FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Between work and that damned bout of flu, I've not had much writing time, but I finally got something done. As usual, reviews are deeply appreciated.

Edited by Tlapa

---

A stiff breeze swept down over the cemetery; the great maple by the gate gave a loud rustle, and shrivelled leaves danced between the gravestones, mingling with fragments of freshly cut grass, the sweet scent of which hung in the air. Above them, the dreary layers of grey shifted across the Amsterdam sky, and the gentle dimness of the damp autumn afternoon grew.

Pendrick glanced over at the elderly human beside him - a short, bent fellow with a lined, sagging, thick-fleshed face, heavy jowls, and an immense pair of spectacles hanging off his bulbous nose - and watched as, one hand still on his walking stick, he awkwardly tugged his coat about him and hunched his shoulders. Then he turned to look up at Pendrick, still smiling, his nostrils dilating dramatically as he took a long, stiff, deliberate inhalation.

"Did I mention I lived in London a few years, professor? I never realised what a gift it was to be able to smell the sea until then."

Pursing his lips, Pendrick turned his eyes back down to the headstone at their feet. It looked, he quite suddenly realised, how any sensible person should wish their own headstone to look one day: cared for, but only to a reasonable degree, showing signs of visits well-spaced and respectfully regular, but not obsessively over-frequent. The weeds had begun to grow thick about the headstone's base, and the corners showed cracks and wear; but the mismatched flowers before it were fresh, and the dark granite remained reasonably free of grime, the grey lettering stamped into it still standing out clearly, unpretentious and terse:

Dirk Aartsen 1975-1998 Beloved son and brother

"So...anyway..." Pendrick heard himself mumbling, looking back at the old man, "...you...you can't remember anything? Rank or name or anything?"

"Of...the military fellow who kept visiting?" the old man said, his ragged and raspy little voice surprisingly clear in the blustery air. "No...no, I'm afraid not. He...he had..." - he gestured at his own neatly combed, ashen-grey scalp - "...one of those peaked caps." He smiled wider, and shook his head. "That's the best I can do, I'm afraid."

Pendrick exhaled indignantly, and looked back down at the headstone.

"...anyway..." the old Dutchman beside him went on, the tone of distracted reflection returning to his voice. "...anyway...he'd come over...a few times a week, normally...and he and my father would sit on the veranda...talking a lot, but, you know...nothing that made sense to an eight-year-old..." - the old man paused a moment - "...except the cigarettes. Dad smoked a lot, and...the guy kept mentioning how, back home, they were talking about banning smoking. It... really ticked him off. He'd say...he'd say 'We expect our young men to be soldiers, but apparently they're not even hardy enough to finish a damn cigarette.'" He paused again, and hacked up a dry-throated guffaw. "Funny, that...that was the only thing I ever saw him get angry about...most of the time, he was...I mean..."

He paused yet again; Pendrick glanced up with a huff of irritation, and saw the old man gesturing with a quivering, veiny hand at his own face. "He was...I mean, he wasn't that thin, but...he had these really sunken cheeks...and...he smiled all the time, so...I asked him once..." - he hiccupped up another series of raspy chuckles - "...I asked him if his smile ever got bigger than his face. Lord, he laughed."

A brisk burst of wind picked up, scattering a hail of grass cuttings across the headstone, before dying abruptly down.

"Anyway...once, you know, he let me put on his cap and...and I led some of the other boys up and down the street...marching, you know...we'd watched the soldiers do it for so long, so..."

Taking yet another pause, the old man began rubbing at the sagging purple bags of his eyes. Pendrick huffed again, and his teeth sank into his lip.

"He and dad, they watched us from the veranda...and when I got back, and the other lads went off, he took his cap, and he sat me on his knee, and...he said to me..." - another hoarse, snorting snicker - "...I don't know why I remember this so well...I might...I might be filling some of it in myself, I suppose...but he said to me 'Paul, don't tell anyone I said this, but I respect a father who wants to keep his son out of the army. So, Paul, when you're old enough, and all this war business is over, you come to me in Berlin, and I'll help you find a nice, quiet job in a government department somewhere, behind a desk. You can find a lovely German woman, and raise a good family. I want to see us build a decent society for the future, Paul, and we don't do that by sending all the good human men out to die in muddy fields in some country full of damn dog-creatures.'"

Another pause. The old man's smile had quite abruptly disappeared. His quavering fingers pulled distractedly at the loose flesh of his chin. "...and...well...then he said..." - the old man took a long, slow, damp gulp - "...he said 'And never forget to thank your father for making sure...'" - he drew his tongue over his lips - "'...for making sure his family will have a good name to carry on after the war.'"

Pendrick nodded soberly at the old man, who turned his eyes back down to the headstone. Stiffening his jaw, Pendrick allowed several minutes to pass in silence as the leaves swirled about their feet, shuddering as their autumnal clamminess smeared itself against his trouser ankles. Somewhere beyond the wall, a car horn wailed.

"So...anyway...I'd like to ask about those friends of yours...the fox and the, uh, lizard..." Pendrick said finally, gently and cautiously easing his words out.

The old man glanced up, his thick, snowy eyebrows raised. "Willem and Mannes?" he said. "Mannes wasn't our friend, old chap, he was the lad that pelted us with stones every morning; always caught us by the old shack near Willem's house. I tell you, walking to school every morning would've just crushed my spirit if it weren't for him; running away from him every day, it gave me the sort of buzz coffee's never managed. That's what gets you through a morning, professor." He smiled gaily, and nodded at nothing in particular. "But Willem, the fox lad, there was a good fellow. All these animal-folks these days that just go out of their way to act human - Willem wouldn't have any of that. He might've walked on two legs, but his spirit was all fox, that one - a real hellion, when he cared to be." Another gravelly laugh. "Once...once, early in the year, you know, he wore the schoolmaster's coat to class. Must've pinched it earlier in the morning. Anyway, the old fellow didn't even notice until about halfway through the class - probably my fault he did at all, really, I kept giggling - and he grabbed that great stick of his, and..." - he raised a trembling hand, and pointed outward at nothing - "...and Willem just took right off. Out the door and...I mean, I doubt it, of course, but he always insisted he got to the other side of town and was dancing about in a lot of puddles before the poor old man caught up with him." More aimless, smiling nods. "No human could move like that, professor. You'd never be allowed to say it in this day and age, but every one of these animal-folks, they're a damn sight more animal than they'll ever let anyone know. Willem, though, he never tried to hide it, and..." - more smiles and nods, his eyes drifting outward - "...I've never seen a one of them happier than he was."

Pendrick nodded, pursing his lips again to fight back a smile. The old man's gaze continued to drift aimlessly over the grass and up the dark, mossy brick of the far wall.

"I...I've never been able to remember when Willem disappeared." the old man went on, his voice growing suddenly softer, his smile abruptly fading. "I just...I remember him not being at school anymore...but I just can't put a day to when...I...I suppose I must've assumed he was just pulling some lark...but it just...it just took so long for me to really realise..." He shook his head now, slowly, tremulously, absently. "Mannes stopped bothering me about the same time, I suppose...but that also didn't really..." The old man, his shaky frame gently wavering, let out a long, low, breathy sigh that melted into the growing breeze. "I never thought to ask the fellow in the cap. I suppose...I mean, I was eight, I just didn't think to connect...but...I don't know, I...I can't help but think...I just...wonder what he would've said, you know?"

A cluster of maple leaves, glued together by damp, blew jerkily across the headstone, leaving a wet smear across the name.

"I...never saw Willem again." the old man went on, his ragged voice dropping further still. "Nobody ever mentioned him afterwards, so...well, I didn't either. Just never saw my way to doing so, I suppose." He licked his shrivelled lips again. "Mannes...I saw him a few years later, when I was in London. Just...brushed by him on the street one day. We...just sort of nodded, really...it's...it's not as if we had anything to say to each other, anyway."

The wind, for a brief moment, gave a particularly strong blast, and Pendrick winced as a leaf smacked damply against his knee. Beside him, the old man began rubbing absently at a tousled eyebrow.

"He...his scales...I don't know, I probably imagined it, but his scales seemed to have gotten greyer. They don't really do that, do they?"

Pendrick stared down at the old man. "Did you ever think of looking for him? The fox boy?"

The old man let out another low, breathy exhalation, his eyes now fixed upon the headstone once again. "I...I don't know, sometimes I thought of going back...to the old town, you know, maybe looking for someone who remembered his full name...but..." - another long sigh - "...I don't know...I'm...I'm a mechanic, professor. I...I don't think I've spent more than twenty minutes together in a library. I...I mean, I can't afford to just bugger off to...to Poland, or wherever it was they took them..."

Pendrick nodded stiffly. "And that's why, is it?" he said dryly.

The old man scraped a finger across his saggy cheek, and sighed yet again. "Well...I mean, obviously not."

Languidly leaning his head back, Pendrick sniggered quietly, his eyes absently tracing a long, thin, golden seam of sunlight running through the clouds.

"You know..." the old man murmured on pensively, "...my little girl...the older one, you know...real swotty sort...she was about twelve, she came home from school with a lot of stuff from the library about..." - a pause, filled with the sharp rustling of the maple as the breeze picked up again - "...about...you know, the..." - glancing back down, Pendrick wrinkled his nose in disgust; the old man's voice seemed suddenly to be bubbling with phlegm - "...about the camps. All those old black and white pictures...all those dead humans and animal-folks just sort of..." - he gestured aimlessly with his withered, veiny hand - "...sort of...heaped up, you know...I...I saw this one of...it was mostly animal-folk, you know, and...and their...their fur was sort of all over the place, you know...they...they didn't have brushes...in there..." - another pause, and Pendrick silently cringed as he heard the old man let out a long, damp gurgle, wedged uncomfortably between a sigh and a snigger - "...and it...well...it made me think of...how my mother used to...to roll up the towels and...stack them in the cupboard..."

Pendrick raised his eyebrows at the old man, who did not look up from the headstone.

"I..." he drawled wetly on, "...I...you know, I sat down, and I started writing this...this very angry letter to the school...saying how they oughtn't to be letting little girls get their hands on...on such filth. I...I just sort of...stopped halfway, though. It had this...this awfully whiny-housewife sort of tone...you know what I mean?"

Pendrick gave another rigid nod; the old man glanced up at him. For a moment, his watery blue eyes, magnified grotesquely by his great spectacles, stared through him unseeingly; then, licking his withered lips yet again, another immense smile crept up his cheeks, and his voice rose to a positive chirp, quite suddenly sounding almost merry. "Anyway...so, anyway...the point of all that is, when my only son..." - he gestured gracelessly down at the headstone - "...tells me he's got it in his head to join the army, I'm damn happy...because, you know...I feel like...I mean, I'd never have pushed him to it if he'd not wanted to, of course, but...I feel as if my family ought to produce at least one military man. I feel...that we owe it to the world. You see what I mean, professor?"

Pendrick clamped his jaw again, and stared down in silence.

"And, well...then I find out he was getting shipped off to sit around Eastern Europe and be a lot of silly grunts for the United Nations. I don't know, I...I shouldn't have made such a fuss, but it just didn't sound like the same thing as, eh, being a Dutch soldier, you know? He tried to explain it to me, poor boy, but...went right over my old head..." - another long sigh, this one slightly less breathy - "...I suppose...I suppose I could've at least found out what was going on in Yugoslavia, once they shipped him off over there, but...but, well, Eastern Europe, you know...I liked to avoid hearing much more about it than I needed. You know, it...for me, it was always that place with all the awful things I couldn't do much of anything about...so I...I just didn't see why I ought to burden myself with hearing about them at all...you know, I just thought...they could keep all their damn jackboots and their famines and their great concrete walls, as long as they kept it all over there..."

Another pause. Then the old man let out another ragged laugh, slightly louder, that hideous gurgle still bubbling in his throat. "That...that's the attitude that really brings nations forward, eh, professor?" he chuckled.

Pendrick nodded again. Above their heads, the thin seam of sunlight had begun to fade, and the cemetery grew ever dimmer. "Go on." Pendrick said flatly.

"So...well, he comes back a year later, and..." The old man's gaze fell upon the headstone yet again; and ever so slowly, his smile began, once again, to recede. "...and...well, before he left, he was always...I'm sure you know the sort, professor...always rather a dim boy, but...so damn alive. Stupidly happy, you know, bouncy as a ball...never got a day older after he turned six, really..." - yet another exhalation, the damp sound now gurgling through his nose - "...and then he got back, and...he was just...different, you know?" He shook his head again, his fleshy jowls wobbling slightly. "I...I must admit, I thought he was just...he'd always been far happier than I'd ever been as a teenager...I just thought maybe he was a late bloomer, you know - maybe the army hadn't turned out to be a Hollywood film, you know, and he was doing all his bratty sulking now...I..." - his voice began to drop wistfully - "...I didn't find out what'd been going on in Bosnia until...much later, you know...so I...I gave him some good lectures on the trenches and the camps, all the things real soldiers put themselves through so he could live in a society where he had time to get all mopey about..." - his damply ragged old voice tailed off for a moment as the maple tree gave another sharp rustle.

Pendrick bit his lip again in frustration, and fighting back the annoyance in his voice, said "Look...did he ever tell you anything about what happened?"

The old man slowly shook his head. "No...no, couldn't get a thing out of him. Well, I mean, there was the day that he...you know..."

Pendrick lifted his brows again. "Go on, go on." he said, doing his best not to sound desperate. The old man, however, stared mutely down at the headstone, his irksome silence lingering for half a minute. Pendrick felt his fist ball up in his coat pocket.

"A soldier should...should die in their uniform, don't you think, professor?" the old man finally murmured on. "That's how it always is in films, anyway...even when they...you know, do themselves in...they put on their uniform first." He rubbed a trembling finger beneath his plump nose and sniffled absently. "Anyway...the day...the day he...he was over at ours, you know, for lunch ...I was...well, I was on his case, I suppose...telling him to pick himself up, you know, that nobody wants to watch an army parade and see a lot of sulky brats with guns..." - he coughed abrasively - "...anyway...someone knocks on the door, you know, in the middle of damn lunch, I ought've just left it...I answer, alright, and it's this great big fellow...loutish sort, you know..." - he flailed a trembling hand at his face - "...huge damn blotch on his cheek...and he says...he says he served with Dirk over in Yugoslavia, right...said he had a bit of leave and thought he'd pop by."

The ever growing breeze stirred the tangle of flowers at the headstone's foot. The old man gave another damp sniff. Pendrick gritted his teeth.

"So I call Dirk over, of course, and I go back to the table...and I'm just saying to my wife, alright, between the pouty brats and the great louts, it's no wonder our army barely bothered holding off the Nazis..."

He paused again. Pendrick tried, and failed, to fight back a particularly loud and disgruntled huff. Another swarm of leaves smacked about his ankles.

"...and then, well...then Dirk starts screaming." The old man gave his head another shake, his eyes not leaving the headstone. "You understand, professor, this boy...he was hardly ever angry. He was too much of a layabout to bother...he'd usually just blub or sulk...but" - another sniff - "...but he was screaming at this fellow at the door like I've never heard. Howling , you know. Furious. I didn't think he had it in him."

Pendrick, in spite of himself, nodded earnestly. "Yes, yes, and did you hear what they were...?"

Glancing up, the old man, with a sideways smile, tapped at the beige object discreetly tucked between the shrivelled folds of his ear. "They were across the house, professor. I can barely hear from a room away most of the time." Turning his eyes back down, he sighed through his smile. "Anyway, I...I suppose I just thought..." - another sigh, his smile fading - "...I'm...not really sure what I thought, but..." - he shook his head again, jowls gently swaying - "...I was irritated with him, professor, I didn't...I was sure it was just...something I didn't want to hear about, you know?"

Gently, the old man nudged the flowers back onto the headstone with the tip of his cane.

"And...well, eventually it stopped, and we heard the boy storm upstairs...I just sort of rolled my eyes, you know, thought..." - another sniffle - "...so we finished lunch and then I headed upstairs, you know, ready with a good lecture about growing the hell up..."

A long pause. The breeze picked up, and the flowers rolled back off the headstone. Pendrick huffed, and clenched his fist.

"He was in the bathroom...in the tub. Dangling, you know." the old man said, his voice quiet and damp, but even. "He'd taken his belt and...strung himself up from the curtain rail." A pause. A sniff. "Funny, I...I always thought, if I was a soldier, you know, I'd never be anywhere without my gun."

A pause. The leaves stirred. Pendrick bit his lip harder.

The old man rubbed a flabby jowl. "It's...ridiculous, isn't it? I've...I've been thinking about it...so damn long, professor. I just...I can't put my finger on why I was so angry with him. I mean..." - a rasping, weary snigger that melted into the breeze - "...perhaps...perhaps I was just...frustrated that he was two generations too late to..."

Raising his right hand, Pendrick brought it down heavily upon the old man's slumped and jagged shoulders; he glanced up in slack-jawed surprise.

"The fellow with the blotch, Paul." Pendrick said through a rigid grin. "What was his name?"

Pendrick rolled onto his back, the lumps of the scrawny mattress prodding at his spine. The sharp tapping began again, boring into his skull, and a burst of pain erupted behind his eyes; he pressed his palms to his forehead and groaned dramatically.

"Alan!" a gruff, clumsy, distinctly canid voice called from the distance. "Alan!"

Wearily roaring with discomfort, Pendrick, rolling about, let his legs tumble off the bed and clambered unhurriedly to his feet, gritting his teeth as the tapping continued. Dark blotches of sleepiness clouded his vision, and the fierce ache continued to gnaw at the back of his eyes; and stumbling sightlessly, his head spinning with weariness, across the darkened room, he grazed his knuckles on the door handle, wrestling with it for several seconds before throwing the door ajar, the sunlight awakening a fresh, searing prickle in his eyes.

Slumping against the doorway, he stood still for a minute, kneading the back of his hand across his eyes and throbbing temples, and running his tongue about the parched interior of his mouth. Somewhere before him, a tall figure moved about in the piercing sunlight, and the sound of his name being angrily barked buzzed indistinctly in his muffled, wax-clogged ears.

Finally, as his giddy weariness subsided, and the grungy sightlessness cleared from his eyes, he found himself squinting through the doorway at the familiar outline of a tall, scrawny Alsatian, his jet black fur tousled this way and that, a damp, foaming patch of toothpaste dribbling off the end of his muzzle and onto his dressing gown.

"Alan!" the Alsatian snapped yet again, suddenly quite clearly; and Pendrick winced as the sharp bark of his voice bit into his ears, awakening a piercing whistle. Staring back at the canine, Pendrick pulled his upper lip into a silent sneer.

"Alan..." repeated the Alsatian, dropping his voice to a low, canid growl, "...what the hell is this?"

He flailed a gangling arm at something beside him; Pendrick, still squinting, peered about the edge of the doorway.

A young Husky - barely out of adolescence, if the canid folk had such a thing - stood in the hallway, clad in a dark tracksuit and a grimy white cap. His scrawny arms tremulously gripped a heap of sealed cardboard boxes, and he peered awkwardly around them, grinning stupidly.

"Oh...this?" Pendrick wheezed, sputtering as he felt the dryness of his throat; and pushing himself through the doorway, he elbowed past the Alsatian and stumbled toward the Husky, who, still grinning, flinched pathetically. Then, smirking over his shoulder at the Alsatian, Pendrick slammed his hand heavily against the side of the larger box.

"This is what a working man can afford, Blakely." he said. He turned to the young Husky, and ran a finger down his fuzzy muzzle and over his damp black nose. "Listen, boy..." - he gestured over the Husky's shoulder - "...head down the hall and look for the room with the carpet that looks like vomit. You can install it there."

Turning abruptly about, the Husky hastened down the hallway, glancing over his shoulder with wide-eyed befuddlement, his vapid smile not receding.

Pendrick, still smirking, turned back to the Alsatian, who stared mutely, a long, thin, glistening white string of toothpaste dangling from his upper lip.

"It's for young Dylan." Pendrick rasped jauntily.

The Alsatian sputtered, and gave a baffled, waving gesture. "And...and you're just...you're putting it in our spare room, are you? Without thinking to ask?"

With a guffaw that abruptly turned into another dry gag, Pendrick, leaning forward, landed a rigid slap against the side of the Alsatian's arm. "You'll still have plenty of space to faff about with that thing, old chap, not to worry." he grinned, gesturing at the feather duster stuffed into the Alsatian's apron pocket as he began to saunter - backwards, and stumblingly - down the hallway after the Husky.