Attached here are Scenes 50 and 51 of Spreading Wings
C&C is welcome. This is likely to be the last of what I post for the
next two or three days. I had hoped to be able to continue advancing the
story at a rate sufficient for posting two or three scenes each day.
However, I am now having a problem smoothing out a crucial part of the
story and wouldn't you know, reality has reared it's ugly head in the
form of things around the house breaking down, et cetera.
I will however fix some of things pointed out to me but a number of
readers, including one faulty link on the index page of the web site.
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 50 & 51
Nabiki Tendo did not have but one class on Thursdays and not
having any intention of attending it, would have loved to have slept in.
It was not to be. Kasumi and Akane had risen early. Between Kasume
calling out inane instructions to Akane, and Akane thundering up and
down the stairs to carry them out, sleep was impossible. To make matters
worse, the two of them invaded Nabiki's room. Nabiki growled at them,
reached into her closet and pulled on the first thing her hands brushed
against.
"You? Akane Tendo? Are going to the vegetable market?" Nabiki
asked incredulously.
Akane nodded.
"Why?"
"The secret to great cooking is having great ingredients."
"Maybe you should go get a check up," Nabiki said sounding
concerned, "Do you want me to call Dr. Tofu for you?"
"I am not sick, Nabiki."
"Well something's wrong!" Nabiki said. She perfectly well what was
going on of course, but she wanted Akane to confess. Keeping a secret
from her own sister was unforgiveable.
"Okay, Nabiki! But you have to promise not tell Dad or Mr.
Saotome."
"And you can't tell Ranma I told you anything about it either.
He'd kill me."
"I rather doubt that," Nabiki said, narrowing her eyes slightly,
"but I won't tell him we talked."
"I'm...it's...bri..it's brid..." Akane seemed to choke on the
words.
"Bridal training?" Nabiki asked.
Akane nodded.
"I'm going with you." Nabiki said.
"Huh?" Akane noised, clearly shocked.
"Of course! You know me! I never turn down free entertainment,
Akane."
"Ooh, Nabiki!"
Nabiki used her special grin she reserved just for annoying
Akane.
"Well if you are coming you had best get dressed."
"And what's wrong with what I have on?"
"You would look rather odd at the market wearing that, Nabiki,"
Kasumi said. Nabiki immediately acquiesced. Arguing with Kasumi was
impossible. Besides, spandex probably would look out of place in
Nerima's open air vegetable market. Much to Kasumi and Akane's
annoyance, Nabiki had nothing suitable in her over-crowded closet. She
had to borrow items from each of her sisters before they were satisfied
with her appearance.
"Gack!" Nabiki said, when she saw her borrowed ensemble in the
mirror, "I look married!"
"No," Kasumi said gently, "You look proper."
"That's even worse!" Nabiki said, rolling her eyes, "The next
thing you know, I'll have some working class bum wanting to ask me out."
"You wish!" Akane said, sounding smug.
"Bums don't work, Nabiki," Kasumi said.
"You would think that as hard as they claim they work they
wouldn't drink and gamble so much that they would have to borrow money
from me."
"Not all of them are like that, Nabiki. Just the ones you know
are," Kasumi chided.
Nabiki had to admit to herself that there was some logic in what
her eldest sister said. The only working class men she knew were the
ones that came to her wanting to borrow money. She by no means knew all
of them.
"Are we going to sit around here and gab all day?" Nabiki asked
irritably, "I thought we were going shopping."
"Let's go!" Akane said.
"Mm!" Kasumi agreed with a nod.
Soun Tendo had listened to his daughters preparing to go to the
market while safely hiding his smile, and his tears behind the morning
newspaper. The noises they made, their arguements over clothes, their
silly chatter was the same as it had been for years. He knew that he
would not be hearing it too many more times. They were grown, ready to
fly away at any time now.
"Bye, Dad!" Akane said as she ran towards the front door.
"See ya in a little while, Daddy," Nabiki said sweetly as she
too, hurried toward the front of the house.
"Father?" Kasumi asked, waiting patiently in the front hall.
"Yes, Kasumi-chan?"
"Is there anything special you need from the market?"
Soun looked around the edge of his paper at his eldest daughter.
Dressed as she was, she looked enough like his late wife to make his
heart ache.
"No, Kasumi. Thank you very much, dear."
"We'll be back in a couple hours."
"All right, Kasumi dear."
"Bye, bye."
"Bye."
The house became unbearably quiet. He put down his paper and
listened intently for a moment. There was definitely an afterglow left
behind from his daughters' recent presence, but it was fading. To his
horror, the house he had lived in for so long was becoming something far
less than what it had been.
"It's just a house, now," Soun said aloud to the empty room, "I
don't know if I can take it."
"There's nothing wrong with this old place that a grandbaby won't
fix," Happosai said as he sat down at the table and refilled Soun's tea
cup. He put the teapot down and waited patiently for Soun's brain to
catch up with current events.
"Sensei?"
"Good morning, Soun my old friend," Happosai said sarcastically.
"I'm sorry! I didn't hear you come in," Soun said as poured
Happosai some tea.
"I'll give you two to one odds that Nabiki has the first one,"
Happosai said with a grin.
"How much?" Soun said with a grin that was even bigger. He could
not imagine a better way to insure that his middle daughter married,
than to bet against such an eventuality.
"Oh, ten-thousand yen, ought to be about right."
"You're on!"
They shook hands. Then sipped at their tea.
"We have some old business back in town, Soun," Happosai said.
"So I've heard, sensei."
"You and Genma meet me at the Nekkohanten tonight at ten."
"But sensei, they stop taking customers at nine."
"This discussion won't involve her customers."
"Ko Lon is going to help us out this time, huh?"
"She's bringing two of her most experienced Amazons."
"Do you think that will be necessary, sensei?"
"You remember what happened last time, dontcha?"
Soun shuddered. He did indeed remember. Things did work out in
the end, but the affair had been quite a bit more of a mess than they
had intended.
"Why us, sensei?"
"Because old farts like you and me aren't much use for anything
else. We," he said, "are expendable now."
Soun did not like it, but he knew what Happosai said was true.
If he died while he and his old master were sitting at this very table,
his children would be able to carry on without him. Even the dojo was in
good hands.
"We'll be there."
"Good. Make sure you are on time. I hate it when Ko Lon wastes
time bitching about ill mannered students."
Soun looked down at his cup so that Happosai would not see that
he was trying to suppress a grin. When he looked up, the old man was
gone. Soun sat listening to the flat, dead silence of his empty home
wishing that Ranma and his morning class would hurry and arrive. Soun
grinned. He was becoming very attached to Ranma. You are becoming
attached to his male half, right Soun old boy? He asked himself. Then he
wondered if that was such a good idea either.
"I suppose I had best call Genma," Soun said to the empty room,
"Perhaps the world still has some little use for us yet."
---------
Hideo Kobiyashi paid cash money to have her keel laid in August
of nineteen-thirty, the year his eldest son was born. At dawn on
November first of that same year, he motored her out of the Nerima yard
and made for the barge docks on the riverbank in eastern Nerima. There
they lashed on a barge loaded to the to the gunnels with rice, and she
pushed it down river to the harbor in Tokyo Bay. There she docked the
rice barge and picked up a barge loaded with fertilizer for the trip
home. From that day forward she made at least two trips a day between
Nerima and Tokyo's main harbor.
All through those long years she had served Nerima and the
Kobiyashi clan well. No matter what the season, no matter what nature
thew her way, she had taken it in stride. Hauling soybeans in mid-summer
when heat waves danced above everything including the river. She hauled
rice when the fields turned golden in the fall. She hauled charcoal and
kerosene in winter when the snows banked high. She hauled bodies down
river after the massive bombings of World War Two and had brought lumber
and roofing tiles back, so the people of Nerima could rebuild. She even
laid a few mines. Through good times and bad, the people of Nerima had
heard the same, reassuring bump-humph, bump-humph of her ancient, low
speed engine as she plied the quiet waters within the teeming,
thundering megalopolis of Tokyo.
She had served long and she had served well, but now her time was
past. Nerima had outgrown her. As times changed and Nerima grew she
began to push produce upriver and garbage downriver to the big landfill
sites. Small tugs like the Kobiyashi-maru are indispensable in Japan.
For although Tokyo is a vast city of wonderously modern complexity, it
is cursed with an unholy tangle of narrow, winding streets and many
places where large trucks simply cannot go. Much of what Tokyo needs
delivered, is still delivered by tiny tugs like the Kobiyashi-maru,
pushing the narrow river barges she was designed to move. The problem
was, she needed to make four trips a day now, not two.
In nineteen ninty-nine, the Kobiyashi clan was still operating
the first tug they ever owned. She cost little to operate and she had
faithfully brought up her third Kobiyashi, Hideo Kobiyashi's
great-grandson, Takeo. He had grown up washing her decks and polishing
her bright work after school. Today he stood at her helm while his
grandfather, Ichiro Kobiyashi, stood beside him in the tiny wheelhouse.
In June her old engine had added a new noise to it's ancient repertory,
a tiny little tink after the humph. A sure sign that the wrist pin
holding her single, giant piston had finally begun to fail from wear. In
early August the engine began to clank as well, indicating that the main
bearings had finally worn enough to require replacement. She was old,
she was slow and there were places where her bilges had rusted through,
requiring her bilge pumps to be run four hours out of eight. Repairs to
her would be expensive and even if done properly, she would not be fast
enough for the new trade. In August of ninty-nine the clan paid cash to
have the keel of a new tug laid. Now, in the middle of November, the new
boat was ready.
Several of the clan wanted to repair Kobiyashi-maru as a keepsake,
but Ichiro Kobiyashi had overruled them. They had not been sentimental
about any other boat in their fleet. The first rule of a shipping
business, no matter how large or how small, is that each and every
vessel in the fleet must make a profit. Kobiyashi-maru would not be an
exception. Today she would not push a garbage scow down the river.
They docked the produce barge at Nerima's south docks just as the
sun came up. Kobiyashi-maru's engine making the little vessel shudder
each time the piston reached top dead center on its exhaust stroke. Once
the deck hands had secured the barge and reboarded the tug, Takeo rang
her bell one more time and backed her out into the river's narrow
channel. Less than a mile upstream the engine deterioated badly. She was
not going to make it to the wrecking yard under her own power.
"I'll try to beach her there, Grandfather," Takeo said, indicating
the long abandoned, northern docks of Nerima. The warehouses were gone,
having burned two-years before. Only one, ramshackle office building
remained on the south end of the docks.
"Ha!" the Ichiro said with a nod.
Kobiyashi-maru nosed into the mud about a meter from the rickety
docks, twenty meters or so north of the dilapidated office building. The
deck hands tied the little tug off and found a solid plank to use as a
gangway. Takeo watched as his hardboiled old grandfather walked the
plank ashore, speaking into a cellular telephone as he went. Takeo knew
full well that the old man's heart was breaking. He also knew that no
one in the world would ever see any sign of it.
Within minutes their repair launch pulled up to the dock. Takeo,
Ichiro and the tugboat crew scrambled aboard it. They motored away,
leaving the forlorn little tug tied to the long neglected, northern
docks of Nerima.
"Takeo!" Ichiro Kobiyashi said sharply.
"Hai, Grandfather," Takeo answered.
"Don't bother with that old wreck today. Come up river with the
new boat tomorrow after you've made you morning run from Tokyo. You can
tow it to the wrecker's yard then. "
"Hai, Grandfather."
"You may salvage the bell if you wish."
"Thank you, Grandfather," Takeo said, realizing that he had been
given order, not granted a boon, "Thank you very much."
Later that day, just before the sun touched the western horizon,
the Kobiyashi clan's repair launch returned with Ichiro Kobiyashi at its
helm. It bore a Shinto Priest. Kobiyashi pulled the launch up to the
old tug and made it fast to her gunnels.
The priest began his ceremony just as the sun began to sink below
the horizon. Ichiro Kobiyashi stood by respectfully, thinking of all the
times gone by. Remembering all the times he played upon her decks as his
father had piloted the little tug down the river, pushing barges laden
with golden rice. Staring at the old boat now, he could still see his
own children running around her main deck. Then he remembered how much
he had hated handling the barge loads of dead bodies during the war. So
many of those bodies had been children, looking for all the world like
scorched and blackened dolls.
He remembered the time he and his crew stole a barge belonging to
the government. It had been loaded with lumber and roofing tiles. By law
it had been an act of piracy. He and his men would have lost their heads
had they been caught. He felt not the least bit guilty about the theft.
That lumber and those ten squares of tiles had sheltered the beleaguered
women and children of Nerima for the short remainder of the war and five
years further during the occupation.
For nearly seven decades this gallant little tug had fed and
succored the people of Nerima, yet scarcely a handful knew anything at
all about her. Even fewer of them would recognize Ichiro Kobiyashi. He
had not encouraged much attention. He was a hard man. He had to be to
deal with the rowdy and rambunctious men of the Tokyo water fronts. Even
worse were the treacherous politicians of Tokyo, who shifted more often
than the river bottoms. He had learned long ago that the price of
foolish sentiment was high, yet a keen eyed observer would have seen the
glint of tears on his granite hard face, in the red-gold light of that
fading day. His bow was curt. His single prayer brief. He cast off the
launch and made for his home downriver. Tomorrow would be another long
one. He would have to make it pay.
Japan is the Land of the Gods,
A place where magic is often made,
A place where gods unseen,
Heard a prayer for a worn out machine,
In the gathering dark they came together,
Whispering in the moonlit dew,
And so it was that when they parted,
They had planned a fitting end,
For the Kobiyashi-maru.