Third World (2 page)

Hank didn’t much like the taste of it
himself, and never used it in his own kitchen.

***

Hank wasn’t much for worship. While he
had no particular reason not to go, the fact was that he hadn’t
been to worship in ten or eleven years. The last time he’d been
there, a friend was getting married. Not so much a friend as a
cousin, which amounted to the same thing around here. He never
really saw them two anymore.

The trouble was, they’d staked out a
homestead clear twelve kilometres out on the other side of town and
he rarely got up that way. Last he heard, they were doing well
enough though. The land was flatter up there, more open, and they
were growing fifteen or twenty acres of grain.

The pews in the church were made of
piss-elm, an old name for a new cultivar but no one had any other
ideas.

Hank looked around for people he knew,
politely nodding when he made eye contact with old lady Stern, who
in spite of the name was always just a little too friendly and
agreeable, laughing too much at the lamest of jokes. Maybe she was
just lonely.

A name is a name, but the seat was
painfully hard under his butt. It was one of several reminders of
why he never came anymore. The room was hot and fliers buzzed
loudly in the small windows, letting a dim light in from a sky
still a milky, dull bluish colour with the moisture. The air was so
thick lately that you could cut it with a knife, bite a chunk off
and chew it for a while.

Maybe that was why he never came
anymore. Marty, the preacher, was surely one of the most fussy,
prim and proper speakers he’d ever heard. He was…he was didactic
and pedantic. The old familiar words came harder now, it’s not like
you heard them at all anymore. It was clunky as all hell, there was
no other way to describe it. There was just a hint of the
effeminate in it, although Marty was married and had eight kids,
all under twelve years of age.

The thought of this man teaching
schoolchildren might in some small way account for their persistent
and habitual truancy. It explained a lot. The last guy, Aldwin
Notherman, was a lot better but he just up and died one day in the
prime of life. It seemed so sad, and his wife and two daughters had
moved back to Emerald City, six hundred kilometres to the
south.

“
Go in God’s name, and with
peace and love in your hearts, my brothers and sisters and children
of God.”

The words were familiar, but the sigh
of collective relief that went through the assembly, as there must
have been a hundred-fifty people in there, was a sign that maybe
Hank wasn’t the only one that missed poor old Aldwin.

***

“
Good morning, Missus
Morgensen. Good morning, Polly.”

“
Good morning, Hank.” Andrea
Morgensen smiled up at Hank, looking distinctly uncomfortable and
out of place despite the black suit, looking a bit thin in the
derriere but still serviceable, and the wet cowlick that managed to
stick up and out in spite of his best effort to keep it
down.

His big hands were doing minor damage
to the hat he held in his hands. Lucky to have two, this was his
best one although he hadn’t worn it in a while.

“
Good morning, Mister
Beveridge.” Polly looked bright and fresh and perhaps a little
younger than her nineteen-and-a-half years.

They stood in a huddle as other
worshippers came down the stairs and into the light, getting
brighter now as the day wore on. Hank had been at the very back and
they were four rows up on the other side, where he had an
opportunity to study Polly and wonder a bit, and not just about her
either. But he had to wonder at himself as well. Men were fools, or
so they said. He wasn’t smiling now, though. Thoughtfully, he put
his hat back on. He had never learned to really fake a smile, not
when he was scared, anyways.

“
With a little luck, we
might see some sunshine later on.”

“
Oh, that would be lovely.”
Polly smiled up at him, making eye contact, but Hank just tried to
stand his ground.

He was tempted to bolt and run, that
was for sure.

“
Hank!”

They turned.

“
Hank! It’s good to see
you.” Marty, his open face lighting up, beamed at him from the top
of the stairs.

He was almost glad to see him, for the
sheer interruption. Marty was in his late twenties, with boyish
lean features and a fervent faith in his mission, which made up for
a lot of failings of organization. He meant well and took an
interest, which was about all that was called for in this neck of
the woods.

A bit of a blush crept into Hank’s
features, reddened by the outdoors enough to begin with. Marty took
the stairs two at a time, possibly as relieved as anyone to be over
and done with duty. The other folks were all regulars and Hank
realized he probably talked their ears off most any given Sunday.
Hank tugged at the brim of his hat and the ladies curtsied
awkwardly, the sudden demand taking Polly by surprise by the look
of it. He would think more on that later. The reverend was at his
side, face wreathed in a smile. Hank was, morally at least, a
long-lost brother. The reverend thought in those terms, and while
Hank understood what he was talking about, usually, it was an
unusually abstract way of looking at things.

“
So what’s been happening?”
With the wind lifting a long tuft of thin black hair, revealing a
good chunk of a prematurely bald skull, Marty took a proprietary
grip on Hank’s upper arm.

***

Hank lived in a cabin on a bench
overlooking the river that ran through his property. Built entirely
with his own hands, he had set up a small sawmill, wheel-driven by
a short stretch of white water where it bunched up over a shelf of
underlying limestone. Every so often someone would look him up and
contract for this and that and the other thing, big beams and the
like mostly, although he could cut smaller stock for the right
price. The mill had paid for itself within a few years and was easy
enough to maintain. It was helpful in combating boredom, and he
could bring in money during the winter.

The biggest job was damming the creek,
but he’d picked the spot very carefully and there were plenty of
boulders available.

The pond above the mill was stocked
with Terran fish including rainbow trout, which seemed to do well
on Third World, and several of the pan-fish species. They were
brought in on their one and only road, under the care of the
drover, and hideously expensive. In a few years, they were feeding
old Hank pretty regular.

There was other stuff in there, but the
local water creatures rarely appealed to the taste. There were one
or two plants in there that he used from time to time.

Since the growing season was just
underway, and bracken was a naturally-occurring resource, Hank was
at home and trying his hand at making a net. He had to take a day
off once in a while.

This was something he had wanted to do
for a long while.

The most abundant local species of
bird-like creatures, for they could fly short distances when they
wanted to, were flocking animals that from time to time he’d
observed eating corn and other grain spilled by the roadside. They
came out into the fields to graze, and they seemed to tolerate
humans although dogs chased them and caught them
sometimes.

Hank was thinking of
catching some birds, with a combination of corn for bait and some
non-threatening system of fencing them in, perhaps at first
gradually. He didn’t even have to box them in at first,
merely
direct
them
a bit. See what they did and how they reacted over time.

He was almost sure it could be done
with a minimum of help, which would of course have to be paid for
or otherwise provided for. The ones he was after even laid eggs. He
found a nest every so often in the long grass, and they tasted
fine. In fact, if you hadn’t had the regular kind in a while, they
were pretty much indistinguishable.

Otherwise, real eggs were sort of
expensive, a luxury when he had them.

He had two stout poles planted in the
ground. At about three metres apart they were good for making a net
that was maybe a bit more than he could chew. But if it worked
well, he wanted to make a really big net, or maybe a bunch of
smaller ones. If he could do it, he wanted to make more than just
one at a time. If they were nice and light, he could push stakes
into soft ground and herd a flock just where he wanted them. They
tended to run along the ground on well-defined pathways through the
long grass when disturbed.

Shooting at them from afar only
scattered the flocks and got you a meal or two. The birds had to
get used to him just like chickens, or ducks or geese.

Hank had it worked out to
some extent, but with no knowledge or experience, only trial and
error could teach him the best way. He had a couple of strings of
the heavy, synthetic black twine going across at a convenient
working height. The two strands had long tails left on them after
being tied to the poles in case it worked. Then he would be able to
set up the net, tie it to things,
et
cetera.

Tying another end on, with the spool
handled carefully to avoid dropping it and creating a real mess, he
brought it up on a forty-five degree angle and tried to tie it to
the upper cross line. Uniform lengths on the angles was crucial.
Then he brought it down on forty-five degrees and tied it to the
lower cross line.

“
Only another fifty thousand
knots to go.” Of course Hank had second thoughts.

Wasting twine was wasting cash money.
He might as well give it a proper shot. Working more quickly now,
he went up and down, up and down, until he reached the far
end.

He looked up at the sun, climbing
higher in the sky as the morning wore on and a welcome sight after
weeks of overcast. In the last few days, the weather had been
generally improving. Yet the season was well advanced and he didn’t
remember anything like this in years past.

“
Oh, boy.” There was still
plenty of material on the spool, and he hadn’t dropped it or
anything yet, so he went straight up in a vertical side-line, tied
it off, and then zigzagged back the other way.

He knew it was possible. He just hadn’t
done it before. The day was young and Hank had a little time on his
hands.

Chapter Two

Hank’s Glasses Were Stained
With Sweat

The black dot at the end of the track
where it came out of the brush down by the ford eventually resolved
itself into a two-wheeled cart pulled by an animal out of
Stanislaus’ Livery, one of the longer-lived establishments in the
vicinity. The blaze of red paint on the hindquarter was a dead
giveaway. The cart was probably from there as well.

Hank’s glasses were stained with sweat
and dirty finger-marks, but as it drew closer he saw that it was a
woman, and he straightened up and wondered who it could
be.

Looking down at himself, he picked up
his shirt and put it on, and then went into the kitchen to put on a
kettle of water just as the cart came in through the gap in his
split-rail fence and entered the yard.

He waved from the door at the figure
inside. She dropped the reins and put her foot out tentatively as
the thing had stopped right in the middle of the biggest muddy
patch and the animal refused to budge another inch.

Stanislaus knew how to pick them, and
it was probably better than a more flighty animal.

“
Hello.”

“
Hello.” Mrs. Beynholm was a
widow, and had been alone for about four years.

She stood there grinning up at him,
shading her eyes from the glare.

People were always smiling at Hank and
he wondered why. It bothered him a little sometimes as he couldn’t
account for it.

She was a buxom woman with sturdy hips,
thick graying hair that had once been brown and deep blue eyes.
While they were courteous about town and knew each other’s first
names, they really didn’t have a lot of contact and little in
common, not even very many friends in common.

“
I’ve just put the tea
on.”

They clumped inside.

“
Oh, thank you.” She stood
just inside the room, hands on her hips, and she inspected the
place, finally giving a slight nod which he interpreted as
approval.

It wasn’t much to look at, smaller than
a typical one-bedroom apartment back home, and with none of the
amenities either. The plank walls were tightly fitted and the floor
was still level, which was saying something for the solidity of the
site as much as his building skills.

With the shutters thrown back, and the
table clean, no dirty dishes lying about, it conveyed an impression
of rugged comfort. Hank had four rooms in total, with the kitchen
being the best, which was on the left coming in the door. Connected
by a sweeping arch supported by a massive log of white cedar to the
living room on her right, it looked bigger in the broad light of
day.