Ok. So here I am accelerating away from the sound of gunfire down I-90 in the ass end of nowhere. Do I know why? No. Do I have a clue about what's going on? No. Do I have a plan? Of course not. Do I at least have something coherent to tell the boss when I pick him up. Not really.
What I have is is a blown off wing mirror, a seven year old who looks like this happens to him all the time and the sound of gunfire fading in the distance. Before I can get into a real thorough "what in God's name were you thinking?!" session with myself, I realize I gotta say something to the two big brown eyes in the seat next to me..
"My name is Itami. Itami Hanzo. What's your name?"
I thought about flashing a reassuring smile, but after considering how much tusk that reveals, figured it might be less scary for the kid if I didn't put him in mind of the monsters little ones worry about at bedtime.
Instead of saying anything, the kid holds up his bear. I'm thinking he's offering me the only thing he has when I see a flash of reflection from a tag on the stuffed animal's collar.
Hi! My name is Storytime Bear™. I belong to Tommy Crocker.
Now I don't know if its the similarity of their names or if all the spiritual stuff that's happened recently has rubbed off and made me some kind of psychic, but I immediately hear the voice of my old buddy Crockett."No good deed ever goes unpunished." It was the old mechanic's favorite saying. I don't know how many million times he said that to me. "No good deed ever goes unpunished".
Somehow I just know that I'm gonna pay for not just driving away when that lady with the gun yelled "Wait!"
The boss....well, the boss is....
Oh, hell. I don't know.
I thought of about a hundred different reactions he might have to his finding a 7 year old kid had joined us. I was ready for surprise, shock, anger, disappointment, lectures on responsibility or safety, orders to immediately take him back... everything except what I got.
Nothing.
We pulled up to where the boss was warming down after his run. He came over to the vehicle. Nodded to me, nodded to the kid and climbed in.
No questions, no fury, no lecture, no argument. Nothing.
I mean, if our positions were reversed and when I pulled up to get him he had some other passenger to travel with us, I'd sure as hell want to know what the story was. Not the boss. He acted like a 7 year old hitchhiker was the most natural thing in the world.
Of course, I told him the story. Explained about the gunfight and the woman pushing him in through the window while ordering me to take him to Kilkenny in Casper. I started explaining why I thought we should do what she said but the polite shrug I got kinda indicated that I didn't need to convince him. If I thought we should do it then he'd go along with it. Made me feel good being treated like a partner, but in the back of my mind I knew that any drek we stepped in doing this was gonna be entirely my fault.
I also introduced him to Tommy. He nodded as I told the story, nodded at the kid, dug a couple of power bars out of his bag, gave me one, gave the kid one and munched on the last himself.
No sweat, no philosophy, no yakin at all. Just nodded and passed out the candy.
I hope to grow to a ripe old age, but if I live to be a thousand I'll never figure the guy out.
After a while he played real softly on the flute and the kid fell asleep.
As I drove along through the evening I got to thinking about the team. I hoped for the best but still wondered how things were going back in Seattle and how they were making out without the boss to call the shots. Its gotta be tough because he's a natural leader and its real comfortable to have him directing traffic. I realized that on some level my worries when the boss had gone all weird were about what I would do without him. I've come to think of myself as the guy who watches the boss' back and it was unsettling to think about what I would do if he weren't there..
Sometimes he can be real spooky,though. As I was contemplating how he had affected my life he turned and looked right at me. Weird. I quietly asked "How you feeling, boss?"
"Better, old friend. Better"
148 miles later we pulled into Casper. Population 42,231.
(I still don't understand why towns do that. Do they figure that having 231 people more than 42,000 makes them more appealing? Do they figure that corps in search of sites for their headquarters say "Our next home town's population has gotta be more than 42,000 but it should also be less than 43,000? If twins are born or there's a fatal accident, do they run out with a can of white paint to change the sign?)
Anyway, Casper is a small town that the airport brought back from the dead. Not a small town in terms of the Sioux nation, you understand. Hell, in terms of the nation its the second largest urban center behind the capital, Cheyenne. No, I mean for anybody familiar with a real urban sprawl, Casper is a small town.
Center of downtown runs about a mile and a half square. So if you were to pick it up and drop it on, say, Manhattan, it would cover from the Penn Station to Times Square and from 8th avenue to Grand Central Station. Not a big place. After the NAN came into being, Casper, which had been shrinking for a couple of years, screamed pretty loud for help and the council gave it a shot of life by putting the international airport there. Although it was huge immediate windfall for the local economy, the industry that was supposed to follow never materialized. The Sioux are, surprisingly enough, not real fond of Anglos (or Ute, Pueblo, Salish, etc.) so tourism has never been an economic fallback.
So Casper's business is the airport. The motels, restaurants, bars, car dealers, liquor stores and donut shops are all around the airport. Downtown's got a couple of churches, a department store, some grocery stores, Post office, Sheriff's office, Feed and Grain, you know, your basic Midwest town crap. We started looking for Kilkenny.
We figured it would be easier to start downtown as the folks there would probably know their neighbors.
Well, they did.
They also knew who were not their neighbors and who, therefore, could be treated as shoe scrapings.
You guessed it. Us.
I felt like we had the plague. I mean, they didn't exactly spit in our faces, but only because it would have required looking at us to aim.
It didn't matter who, either. Little old lady, loafer on a bench, guy walking his dog. Nobody had the time of day. These people could have given your stereotypical broomstick-up-the-ass new Englander lessons in inhospitable behavior 101.
Finally the guy at the drug store pointed us toward the Flame Bar.
The bar was a seedy, smoke filled neighborhood tavern. The kind of place where if you don't know that the 2nd stool is broken and won't hold your weight, you somehow deserve to find yourself on the floor to the amusement of the regulars. The sort of place where if you have to ask what's on tap your going to get a draw that 2/3 head because you've wasted the bartender's time. You know, a place where all conversation stops if a stranger steps through the door.
The preliminaries..... well, you just know how the preliminaries went, don't you? The bartender found stuff to keep him busy at the other end of the bar while the boss and I enjoyed the muttering of the crowd. When the boss did a loud piercing whistle to get the bartender's attention the muttering got louder. When he asked for bottled water the spokesperson for the local chapter of assholes anonymous identified himself by sounding off..
Several minutes of increasingly tense banter followed with the witty epigrams eventually giving way to unveiled threats. When a blade flicked open the boss kicked the mouthy would-be knifeman in the shins and snatched the weapon away from him.. He then backhanded the knife the length of the bar, bullseyeing the dart board. The "Thrumm" of the blades' vibration was particularly loud against the stunned silence it inspired. (By the way, the kick the boss delivered was no esoteric martial arts move, no secret kung-fu form- just a short, sharp, kick to the shin with enough force to hurt. Why he did it that way is a mystery to me.)
:"Before anyone requests that I try that again, fight like a man, bring it on, etc. we need to find Kilkenny. If we can get directions we'll leave without further bloodshed."
Now, this offer seemed quite reasonable to me, but the buzz in the room indicated that it would not do at all. Fortunately, the bartender had enough business sense to realize that if his place and customers were undergoing repairs due to the approaching riot, his revenue stream would dry up. Rather than risk his livelihood on the locals ability to quickly and quietly ice a pair of outsiders he said "BCE" and jerked his thumb over his shoulder.
We quickly took the hint to check the Bureau of Civil Enforcement.
The norm (?!- see following) behind the counter must have tipped the scales between 360-420 lbs. He was so big that I couldn't pin it down any closer than that because he was beyond any frames of reference. The fatman did not, (surprise, surprise) roll out the red carpet. He didn't share friendly advice. He didn't offer witty banter. He didn't react to our presence at all. I was beginning to wonder if he was deaf, dumb and blind as well as gravity challenged when he wheezed out "Whaddaya want."
Now, if you or I had said it there would have been a question in there someplace. When jabba the sheriff (yeah, the boss has roped me inta watching some of his vids) said it, there wasn't even the smell of a question. "Close the door." "Lift that end." "The order's to go." all embody the same level of inquisition as bigboy's "Whaddaya want"
"Kilkenny" the boss said and for the first time the critical mass club candidate demonstrated that he had some connection to his environment beyond attempting to devour it.
The look he gave us combined suspicion, hatred, curiosity and indignation. It lasted far too long.
"Your funeral" he eventually concluded with a ripple which was probably intended as a shrug. "Columbia and Mason"
We got back into the Bear and set out in search of the address..
This story is copyright of the author. Shadowrun was a Registered Trademark of FASA Corporation until they went busto foldo. Now Wizkids LLC owns it. Or possibly FanPro. Or some other dragon owned subsidiary. Whoever holds the trademark, they didn't call and tell me it was ok to write this, and anybody who says I said that is full of it. I'm not challenging any of the rights or trademarks of anybody who own's them, whoever they are. I'm just writing stories. Honest. Thank you for not litigating.
What I have is is a blown off wing mirror, a seven year old who looks like this happens to him all the time and the sound of gunfire fading in the distance. Before I can get into a real thorough "what in God's name were you thinking?!" session with myself, I realize I gotta say something to the two big brown eyes in the seat next to me..
"My name is Itami. Itami Hanzo. What's your name?"
I thought about flashing a reassuring smile, but after considering how much tusk that reveals, figured it might be less scary for the kid if I didn't put him in mind of the monsters little ones worry about at bedtime.
Instead of saying anything, the kid holds up his bear. I'm thinking he's offering me the only thing he has when I see a flash of reflection from a tag on the stuffed animal's collar.
Hi! My name is Storytime Bear™. I belong to Tommy Crocker.
Now I don't know if its the similarity of their names or if all the spiritual stuff that's happened recently has rubbed off and made me some kind of psychic, but I immediately hear the voice of my old buddy Crockett."No good deed ever goes unpunished." It was the old mechanic's favorite saying. I don't know how many million times he said that to me. "No good deed ever goes unpunished".
Somehow I just know that I'm gonna pay for not just driving away when that lady with the gun yelled "Wait!"
The boss....well, the boss is....
Oh, hell. I don't know.
I thought of about a hundred different reactions he might have to his finding a 7 year old kid had joined us. I was ready for surprise, shock, anger, disappointment, lectures on responsibility or safety, orders to immediately take him back... everything except what I got.
Nothing.
We pulled up to where the boss was warming down after his run. He came over to the vehicle. Nodded to me, nodded to the kid and climbed in.
No questions, no fury, no lecture, no argument. Nothing.
I mean, if our positions were reversed and when I pulled up to get him he had some other passenger to travel with us, I'd sure as hell want to know what the story was. Not the boss. He acted like a 7 year old hitchhiker was the most natural thing in the world.
Of course, I told him the story. Explained about the gunfight and the woman pushing him in through the window while ordering me to take him to Kilkenny in Casper. I started explaining why I thought we should do what she said but the polite shrug I got kinda indicated that I didn't need to convince him. If I thought we should do it then he'd go along with it. Made me feel good being treated like a partner, but in the back of my mind I knew that any drek we stepped in doing this was gonna be entirely my fault.
I also introduced him to Tommy. He nodded as I told the story, nodded at the kid, dug a couple of power bars out of his bag, gave me one, gave the kid one and munched on the last himself.
No sweat, no philosophy, no yakin at all. Just nodded and passed out the candy.
I hope to grow to a ripe old age, but if I live to be a thousand I'll never figure the guy out.
After a while he played real softly on the flute and the kid fell asleep.
As I drove along through the evening I got to thinking about the team. I hoped for the best but still wondered how things were going back in Seattle and how they were making out without the boss to call the shots. Its gotta be tough because he's a natural leader and its real comfortable to have him directing traffic. I realized that on some level my worries when the boss had gone all weird were about what I would do without him. I've come to think of myself as the guy who watches the boss' back and it was unsettling to think about what I would do if he weren't there..
Sometimes he can be real spooky,though. As I was contemplating how he had affected my life he turned and looked right at me. Weird. I quietly asked "How you feeling, boss?"
"Better, old friend. Better"
148 miles later we pulled into Casper. Population 42,231.
(I still don't understand why towns do that. Do they figure that having 231 people more than 42,000 makes them more appealing? Do they figure that corps in search of sites for their headquarters say "Our next home town's population has gotta be more than 42,000 but it should also be less than 43,000? If twins are born or there's a fatal accident, do they run out with a can of white paint to change the sign?)
Anyway, Casper is a small town that the airport brought back from the dead. Not a small town in terms of the Sioux nation, you understand. Hell, in terms of the nation its the second largest urban center behind the capital, Cheyenne. No, I mean for anybody familiar with a real urban sprawl, Casper is a small town.
Center of downtown runs about a mile and a half square. So if you were to pick it up and drop it on, say, Manhattan, it would cover from the Penn Station to Times Square and from 8th avenue to Grand Central Station. Not a big place. After the NAN came into being, Casper, which had been shrinking for a couple of years, screamed pretty loud for help and the council gave it a shot of life by putting the international airport there. Although it was huge immediate windfall for the local economy, the industry that was supposed to follow never materialized. The Sioux are, surprisingly enough, not real fond of Anglos (or Ute, Pueblo, Salish, etc.) so tourism has never been an economic fallback.
So Casper's business is the airport. The motels, restaurants, bars, car dealers, liquor stores and donut shops are all around the airport. Downtown's got a couple of churches, a department store, some grocery stores, Post office, Sheriff's office, Feed and Grain, you know, your basic Midwest town crap. We started looking for Kilkenny.
We figured it would be easier to start downtown as the folks there would probably know their neighbors.
Well, they did.
They also knew who were not their neighbors and who, therefore, could be treated as shoe scrapings.
You guessed it. Us.
I felt like we had the plague. I mean, they didn't exactly spit in our faces, but only because it would have required looking at us to aim.
It didn't matter who, either. Little old lady, loafer on a bench, guy walking his dog. Nobody had the time of day. These people could have given your stereotypical broomstick-up-the-ass new Englander lessons in inhospitable behavior 101.
Finally the guy at the drug store pointed us toward the Flame Bar.
The bar was a seedy, smoke filled neighborhood tavern. The kind of place where if you don't know that the 2nd stool is broken and won't hold your weight, you somehow deserve to find yourself on the floor to the amusement of the regulars. The sort of place where if you have to ask what's on tap your going to get a draw that 2/3 head because you've wasted the bartender's time. You know, a place where all conversation stops if a stranger steps through the door.
The preliminaries..... well, you just know how the preliminaries went, don't you? The bartender found stuff to keep him busy at the other end of the bar while the boss and I enjoyed the muttering of the crowd. When the boss did a loud piercing whistle to get the bartender's attention the muttering got louder. When he asked for bottled water the spokesperson for the local chapter of assholes anonymous identified himself by sounding off..
Several minutes of increasingly tense banter followed with the witty epigrams eventually giving way to unveiled threats. When a blade flicked open the boss kicked the mouthy would-be knifeman in the shins and snatched the weapon away from him.. He then backhanded the knife the length of the bar, bullseyeing the dart board. The "Thrumm" of the blades' vibration was particularly loud against the stunned silence it inspired. (By the way, the kick the boss delivered was no esoteric martial arts move, no secret kung-fu form- just a short, sharp, kick to the shin with enough force to hurt. Why he did it that way is a mystery to me.)
:"Before anyone requests that I try that again, fight like a man, bring it on, etc. we need to find Kilkenny. If we can get directions we'll leave without further bloodshed."
Now, this offer seemed quite reasonable to me, but the buzz in the room indicated that it would not do at all. Fortunately, the bartender had enough business sense to realize that if his place and customers were undergoing repairs due to the approaching riot, his revenue stream would dry up. Rather than risk his livelihood on the locals ability to quickly and quietly ice a pair of outsiders he said "BCE" and jerked his thumb over his shoulder.
We quickly took the hint to check the Bureau of Civil Enforcement.
The norm (?!- see following) behind the counter must have tipped the scales between 360-420 lbs. He was so big that I couldn't pin it down any closer than that because he was beyond any frames of reference. The fatman did not, (surprise, surprise) roll out the red carpet. He didn't share friendly advice. He didn't offer witty banter. He didn't react to our presence at all. I was beginning to wonder if he was deaf, dumb and blind as well as gravity challenged when he wheezed out "Whaddaya want."
Now, if you or I had said it there would have been a question in there someplace. When jabba the sheriff (yeah, the boss has roped me inta watching some of his vids) said it, there wasn't even the smell of a question. "Close the door." "Lift that end." "The order's to go." all embody the same level of inquisition as bigboy's "Whaddaya want"
"Kilkenny" the boss said and for the first time the critical mass club candidate demonstrated that he had some connection to his environment beyond attempting to devour it.
The look he gave us combined suspicion, hatred, curiosity and indignation. It lasted far too long.
"Your funeral" he eventually concluded with a ripple which was probably intended as a shrug. "Columbia and Mason"
We got back into the Bear and set out in search of the address..
This story is copyright of the author. Shadowrun was a Registered Trademark of FASA Corporation until they went busto foldo. Now Wizkids LLC owns it. Or possibly FanPro. Or some other dragon owned subsidiary. Whoever holds the trademark, they didn't call and tell me it was ok to write this, and anybody who says I said that is full of it. I'm not challenging any of the rights or trademarks of anybody who own's them, whoever they are. I'm just writing stories. Honest. Thank you for not litigating.
No comments:
Post a Comment