“You are on my land. You are holding my stock – whatever those things are – and this is now my shed. You either work for me, or you are trespassing. Your future is now of great concern to me as I am faced with an awful decision.”
He leaned closer. “If I may make myself a tad clearer, I’ve got all your nuts in one shell. Anything to say?”
“I, wuh...” Horn’s mind was behaving like a jelly in a blizzard. “You won’t a...” Trying desperately to sound offended but knowing his case was hopeless because he’d been caught in the act, he tried again. “You won’t believe this,” he began again and blurted, “but I’m putting them back. Honest?”
“You’re right. I won’t.” Agreed the wolf.
“You saw me do it!” Horn was surprised at himself. He’d shouted.
Wolf was surprised as well. He had seen Horn flinging bags in. He turned to the three dogs with him. “Why would he do that?”
“Oh, couple of reasons come to mind,” said a pompous Pointer.
“Customers change their mind, sometimes,” said another as the three dogs chipped in one after the other, “Occasionally,” “Analytically, perhaps it’s to be expected.” “Statistically, we try and keep it to a minimum, of course,” “The odd refund here and there, you know?”
Wolf grew visibly bigger. Turning on all three. “What d’you mean! You’ll be telling me next I have to give this fellow his money back!”
“Oo! Um, Oh...?” Horn started, hopefully.
“You keep out of this!” Fumed Wolf, rounding on Horn and back to the poncy Pointers, “Why would you consider giving their money back? You know anything about business?”
“Oh, most assuredly. Our motto has always been ‘quality first’. If someone has a genuine grievance about a product? If it’s faulty in the slightest degree -”
“FAULTY? You sellin’ me a DUD?”
Suddenly, Wolf was chasing the three dogs around Horn and the pile of bags. During this lively exercise their conversation continued “No, not at all!” From them. “You’ll give me more than MY money back!” From him, and “You have to try the product first!” “You are trying my PATIENCE!” “The PRODUCT - Try the PRODUCT!”
Wolf suddenly stopped close to Horn. Leaning over him, he asked, “What is this stuff, anyway? What’s wrong with it? Why are you bringing it back?”
“Nothing!” Horn stated very quickly. “Wine! Nothing’s wrong with it at all!” He looked enquiringly at the Pointers for support. “Is there?”
“Our finest line.” “Best seller.” “Try it!” They chimed in one after the other. “Have some!” “Taste it!” “You’ll see!” They encouraged.
Wolf looked slowly from them to Horn. Horn eagerly picked up a bag.
“What’s it worth, then?” Wolf asked.
“Anything up to three knockers a bag,” said a Pointer.
Wolf looked at the number of bags heaped on the ground. The others could almost hear the calculation going on in his head.
“And of course, you’ve got no idea of the number we have in stock,” a Pointer added helpfully.
“What’s it taste like, then?”
“Plum,” said one. “With overtones of chocolate and peppercorn and an after taste of dried oak leaves,” said another. “Most soothing to the palate,” said the last. “Improves with age,” said the first. Then they went round again. “But don’t leave it too long.” “Can become quite fun and lively.” “Drink it before it gets tired.”
Wolf settled his eyes on Horn again. Horn offered the bag, helpfully pulling the top off before Wolf took it.
“Admire the colour,” “Smell the aroma.” “Savour the texture.” These comments were spoken in vain. Wolf, having no idea of the finer points for imbibing wine, simply up-ended the bag and gulped his way through it - until suddenly he exploded. A brilliant, sparkling shower spewed from his mouth and the bag went flying at the wall of the shed.
“WATER!” He bellowed. And the evidence was all down the wall, and all over Horn. Nothing but clear water.
The free-for-all that followed was fought with gusto and wine bags. It was found bags could be used both defensively and offensively, as protection or projectile.
This was no ordinary fight. Centred as it was among a great heap of wobbly bags full of liquid, the quality and effectiveness of biting, kicking and scratching among the five participants was not so much blunted as diluted by bursting bags under foot and against heads. The result looked more like water polo than a wrangle over quality.
When finally a number of bags containing actual wine instead of water did burst among them, everyone stopped, but not for long. Once everyone agreed that the wine was the proper and expected content of the bags and did live up to the standard claimed, the fight resumed.
This time around there was a much clearer sense of direction. The wine had lived up to the sales pitch of the Pointers. That was agreed by all. Ownership of the wine and the shed had moved from the Pointers to the wolf. That was agreed by all. That the water was being moved from Horn to the shed was agreed by both the Pointer and the wolf, and they agreed that Horn’s vote on that score didn’t make a scrap of difference.
From then on it looked like the traditional two warring parties of a good old domestic dispute both turning on a well-meaning interloper - in this instance, new owner Wolf and old owner Pointers turning on Horn.
Thus, as soon as it was obvious that the water bags belonged to Horn the outsider regardless of what he said, both parties to the dispute united to set about teaching the outsider a lesson, physically, mentally and mathematically.
26 NO SWINGS, ONLY ROUNDABOUTS
By the end of the day, it could almost be said that Horn ended up the same as the Wolf and the Pointers. All of them were soaked, stained and reeking of wine. All of them were battered, bruised, walking rather carefully, and none of them wanted to think too much about anything.
However, business was business and their ways separated. Horn was in fact a lot more bruised than the others and he did have considerably more to think about than he did at the beginning of the day. The wolf had also very kindly given him an escort all the way home - not so much for Horn’s safety, more to protect the wolf’s interest in a new investment.
Horn had started out with the reasonable assumption that if he knocked off a couple of hundred wine bags, any price he got for them would be money in the bank. But the peanut he got for the only one he had actually sold, divided by the two hundred that he hadn’t, plus the huge effort involved, was a bit tragic.
It got worse. He had no clue whatever how the wine could have been changed to water. Normally, he would have given half his teeth to know the secret. That kind of legerdemain had to be worth a fortune in terms of profit possibilities.
Imagine how famous I would be if I could turn wine into water!
As it was, he was getting the blame for something he didn’t even know how to do. Being caught like that in the wrong place at the wrong time was bad enough. But to be blamed, no matter what he said for somebody else obviously doing the dirty on him, seemed grossly unfair.
Yet worse was to come. Everyone agreed - except him - that all two hundred bags were his responsibility by virtue of the fact that they were on his side of the shed wall, not theirs. But everyone - including him - agreed that he hadn’t paid for them. And everyone agreed that he was trying to put them back. but now that they were clearly, indisputably, damaged, diluted and definitely destroyed before they were returned by him, then clearly - and here was the sticking point - even if they were shop soiled, he had to pay for them. Horn asked for time to think about that.
He asked in vain. Discussion had moved on to stock valuation. Horn argued rather vehemently that trade prices should apply since the transaction was obviously of the wholesale variety. Unfortunately, unable to provide them with his own liquor trading licence without a very lengthy adjournment, he was overruled again.
The upshot was that the total value he owed per bag, as
explained most carefully by them, i.e., after warehouse charges, freight charges and distribution costs, demurrage, superannuation, long service leave, sick pay, consultant fees, value added tax, sales tax, loss of profit and/or dividends were all carefully added, subtracted and cross-referenced, the result came to exactly five hundred and eighty-five knockers and fifty punts. Settlement within one lunar month or their generous terms were available on the never-never with interest at only 12 percent and easy payments of only 10 percent of the remaining amount owed.
After his surprise and polite protestations failed to impress, he requested a waiver or at the very least a discount. They graciously agreed to a reduction - if he was willing to repair the shed, remove from the site all the damaged bags and any other evidence of the day’s festivities, and pay for their dry cleaning. That would cost him a neat five hundred and eighty knockers and fifty-five punts as above.
Out-punched and now outwitted, he could only accept. Being unable to make the first payment, they marched him back to his dump with the idea of distraining on his furniture. Since the chest of drawers didn’t fit through the doorway, they gave up on that. But now they knew where he lived, they’d be there on the dot to collect as regular as N. Snood.
As well as having to work to meet his regular rent, he now had a huge debt for something that was not even half his fault simply because he’d been caught out at the wrong moment trying to do the right thing when someone else had taken unfair advantage of him behind his back when he had only been trying to make an honest living doing the wrong thing in the first place. He was also learning but equally not understanding that the business of money worked both ways. While it might be easier to make money if he had some, it was much easier to lose much more money than he didn’t have in the first place.
27 GOOSE BUMPS
Now that Monty Stump was going north, the river was on his left as it wandered across flat land. He travelled sometimes on the only road, but mostly he roamed freely either side of it, seeking out new sights and sometimes old ones.
He seldom found anything of interest on the flats near the river. To his right, with the occasional signs of the ancient track that he had seen and used, the upland country away from the river generally had more to offer.
Road traffic was sparse. He would invariably watch the occasional traveller from a distance, observing them long before they would have seen him. Cross-country, he’d only been caught off-guard once, at night, when trying to be too clever. Rounding a clump of brambles, he had run headlong into a badger. They both went sprawling.
It turned out that badger was desperately anxious for Stump to keep their encounter secret. Badger had met this extraordinary girl from another sett, needed to get back to his own sett undetected. What was fox running from? Nobody cut round corners like that unless they had a pretty damned good story or were up to no good. What was it?
Stump smelt badger’s girlfriend still on him, so the fellow would most likely cop a hiding from his Mrs. That gave Monty the idea that a similar kind of story involving the opposite sex might be accepted without much scrutiny.
Monty pretended to turn bashful and told of a tryst he had with this vixen who would unleash heaven knows what trouble if he was late. Badger accepted this with a leery grin, and they parted with knowing winks and an awkward but meant-to-be-friendly nudge.
Later, Stump went back and retrieved his dinner, lifted from an inattentive stoat - hence the reason he had been running. The impact had flung it into the brambles - luckily past Badger and out of sight.
28 ANOTHER ROLL OF THE DICE
From Neese Montague Stump worked his way back to Muddle and kept going north. Eventually he reached Wallop and then went on to Nock. He was at Little Willy when he realised something. No matter how many weeks or months might pass, sooner or later he would be back at Diddling.
With this thought, in the middle of what little there was of Little Willy, Montague Stump simply turned right along the first track he came to and headed east. He camped and spent the night before entering the darker world of Worrywart Woods. He knew the Woods were extensive. How big, nobody seemed to know. He was entering uncharted territory.
Towards the end of his first day in the Woods, Montague started to worry. In the gloom, or at best, the low shadowless light, he couldn’t tell if he was going east, west, or round circles. With no external clues to help him like the sun or stars or prominent landmarks, he had to look to his own resources to solve the problem.
His solution proved to be very simple and only relied on the one assumption that he was still heading east. He scuffed his feet in the pine needles and dry brush to make a trail. All he had to do was keep his line as straight as possible. This went against every instinct to cover his tracks, or at least to not leave unnecessary evidence. But apart from the curious discomfort of going against that grain, it just took a little practice. He felt he was slowed somewhat, but it seemed a necessary insurance. As for his instincts about being followed, the scuffing was only a tool to keep him straight as he moved forward. He assumed his track would disappear in time, so long as it stayed while he could look back and see it.
Apart from this rather weird ritual and its scuffing noise, the going was quite pleasant. The one new experience was the extraordinary quiet that brought with it a really unique feeling of solitude.
29 A REAL NIGHTMARE
In a sense, Hans Horn had no vices. More correctly, in his view he had no vices. He had no time for them. He was running a business. Middle-man. In one door and out the other – Import/Export if you like - take a cut as it goes. Actually, it was more out of somebody’s house, into someone else’s, but why split hairs? He wasn’t in it for fun. He didn’t do fun. He was in it because he was up to his ear hairs in debt to a bigger bully who apparently came from up north.
How Horn’s problem had got to its current size in the debtors’ ledger kept going fuzzy. Blowback or Skinner weren’t in the know because the idea had been to make a profit without their knowledge. So he couldn’t possibly explain it to them even if he did understand it. But he knew exactly the penalties for late payments as reckoned by the bully wolf.
Wolves. In a sense, Horns problems went right back to something to do with his birth certificate. Leastways, he had learnt very early on, that the nice warm friendly society of Diddling turned chilly with anything had to do with wolves.
He might have been only half fox, but being half wolf meant a life devoted from the get-go to defending himself. At school, nobody seemed to believe that he wasn’t always the one to start the fights. After a week or two of not only getting sorely trounced in fights at school and then getting trounced again by the grownups who always held him responsible for causing the melees at the school, he opted for a different approach.
From then on, education was the last thing on his mind. He’d picked up the expression “if they don’t see it coming, they won’t know what hit ’em.” It took him a while, but he finally got the hang of what it meant. Not only did he learn to defend himself, he also learnt to buy and sell just about every possession any kid in the foster home and in the school ever had to every other kid. He finished school ahead of everyone - with a trade - though not necessarily legit.
From then on, he took anyone he could corner for a ride, took ’em to the cleaners, and took the takings home and banked the lot. Regularly. He stashed any takings under the privy. After all, nobody would think to look there.
After a while, with things paying off steadily if rather slowly - especially with periods of R & R in the local Pound - he started to think of ways to expand his little business. His business contacts - for want of a better word - in the Lock-up had eventuated in his partnership with Blowback and Skinner.
Then had come his disastrous milestone/millstone debt to the nameless wolf. At the slow rate he was going, he was never going to get out from under. He needed something big. In a word, he wanted to be greedy. On his pitiful turnover, he couldn’t afford to be greedy. The big w
olf could afford to be greedy. Bigwolf wallowed in greed and Horn simply felt the need for a promotion. What he wanted was to make a fortune. He wanted to be a big wolf himself.
Not knowing how to make a fortune from the opportunities around Diddling, he came to the conclusion that if he couldn’t beat them up north, he’d join them. After all, in spite of the heavies who were apparently relying on his earnings for their pension schemes, there must be relatives of his own up there. Here was an untapped resource.
I got rellies up there I’ve never used! He reasoned that they must surely be good for something. So, he set off to see if they were worth the trip.
I’ve never been that far north, especially not off the beaten track. Called the Badlands? Couldn’t be that bad, surely? Not if my rellies - well, half rellies - were happy up there? They must have something pretty good up there.
Failing all of that, he might see if there was an improvement course up there he could sign on for, or something. He’d surely get something out if the trip.
Once there, he had to ask around a bit. Which was nice, because at least that gave him a chance to see the scenery and get to know the kind of people living there. Bit more rugged, maybe, but all very friendly. Not what he’d call “Badlands” by any means. It seemed a very over-rated title.
Funny but nice, the way all these strangers wanted to help, and the way they all asked the same questions. By the time he really did find his relatives – OK, half relatives – the whole community knew everything there was to know about him. But if that was the way to make connections, so be it. He hoped the next step would be for him to learn all about them.
His half relatives were just the same as the rest. Full of questions and it seemed little else. But then some fellow he’d seen earlier turned up and went into a huddle with his folk. His half folk. After the fellow left, his half relatives had a remarkable change of heart.
A Tour de Fate Page 7