Title: На краю тайги, бюро находок /On the Edge of the Taiga, Lost and Found

Author: Janlaw

For JAG Junkie (Ronda) who would like to see someone write a continuation/follow up to Gypsy Eyes. We are left with a sorrowful Harm looking out into the mountains. Mac has just been the one to tell him what happened to HR Sr. They've been through all that together, now they're in the middle of nowhere with a woman they hardly know and only Mac can interpret, Harm is sad, Mac is sad for him, and...what?

Disclaimer: All the usual legalese. My parents taught me to play nice with my toys.

Author’s Notes:

1. Although Pitchta knows no English, I haven’t translated everything she says in this story, assuming that few JAG fan fiction readers speak or read Russian as their primary language. Instead, to remind you that she’s speaking Russian and Mac is translating, and to hopefully provide a bit of “flavor,” I’ve translated some phrases or sentences at the beginning and/or end of most of the sections where Pitchta speaks or where Mac is talking to her. It’s a great many years since I’ve spoken, read or written much in Russian, so any errors are mine (probably not the online translators I used to check my translations and for the Cyrillic alphabet typeset)!

2. Taiga is the Russian name for the boreal forest which covers much of that country.

3. I greatly appreciate Mkim’s sharing the “Semper JAG in Europe” website, with its map of places in Europe that figured in the JAG episodes, as well as her generosity of spirit and understanding, since her new story, “Wings of the Morning,” also deals with various aspects of Harm, Senior’s life in Russia.


**********************


A clearing next to a small pond on Pitchta’s farm
Outside Svischevo, Russia
Late September 1998 (Season 4)


Nearly 29 years of dreams and hopes and searching. In the depths of his soul, in his mind, in his heart, in the jungles of Laos and Vietnam. All done and ended. Here in the vast desolation of this totally unforgiving land. In this forest that stretches forever to the mountains and beyond. Harm stared unseeing at the taiga beyond the clearing, beyond the pond, trying to make sense of how his father could have lived here for several years, yet apparently never tried to leave or get a message to his wife and son. This was what he’d risked his life and Mac’s for? Behind him, the cadence of the foreign words barely intruded onto his consciousness.

“Я имею горячий, тушатся /I have hot stew,” Pitchta murmured. “You will stay tonight? It’s too late for you to go back to Svischevo. Can you, please, tell me his American name again …he looks just like Tyete/Он смотрит точно так же как Tyete.” The Russian woman, at least part Mongol from her appearance, was probably in her 50’s, but looked years older. Clearly, her life had not been easy.

“Harmon Rabb.” Mac pronounced the English words slowly, pausing as Pitchta repeated then uncertainly. “Did he ever tell you his name/Он когда-либо говорил Вам его название?” Mac’s eyes darted back and forth between the rigid back of the tall man a few feet away and the woman stooped in sorrow, wishing with everything she had that it hadn’t turned out like this.

“Нет/No. He knew a little Russian …we taught him more. We knew he was from another country, but he would never tell us anything. When we asked, he said it would be better if we didn’t know….just in case/ на всякий случай.” It had been nearly 20 years, but it was like yesterday to Pitchta, remembering the man who had been part of her life for a short two years. “Harmon Rabb.” Pitchta tried again to voice the unfamiliar English words. She’d always known that “Tyete,” as she’d called him, had another life somewhere far away. She’d never let herself wonder about the family he might have had.

“Будете Вы говорить нам о нем /Will you tell us about him?” After coming all this way, after everything that had happened, Mac wanted closure for Harm. If knowing what his father’s last two years had been like would help, she was determined to get that knowledge for him.

“Да /Yes,” Pitchta whispered. “Will you tell me about him?”

“I never knew him. I’ll ask Harm to try.” Whatever this woman’s relationship with Harm, Senior had been, she deserved to know something about the man she’d helped, a man who had died defending her honor and probably her life.


A short time later
Pitchta’s farmhouse


The farmhouse, little more than a good-sized cabin, was lit by oil lamps, although there was electricity and running water. There were few “modern” conveniences. No telephone. No television. One room was used for cooking, eating and sitting. A short hall apparently led to bedrooms.

“What is it?” Harm asked Mac uneasily, touching his fork to the bowl Pitchta had set in front of him.

“Squirrel or rabbit, I think. Eat the vegetables, Harm, and try to eat a little of the meat. You’ve hardly eaten in days.”

The stew, served with thick slices of homemade black bread and what appeared to be fresh-churned butter, was surprisingly tasty. Pitchta served tall glasses of strong tea and tried to stop staring at Harm.

“Thank you for helping my father.” Harm sighed, trying to sound grateful…hell, trying to feel grateful. Pausing for Mac to translate, (“спасибо помогать моему отцу”) he asked “Will you tell me about his life here?”

“Да, я буду пробовать/Yes, I will try”…It had been so long since she had talked about her Tyete, and this man, his son from a far-away country, looked just like him. Slowly, stopping every few sentences for Mac to translate, Pitchta described Harm Senior’s life with her and her brother Josef on the farm. She showed them the secret room she and Josef had built to hide Tyete if anyone came. Those years, with both Pitchta and Josef working the farm, there had been chickens, a few cows, and two horses. They grew vegetables that they sold in Svischevo or Krasnoyarsk. The second year Tyete was with them, they decided that they would tell people Josef’s cousin from Ular-Ude, east of Lake Baikol, had come to live with them after an accident left him deaf and mute. Blinking back tears, Pitchta served more tea.

“Он никогда не был счастлив /He was never happy, but he worked hard helping us. He always looked to the mountains. He always asked, again and again, ‘where is Finland, where is Poland, where is Turkey?’” Looking at his son, Pitchta understood now what Tyete had really meant, that he had been asking if there was any way he could escape from Russia and get to any of those countries. Mac translated carefully, wishing there were something she could do to comfort the older woman as well as Harm. The remembering was obviously turning painful.

“Do you have anything of his?” Harm held his breath, hoping for something, a letter, his dogtags, anything to hold, to make it real.

“Нет ничего. Я сожалею/There is nothing. I am sorry.” Pitchta explained that after he came back from the taiga, Josef had burned the few things that might have been considered “Tyete’s.”

“What did you do? I mean, in the evenings, after the work?” Harm couldn’t believe this was all there was of his father’s existence - unceasing days helping Pitchta and Josef scratch out a tenuous living from the Siberian soil.

“O!/Oh!” Pitchta’s hand flew to her mouth. “I was only thinking of the papers Josef burned… мы играли в игры, шахматы/we played games, chess… ждать/wait….” Jumping from her chair, Pitchta reached way back into a cupboard, retrieving an embroidered cloth wrapped around two wooden boxes, and a flat square board, setting them on the table in front of Harm and Mac.

Tracing the designs carved into the nearly forgotten box tops with her hands, Pitchta explained. “Josef liked to carve little figures from scraps of wood, mostly animals, but your father - he was much better at it.”

Tears rained down Harm’s face as he studied the two boxes. “He was here, he was really here…and he didn’t forget us – look, Mac, there’s his plane, the swing in our backyard, a baseball, the car from the roller coaster.” Skillfully carved into the design of flowers and leaves were the symbols of a life lost but not forgotten. Harm’s fingers gently caressed and smoothed each one. “He didn’t forget us.”

“He did the checkers box first,” Pitchta explained, “then the chess box.” She opened the first box, showing them the simple wooden rounds, marked rather than painted. Smiling a bit now, remembering, she went on. “A pawn broke, and Josef carved a new one – I think he made a little fox from the taiga. Tyete was excited, he said he wanted to make all new pieces.”

While Mac continued to examine the intricately carved box tops, Pitchta organized the chess pieces on the board. “He didn’t finish all the new ones ….before …” she was crying now too, the tears sliding down her cheeks, dripping silently onto the table.

Harm lifted and painstakingly examined each piece, turning them over and over in wonder. For pawns, Tyete had carved some of the figures he’d carved into the box tops. As Pitchta handed him the King and Queen, Harm gasped, “They’re us,” he whispered, choking back sobs, “they’re Mom and me.”

“Harm, look at this.” Mac pointed to tiny Cyrillic letters carved along the stem of a flower. “He disguised his initials by using the Russian alphabet, see -- ‘X’ is pronounced “kh” or like the “h” in “house” or “Harm,” and what looks like a ‘Р’ is pronounced “R,” …and … this looks like the number ‘2’?”

“HR squared – him and me – we carved it on the wooden roller coaster at the amusement park at Mission Beach.”

Feelings of vindication – his father really had been taken from Vietnam to Russia – sorrow and pain for his father’s last lonely years – and a glimmer of peace – or at least acceptance - in knowing that he and Trish hadn’t been forgotten – warred for supremacy.

Harm smiled shakily at Mac and Pitchta. “Mac, how do I say ‘thank you?’”

“Спасибо. Большое спасибо/Thank you. Thank you very much.” Mac smiled too; for the first time since this nightmare journey began, she felt that her partner and best friend might leave Russia not whole – not yet – but with the hole in his heart for his long absent father finally healing.

“Спасибо. Большое спасибо.” Harm enunciated the Russian words with care, reaching across the table to take Pitchta’s hands in his.


0700
The next morning


Shivering in the frigid dawn of the Siberian morning, Harm stared out at the taiga and the distant mountains. Yesterday they had been a forbidding reminder of his father’s imprisonment. This morning, they were just forest land stretching as far as he could see, with mountain peaks barely visible in the distance.

So much had changed in just a few hours. Finally knowing his father’s fate, Harm had initially felt intense anger at the idea that his father had forgotten, abandoned, or just didn’t care anymore about his wife and son. Pitchta’s revelations – that his father hadn’t been happy and that he had repeatedly asked about Finland, Poland and Turkey, as well as the astonishing gift of the carved box and chess pieces, put everything he had first thought in a different light.

Last night, at Mac’s urging, Harm had recounted a few stories about his father’s life that he’d learned from his mother and grandmother, as well as some bits he remembered. He felt that he owed Pitchta some of his memories in exchange for hers.

Harm and Mac had talked most of the night: He had shared a few more stories of his earliest memories of his dad; he had tried to express, stumbling over the words, his gratitude for what Mac had done for him. Harm acknowledged that if she hadn’t been with him, he would either be dead or at the very least, he wouldn’t have found Pitchta, let alone been able to communicate with her.

More than that, he’d tried to convey the difference that having this knowledge would make. For the first time in his life, Harm felt free to pursue the future he knew he wanted – the family and home he hadn’t let himself hope for, although dreams of this woman had certainly intruded into his sleep many times in the nearly two years he’d known her.

Finally dozing off, he’d held Mac close.

As she straightened the beds in the sparsely furnished room that Pitchta said Josef and Tyete had shared, Mac left most of their rubles and several hundred dollar bills with a note telling Pitchta to take them to a bank in Krasnoyarsk to exchange for local currency. The money would make her life a little easier.

Leaving the cabin with their bags, Mac paused behind Harm, watching him stare into the taiga. She had loved this man in one form or another, almost since she’d met him. With Harm’s quest for his father ending, perhaps there might be a chance for her dream of a future with him.

“Do you want to walk a bit out there Harm? We have time,” Mac offered quietly.

“No...there’s nothing out there for me to find. He’ll always be with me, wherever I am, wherever I go. It’ll be all right now, now that I know pretty much what happened to him.” Turning back to look at the cabin, Harm sighed, “I think I’ll always feel closest to him at the Wall. It’s just hard – knowing that there’ll never be a grave. Mom never had a funeral.”

Nodding her understanding, Mac moved to stand beside Harm and began to sing softly:


Day is done,
gone the sun,
from the lakes,
from the hills,
from the sky,
all is well,
safely rest,
God is nigh.

Fading light,
Dims the sight,
And a star gems the sky,
Gleaming bright,
From afar,
Drawing nigh.
Falls the night,

Thanks and praise.
For our days,
Neath the sun,
Neath the stars,
Neath the sky,
As we go,
This we know,
God is nigh.


Taps. The concluding component of every military funeral. No flyover, no tomcat veering off in the missing man formation, but at least she could do this.

As the last note floated away on the wisps of mist blanketing the taiga, the two officers came to attention, two hands snapping up in salute. Husband, father, pilot, warrior. Harmon Rabb Senior had lived and died with honor.

Behind them, Pitchta whispered words long denied under the harsh Soviet rule that had governed most of her life. “Будьте в мире, Tyete. Пойдите с Богом /Be at peace Tyete. Go with God.”

Looking once more toward the mountains, Harm made up his mind. It was time to let the past and its regrets go, hugging close his memories and the relief of knowing his father’s fate. Russia was the past, and he wanted his future.

“I’m ready to go. Let’s go Mac. Let’s go home.”

The End.