Bloggaard Finishes Very Rough Draft of Thesis Novel Tenatively Titled The Cobalt Legacy.

Part One

Chapter One

The Russian drove and I stared out my passenger window, watching Wisconsin blur past. The snowy fields were blue with moonlight and the farmhouses were dark with 2 A.M. sleep. I watched the ditch for starving, possibly suicidal deer. Miles went by. Eventually I saw two shining eyes looking back at me, and I warned the Russian.

“Yes, Alexander,” Nikolai said, dropping the Jaguar’s speed from ninety to seventy-five. “I see your deer.”

This was our first exchange since Minneapolis. Just a few hours previous Nikolai had knocked on my apartment door. He was six foot seven inches tall. He had a broad chest, muscled arms, and a red beard. He said he worked for a man I’d never met, my grandfather on my father’s side. I was to return to Pennsylvania with Nikolai and meet the mysterious old man, who apparently was dying, and if I did there’d be a significant inheritance in it for me. The whole melodramatic proposition was ridiculous, of course, but here I was anyway, speeding through the night with a complete stranger, still unsure if I was being kidnapped or if the Russian really worked for my grandfather.

“Are you getting tired?” I asked him.

“No,” Nikolai said, staring at the road. “I am not weary.”

“How long have you been driving?”

“Since I left Pennsylvania.”

“Straight through?”

“I stop for gasoline. I urinate and buy hot dogs.”

“The essentials.”

“Yes,” Nikolai said. “The essentials.”

I watched the blurred white line in the center of the road for a few minutes. Nikolai murmured something to himself. I thought he spoke English carefully, like someone spelling out a fourteen letter last name for a receptionist.

“Where you from, Nikolai?”

“I live in Pennsylvania, with your grandfather. I have told you this.”

“No, I mean originally.”

“I lived in Moscow until America.”

“Ah,” I said, smiling. “I knew it. I knew you were Russian.”

Nikolai turned to me. The electric white dashboard light cast a strange glow across his face, as if he were holding up a flashlight to his chin. I wondered if he was going to punch me.

“It is late,” he said. “You should rest.”

“Okay,” I said. I curled back against my door, which was locked, and slid my face against the cold glass of my passenger window. More Wisconsin slipped by. I didn’t see any more deer.