family heirloom

The pleasure of finally avenging his honor (as he put it), was tainted by the thought that in America he'd have blown the bastard's head off with a .38, while here in the Hungarian shit-nest he had to slice the dickhead's throat.

In the folktales Grandma Julia used to tell him, the hero always sits in a tree eating a pear with his jackknife when a bear comes and snatches him away, dragging him to his lair where Mother Bear waits, toothless and witchy, ready to cook up a nice kid stew (plenty of parsnips). Kovi never understood why the kid didn't just stick it to the beast and be done with him. That's what he would have done.

And now, that's what he had done.

And he had to do it. Self-defense, cause what they were doing was eating him away, just like the damn bear would have done, though nowadays they're less obvious about it and the witchmotherbear is the goddam European Union. Goddam border guards. Can't pay em off anymore with a few bottles of brandy. That's democracy: no work, crooked or straight. With only eight years of school they won't even take you at the new tire factory even if they're just paying you to breath in your death. And the old trade's dead now. They'd even taken his 405 with the 200 liter tank. And now they'd even let in the damned hairy-soled Romanians. Damned border guards. Can't pay em off. Gotta hunt em down and kill em. Goddam European Union.