School of Monsters- Chapter 2- The Chiefs

Lynn meets some of the students and community member and finds them just a little 'odd'

Chapter 2  The Chiefs

Capac is this tiny little town situated in prime flat agricultural land of Michigan’s thumb area where nothing and I repeat nothing ever happens.  Almost.  In recent history there have been two noteworthy events.  One was the discovery that the Oklahoma City bombers hailed from this apparently sleepy little area.  Many of the current town’s folk knew McVey and Nickols prior to their jaunt in the van that blew up the federal building.  Both men had learned that combining urea fertilizer and diesel fuel made what most farmers in the area call “farmers TNT” to blow up stumps and is used to clear farm land.  Local farmers and townsfolk very much resent these two men drawing attention to both this sleepy little area and even more so for making the purchase of fertilizer more difficult. 

The other event in semi-recent history was the rescue and return of a downed pilot in the Bosnian war.  When this hero returned to Capac, news people and cameras flooded the area.  The fact that there was and is so little to film in this tiny little village drove reporters to display the towns one and only traffic light on television newscasts, is still to this day a decade  plus later, a sore subject with the inhabitants.  The townspeople are proud of their one and only, and largely unnecessary, stoplight.  Generations earlier, when cars started to replace the horse drawn vehicles, the inhabitants felt that they needed to purchase and install this particular display of progress and modernization on the main street of this slumbering little burg.  Because the people were so seldom likely to travel much further than the next ‘less progressive’ hamlet, the village fathers deemed it necessary  to purchase a traffic signal light with very large lenses with the words: stop, yield and go emblazoned upon the ruby, amber and emerald eyes.  The current inhabitants, rightly so, resented what they perceived to be a slam and poking fun of their proudly held traffic signal being the main feature that the news displayed in the national broadcast of a hero son being returned home to loving arms.

That same stop light cracks me up every morning when I drive to work.  To have to sit in the middle of the main thoroughfare, to wait for non-existent traffic at this cross section to clear, is a constant reminder of the inhabitants fierce pride for their town, named by the towns founding father Judge DeWitt Walker in 1857.  Walker selected the town’s name, Capac in honor of the first Inca dynasty. 

Legend has it that ruler Manco Capac selected the site for The Temple of the Sun, a palace of gold-covered walls built on the spot where he thrust his gold staff into the ground and the soil was deep enough so the staff was embedded and stood erect. Legend goes on to say Capac dressed his nine year old son, Roco Capac, in garments of gold and set him at the edge of the village.  The people of the village seeing the boy dazzling in the morning sun believed he was the son of the sun and were easily persuaded to join the rule of Manco Capac.  Either no one knows or is willing to divulge to me, an ‘outsider,’ why Judge Walker was seemingly either obsessed, or intrigued with the legend of this far off Incan ruler.

I had made the gross error of judgment, one early July morning in the local coffee shop, of asking a curmudgeonly elder patron, “What’s the deal with the traffic light?”  I then had to politely sit through a hours dissertation and harangue by this septuagenarian and several other farmers that are regular occupants of this habitual morning haunt in this agrarian enclave.  I learned my lesson that morning, to never, ever remark on that anachronism of ‘modern’ society again!  I guess in a way I was lucky that this closed societal group even talked to me.  I had been warned by Tim Harrison’s that first morning I spent in the town that I needed to make this ‘the Dairy Bar’ a morning ritual.  He dragged me that first morning into the establishment in order to introduce me to what he called his ‘informal advisory committee.’  I remember well that half of a day we spent sipping the morning coffee, munching on donuts, and meeting the denizen’s of the town.  I had been overwhelmed with the sheer number of men in a wide array of clothing, which made a regular morning trek past, what had been a regular designated table for this teacher.  How was I going to ever remember these names, and what each of these men did?  Would they ever accept me, a woman, into their society and confidence?

“Tim, how do you do it?” I whispered across the red Formica topped table.  “How can you remember all their names plus all of the students and their parents?”  My mind is reeling with all the names and faces I’ve encountered this past twenty-four hours.  I had met more than forty-five students last night at the regular monthly FFA June meeting.

“Ahh, umm, how do I put this?” Tim appeared perplexed with what I considered a rather straight forward question.  “Do you remember Max from last night?”

“Not really, which one was he?” I answered while stirring in more cream and sugar to my just freshened cup of coffee.

“I am sure you will remember him.”  Tim chuckled, “He was one of the few not wearing a FFA jacket.”

“Not the one that was…” 

Tim laughed even more as he watched my face as I searched my memory of the kids I had met last night.  “Yeah, he was the one dressed like Zorro!” He exclaimed

I had to laugh myself with the elaborately dressed young man that could have been a young Antonio Banderas.  “Why does he dress like that?” I queried.

“Well, in a way I am a little bit responsible for that issue.  Although one plus is that he left his sword at home last night.”  Tim chuckles.

“How are you the reason the kid dresses like Zorro?”  Did young Max think that the students were the peasants in need of a swash buckling hero?

“The first day I met Max, I asked him if he was any relation to Antonio Banderas, like from the Zorro movie.”

“Wow, I was just thinking that’s who he looks like!”

“Well,” Tim said. “In my defense he does have the same last name.  He just reminded me so much of what the actor looked like the first time I saw that movie, and I was trying to figure a way to associate his first name with that face.  I really didn’t want to some day slip and call him Antonio.”  Tim stopped to slurp up some coffee.  “Max’s first name is Maximillian, so I was thinking of him as Maxi-Zillion.  You know a play on the name, and he looks like a young Zorro.  So I just pictured him with a big Z emblazoned on his chest.  Every since, Max has been ‘becoming’ Zorro.”  Tim shook his heavy head and cast a wry glance over his shoulder at the hovering waitress in her blue uniform and white apron.  "If you think Max is a bit odd, wait until you meat our local Batman".  He grinned toothy mischievous grin.

“So the resemblance is why Max started the hand kissing thing that happened last night?”  I blush with the memory of the elaborate and bazaar courtly gesture  toward me that Max was the first to initiate at the conclusion of last evenings meeting and refreshments.

“More or less.”  Tim smiled wryly.

“But why did all of the boys then follow his lead?  I mean they can’t all think they are Zorro, can they?”  Good grief did I just get myself admitted to the loony bin!  Bryce had warned me that coming to this town would not be like living where I’d spent the first twenty-two years of my life. “And what about the girls?  I mean almost all of the girls hugged me and kissed my cheek.”

“No.  You are going to find that their behavior, at least for a first time greeting or goodbye isn’t that uncommon for this town.”  Tim began tugging on an already reddened ear.

“You can’t mean that they do this all the time when meeting someone new, do you.”  I asked him.

How would these kids behave at regional, state and national competitions and conventions?  There the hand kissing and hugging would definitely earn the derisions of their contemporaries.  It could make for some tense situations, if they insisted on hugging or hand kissing judges at a leadership contest!

“No, only someone new that will be staying in this immediate area.  They are quite normal when you take them somewhere else.”  He had guessed exactly where my thoughts had been going.  “Ah, you are just about to find out about the adults…”

“Lynn, I’d like you to meet George Shueman.  George, this is my replacement, Miss Juracetys.”  Tim introduced me to the first of the informal advisory committee members that morning.  Living totally up to his prediction at least half of all the men I was introduced to that morning, had in what I’d originally though an unusual mimicry of Max’s hand kissing the night before, bent over and gave my hand a good bussing. 

This town is weird was the only refrain that my mind kept playing that first morning in the coffee shop.  Had I only known how weird!

 

Author's Note

I need to know if I have given enough description of the environment to give a visual image of what is happening

Reviews

[Daiku Maryu]

"I blush with the memory of the elaborate and bazaar courtly gesture toward me"--I think the word is bizzare. I'm pretty sure bazaar is a synonym to marketplace.

"There the hand kissing and hugging would definitely earn the derisions of their contemporaries."--I think "peers" would be better than "contemporaries". Contemporaries sounds like a thing taken out of a history book to me.

"Living totally up to his prediction at least half of all the men I was introduced to that morning, had in what I'd originally though an unusual mimicry"-- I'd write "totally living up": separating the living and up makes it sound a bit odd, but that may just be me. Also "thought" not "though". Minor typo here.

Interesting chapter. It gives you the feeling that Capac is an old-fashioned town and it's a bit of a closed community. I don't think this chapter needs any serious tweaking, though I might have concentrated a bit more on Lynn's reactions to the children's behaviour.

[JRB]

keep up thr work its a pleasure to read,

[TL Boehm]

I love the descriptiveness of this piece as well as the solid dialogue - you've taken a dot on a map and magnified it into its own world. Well written.

[Joanna Maharis]

Your descriptions of the environment are excellent. I also love the bit about the guy who is a Zorro wannabe, and the other who is a batman wannabe. I like the customs with regard to the people of the town, such as the men kissing the hand of a woman who is a newcomer, or the girls kissing the newcomer on the cheek. All these details make for a very interesting story line.

[anneliese]

i cant really find anyhting wrong with it. i do believe that the visual effect of the peice is good. i can certianly see it in my mind. the only question i have is , are there trees? because i dont see trees, seeing as it seems to be farmland.

[Kloud_Nine]

Hello, Lyndie, and thank you in advance for your review (I haven't gotten around to read it yet).

Anywho, Lyn, I see you have a very interesting second chapter. Your characters are done well, I can see Lynn becoming more and more of a dynamic character as she meets the people of Capac. Speaking of Capac, you describe it well and even go as far as to throw in some history, I mean, I learned something new just by reading the first paragraph. Basically, you paint Capac well. I also like diverse you've made the characters so far, Tom seems to be a fairly down to earth kinda dude, but I would probably give him just a little more small town fling just to make him a bit more interesting (I'm assuming he's from Capac). After meeting this Max kid, I can't wait to meet "bat man".

I don't really see any issues with the amount of detail you've given us about the environment of chapter two. I could see everything, there were no mix ups, and it all sounds pretty accurate. The only thing I would consider doing is perhaps giving us a few details about the local coffee shop, being in Capac does it have a unique kind of fling to it that separates it from any other run of the mill coffee joint? I'm just assuming the coffee shop will play a larger role later seeing as Tom warned Lynn to make visiting this place a morning ritual.

You are very talented, Lyndie, keep 'em comin!