Chapter 35. Transitions

[lloigor]

 

Betty and the kids had decided to go down to the Hell House just to take a look and see what was needed. Walt chose not to, he just wanted to think for a while, the past couple of days required it.  

He decided to walk out along the road going to Pineville, which was the opposite direction from the youngsters and a long straight walk with a slight uphill to get him up and moving.  He passed through the town, looking at all the houses as he walked by, just thinking.  When he walked by Bill Downey’s place he noticed that the front porch had been cleared off and that there was a nice camping chair sitting out.  That was odd, he would have to ask Bill about that.

He finally cleared the last house of the town proper and walked toward the beginning of the slope leading up to the ridgeline.  The day was cool and overcast, with the humidity that still brought on sweat.  “It’s good for me” came the thought.

He was breathing hard by the time he got to Matt and Olivia Hale’s place. The old truck that had decorated their front yard for years was gone.  Olivia came out to chat, and told Walt to stay where he was, that she would come to him.  She was grinning as she clumped along using her walker and sat down on the seat when she got to him.  She brought him up to date on the town gossip and what Robin and Justin were doing over in Leffert’s corners.  She was proud of the fact that Robin had actually printed “I love you Grandma” on the bottom of the letter.

She told him about how the new Tcho Tcho folks had offered her $100.00 for the old truck and had even hauled it away for her.  Apparently they were planning on recovering the metal from it themselves.  She was especially pleased that they also cleaned up where it had been sitting and even moved the “lawn” for her.  She tried to get Walt into the house for a cup of coffee and some company, but Walt begged off, using the excuse that he needed to finish his walk.  He was certain that he didn’t need to hear all of the gossip in town and beyond.

He figured that he would walk  another half mile before turning around; one of the Tcho Tcho families had bought out the McDaniel place after they had decided to move to Arkham.  He would get up there, take a look, and then get back home.

As he got to the dilapidated mailbox that he had set for his turn-around point, a middle aged Tcho Tcho man came out the front door and looked at him carefully.  “Hello Mr. Moore, how are you doing this morning?”

“Morning,” said Walt, puzzled for a moment. Then he thought that he recognized Chuck and Bai’s father. “I’m afraid that you have me at a disadvantage though.  I remember meeting you but I can’t for the life of me remember your name.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I’m Thao Choj, we saw you the other night when we went to Carla’s for dinner.” Choj came around the gate and stuck his hand out. Just call me Choj, and I think I am right up there with you on names bouncing off my thick skull until I hear it four or five times”

“Thanks, I’ll Definitely remember it now Choj” said Walt, shaking the offered hand. “Anyway,” Walt gave a sheepish grin, “The answer to your question is that I am doing fine, how are you?.”

“Just fine, when I saw you walking down the road, I just wanted to get out here and chat with someone when I had the chance,” Choj gave a little wry smile, “We’ve been city folk for a while now, I not quite used to not having that many people around.”

“I would say that it takes a bit,” said Walt, giving Choj a peculiar look. 

“Oh, we’ll be OK, everyone says that this is a lot better and no one want to go back, but we miss the community,” Choj kinda winced. “Buffalo has always been a rough town, it just got rougher, it was time to leave and get back to farming.”

They both stood there for a while, just talking about the things people talk about when they are just talking for the first time.  After a couple of rural minutes, a head peeked around the side of the house, Walt looked at Chuck’s grinning face, “Hey Chuck Come on out, Show your face!” Walt matched the kid grin for grin.

“How are you doing today?” said Chuck walking up to the side of the road, “Good to see you Walt.”

Choj shot Chuck a look. “That is Mr. Moore to you,”  he said. “Respect your elders!”

“Ummmm” started Walt at this. Choj turned to look at Walt, “Actually, that is my fault Choj, I told Chuck to call me Walt, I didn’t think to ask you.”

“Hmm,”  Choj just stood for a moment, then shook his head, “Then it should be Walt then.”  He paused and looked at Chuck, Started to say something, then just waved Chuck toward them and turned to Walt.

“You call me Walt too,” said Walt. “Formal manners happen here in Chorazin, and what happens in the church is different than what happens on the roads, but I would prefer that you call me Walt too, when we are out and about.”

“OK Walt” added Choj, “I gotta remember where we are, I tend to revert to thinking that I am back by the plateau.”

“Walt, what’s up, I was working on the forge we are putting together back in the shop.” Chuck chimed in with his characteristic grin.

“You’re putting together a forge?” Walt said. “Tell me more.”

“Yeah, this is my last semester over at SUNY at Buffalo, the engineering program is getting shut down.”  Chuck waved his hand to have Walt follow.

“Some people would have asked politely.” Walt heard Choj grumble as he followed Chuck toward the back of the property.  Walt caught his eye, smiled and winked.  Choj shook his head ruefully and smiled back.

“So, you are graduating this quarter?” Walt asked.

“Nope, the engineering school is going through a tizzy fit” Chuck said while opening the door to the oversized shed. Engineering prof’s got the same salaries as they had last year while all the humanities professors got a little bit of a raise.  School administration said that since they all had side jobs, they could work for less.”

“What?” Walt almost stopped in surprise, “That is one of the dumbest things that I have ever heard.”

“Yeah, the engineering prof’s basically told them that they wouldn’t work if they did it, the administration said they had to because it wasn’t going to change.” What really pissed the engineering folks off was when they found out all the administration and the tenured professors in the humanities got decent raises. “The engineering professors all walked out and put in their resignation letters for next semester,” Chuck said, “I was thinking about leaving anyway to come here, the thought of working for an engineering firm was getting less and less appealing the more that I looked.”

“Why is that?” Walt asked.

“Mostly because the school cut financial aid to just about everyone and then raised tuition on top of it,” said Chuck. “Word around the street was that firms weren’t hiring working class kids anymore, they were saving the jobs for the upper class kids whose parents could afford for them to do unpaid internships and maybe throw work the firm’s way.”  The three men walked to the metal shed that held the forge.

Walt’s eyes finally adjusted to the low light in the forge.  There was a pile of stone and fire bricks neatly stacked in the corner, several oversized propane tanks, and the biggest bandsaw he had ever seen outside of a lumber mill.  There were a couple of repurposed apple harvest bins that were getting full of different pieces of steel that looked suspiciously like the truck that used to be in front of Matt Hale’s place on the road before town.

Chuck spent some time showing him around, obviously proud of what he was setting up.  Walt stopped and just stared at an area with bars of different types of obviously pure metal.  Chuck noticed the quizzical look on Walt’s face.

“Since I decided that staying in school didn’t make sense, I have been taking every course I can take that has anything to do with metallurgy.” he said, grinning Walt.  I worked for a friend in Buffalo and spent all that coin investing in metals for alloys.”

“This is pretty amazing” Walt said, Looking at a crate filled with what looked to be charcoal briquettes in a funny color. “What’s this,” he asked.

“Manganese,” Chuck said. “Getting those turned out to be a bit of a nightmare.”

“So what are you thinking about doing here?”  Walt was genuinely interested.

Chuck and his father looked at each other and shrugged. “Mostly we are going to figure out how to farm here, our grandfather is here with us and we decided to get out of the business we were in, and get back to what we should be doing.” Chuck turned out the light and motioned to Walt to follow. “Why don’t you meet grandpa, come on into the house and have a cup of tea?”

“Happy to join you, thanks.”.  Walt seemed curious, he had spent enough time around both Tcho Tcho and Hmong to understand that being invited for tea and to ‘meet the parents’ wasn’t something done lightly. Chuck closed the door to the oversized shed and started walking toward the back of the house where a large plot of tilled soil showed. An old man was there, spading in what appeared to be manure and straw. They stopped at the edge of the plot and waited for the old man to notice them. When he finally looked up, he flashed a toothy grin at them and drove the shovel into the area he was working on and took off his gloves and threaded them through the D-handle of the spade he was working with. Walt was jealous when he saw the man who appeared to be older than him move much more like a young man than a man his obvious age. Hands were offered and shaken, small talk was offered and accepted.  He introduced himself as Thao Keej.  He was Choj’s wife’s father.

“I’m glad to meet you ” Keej said, “Khorep told me to come and talk to you when I got settled here, but getting the garden ready for planting takes a lot of time at my age.”

“Might be because that is a pretty darned big garden plot,” Walt laughed. “You might have the biggest one in the area.”

“I think that we just might be needing it in the next couple of years.”

“What do you mean?”

“We moved here because things in Buffalo aren’t getting better and it was time to take our profits and our savings and start to get out.”

“The Sarkomand isn’t closing is it?”  Walt was genuinely concerned.

“Nope, not yet, Ghoreng will need to keep it open until all of our finances get arranged.”

“Whew, that is good, I don’t get to Buffalo often, but when I do I make a beeline there, that is the best food in two-hundred miles.”

“I’ll pass that on to him the next time I see him,” Keej smiled.

They chatted for a while, Keej walking with Walt and pointing out the improvements that they had planned.  Walt was impressed, a lot of the improvements made sense, but weren’t like anything done around the town. When they finished the tour, Keej led everyone back to the rear of the house to a new porch with a new canvas awning.  An older woman came out, smiled at the men and deposited a teapot and cups in the middle of an old table, carved from a single piece of teak that, while meticulously maintained, showed great age. They drank tea, Walt was quizzed about the weather and if Keej had a chance of finishing the fertilizing and prep of the garden before the snows hit. As always, talking about the weather relaxed everyone. When that topic petered out, Choj looked at Walt and asked “more tea?” When Walt nodded his affirmative with a smile and a “please and thank you”.

The conversation meandered in that rural way.  Walt was surprised that ‘city folk’ were so comfortable with it, but decided to just roll with it, these folks fit right in.  “So, we heard that our little chat with Chuck here met with approval when he went hunting the other day.” Choj said, when he brought out a fresh pot of tea. “I hope that you understand that the conversation leading up to Chuck being dressed like a cracker and carrying that ancient 20-gauge was the end-point of a lot of discussion here.”

“OK?” Was Walt’s answer, obviously this conversation was taking a turn he hadn’t anticipated.

“I originally was going to send Chuck out pretty much like Jim was geared up.” After this admission, Choj sipped a little more tea and just waited for Walt to respond.

“I’m curious, what made you change your mind?”

“My Father-in-Law here heard about it and sat me down, said that I was thinking about things all wrong.”

“Oh, how is that?”

Keej answered, “I told him that he was thinking like a drug dealer defending his territory from other dealers instead of realizing that we weren’t in that game anymore.”

Walt’s stunned silence was all the answer that Keej needed to continue.

Keej stared out over the reviving farmstead. “Mr. Moore, You know better than anyone what we did to fund our fight against the Pathet Lao.” Keej said gently.  “You came to us to help us fight, and we are grateful, and you are a friend, but your government used us and didn’t provide enough money for us to win the fight, just enough to keep getting killed for no reason.”

“I didn’t have anything to do with that” said Walt.

“We know that Walt, but we know now that you are people of the Old Ones too.” The tableau sat quietly for a while. “But when we came here, your government made a great noise about their helping the few of us that escaped and then forgot about, leaving us at the mercy of your culture.”

Walt winced, sensing where this was going.

“Pakheng Ngilma gave your people here in Chorazin the highest regards, She pushed for us to get out of the business of the poppies and move back here to our real ways.  We were skeptical at first, but she is strong and persuasive.” Keej looked over at Walt and smiled. “But I think that you already know that.

“We have nothing but respect for her,” Walt agreed.

“We spent the last four years working on getting out of the business”, Choj smiled.  “Some of us were frustrated because the government falling apart had made smuggling easier and profits even better.”

“Put Pakheng Ngilma prevailed on even the most greedy,” Said Keej, giving Choj a little knowing grin, “but even the most greedy can see that Grandma Pakheng sees farther than they do. The decision was made to get out of the business and convert our money into farmland so we can return to our ways.”

Clouds had begun to move toward them from the West, the four men moved their chairs around to watch the clouds come in.  They just sat, the three Tcho Tchos waiting for Walt to say something, Walt taking his time to absorb and assess the bombshell that had just landed on him. “Is this going to be good for you though?” Walt finally asked.

“It will work, we are used to doing what we have to do, even when it looks like we might fail.” Keej wryly added, “But this is better for the young people, having something of the earth to worry about instead of taking money that is worth less every day from people trying to dull the pain of their lives.”

The two old men sat watching the clouds come in, the two younger men, sensing the pain and turmoil below the remnants of conversation, politely excused themselves to tasks that needed to get done.  The old men just stared at clouds coming in, lost in a memoried past of jungles and fear and loss and moral ambiguity.  They sat there for a long time, in the camaraderie of age, considering the compromises and bad decisions of the past.  Considering how a world had led them here and what they could do, knowing that battles weren’t always won and that decisions weren’t always good.

Small snowflakes began to fall, not enough to stick, just enough to let them know it was still November.

 

Comments

Thinking too much

[(Anonymous)]

"It will work, we are used to doing what we have to do, even when it looks like we might fail."
Something about that troubles me, these people have been forced to do things regardless of right or wrong. I get that they are survivors, but are they really on the right side or the most convenient side of the moment? Will the Goddess vet them or are they part of chaos? Been mulling this over all afternoon. Either way interesting chapter.
OLfromNC

Nitpicking and comments

[emily07]

"stuck his hand out. Just call me Choj, and I think I am right up there with you..." a " missing in front of Just? And same sentence seems to be missing a periodical at it´s end.

"“Thanks, I’ll Definitely remember it now ..." not sure if the capital letter D is intentional.

"“Thanks, I’ll Definitely remember it now Choj” said Walt, shaking the offered hand. “Anyway,” Walt gave a sheepish grin, “The answer to your question is that I am doing fine, how are you?.” - either one periodical too much at the end, or higher up one periodical to little.

"at with someone when I had the chance,” Choj gave a little wry smile, “We’ve been city folk for a while now, I not quite used to not having that many people around.” - would Choj say I´m not quite used to not having...or is he talking Yoda style?

"Hey Chuck Come on out, Show your face!” Walt matched the kid grin for grin." come out?

" that I am back by the plateau.” - my grammar non-sense finds this noteworthy...

Yeah, the engineering prof’s basically told them that they wouldn’t work if they did it, the administration said they had to because it wasn’t going to change.” What really pissed the engineering folks off was when they found out all the administration and the tenured professors in the humanities got decent raises. “ - I suppose one of the " is not in it´s right place?

“Happy to join you, thanks.”. - a periodical is visiting another one ;-)



Comments:
"That was odd, he would have to ask Bill about that." Hmm, Suzette Haden Elgin let one of her characters insist that "every mismatch is a sighn of warning". Bill decides to watch the road more? Needs more D3 intake? Hm.

"and what Robin and Justin were doing over in Leffert’s corners." nice.

Aha, humanities professors get more than engineering - I hear someone outta the field talking, no?!


“Nope, not yet, Ghoreng will need to keep it open until all of our finances get arranged.” - hmm, so another way the gold from the Shoggoths could be directed to landbuy...

The old men just stared at clouds coming in, lost in a memoried past of jungles and fear and loss and moral ambiguity. They sat there for a long time, in the camaraderie of age, considering the compromises and bad decisions of the past. Considering how a world had led them here and what they could do, knowing that battles weren’t always won and that decisions weren’t always good

- Chapeaux.