A Tour de Fate
Page 1
A TOUR DE FATE
BOOK 1
From
THE TAILS OF MONTAGUE STUMP
P R M KINLOCH
Cover design by ebook.com
Illustrations by the Author
For Silvia
TABLE OF CONTENTS
THE WORDS
THE HISTORY
THE PROLOGUE
THE SCENE
THE WOLD
1 ROAD CRAFT
2 WHICH CRAFT?
3 LESSONS IN LIFE
4 THE MAKING OF A SELF-MADE MUTT
5 A FATHER’S OPPOSITION
6 GOING FOR BROKE
7 LET’S PLAY
8 PLAYING FOR HEAPS
9 PLAYING FOR KEEPS
10 HAVING AN INSIDE TRACK
11 MENU
12 CALL OF THE WILD
13 THE TURNING POINT
14 STEPS IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION
15 A BALANCED DIET
16 A COMING OUT
17 GOING NOWHERE FAST
18 PIG IN THE POKE
19 ON A ROLL
20 THE LEARNING CURVE
21 GETTING ROLLED
22 HORN’S DILEMMA
23 GETTING TO THE POINT
24 LAND’S END
25 ROLLING WITH THE PUNCHES
26 NO SWINGS, ONLY ROUNDABOUTS
27 GOOSE BUMPS
28 ANOTHER ROLL OF THE DICE
29 A REAL NIGHTMARE
30 KNOWLEDGE ISN’T EVERYTHING
31 THE CROSSING
32 GUN FOR HIRE
33 MOLLIFICATION
34 THE WINDS OF CHANGE
35 THE HORN OF PLENTY
36 A PLACE TO REST ONE’S HEAD
37 STUDYING THE MARKET
38 FOLLOWING HIS INSTINCTS
39 SEE SAW
40 MEMORIES
41 LOST & FOUND
42 NARROWING THE SEARCH
43 TITLE DEED
44 FIRST THINGS FIRST
45 THE LAST THING HE WANTS
46 HIGH HOPES
47 ROPE TRICK
48 FRIENDS OLD AND NEW
49 GETTING ROPABLE
50 THE WHAT KNOT
51 NO GAIN WITHOUT PAIN
52 LOOPING THE LOOP
53 THE SQUIRREL KNOT
54 THE THOUGHT THAT COUNTS
55 NOT A PROBLEM
56 THE FOX KNOT
57 A PRETTY LITTLE PROBLEM
58 A KNOTTY PROBLEM
59 A TICKET TO FREEDOM
60 NO STRINGS ATTACHED
61 DERRING DO
62 GOING BIG-TIME
63 A HOME RUN
64 EXECUTION
65 THE SMELL OF SUCCESS
66 CLOSING IN
67 SUDDENLY NOTHING HAPPENED
68 MEMORY LANE
69 GAME OVER
70 GETTING SORTED
71 GETTING IT STRAIGHT
72 GAME ON
73 PREPARATION
74 TWO LUMPS PLEASE
75 THE WAITING GAME
76 PLENTY OF THINGS BEGIN
77 FINAL PREPARATIONS
78 THE RESCUE
79 PLENTY OF TROUBLE
80 MOVES IN ALL DIRECTIONS
81 THE WORKS
82 STORM COMING
83 DRESS REHEARSAL
THE INVITATION
84 TIME TO PARTY
85 A RACE AGAINST TIME
86 LAST THROW OF THE DICE
87 PASS THE PARCEL
88 HERE COMES THE CAVALRY
89 JUST DESSERTS
90 SHADES OF THINGS TO COME
BOOK 2
BOOK 3
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
THE WORDS
"The land actually gave birth to our language. Language and culture are inseparable."
Bua Benjamin Mabo, a Meriam linguist from the Mer Islands
off the most Northern tip of Australia.
[The Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders of Australia are thought to have started their migration from Africa some 60 to 70,000 years ago, and there seems to be no evidence that anyone was there to meet them.
According to The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), they have 250 languages and 800 dialects. These can be grouped into around 32 language families. About 75% of those languages belong to one language family (Pama-Nyungan). The Pama-Nyungan languages likely had a single ancestor language (“proto-Pama-Nyungan”) and they evolved into different languages after the original speakers’ arrival in Australia. All this is wonderfully summed up by
I am indebted to Bua Mabo for permission to include his words, and also to the folk at AIATSIS, in particular Daniel Walding, an Assistant Director, and acknowledge all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Traditional Custodians of County and recognise their continuing connection to land, sea, culture and community. I pay my respects to Elders past and present. We could learn so much from them that we have forgotten, especially our connection to Country, the land, the environment.]
P R M K. Sydney, May 2021
THE HISTORY
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
from Genesis Ch 1, v26, King James Version
THE PROLOGUE
(THE DOOLITTLE PRINCIPLE)
If we left all the animals alone on the farm
We wouldn’t condone of them coming to harm.
So we put down the hay and clear up the stink
And that’s what we say the farmer should think.
But let us suppose we’re not in the way
And the animals pose the rules for the day.
I bet that we’d find there isn’t much strife
Among all the kind that chooses that life.
But even a trace of our selfish obsessions
Could make them fight for place or possessions.
Our human powers should give us pause
For while they’re ours they're worse than claws.
If we were to crash and sink from our powers
Is it rash to think theirs are better than ours?
The least I can say of their day in the sun
Is there isn’t a way they wouldn’t have fun.
PRMK May 2021
THE SCENE
Mankind has moved on, the earth has rested, almost dormant until once again creatures populate the world.
Here is a pleasant countryside, well looked after as the inhabitants use their initiative and anything they find to follow their hopes and dreams, maybe in the footsteps of those who went before, maybe not.
THE WOLD
1 ROAD CRAFT
Montague Stump had slept enough. Hungry too, but that was nothing new. On the road, the time to eat was when food was to hand, easy to find or worth the effort. Other considerations played a part. Location, time and so on. But out in the open, first rules of survival applied. Keep moving. When moving, keep alert. Life invariably got interesting. If something else moves, stop. Be as still as the night. Stay still. Be eyes and ears. Wait. Patience is everything. Assess. But where did this knowledge come from?
There was more. He was finding what amounted to checklists would arise and narrow down as the situation developed. Friend or foe, dangerous or useful, too big, too little, whatever. And such a lot could be learnt of other parties, especially if they never knew he was there.
Nothing sinister in this. Just preserving his options. And his freedom. For instance, while intent on watching whatever was attracting eye or ear, were other eyes watching the same thing? Or watching him? This was now life on the road for Montague Stump.
Living within his means - a totally new concept for him considering the luxurious life he was running from - was coming to mean keeping to what was possible. ‘Getting away with something’ had to be measured against the chances of getting away at all! For really fast travel, moonlit nights were best – although speeding could lead to mistakes.
Everything was measured against risk. Always to do with risk. Tick the boxes, see what’s what first, then decide. On food, was it too big to fight, or to eat without leaving traces, or to transport to a safer hide? Or even, was it too big for the current hunger level or too little to worry about, too small for the risk involved, or simply not worth the effort?
Food, no longer ‘a given’ now figured a lot in his life. While just as true for domesticated souls, to him domesticity now meant unnecessary time in food preparation. ‘Opportunity shopping’ as he called it was much quicker and just as successful. He was learning the art of ‘take-away’.
Montague Stump liked learning on the go. He found he could adapt. A capacity to think outside the box was giving rise to unusual and interesting results. Not that he was used to any of this. His new life was the very opposite of the pampered one he had been leading. For that matter, the life he had actually led and the one he was confronting now were both quite opposites of what he felt his parents had been expecting of him.
The sudden harsh reality of having to manage his own survival had been alarming and numbing. With no experience whatever, his wits were on full alert just getting from one day to the next. This meant that any introspection, anger, confusion and self-pity about the harshness of his new life were minimised simply by the need to survive. As his internal conflicts gradually resolved themselves, external success brought a sense of self-esteem. Wherever knowledge came from, out of sheer necessity Monty was learning his craft, and like any fox, he was enjoying it.
2 WHICH CRAFT?
Hans “Hammerhead” Horn was excited. He didn’t need sleep when excited. He got excited very easily. That was because of his up-bringing. And that was mainly because he hadn’t had any. Abandoned at a tender age, his earliest memory was of going from pillar to post. An adult canine checking out pillars and posts would be unremarkable, but as a mere slip of a cub, it had to mean something else.
As the years passed, his memory played the obvious trick that he had been looking for something. Easily done, considering the necessities of his adopted trade. Were he to have ever divulged that little gem of a memory to anyone, they would have immediately spotted he could only have been looking for someone. Parents for example would have been nice for one so young.
When neither pillar nor post offered any recognisable means of succour, emotional or physical, Hans Horn had turned to other means of survival. Abandoned scraps and left-overs served him well for a year or two - if mere survival could be counted as success. He assumed a shy and retiring disposition on account of having no ID - in his case this meant not having the faintest idea of who or what he was, being of no fixed abode or employment, and having no visible means of support. He found it helped to spend his spare time skulking in the shadows. This habit led him to the first conscious trick that he learnt. How to shadow others.
He found folk could be quite careless, trusting or forgetful, if they thought they were not being watched. He also found surviving by nicking what wasn’t his had an upside and a downside. While it grounded him in a trade that would last him a lifetime, it wasn’t likely to set him up for life - although as the years went by, the more desperate he became to make it do just that.
During the course of his most tender years, he learnt those years were called “formative” for good reason. Having only trial and error to go by, the errors were all his, and trial was by courtesy of the local Magistrate. Thus, before he knew it, he had “form” with the local constabulary.
It wasn’t all bad. Too young for the local nick, he was put in foster care. For the first time in his life he experienced a regular meal a day without the exercise needed to steal it. Stealing the other kids’ food did have its own reward in that he learnt a basic lesson about himself, but that was a mixed blessing. He was a fox, which was the good part. Everyone was soft on foxes. But he wasn’t only a fox and being nice didn’t guarantee survival so was a waste of energy. To him, survival depended on something with a bit more bite. He was also half wolf, which might explain it. Unfortunately, nobody seemed to like wolves.
3 LESSONS IN LIFE
Montague Stump had grown up in the cosseted environment of luxury and safety with an assured life expectancy of indolence and plenty. Then, suddenly to find nothing between himself and starvation but his own ingenuity had been quite a wake-up, even if it was of his own making.
He blamed nobody for his predicament. He’d gambled stupidly and lost. His sense of justice left him trying now to live on good terms not only with himself but also with the rest of the world, including the one who had gained massively from his mistake.
He held no grudges. To his mind, there was more than one side to what had happened, and to him at least, that had nothing to do with the fellow who had won so much. It was obviously stupid to throw away such a life of privilege and wealth – especially on something like the proverbial toss of a coin. Anybody and everybody would surely have told him that. “Don’t chuck it all away for nothing!” He knew that, but had still done it.
Then as he walked off into the night away from everything he had known, he felt somehow that an underlying discomfort in his life had disappeared. Yet even that was complex. It took a while and many miles to clarify his thoughts.
Was it just hot-headed empty rebellion that had made him do it? And adolescent stubbornness that kept him going? Should he eat humble pie and just go back home? Would they understand if he did? What would his father say to him with all his principles and judgements – other than his stony silence?
“Well, Son, you’ve made your bed, so now go and lie in it.” Or “Well, Son, if that’s the way you want to learn, so be it.” More likely, “Well, Son, if that’s how little you think of all I’ve given you and done for you, get out!”
No. As he saw it, he had made a legal commitment anyway, so he could only go back as an outsider. And not even he could stomach that. It would put his family in an intolerable position. His father would be beside himself – probably go after him, tear him to shreds as soon as he put his nose in the door. It would also put his mother in an impossible position.
But it wasn’t just rebellion that had set him off, though it was certainly the fuel. The impetuous gamble that he had taken and lost was just the trigger of opportunity. The explosion was the result of his inner arguments. Like a thorn gradually working itself to the surface, it had emerged as a desire to run away from a lifestyle he didn’t like, and required an impossibly stuffy lifestyle
His one regret was perhaps the unnecessarily ruinous way he had chosen to bring about his departure. Yet maybe only such a totally stupid, obviously adolescent but irreversible action would have allowed such a clean break? Wasn’t it the destiny of every young pup eventually to leave anyway? Did it really matter in the long run how that happened? He knew it mattered. But he had no way of coping with that, and most of the time his new predicament kept his immediate attention from dwelling on it.
For Montague Stump, this need for survival helped him in another way. It gave a clarity of purpose that had been totally missing. He had never lacked anything before, so survival and initiative had never entered his head. Essentially he had had nothing to do and had been far from
happy. Now, it wasn’t as if he suddenly had something to live for like marching off to find a fortune, he was simply too occupied just finding enough to live on.
Having always been free to do just whatever he liked, initiative had been unnecessary and meaningless. Now, not only was initiative required of him, he was his own boss and he had to direct it. This gave him a purpose and sense of direction, and something a lot closer to happiness.
Then came another realisation. Hunting and snatching what he wanted from his surroundings left a residue of disquiet. Living in the real world instead of his protected cocoon of privilege, confronted him with the realities of living ‘hand to mouth’. And wasn’t everybody else around him doing the same?
Was any of the stuff around just anybody’s to take? Suddenly nothing in life was free. Where it might have looked free before, it certainly was not now. It was up to him to win every step of the way and every bite to eat. The question of ‘by fair means or foul’ had never seemed important before. Now, it was sharpening his mind out of sheer necessity.
Montague’s impetuous walkout was the result of confusion about the privileged life that was apparently his, and exactly how he should go about it. Taught from the start that he was of a superior class by the simple fact that his breed could out-think and out-smart almost any other creature, and growing up just having everything, left him expecting and taking everything for granted. He’d not seen that as a privilege. He just didn’t know any better.
Yet even with such apparent wealth something had been missing. Being told he could outsmart others was OK he supposed, but to be told it would all be his anyway with or without his smarts, didn’t help.
But if something was missing, he didn’t know what. He didn’t feel clever and didn’t know how to think - especially if there was nothing to think. His home and its regimentation were stifling. Just being the kid with everything seemed to amount to nothing. That was dissatisfying. Something was obviously missing, but not knowing what made him angry. Everything made him angry. His parents, especially.