[b]Aygestan, Armenia[/b]

	The office of the Aygestan Logging Company wasn’t too far from the house: a short twenty minute walk led her to the iron gates of what used to be a military warehouse. The facility was liquidated to the public alongside two of their cargo-carrying halftracks after the Artsakh War: an entrepreneur by the name of Nikol Calrissian bought them at an auction and used investment capital from Stepanakert to purchase land rights to a sizeable tract of forest outside of the village of Aygestan. He entered into some contracts to supply the Artsakh’s biggest city with lumber for its construction boom and quickly turned into the village’s largest employer aside from the brandy company. Gor worked there for a few years before the accident and was well-known amongst the company staff. Mary hoped that the boss would be in that day, not working down at the camp. She never really knew where he went most of the time. The gate was unguarded: the widow pushed the creaky iron bars open gently, slipping inside and saying hello to the pair of mechanics who were busy fixing a halftrack’s wheel.

	Of the two warehouse structures inside the dull, grey concrete walls, the one closest to the road had the company office in the back. Mary navigated her way through the maze of neatly stacked logs in the open warehouse, passing by crates of industrial equipment and tools. The smell of freshly-cut wood, the musty smell of the forest, permeated the air. She pushed through towards a featureless metal door in the back with a small painted sign reading “manager.” Mary paused and steadied herself, unsure of what she was going to say. She knocked on the door. A moment passed, the sound of the metal echoing off the walls of the warehouse. Footsteps were heard inside the office, then the jiggle of the doorknob. The door swung open and a tall man with a swarthy mustache and dark eyes greeted her. “Misses Kandarian?” he said, somewhat startled. “I don’t think… well, I didn’t expect you here. How have you been?”

	Mary looked Mister Calrissian up and down and bowed her head. “I know my visit is a little bit of a surprise, but I have urgent matters I want to talk about.”

	Calrissian stepped aside and waved her into the office. He went to his desk and pushed aside the papers that he had been working on. The smell of smoke replaced the smell of forest, a handrolled cigarette was still burning in a blue, ceramic ashtray. Calrissian sat back down in his creaky wooden chair and folded his hands across his chest. His brow furrowed: “I hope your family is doing well. I know Gor’s accident is hard on you. Hard on anyone. But he talked about how strong and stubborn you are.”

	“Mister Calrissian,” started Mary. In her mind, she didn’t want to be coddled as a widow. Widows were helpless, mourning and dejected. While she mourned and missed her husband dearly, she also had children and ageing parents to take care of. She couldn’t afford to be complacent with pity. She couldn’t afford to let people tell her about how tragic of an accident Gor suffered. She didn’t need them to tell her what a strong woman she was. She needed security, not pity. “I… I don’t want to talk about what happened. I’ve talked about it a lot, I just don’t want to relive it anymore. I just know that he died in your employment and you were the one who paid him.”

	Calrissian cocked an eyebrow, leaning back. He was silent for a minute, twirling the end of his mustache in thought. Mary stared him down, resolved to be stoic in the face of his response. After a few moments that felt longer than they were, the boss answered: “When Gor died, he died. I know this is going to sound cruel but… he can’t work for me anymore. I pay for work. I can’t pay dead men. That’s just not how this works.”

	“I have a family. Gor had a family,” Mary answered flatly, still staring straight ahead at the boss as he took a drag off of his cigarette. “You yourself have a family, I know. I’ve seen you at the market and at church. You have to understand. What would they do without you?”

	Calrissian shrugged, running a hand through his balding hair. “I… Well, I’m not sure. But I can’t help you with this, I’m sorry. I need to pay my own workers. This is my own livelihood. I am not a charity. This company is everything. I started it myself, I manage it myself. If I paid out money to everyone who was injured I’d just be a doctor, not a logger.”

	“How much money [i]do[/i] you make?” asked Mary, a hint of frustration creeping into her otherwise calm voice. “Surely Stepanakert pays well for your lumber. Surely you can afford that nice automobile you bought. I have bills that I have to pay. My sons are too young to work!”

	“What I make isn’t of concern to you, Mary,” defended Calrissian. He posture changed: he leaned forward from inviting to intimidating. “I just need you to understand that this company can’t be giving handouts. If you want handouts, there are other options. We have no insurance for you. I’m sorry. That’s just the way it is.”

	“But-“ Mary started again.

	“There’s nothing I can do,” repeated Calrissian sternly. He stood up from his desk and walked to open the door. He cocked his head slightly. Mary knew that she wasn’t welcome anymore. Dejected, she stood up from the chair and thanked the manager for his time. She left the warehouse and began the long walk back to her house. The sun beat down on the road but the hot air was beginning to cool: signs that autumn was not far off from the black forests of the Artsakh. Soon it would be winter: she had to have a plan before then, or else her and her family would suffer through the infamous cold snows of the mountains. On the hill back to the house, she thought of the one place left she could go. It was in town, however, some distance away. Mary decided to stop in at her neighbor’s house to ask if she could be driven into Aygestan. She met with them, her husband was called out, and they graciously offered her a ride into town. Mary soon found herself on the way to see the pastor.

	Father Deradoorian’s house sat down the hill from the church, in a small neighborhood with half a dozen other similar residences not far from the town center. In typical Artsakh fashion, the rustic country house was painted a modest blue color with a wood trim along the roof, its glass windows framed in pleasant white. A sole balcony faced out to the gravel road, a freshly-cleaned carpet drying in the sun on its railing. Below that, one of the pastor’s three daughters tended to a bright flower garden, watering the vibrant summer flowers with a metal water can. Mary rode to the house in the back of her neighbor’s car, staying silent with her hands clasped in her lap while her neighbor talked with her husband in the front. She nervously smoothed out the wrinkles in her mute, dark dress, sighing deeply. The door to Father Deradoorian’s house was already open by the time the car pulled up beside the lawn, airing out the house in the summer breeze. The daughter, whose name Mary did not know, greeted the widow. “Are you looking for my father?” she asked in her singsong accent.

	“Yes, please,” Mary replied, looking back to the door. “I want to talk about some things with him. Is he, perhaps, free this afternoon?”

	The Deradoorian daughter put down her watering can and brushed her wavy brown hair behind her shoulder. She called out for the pastor, who appeared on the balcony of the house. “You have a visitor!” she announced cheerily. The pastor looked to Mary, offering a smile to her.

	“Mary, welcome,” he said to her. “Please, come in and take a left to the sitting room. Let me get the kettle going.”

	He withdrew back into his house as Mary thanked the Deradoorian daughter and climbed up the steps. She took her shoes off at the doormat and entered through the entranceway. A portrait of Jesus, sitting barefooted on a bench and holding the cross, hung above a small altar with unlit candles. Like Mary expected, the house had a somber, respectful air to it. The church was never her favorite place to be, but she respected it nonetheless. Father Deradoorian could be heard calling for his wife to make a pot of tea before he entered the room with Mary and ushered her to his sofa. Father Deradoorian took a seat beside his coffee table while Mary got comfortable. He leaned slightly towards her with a priest’s look of kind concern on his face. “What’s on your mind today, Misses Kandarian?”

	Mary sighed, looking towards her lap. “It’s been a few weeks since Gor died and… well, to be straight with you, Father, we’re running out of money.”

	“Who’s going to work for you?” asked Father Deradoorian. Mary looked up at him and shrugged softly.

	“My sons are too young to work. My parents are too old to work. My brother in law is on the Turkish border. My own brother is with the Air Force in Nakhchivan. He barely has enough wages to support his own apartment and remissions are… I don’t want to ask for remittance.”

	Father Deradoorian leaned back into his seat and sighed. “It’s embarrassing, I know. There was once a point in time where I was penniless. You know, one of those street kids in Stepanakert. Long before I was a servant of the Church like I am today, I was actually involved in all those vices that you’d associate with them. Drinking, smoking hashish, small time crimes, all that. I used to scam people out of their money with phony card games. I spent many years like that. My cousins were all fairly successful, but they left to head west where the money is. The richest one, Ivan, is still a land developer in Yerevan. He could have cut me a deal with one of his apartments if I had asked. But I was too proud to. I didn’t want to be the little kid pulled out of poverty by my cousin Ivan, something for him to show off to girls at parties to show his sweet side. I knew he’d do that: Ivan has a thing for theatrics and the temptations of the flesh.”

	Mary kneaded her hands in her lap and sighed. The clock continued to tick the seconds away while she thought about her family. Gor’s family wasn’t much better: they hadn’t even reached out to her after the funeral. For all intents and purposes, she seemed alone in the little village. They had a savings, of course, but that wasn’t going to work for them for much longer. Her pride, unfortunately for her, would have to yield before her finances did. “I was turned down by the logging company,” she said. “They said they had no insurance for injury or death. What happens… well, it just happens. It’s unfair, Father.”

	Father Deradoorian nodded slowly. “You know that the Church will offer alms for those in need. I suspect that’s why you’re here today.”

	Mary bit her lip and mumbled an affirmative. Father Deradoorian looked out at the window. “We can provide alms for a certain period of time to cover basic necessities. Outside of that, we cannot support you forever. As generous as we would like to be in the provision of worldly things, our resources are not unlimited. There must be some other option you should consider but… for now, we can provide you with a basic allowance.”

	Mary was too crushed to feel happy that she was staying afloat. Everything in her, from her upbringing to her personality, fought against others supporting her family. Even the Church’s alms were almost embarrassing to her. “I just…” she began. “I would prefer it if nobody knew about this arrangement. I don’t need anyone knowing that I am taking money.”

	Father Deradoorian nodded again and said: “We can provide that. I can send one of the church assistants discreetly every few weeks with the money. They have done this before, trust me. There are many who suffer in the community: most of them do not want to be known either. Expect the first of these payments to be delivered at the end of the week. One of my assistants will be at your house.”

	“Thank you, Father,” Mary replied. The pastor smiled and asked if there was anything else that Mary needed. She said no and thanked the priest again for his time. Father Deradoorian escorted Mary out of the house and towards the car waiting outside. The neighbors greeted Mary and the pastor, making small talk about the weather for a few minutes before the pastor saw her off. The car ride again was quiet, Mary staying silent in the backseat while she thought. Choking down the shame, she returned to her house where her kids were listening to the radio in the sitting room. She greeted them, but quickly returned to her room where she stripped her heavy dress and sat in her undergarments. She scratched at an itch on her neck, looking over at a photograph of her and Gor on the counter. Who would have thought that she would be here right now, living off of the Church and hoping for a better way out? Frustration washed over her and she wanted to succumb to the feelings, but ultimately she decided to take a bath instead. Those usually relaxed her.

	Mary turned on the water, heated by the wood-furnace water heater outside, and slipped into her tub. The warmth washed over her as she purged the thoughts of money and loss from her mind. Inside, she felt almost weightless. She closed her eyes and thought of far off fields. Outside, the sun set over the mountains. Dusk cast long shadows from the peaks that engulfed the village, before the stars rose over. A dog barked in the distance. The chickens in their coops relaxed and stopped clucking, the mooing of the cows ceased, and the rumble of the occasional car driving through the gravel mountain roads stopped. The Artsakh went to sleep.