SONS OF THE FATHERS
Chapter 4: Angstless in Australia
There was a series of crashes and then Terry broke through the paper wall,
falling on his back across their tea table. Ute stared at the K&R
agent, his camo streaked with sweat and tears. Then she turned her
eyes questioningly on Jeffrey. He shrugged. "All I can say is
that it involves several different sizes of bamboo." Annsmac appeared
just on the other side of the wall. "Oh, good!" she said,
pleased. "Now we can enjoy the reception."
*************************
It was the Easter season and Arthur was excited. In his arms he
carried a large, flat box filled with nutmeg-flavored, currant-filled sweet buns
decorated with a white icing cross atop their tops. He smiled as he
knocked on Ando's door. He had cleverly waited until Hando had gone for
his 45 mile jog through the slummier portions of the city. Ando
would be alone. It was time, truly it was, for the presently-Welsh to lay
claim to the formerly-Welsh and remind them of their heritage, of where they
belonged, where their loyalties should lie, not to mention their bodies.
He was glad they were so
near the sea. Always, absolutely always, in the days of their now-getting-fairly-long-ago
youths, it had been along the coastlines of Wales the two of them had frolicked,
her with her branding iron chasing him, him pretending to struggle, trying to
keep his buns from her intended hot-crossings. Again he grinned.
When she saw what he had brought her, he knew her medulla oblongata would
be flooded with the sights, the smells, the screams of happier times on the
Welsh beaches.
He tapped lightly, listening
as she did her usual rapid gatherings of empty bottles and stuffings of them
under the sink. Dear Ando. She never changed. Well, except for
the time she turned chartreuse in the dye vat that afternoon when their
performance of Swan Lake had all gone so terribly wrong.
"Did you forget your
handcuffs?" she called out as she opened the door.
Ando blinked. Hando was not standing in the hallway, perturbed at his forgetfulness.
No, it was the very unscripted-of-late Welsh Baptist virgin, a large white box
cradled in his cardiganed arms. Quickly he flung open the lid, revealing
row after row of plump, juicy,
steaming hot hot-cross buns. He blew over them, wafting their icing and
currant scents toward her nasal
passages. Clearing his throat briefly, albeit a bit dramatically, he launched
into:
"Hot-cross buns! Hot-cross buns!
One a penny, two a penny,
Hot-cross buns!
If you have no daughters,
Give them to your sons,
One a penny, two a penny,
Hot-cross buns!"
What cruel advantage he was taking of her weaknesses! Not only had he
presented her with the single, true reminder of her now-getting-fairly-long-ago
youth, but he played upon her weakness for great works of literature!!
Her knees trembled under the dual assault. If he had
been a character from some Starrier and more War-like film, he would have
grasped her by her neck and said something like, "I have you now, my pretty."
But, being Arthur, he dropped the box of buns on her feet. Somehow, the
spell was broken and she regained her composure... not an easy feat as it was
rather widely scattered down the hall.
"Arthur!" she
said, frowning at him. "I thought you were Hando."
He stepped back, a strange
expression playing across his features beneath his long, limp bangs. It
was one of his greatest triumphs that almost no one in the world actually KNEW
that under his cardigan
lay the panther-like bodily structure of the Melbourner. During the day
he might hide under the dashboards of cars, but at night he hung upside down
from pipes, doing crunch after crunch after crunch. All one really needed
to do was to think of the order, the timing of Himself's filmography, and it
would become evident. But so good was Arthur in his complete overlay of
Arthurishness that it was not a thing truly considered. Only Himself really
understood. He sighed, resisting the urge to straighten his shoulders.
"Forgot his handcuffs
again, did he?"
Ando shrugged.
"As usual, he'll get half-way through his jog and when he needs them
most, will discover he doesn't have them."
She looked then at her
feet where a large currant slipped down her right shoe in a small waterfall of
white icing. Returning her gaze to him, she cocked one eyebrow, the
cocking of both eyebrows having been found to engender more a look of surprise
than would really be intended by the single cock, er, cocking...but one
digresses.
"Buns?" she
said, rather archly as architudiness
and cockitivity often went hand in glove, especially near Swansea.
He had the grace to blush.
Of course she would be aware of his intent! Her awareness of his intentions
had been his intention from the start! She was, truth be told, utterly his
intended. Someday she would tire of Hando's intense sexuality, his
testosterone-laden muscle rippling,
stair descensions...and turn to him. He knew it!
Ando, aware of his
awareness of her awareness of his intended intentions, bent down, gathering the
iced currant on her forefinger just before it splopped onto the floor, and
looking directly into his eyes,
smiled as she slowly licked it off.
"Not yet," she
said, her tongue twisting as it pried a bit of currant skin from between her
front incisors in that way that had tortured him since
adolescence.
"Not yet?" he
repeated sadly.
She shook her head.
"Not yet."
Sue watched, her gaze intense, as the tailor measured Cort's inseam.
In any other circumstance, such closeness to her personal property would
have resulted in slow, tortuous death. Today, though, she was in a good
mood and let the trembling man live.
"Perhaps," Cort suggested
gently, "if you were to recoil your whip and lay down at least half a
dozen of your longer knives, this gentleman might not have to remeasure so
often?" Though she had never once in her life even approached being
formerly Welsh, Sue nonetheless cocked one eyebrow archly as though to say,
"Surely you jest!" No way was she letting ANYBODY that close to
Cort's inseam without herself being fully armed. She leaned back in her
chair, planting her feet atop the tailor's desk, keeping close watch as the man
pinned the parallel rows of tucks down the front of Cort's new jacket.
With his cloth all fancynew and fine, she hardly recognized her young
sheriff. As soon as the wedding was over, she firmly intended to engage
in a long period of dust enflopment. But for now, his sheriffosity was
being submerged under the pastorifical duds he needed to wear as the officiant
at the upcoming nuptials.
"I suppose you'll be
getting a new white collar?" she growled.
Herod had ripped Cort's
old one off, tossing it onto the ground. He had only worn it once since, that
day Droogheeda was burning and he needed to convince the memory-challenged
General that he was not Father Ralph. Even though this once again involved
the General, it was a much happier occasion and he had real hopes that no one
would forget their identity during the vows. Or die.
Zack had been quiet, almost withdrawn, all day and Susan was getting worried. "Are you not happy about the
wedding?" she asked him as they returned to Woolloomooloo from a long stroll
in the Botanic Gardens.
"I think the wedding
is a fine idea," he replied.
She sensed an unspoken
'but' hanging in the harbor air.
"What then?" she pursued.
"It...it's the pregnancies," he murmured softly,
squeezing his eyes closed.
"Ah!" she
breathed. Of course! He was the only character whose role had actually
taken him inside a delivery room. The outcome had not been a happy one.
"You are worried about them?" she asked.
He nodded, so she
continued, "The way epis go, there probably won't even BE a delivery room,
you know."
She had thought to
encourage him by this observation, but it seemed to have the opposite effect.
Immediately into his mind sprang the image of Joimus in labor atop some
sand dune whilst Bunny gasped away on a riverbank.
Biebe and Buggie happened
to be arriving at the Wharf at that very moment and the older sheriff said heartily,
"Nothing to it, Zack! I was there when my three sons came into this world
and other than having to shoot 2 or 3 bears and avoid an avalanche,it was no
big deal!"
Buggie fixed him with a
glare. Not that he was actually broken or anything...yet...but she fixed
him anyway.
"Do you not
realize...?" she said, her voice literally shaking with shakiness.
"Realize what?"
he asked, obviously not realizing that which she had,
one presumes, realized.
"That the angst level
in this epi and the entire one before it is practically...non-existent?"
"Um, I hadn't really
thought about it," he admitted honestly, which was, of course, a right and
proper thing for him to do, his being a representative of the law and all.
"Can you not feel it building up beneath our feet even as I expound?" she asked. "It's like some seething pool of lava, ready to well up and take the lengthy, peaked roof off Woolloomooloo and cast it into the harbor."
"That bad, eh?"
Biebe inquired, almost but not quite cocking a single eyebrow.
She nodded in profound
affirmation. "I fear all this un-angst will have dire consequences
in this epi or the next."
"As long as it's not
this epi," he said in a way all too reminiscent of a certain fellow named
Louis' "Apres moi l'angst" line. And everyone KNEW where THAT
had led!!! Detroit!!
Terry had slept for some hours now after annsmac got him back to the Wharf in
the wheelbarrow so kindly lent her by the proprietess of the teahouse.
Thank goodness for elevators or she would never have gotten him up to the
apartment! No one had asked a thing as she wheeled him across the living
room.
When the bedroom door
closed behind them, Himself stopped a moment in his composing, looked up at
Phyllis and remarked off-handedly, "Deblunted."
She nodded, adding, "At
last."
She lay beside him, watching him sleep, her eyes studying his streaked camo,
planning where to apply fresh olive and black later in the day. Thank goodness
it was over. It had been a tough one she knew, worse even than all the
splinters she had had to remove with such care there in the hallway of the
Toronto museum after he'd broken the door in. Truly she hoped it would be many,
many a long year before he ever found himself beneath a train again. She
had wondered as the epis progressed from A New Jeopardy on into YOOK and all
through Australian Adventures just when he might be returned to the fine state
of unbluntedness so dear to her heart and other places.
It was not
until the whole concept of the wedding celebrations had come up that she
found her last ounce of longsuffering had become nearly as blunt as his
equipment. Now...he was fine...or would be in several days when his pain
levels had become bearable and the swelling had come down and
some of the redness and huge blistering had disappeared. She was so glad
she could be of service like that to him. Usually she managed to deblunt
his bluntness by herself. This time was different. Not only had he
bounced for many miles from railroad tie to railroad tie then had to ramrod his
way up through the steel flooring of the Polar Express' passenger car, but THEN
had had to lever the broken tiger cage off the General's legs there on the
snowy mountainside after the crash.
She said a silent prayer
that no one would need rescuing for the next couple of storylines, at least not
until she had devised some leather sheathing for it. It was a thought
she'd been mulling for some time now, her mind so continuously centered on his
equipment as it was and all. She planned to ask Maximus about it at some
convenient time when he was not dead or the mindless king of some tribe.
As those moments seemed to be getting fewer and further between of late,
she feared
the information she sought might be hard come by. Besides, as she mused
pleasantly upon the General's personal sheathing, he used his for double-edged
blades and she was not sure how well that would actually apply to Terry's, um,
structure. Her eyes widened at a sudden terrible thought. What if she
were in dire need of his immediate unsheathing and...and...there was...frost?
As they so often encamped in wildernesses hither and yon, such an event
was not unthinkable...further proven by the mere fact that she, herself, had
just thought it! Ack!
As evening once again crept across the Pacific, sliding with soft ease between
the Heads and claiming the harbor as its own, Steve and Laura returned to the
curve of Farm Cove where he had taken his wonderful picture earlier in the day.
He wanted a sunset behind the bridge...their bridge. He liked the view of it from this side of the Cove, liked
that he could see both the Opera House and the entire bridge. The two of
them walked further up the curve this time, closer to Mrs. Macquarie's chair so
that in viewing the sunset, the Opera did not
block the area below the bridge's deck.
"It's a shame the Captain
didn't get to climb it,"Laura commented as he set up his tripod.
"I imagine he will at
some point," Steve replied. He stopped, looking at her. "If he
does, would you like to have another go at it?"
She knew what he was
asking, knew that he wanted once again the glorious kiss beside the snapping
flag. "I would," she said. "It
was...wonderful."
Suddenly she gasped,
pointing behind him. "There!" she said.
He turned quickly. The sky
was clear but for a few low, small clouds scattered widely. They were
glowing with an almost intense shade of peach. The yellow sun sat precisely on
the horizon directly below the bridge, wide splashes of dark rose and peach
spreading out from both sides. The mandarin segments of the Opera House's
roof were in perfect silhouette at the end of the the arching bridge.
Quickly he snapped his picture, his heart brimming with the joy of the
perfect shot, with the joy of having Laura with him in this place, in this
moment.
"What an amazing job they did!" Jewelie exclaimed to Jim after
viewing the new Cinderella Man trailer. "You can't tell at ALL that
24 of you were Braddock."
He smiled, pleased. He'd
been more worried than he'd let anyone know that somehow, in some small way,
the truth of the filming would come out, would just be right up there on the
screen for anyone and everyone to see. "I was most concerned about
the Captain's blond ponytail," he
admitted. "You know, the way it would flop and fly around during
some of the intense punching in the face scenes in the boxing segments."
"I'll never
understand the technology,"she admitted. "It's just
mind-boggling how they made Jack's hair all black and short like
that. You couldn't even tell it was Andy who first got into the ring and
then suddenly it was Jack."
"Or when Colin picked
Mae up and then Jeffrey kissed her. Absolutely...seamless!"
"Well, it's a good
thing the general public will never know what really
happened in Toronto or Himself's Oscar nomination might well bite the
dust."
"Isn't the whole
story of it right there on Enchantments for the world to see?" he asked.
"Perhaps Marti will
rename it like she did when she turned Saving Captain Jack into Seriousosity
and no one will have any idea what the heck it's about?" Jewelie
conjectured.
"Probably a sound
idea," he agreed. "After all, 'Toronto Tribulations' is just
too, well, obvious."
Marti was, at that moment,
bending behind a nearby bush in the act of retrieving one of Jeff's balls (no,
Ando, the kind you KICK), and, of course, heard. She narrowed her eyes as
that action had so far been missing from this particular epi. "The woman just refuses
to drop it!" she muttered.
Jewelie overheard Marti's
mutterings. "Drop what, Marti?" she asked.
"Um, Jeff's
ball," Marti said quickly, covering her verbal tracks.
"Someone dropped
Jeff's ball?" Jim inquired, concerned as everyone knew by now what had
happened with Terry. "Is he all right?"
"I'm fine,
Mate," Jeff beamed, running up fetchingly in his shorts. "Did you
find my ball in the bush?" he asked of Marti.
"Someone put your
ball in the BUSH?" Jewelie gasped, horrified. Jim gripped her arm.
"First bamboo and now
BUSHES!"
"Oh, JIM!"
Jewelie cried. "Let's get you back to Woolloomooloo
before something happens to yours!"
"His...what?"
Jeff asked, puzzled, but Jim and Jewelie were already sprinting for the Wharf.
"Do you know what they were talking about?" Jeff wondered.
Marti shrugged, rolling
her eyes. "I've been through a number of storylines now and I've YET
to know what the heck ANYBODY is talking about," she sighed.
"You will note," Franki said to Nash with great concern, "that
nowhere in this epi do either Joimus OR Maximus appear."
"I have noted
thusly," he agreed without stopping his wide-ranging wax pencil
calculations on Himself's huge wall of windows. "Why," he
continued, "do you suppose that is?"
"How could they
possibly appear in an epi with a title like 'Angstless
in Australia?" she explained.
"True," he
nodded, squatting slightly to reach a lower area of
unwaxedness.
"Two whole epis
without angst," she shuddered.
"Terry might disagree
with you on that," Nash rejoined.
"Well, the teahouse
was not...exactly...angst, you know," she mused.
"For him it probably
was," he persisted. "I know for me it would have been."
"I would never let
anyone get near you with differing sizes of bamboo," she assured him.
"But, then, I
have never been...blunt," he added.
She laughed. "Ah,
but you are well known for your bluntness!"
Her remark finally made
him turn away from the glass. "Only verbally," he frowned,
"only verbally."
"True," she
chortled, "and it's very hard, or so I hear, to unblunt words with bamboo."
He looked at the wax
pencil in his hand. "I could put this down and we could exchange
bodily fluids," he suggested.
"See what I
mean!" she grinned, not actually, one notes, saying 'no'.
"Are...are...you really...allowed...to fly UNDER the bridge...in the
dark...with no lights?" Wanda asked worriedly as Lachlan turned the small
plane upsidedown and let out a wild whoop of glee.
"HA!" he then
laughed. "Missed it by a good two feet!"
A few seconds later he
looked at her seriously. "If I had my lights on, then they would
know we are here," he explained.
"Yes," she
agreed, tying off the top of her full barfy bag, "but then you might also
be able to see where you are GOING!"
"I see where I am
going just fine," he laughed, curving into a side roll over the Opera
House.
"I'm going to take
issue with this epi title," Wanda said firmly. "I find I am
quite entirely...angsted."
"Ah, but it's funny
angst," he chortled. "Without true danger of death, disease, or
dehydration...it doesn't count as real angst."
They were skimming along a
good 5 feet above the harbor water, heading straight for the round stone tower
of Fort Denison. "FORT!" shrieked Wanda, whom nobody would convince
at this moment that the imminent possibility of one out of the three D's did
not qualify as angst.
"What say?"
Lachlan asked, turning his head toward her.
Her shaking hand pointing
straight ahead, she obligingly shrieked, "FORT!" again.
"Did you say
'fort'?" he asked.
"FORT! FORT!"
she shrieked, folding her arms over her head.
As Fort Denison was almost directly out in the harbor from the end of
Woolloomooloo, Jack's sharp eyes could hardly miss the dark, winged shape
hurtling towards its bulk.
"Looks like Lachlan's
brushing up on his flying," the Captain remarked to Rose.
(NOTE: You can see Dennison out in the harbor...with Mrs Macquarie's chair being at the tip of the green point and Woolloomooloo Wharf being the white rectangle tucked back to the left of the point)
"We...we...are...required
to...fly...with him?" she stammered, her eyes wide as the small aircraft
came within spitting distance of the fort before zooming almost straight
upwards into the night.
Aubrey held out his hand
to Rose. "Don't worry," he said comfortingly, "he has
another whole day to practice."
Rose shuddered, hoping
Wanda had a goodly supply of barfy bags. The two of them were out
on Himself's balcony again. Jack loved the night air, the smell of the
sea, the sight of the bridge. "Will you climb it with me
tomorrow?" he asked, looking at it longingly.
It was not that the petite
Frenchwoman actually WANTED to bridgeclimb, but more that she hated any and all
time out of the Captain's company.
Jack saw that she was
nervous. He pulled her close to his side. "I will be with
you," he said softly, "the whole way."
She sighed happily.
There was, by now, nothing more she wanted of life than that.
