Day Sixteen - Afternoon

     Casper trudges down the backroad from Smith’s, leaving in a considerably worse mood than when he arrived. Another three weeks his arse, that’s what he said last time!

     “I said three weeks at the very earliest,” Smith puffed on his cigar. High quality stuff too by the smell of it. “And,” Smith continued, “it’s hardly been a week since you been here last, so don’t you go harping on me now boy.”

     And that was the end of that. Showed Casper straight to the door without letting him get so much as a word in edgeways. Casper will be back, there’s no doubt about it. He’ll be counting the days, mark his words and the tally he keeps carved by his bed. He’ll be there… (what’s three by seven again…?) nineteen days later on the dot.

     But today, kicked to the curb as he is, he’s got a whole lot of nothing going for him. At least there’s the pub fare to look forward to.

     After some deadbeating around town, Casper finds something to do in the form of a few of the youngest Glenholm boys. It’s not so odd to see them about, this is their home after all, but normally they’re the tag-alongs for the rest of the group. The little guys have been left to wander about the streets, nobody else around. Kinda like him.

     Casper sighs. Might as well go up to them and say hi, how you doing, where the hell is Davis and the rest? Misery loves company and whatnot.

     So… Yeah. Here goes.

     “Hey.” He’s said it. Now what? “Don’t suppose I’ve seen yous around?”

     The young’uns make a great show of freezing on the spot, looking here, there, and anywhere else but Casper.

     “What’s the matter with yous? No one ever tell you how to introduce yourselves nice and proper?”

     They look at each other, then, one by one, they shake their little heads.

     “Come off it then,” Casper sits against a wall next to them. “I don’t bite.” Until you give him a reason to.

     “We- we aren’t supposed to go talkin’ to strange folk,” a pipsqueak with mop full of curls says.

     “Is that a fact?” That could mean about a hundred different things, ranging from the fact that he isn’t from around here to someone else catching on there’s something not quite right with his situation. (Half a shilling says Lard-ass spilled the beans, the damn snitch.) “How you figure? I’m the same as the rest of yous, ain’t I?” He throws the idea out there to test the waters.

     The little ones look at one another, then Casper for comparison. They shrug. “But auntie Martha said- she said we’re not supposed to go talkin’ to folk we dunno by us-selfs.” What dutiful, little parrots. They’re singing true to every song and tune they hear.

     “Who says you dunno me?” Posture open, he’s friendly and smiling and you wouldn’t think there was a single bad bone in his body going by the looks of him. “You seen me around, right?” The way they’re looking at him more than elsewhere tells him they’re almost convinced, but just in case, “I’m Casper by the way.”

     “We know that,” the middling youngster sniffs, “we was there as you was talkin’ to Davis.”

     “I didn’t know,” the last one says before Middling elbows him.

     “Izzat right?” Casper drawls. “An’ what’re you chaps called?”

     “Paulie,” says the Middling.

     “Charlie,” says Curly.

     “An’ I’m- an’ I’m Harry,” says the last.

     “Well I’d say we know each other now, so how ‘bout we be friends from now on.” No strangers here, no sir. The young’uns are certainly more comfortable now that they’ve gotten that issue sorted out. “So… Where’s Davis an’ the gang?”

     That’s gone and made them all upset. Harry’s face crumples like yesterday’s newsprint and Casper swears he’s about to start crying any second. “They went an’ ditched us!” He wails.

     “Wha-? Davis?” Odd. Casper hadn’t pegged him for the type given the way he’d tried to break up that fight almost two weeks ago to the date (the one Casper started).

     “No, them,” Paulie pouts. “It was Allen.”

     The name’s not ringing any bells. Could be any number of them he didn’t bother to learn the names of. “Fat fellow? Black hair, ‘bout yea high?” He rattles off a rough sketch of Lard-ass. Taller by about a head, but sporting a nasty set of marks from the hiding Casper gave him.

     “That’s Terry,” Harry corrects, not that Casper gives a fig; he’s sticking with Lard-ass.

     “An’ he’s worse’n Allen!” Charlie chips in.

     “So why’s it Terry’s so bad? What’s he gone and done?” Casper listens. Casper waits.

     These youngsters don’t disappoint him. “Nuthin’ this time,” Paulie reports, “he can’t do nuthin’ either, not for a week.”

     “’Bout time!” Harry crows. “He always been bossin’ us around, leavin’ us behind.”

     There’s something Casper can sympathize with. “Does he now.” Not a question, just another fact as cold and hard as the pit that’s suddenly bottomed out his stomach. The littluns are happy to furnish him with as many tales of woe for the wrongs done against them by Lard-ass and Allen and any others they can put a name to, Harry putting himself to the task with particular aplomb. Casper listens. Casper waits. Casper wishes he hit Lard-ass harder.

     Not that Lard-ass got off easy either, from what he hears. Didn’t fess up like Casper expected him to, nor did the rest of his expedition crew. Got in a whole lot of trouble for getting back black and blue like that; rumor has it, or so Charlie tells him, that the week’s house arrest was because he didn’t say what he’d been up to that got him hurt so bad. Unsurprising. The crimes people make with their imaginations tend to make the real ones pale in comparison.

     Casper still should’ve hit him harder.

     No matter. Those who should’ve kept their traps shut did just that and that’s the important part.

     “-which sucks and he goes an’ bosses us around ‘cause he’s Davis’ brother,” Harry continues to complain.

     “An’ this is Terry then?” Casper checks. Can’t be having his facts mixed up. Knowing who’s who is everything.

     “Yuh huh.” The little guys are cozied up next to him on either side of him and Casper swears it’s almost like he’s with his gang again, like in the good old days.

     “An’ Davis is older than him.”

     “Yeah… He’s nice an’ all,” Paulie sniffs, “an’ no one ever get left on his watch.”

     “Right.” And now for question worth a whole damn crown. “Where the hell is he anyhow?”

     The young’uns’ eyes go wide, all three pairs of them. They fix right on Casper.

     “What? I got somethin’ on my face?”

     “You said a bad word,” Paulie gasps.

     “Come off it, you lot are as bad as the old man back home,” Casper snorts. “Seriously, where is he? It’s damn weird not seein’ him ‘round.”

     More gasps and giggles from the youngsters, but they tell him in good time. Charlie, to be exact. “At the church, they meet up sometimes after service.”

     “This a regular thing?”

     “Only if you’re a grown up.”

     “Or if- or if you’re a general or higher,” Paulie adds.

     “A general?” Casper gives him a look. “You boys in the queen’s army already?” He shakes his head and grins. “Must be recruitin’ ‘em young these days.”

     “We’re not the queen’s army!” Harry says.

     “What are you then?”

     “We’re the Glenholm Brigade!” Paulie trumpets proudly.

     “Are you now?” Casper asks more amused than serious. Might as well play along. “An’ what is it this… brigade of yours do?”

     “We be on the look out for witches an’ the devil,” Charlie tells him. That explains what Lard-ass and his crew were doing up on the hill. What better place is there to look for the boogieman than the witch man’s front yard?

     “Sure you are. What’s this have to do with what’s goin’ on in the church?”

     Paulie looks to Harry, who shrugs and says, “how’re we supposed to know? We never been.”

     So much for information gathering. Casper deems it a lost cause until Charlie, dear, sweet Charlie lets a real gem drop from his lips: “Has to be somethin’ big, like real big if they’re callin’ in the generals.” The others agree and Casper knows he’s struck gold.

     “What kinda somethin’ we talkin’ ‘bout here?”

     “Ionno, but everyone gets real nervous when summer comes, every year.” For that, Charlie’s earned himself a nice pat on the head.

     “Well done Charlie!” Casper ruffles those bonny locks for the hell of it. “Say, mind if I call you Curly?”

     “Sure!”

     “Well how’s about this Curls: you see if you can figure out what the hub-bub’s on about an’ I’ll see if I can’t sneak you a little somethin’ or other from the pub.”

     “Really?”

     “But we’re not allowed,” butts Harry.

     “You ain’t allowed,” Casper corrects. “I’m an exception to the rules. An’ the same goes for the two of yous as well,” he musses up the tops on Harry and Paulie too, lest they feel left out. Over their heads, Casper espies the church crowd coming down the main street. “And with that, gents, I think I best get goin’. Keep your ears open, yeah?”

     The young’uns scamper off and Casper makes himself scarce, kipping off to the pub shortly thereafter in a significantly better mood than he’d started the afternoon. If nobody’s going to bother to tell him anything, then fine. He’s got ways of finding things out on his own… With a little help, of course.

END OF DAY SIXTEEN.

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