Maybe the saying was started by the guy who knocks out ogres with his bare hands.
The Cranky Old Men are an ongoing crew of antiques who pooled resources to purchase, maintain, and staff an abandoned abbey where they await the Reaper, many because they're so unpleasant their relatives don't want them around home. Somebody in a black humor named the place Heaven's Gate.
In its prime the abbey housed fifty monks in luxurious little apartments. More than two hundred Cranky Old Men live in the same space, three to the apartment and who's got any use for even one chapel let alone the three of the original setup?
The place is cramped and smelly and almost as depressing as the Bledsoe and makes me hope that in my declining years some twenty-year-old lovely with an obsession for chubby old bald guys who smell bad takes me in so I don't have to buy into anything like Heaven's Gate. Of course, with my luck and the way things have gone lately I shouldn't worry about getting old.
The abbey was constructed in a square around an inner court, two stories high, filling a larger than normal city block. Not an uncommon layout in TunFaire. Tinnie's clan resides in a similar though larger compound, which includes their tanning and manufacturing facilities. In a display of misplaced faith in their fellow-man the monks had included ground-floor windows around the street faces. The Cranky Old Men had adapted to modern times by installing wrought-iron bars. Most people just brick them up.
There are two entrances, front and rear. Each is just wide enough to permit passage of a donkey cart. Both are blocked by double sets of iron gates. The place looks more like a prison than the Al-Khar does.
Somebody's grandson was on some scaffolding, installing bars on a second-floor window. The deeper poverty arriving with the immigrants might make the place attractive after all.
I eased around the scaffolding to the gate. It was comfortable in the shadows there.
"Eh! You! Move along!" a creaky voice insisted. "No loitering." A sharp stick jabbed between the bars too slowly to hurt anyone.
Everyone got this treatment, including favorite sons.
"I came to see Medford Shale." Not strictly true, but you do need to offer a name and I knew that one. The hard way.
"Ain't no Medford Shale here. Go away."
"That's him back there under the olive tree. On the cot." Which was true. And handy. So maybe my luck wasn't all bad.
The sharp stick jabbed again. I didn't go away. The old man on the other end came out of the shadows. I said, "Hello, Herrick."
The old man squinted. He scowled. He tried to stand up straight. "I ain't Herrick. Herrick passed. I'm his kid brother, Victor."
"Sorry to hear about Herrick, Victor. He was good people. I need to see Shale."
Victor's eyes narrowed again. "You ain't been around lately, have you?"
"It's been a while." Medford doesn't make you want to hurry back.
"Herrick passed two years ago."
All right. It had been a big while. "I'm really sorry, Victor. I need to see Shale."
"You got a name, boy?"
"Garrett. We go way back."
Victor sneered. "Shale goes way back. You're just a pup." He started to shuffle off, thought better of it. Maybe he decided he'd given in too easily. "What you got there?"
I didn't think he'd miss the bundle. "Little something for Shale." There was more on the way. These sour old flies would need a lot of sweetening.
"Bigger than a breadbox," Victor muttered. He considered the Goddamn Parrot. "You better not be carrying no birdcage there, boy. We got no truck with useless mouths."
I patted the bundle. "It's edible." The best bribes are the wonderful things the Cranky Old Men know they shouldn't eat. Or stuff they shouldn't drink.
"Got a creme horn?"
"I do believe. If Shale will share."
Victor fumbled with the inner gate. He muttered to himself. He didn't sound optimistic about Shale sharing. He had reason to be pessimistic. Great-granduncle Medford is a cranky old man's cranky old man. Maybe he had a little ogre or Loghyr in him somewhere, way back. He hasn't aged obviously since I was a kid and my Great-grandaunt Alisa was still alive. He's one really nasty old man.
But he's got a soft spot for me.
As long as I come armed with molasses cookies.
Victor opened the outer gate.
The instant it opened wide enough so Victor couldn't stop me the Goddamn Parrot revealed his secret relationship with a lady pig.
The old boy just stood there, poleaxed, as I started toward Shale. I said, "Bird, these codgers don't get a lot of meat in their diet. Costs too much. A buzzard in the pot might put smiles on all their faces."
I could see the little monster only from the corner of my eye but, I swear, he sneered. Somewhere, somehow, he'd gotten the idea that he was invulnerable.
Probably my fault.
"Hey, you!"
I sighed, stopped, turned. "Yes, Victor?"
"Whyn't you say you was one of them ventriloquisitors? A guy with a good and raunchy routine would be a big sell around this dump."
"I'll think about that." Might be a good career change. I never saw a ventriloquist with his head bandaged or his arm in a sling. "Let's see what Shale thinks." I just can't seem to get by without people thinking I'm flooding the dodo's beak with nonsense.
How come his big silence couldn't last?
Was some petty little god still carrying a grudge?
64
Shale appeared to be asleep. Or maybe dead. His chest wasn't moving. Maybe he was hibernating. Maybe that explained why he never got any older. I hear you don't age when you're sleeping.
He'd been in the same place so long the olive tree no longer protected him from the sun. He was all wrinkles and liver spots and if all his fine white hairs were tied end to end, they might reach his knobbly ankles. His clothing was threadbare but clean. Medford Shale had a thing about cleanliness.
"Shale thinks you're a no-talent little peckerwood and it's probably that mallard doing the actual talking and putting words into mouths." Shale's withered lips scarcely moved. Maybe somebody from the great beyond was ventriloquising him. "You found yourself a wife yet?"
"Good to see you well, Uncle Medford. Nope. Still playing the field."
Any other old boy in the place would've done a wink and nudge and boy-do-I-envy-you number. Medford Shale snapped, "You some kind of nancy boy? Ain't gonna be none of that in this family. What the hell you doing, coming around here dressed like that?"
No relative of Shale's ever did anything that didn't embarrass him. The more sensitive sort never visit him. Generally, that includes even those of us with hides like trolls.
"Your life is so full you don't have a minute to come ease an old man's last years?"
"That's right, Uncle. Given a choice between watching grass grow and listening to you bitch there ain't no contest." I'd always wanted to say that. When I was a kid my mother stopped me. Later, respect held me back—though I think respect should run both ways. Shale is too self-engrossed to respect anything. Right now, with a fresh crop of ogre-inflicted bruises atop the other aches I'd collected recently, I was crabby myself.
"That's no way to talk to—"
"You want to be treated right, you treat people right. If I want to be pissed on and cut down, I don't need to trudge all the way over here."
Shale's eyes widened. He sat up more spryly than you'd expect from a guy three times my age. "That parrot has become confused about what words to put into your mouth. No kin of mine would talk to me that way."
"All right. I'm no kin. And the buzzard is quacking. He says, you want things easier here, help me. I know where to find a baker's dozen of those molasses cookies you like." I gave him a glimpse of the bundle.
Medford Shale wasn't stupid. He wasn't the kind of character who didn't look out for number one, either. I learned to deal with him when I was a toddler, before Aunt Alisa died and he bought into Heaven's Gate thinking the staff would cater to him the way his wife had. And they did. Almost. But he could begrudge the most reasonable request. Human nature made paybacks inevitable.