929

They first appeared unexpectedly on Vladimir's eighth birthday, following the swift consumption of three bottles of soda. Young Vlad stood from his seat and leaned over his birthday cake to blow out the candles. He prepared himself with a moment of quiet, positioned his arms on either side of the table, then, instead of blowing outward, Vladimir accidentally and tragically inhaled a long, deep breath. What emerged next was the mixture of a whistle blowing and a frog's ribbit. Vladimir's mother, Ilga, was the first to express shock. “Vladdy,” she said in their native Russian, “what a sound you've made.” Vladimir smiled and went to blow out the candles when the sound materialized a second time. His friends giggled and snickered in good fun. Then it reared its head again. And again. Like a metronome, the sound repeated at intervals of 3.7 seconds.

Vladimir's mother pulled him aside. “What's wrong, Vladdy?” she said. “Are you sick?” Vladimir shook his head. He felt fine. He just had the hiccups. His mother sent him back to play with the others and kept a close eye on him. An hour later, when Vladimir's condition had still not improved, Ilga sent his friends home early. She sat her son down and looked him straight in the eye.

“Boo!”

The boy just stared at her. He didn't bat an eye.

“Boo!” she shrieked this time and threw her hands in the air.

Vladimir continued to look straight forward, not the least bit startled. After a half dozen failed attempts, Ilga forced the boy to drink a tall glass of water. Vladimir gulped it down, hiccupping several times during its consumption. The water had no effect. In fact, none of his mother's efforts had any effect. For two hours, she attempted every trick she could possibly imagine, from feeding the boy spoonfuls of peanut butter to having him stand on his head and recite the alphabet. By bedtime, she'd completely run out of ideas. “Go to sleep now,” Ilga said. “Things will be better in the morning.” Vladimir's mother tucked her son into bed, kissed him on the forehead, then shut his bedroom door and lingered outside.
Hiccup
. There it was, quietly through the door.
Hiccup.
It sounded again. Ilga shook her head in frustration, walked to her room and poured herself a stiff glass of vodka. She shot it down in one gulp, rolled into bed and dozed off gently, her son's hiccups forgotten.

When she awoke the next morning, Ilga made herself a cup of tea before waking Vladimir. It was his first day back at school after the winter holiday and Vladimir had a long walk in steep snow ahead of him. “Vladdy,” she called down the hall. “It's time for school.” When he didn't respond, Ilga marched down the corridor and opened the door to his room. Vladimir was lying on his back in the exact position she'd left him last night. His eyes were wide open. He hadn't slept.

Hiccup.
“Good morning,” he said.
Hiccup.

“Vladdy!” His mother ran to his side. “Did you sleep at all last night?”

“No, Mother,” he said between convulsions.

Ilga was beside herself. “Well, that's still no reason for you to stay home from class.”

Vladimir's mother dressed her son, forced him to eat some bread and marmalade, then helped him with his boots and wrapped him in his winter coat before pushing him outside into the waist-deep snowdrifts. He walked the half hour to school, hiccupping his way through the cold.

As Vladimir entered the school's courtyard, out of the corner of his eye he spotted his classmate Ileana Berezovsky in all her glory. For two years now, young Vlad had been infatuated with Ileana. He didn't really know why. He was still at an age where he detested girls, after all. Like any eight-year-old boy, Vladimir would much rather dissect a squirrel or kick a football through a sealed glass window than engage a girl his own age in conversation. But Ileana was different. A pretty little girl in a sailor suit, she had long blond hair that reached the small of her back; the profile of her closed lips was enchanting and pure. Ileana smelled of sweet cherries and emitted a laugh so intoxicating it stole the very light from the room. Young Vlad could have written volumes on the joy her laughter brought him. He had never actually spoken to Ileana, however. Vladimir preferred to worship her from afar, even when she allowed another boy to carry her books to school. On this day, Vladimir could barely manage a glance at the angelic girl, so heavy was the tired miasma in his mind.

He trudged into the town's schoolhouse, a small building consisting of a classroom and an office. The office was inhabited by the schoolteacher Urie Kochuokova, a giant bear of a man with a quick temper and a firm, almost secular regard for formality and rules. Kochuokova's iron fist was ever-present. Talking out of turn, failure to enunciate a subject-verb agreement in a sentence before the class and often talking too loudly (even when it was a child's turn to speak) were all reasons for Kochuokova to draw forth the wooden paddle that sat in the drawer under his desk. He required all students to refer to him as Professor even though no diploma hung on his wall and he had been educated in the third-smallest township in the country. On the day Vladimir arrived with the hiccups, the Professor was already in a state of ill temperament.

Young Vlad took his seat at the center of the classroom and tried to stifle himself. He held his hands to his mouth and stared straight ahead, deadening his hiccups slightly, but not suppressing them entirely. As the day's lesson in mathematics began, the sound of a dog yelping emanated from behind Vladimir's closed cheeks.

The Professor shot a commanding glare across the room. “What is that?” he said.

Vladimir hiccupped again.

“What is that noise?” The Professor threw his chalk against the blackboard. It sounded again. “I demand to know who's doing this.”

Vladimir's face turned red. He could hold his breath no longer. In a torrid burst of air and saliva, young Vlad pulled his hands from his mouth and expelled the loudest yelp yet.

Kochuokova stormed toward his desk. “Is this you, Vladimir? Are you making these noises?”

“Yes, Professor.” He hiccupped again.

“We're in the middle of a lesson. I demand you stop this nonsense.”

“But I can't.”

“What do you mean you can't?”

“I just can't.”

Urie Kochuokova scratched his bald head and twisted his jaw in frustration.
I could be in Moscow exchanging pleasantries with dignitaries right now
, he thought. He made as though he were about to walk away, then turned suddenly.

“Boo!” he screamed.

The large man marched forward until he was nose to nose with the child.

Vladimir didn't flinch. His pupils didn't even dilate.

The Professor hovered momentarily, then stood upright. Vladimir could see the thick wiry hairs pulse in Kochuokova's nose. He straightened his jacket, replaced his dangling timepiece back in his pocket and walked to the front of the class. “Back to your arithmetic, children,” he said.

Vladimir hiccupped all the way through the day. The Professor's lessons, those stringently regimented lectures Kochuokova had committed to memory, fell into disarray toward the end. He could barely even hear himself think over the repetitive yelping. Like a pack of carnivorous wolves, the students sensed weakness and started to misbehave as the day went on. Talking erupted in pockets with giggling fits interspersing the afternoon. Just before the final bell, a young troublemaker named Pavel Discarov shot a spitball at the back of Vladimir's head. Young Vlad, dizzy and tired from lack of sleep, could only turn around and give him a desperate look. The Discarov boy seemed to sympathize for a moment, then changed his mind and ruthlessly hit Vladimir between the eyes with another wet, tepid wad of paper. Vladimir spent the rest of the afternoon facedown, his hiccups reverberating off his desk.

As the bell sounded, the Professor asked Vladimir to stay behind. The other children ran off to play, all except Ileana Berezovsky. She walked up to Vladimir and placed a consoling hand on his shoulder. Up close, Ileana smelled like caramel and peaches outside on a clear spring day. Vladimir breathed in a long, deep breath. It was more enthralling than he could have imagined.

“Are you unwell?” Ileana said.

Young Vlad was about to answer when Pavel Discarov called to Ileana from the doorway. Holding her books, he appeared anxious to leave. “I hope you feel better,” she said and removed her hand from his shoulder. Vladimir watched her leave, his skin still warm from her touch. The girl's sweet scent filled the air long after she left. Young Vlad would have lingered in that moment for an eternity; he would have basked in its sympathy, its simplicity, the glory of her touch — had not a set of heavy footsteps sounded behind him. Kochuokova stormed up to his side and suddenly Vladimir found himself alone with this mammoth man. He gazed up at the towering figure. The Professor did not look pleased.

Vladimir searched the man's hands for that thick wooden paddle.

Kochuokova scribbled down some words on a piece of paper. “You are not permitted to come to class until your condition betters itself,” he said. “Take this note home to your mother. You may come back when you stop making that infernal noise.”

“But what if it never stops?” Vladimir said.

“Don't be silly, boy. These things have a way of running their course,” the Professor said. He glanced away momentarily and when he looked back, Vladimir had on his face such a look of distress, Urie Kochuokova realized that he alone would have to comfort the lad. Instantly, he regretted taking this job. Thirty-three years ago, his mother (God rest her soul) had declared him gifted. She said he had a way with people, that her little Urie was born to do great things. He had in him the inherent ability to become the next Russian ambassador to any number of great nations: noted, respected, even feared. Now her son stood in this cold room alone with a pale, yelping child. “There, there, boy. Don't sob. It's undignified,” he said. “You will be fine within a week's time. Consider this an extended vacation.”

With those words, he ushered Vladimir out the door and into the cold.

Young Vlad would never see the inside of the schoolhouse again.