Attached here are Scenes 54 through 56 of Spreading Wings
C&C is welcome.
Scenes 52 and 53 have been revised and are now on the web site.
Scene 54 begins the build up to the climax of Part I and I hope to be
completing all of Part I soon. I will then take a brief break from
writing. The scene I am working on now is proving to be difficult so it
may well be Wednesday or Thursday before I post any more of this yarn. I
can only beg that you remain patient.
Thanks in advance for your time and attention,
Don Granberry.
Most of the characters in this piece and the setting for it, were
conceived of by Rumiko Takahashi for her Ranma1/2 series of Manga. All
such characters and the setting are the property of Takahashi-san and
her licensees. All other characters in the piece are purely fictional
and any resemblences to actual persons living or dead are purely
coincidental.
Spreading Wings
Part I: The Burning Ring of Fire
Scenes 54 through 56
Hana Yamakami woke well before the dawn of Friday morning.
Unlike the majority in Nerima, she avoided the markets from Friday
through Sunday. Her favorite day to do her buying was on Monday. The
crowds were always thinner then, allowing her to spend more time
visiting with the vendors in the vegetable and fish markets. She got up
and dressed to go to the market, but did not really understand why until
she got the urge to pick up her one-liter pail. So that's what it is,
she thought.
The spirit impelled her stay on the bus at the Sales Street stop.
Instead of getting off the bus there as she usually would, she rode on
until it reached the stop at Riverside and Corn. She wandered about the
grain market, frightened by the noisy conveyers, forklifts and sweating
men. She did not have a clear picture of what sort of person she was
looking for until she saw a strong young man in his twenties wearing a
head band. He was not the one she sought, but she knew he would have the
same general appearance. Convinced now that she was in the right place
she quickened her pace. The sooner the spirit was satisfied the better.
She did not like wondering about in this place. It was too noisy and the
men too busy to pay her any attention or respect.
Finally she found him. He was pitching heavy sacks of grain onto a
small pickup. She had splashed this young man before, but did not
understand why the spirit had targeted him for a special effort today.
This young man looked nothing like the people she usually hunted down
and splashed. He looked to be mostly honest, and did not seem to suffer
in the least from self-importance or arrogance. She resisted. The spirit
insisted. She walked away from the young man and found a place to sit.
The urge to splash the youngster grew stronger. She continued to resist
it. Only after the pressure became completely unbearable did she find
the young man again and throw her bucket of water at him. He was just
climbing into the back of his little pickup when she struck.
Hana Yamakami did not stay to see the results of her attack. In
truth, she was mildly distressed by it. The young man only seemed to
need a bit of waking up. Why did the spirit have her to out of the way
to make him miserable? The spirit insisted that she had done the right
thing. She made her way back to the bus stop at Riverside and Corn, then
sat on the bench and waited for the bus. As she sat waiting, the little
pickup the young man had been loading drove past her with a lovely young
girl at the wheel. The girl waved at Hana. She waved back. If the young
man she had wetted down was in the truck, she could not see him. The bus
finally came and none too soon for Hana. Her walkways had not been
touched this morning, and people would be out and about before long.
---------
Ryoga Hibiki found life on Akari's farm refreshing, once he
learned to put in a day's worth of work without wondering over onto the
neighbor's place. Akari, being wise in the way's of pigs, cured much of
his problem with the same electric fence wiring she used to contain her
animals. During his long absence she hired a fence builder and had him
string the same high-voltage, low-current wire she used around the hog
pens, around the entire farm. She had him place one strand at the height
of Ryoga's knees, the other at about the same height as his chest. She
had a third wire placed one and a half handbreadths above the ground.
Once the transformers were installed and the wire charged, the fence was
Ryoga high and P-Chan tight. The electrically charged fencing did not
really hurt Ryoga, but it did keep him from straying off her farm.
She had also ordered a water activated, radio transponder for
Ryoga's bandana, but it had not yet arrived before they ran out of feed.
Akari was negotiating with the bureaucrats over a special frequency for
people with Ryoga's peculiar affliction. Fortunately, she had found one
that was a fan of Sumo Pig Wrestling and he was strenuously arguing in
favor of the idea. They had won approval for the transponder. Now all
that remained was to kid, cajole wine and dine the bureaucrats until
they selected a frequency for the newly designated transponders.
Ryoga was fairly proud of his accomplishments of the past week.
Once he had finally been confined to the relatively small area of
Akari's farmstead, he had begun to be able to find his around within its
confines. Already he could make it from the house to the barn and back
in under an hour, even though the two buildings were nearly one hundred
meters apart. This morning he had made the trip in forty-five minutes
and he only rubbed up against the two-inch hawsers Akari had strung up
for guide ropes twice. He was improving by leaps and bounds.
Akari's old tractor was due for replacement and Ryoga talked her
into buying the pickup instead. After all, pulling a middlebuster with a
half-meter hill sweep was not a problem for him if Akari was there to
help him keep the rows straight. The big moldeboard gave him a little
trouble and he hated pulling the three-meter harrow, but things were
otherwise going quite well. The plowing was great power and endurance
training for him. The food was delicious and plentiful. One of the most
important things to Ryoga though was that he was universally admired by
all of Akari's neighbors and they were constantly on the look out for
him. Ryoga had never met people that admired him despite his handicap.
He was in hog heaven.
[Author's note: If you don't understand, I doubt if I will ever be
able to explain it in a way you can fully appreciate. If you are a
farmer, or know anything about farming, you are already laughing your
ass off. I will try to explain though. A middlebuster with an eighteen
inch hill sweep will very quickly wear out a big horse. A team of horses
pulling such a plow will be exhausted before lunch time. You are better
off with a team of big mules, but they will only last about six hours or
so. Moldeboards and harrows? You will need three teams of good mules to
work all day. Start plowing in Mid-January if you want to plant twenty
acres by March. Plan on working everyday the soil is dry enough to plow.
You still may not get it all planted.
The Japanese did not start using plows pulled by horses until the
middle of the nineteenth century. Tractors quickly supplanted them.
Prior to this time they dug their rows with picks and threw up their
rice levees with shovels. The women did the planting. The men were
usually too stove up to do much once the fields were ready. Everybody
worked the harvest. Sometimes even the lower ranking samurai would help
out with the harvest. The rest of the year was spent repairing the
irrigation system, barns, fences, et cetera. There is never a slow day
on a farm, contrary to the literary bullshit that became popular among
urbanites in the middle of the nineteenth century.]
Akari had tried to get him to stay home while she made this
necessary trip into Nerima, but Ryoga insisted upon going with her. Not
that he felt any particular need to go somewhere just for a change of
scene. He had done enough traveling around for two lifetimes. He had
insisted upon riding with her because he hated being alone, and because
he hated to be separated from Akari, even if only for a few hours.
Buying feed at the grain market was their fourth and last stop in
Nerima and they could go home. Ryoga began loading the truck as quickly
as he could after the forklift operator brought the pallet loaded with
their order of custom ground feed. He was eager to return home. Thinking
of the word home made him stop and think. I finally have a home. A real
home. A place where I'm never alone and loved.
Ryoga pitched the last sack into the back of the truck and it
landed with a satisfying thump. He closed the tailgate and checked to
make sure it was properly latched. Then he stepped up on the bumper to
crawl into the back of the truck, tapping the side of the truck to let
Akari know she could start driving. He should of waited until he was
completely inside the truck bed. He tried his best to hold on to the
tailgate with his forelegs after the change, but tumbled off onto the
pavement as Akari drove away.
They had worked out an emergency routine for this eventuality of
course. Ryoga was to wait at the nearest light pole until Akari or
someone else who could lead him home, found him. The problem was, he was
in the granary and there was not a single light pole in sight. He would
have to find one before he could begin the soul wrenching process of
waiting to be found. Even something as easily visible as light pole can
be difficult if you are Ryoga Hibiki and only eight inches tall.
---------
Takeo Kobiyashi docked the produce barge at Nerima's southern
dock well ahead of time. The new boat with her big, V-12 diesel engine
driving pumps and thrusters rather than propellers, made handling barges
within the confines of Tokyo's narrow waterways a joy. Everything went
faster. As much as he had loved the older boat, he was not going to miss
operating her very much. His grandfather had been right to retire her.
He still wasn't so sure that scrapping her was a good thing, but the new
boat certainly made life much easier. His cellular telephone rang while
he was waiting for the deckhands to make the barge fast to the dock.
"Hello?"
"I see."
"Not a problem. We can hold off for as long as you like."
"Okay, I'll bring her in Monday."
"See you then. Bye."
The deck hands boarded the tug and signaled him to pull away.
Takeo backed out in the channel and turned downstream. His mate swarmed
up the ladder to the wheelhouse.
"What about the old boat, Skipper?"
"The wrecking yard's crane broke down this morning, Kobiyashi
said, "They want us to hold off bringing her in until Monday."
"So we're going to the garbage dock?"
Kobiyashi nodded.
"Okay, Skipper," the mate said. He dropped back down on the main
deck and helped the deck hands rearrange the rigging for a barge rather
than the old tug. Kobiyashi gave the new tug a little more throttle,
making her powerful new diesel rumble happily in the damp grey light of
early morning.