3. Dick Turpentine bags a queer fish I
"Err ... can I lower my arms now? I won't try anything, as you people say in your parlance," asked Normal, his arms already creeping down of their own accord due to weariness.
"Us people? Which people would that be?" Dick bristled, an edge to his voice, bringing his blaster up again to cover the customer[1]. Had it been nighttime and the moonlight glinting off the blaster's barrel, it would have made one of those jolly old paintings deserted road, dashing highwayman, a full moon adding a touch of silver to everything, and the cowering victim pleading for his life.
Unfortunately, it wasn't nighttime, they weren't in the scenic highland moors favoured by artists, and the highwayman didn't look the least bit gallant. In fact, it was just afternoon, and the sun was still about, shining on a desolate landscape littered with chasms and mounds of earth through which the highway rolled on and on like an amateur attempt at bandaging the wounds inflicted on the land. Rocks, dirt and more rocks was all that the eye could see for miles around not a hint of heather, nor a sprig of gorse.
Dick Turpentine, while as famous as the highwaymen who did get put in paintings, wasn't exactly the sort you wanted in a painting, at least not if you wanted to sell it.
"You know, highwaymen." Normal paused, staring at Dick with his head tilted to one side. "In fact, I think I would like to become one," he added, nodding his head.
Dick stared in puzzlement at the strange catch he'd gotten tonight. This one was an odd fish. Normal was a thin-faced, stubbled man in a nondescript suit, whose unkempt hair was just a tad too long. Dick guessed the guy must be around his own age, somewhere in his late twenties, approaching middle-age and not quite sure what to do with it[2].
Dick had been doing this gig for a few years now. Some of them begged, others threatened him with anything from eternal consignment to radiation poisoning to a good hiding if they ever got their hands on him and he wasn't holding a gun. But none of them had responded to a hold up quite like Normal. Dick was beginning to wonder about the guy's sanity. He decided that it might be a good idea to let Normal lower his arms. Who knows, maybe he'd just snap because he had his arms up for too long. Dick motioned hurriedly with his blaster for Normal to lower his arms as images of flies with their wings pulled out flitted through his mind like bats in a belfry.
"You want to become a highwayman, eh?" Dick asked, his mind racing, trying to come up with a way to deal with the situation[3] in a diplomatic manner.
Normal was still staring off into space, and he spoke as if thinking something out loud, "Yes, I would. I hadn't planned on this but you know, come to think about it, I think I'd like to become your sidekick. You can be the Lone Avenger or the Lone Highwayman or something like that, and I could be your faithful companion. I can call you Kendo Sword or Come-o Hero."
"Hmm ... If you were my companion, I wouldn't be a lone highwayman, now would I? And what's with the sword bit? Why would you call me a weird name like that? Not that people don't call me names all the time, mind you, but they're your common, honest-to-goodness names like thief, rotten scoundrel, bastard, and so on. None of this weird sword or gun stuff ..."
"A sidekick is supposed to call you some incomprehensible name. It's all in the book." Normal was clearly hurt that Dick would dare question anything from "the book", whatever it was. Dick had the feeling that the guy would pull the book out and start quoting chapter and verse if he probed any further.
"Books? I never trusted books. Too many words in 'em. I did like the ones with pictures though," said Dick with a wistful smile. "When I was little, my parents had this picture book with stuff from before the Chaos Wars. Bunny rabbits wearing clothes and talking snakes and frogs - or was it a toad? - driving cars. All colourful and cheerful and lots of fun. I thought life would be like that, but boy, was I wrong. Look at me now, holding-up people on the highway."
Dick frowned. He didn't like to tell people too much about himself. It didn't pay to reveal information about oneself in his line of work it had a habit of coming back to haunt you; quite often, it brought the Cheese along. This guy Normal was different from the other customers, though. There was something about him that made you want to talk about yourself and it wasn't fear of him being a lunatic either.
"No traumatic events from your childhood that drove you to a romantic life of crime? No bandits attacking your house and killing everybody but you and then leaving you to swear eternal vengeance over the corpses of your parents? That's a bit disappointing." Normal shook his head. He'd hoped to have much better material to work with. He then brightened up. "Oh, well. Guess we have to make do with what we have. But I'll need a name for myself if I'm going to be your sidekick. Something short and snappy like Finch or Pluto or Guido or Sancho ..." Normal looked at Dick in expectation, as if waiting for Dick to conjure a name out of thin air.
To be continued ....
[1] Dick preferred to call them "customers". "Victims" had such a negative vibe, and he had enough negativity in his line of business already[4].
[2] Nobody knew what to do with middle age, which is quite possibly why mid-life crisis was invented.
[3] Most of the time, when Dick tried to come up with stuff, he came up with jack. But that's Dick for you.
[4] For some inexplicable reason, people just didn't seem to consider being robbed a positive thing.
