On Wartime Housing. Louis Shalako.

730 square feet.

Louis Shalako

The new federal government of Canada is promoting home-building, and one aspect of the plan is pre-approved home designs.

There have been references to ‘war-time’ housing, which was built in large numbers and all across this country after WW II. Large numbers of service men and women were coming home from Europe and other theatres, and they needed two things. They needed housing, and they needed employment.

A large housing program served both needs, bearing in mind circumstances are different in the modern context. We have both a housing shortage, and a labour shortage. Funny thing is, there's no real shortage of money. Just look at the homes people are buying now, more importantly, look at the mega-homes that are being built.

By eliminating the basement, and putting the furnace, hot water tank, laundry tubs on the ground floor, you simply bump out the side of the kitchen and add a few more squares. You also save a big chunk of up-front money.

Young people could, in fact, afford a small starter home. The design, #50-13, seen above, stands at 730 sq. feet. My two-bedroom apartment is roughly equivalent. With pre-fabrication, the components relatively small, (for highway trucking), the longest elevation at 30', you could pump these out like so many hot rolls. You could sell these at $299,000.00, with the feds splitting the 10 % down payment, and a mortgage amortized over 25 years, at some rational rate. I’ll go three and a half percent compounded monthly.

All the interest has to do is to cover the costs of the program. Developers make their money by actually building the homes in a speedy and efficient manner. The faster you can build them, the better, and if you build it, they will come.

We have to start the conversation somewhere, after all.

All prospective owners would be subject to means testing. Essentially, are you poor enough to both need the program, but also, can you pay your own way insofar as you must—a very specific demographic group, largely consisting of what we might call ‘mature renters’, a group who might like to get out from under the stern eye of the landlord and maybe build a little wealth of their own, for, essentially, the exact same money.

The basic idea is that people could buy a house, on their own land, for $1,000.00 a month, of course on top of that would be municipal taxes, electricity, heat, water, and insurance and maintenance costs. The entire kit fits on a flatbed or inside a standard semi-trailer.

The kit might include all structural elements, and basic amenities like the furnace, hot water tank, bathtub, shower, fridge and stove, pipe for plumbing and rolls of wire and boxes of electrical components, bundles of shingles, stacks of drywall board, all of it packed into one or two long trailers. You can use the stock colours or upgrade at your own expense, however these are in no way ‘custom builds’. These buildings do not require marble floors and bronze countertops, and zirconium-encrusted platinum toilets a la the bourgeoisie.

We're building homes, not status symbols, or stroking the egos of the unrepentant hedonist.

Those people already have money, they already have their McMansions, if they have over-leveraged their credit portfolio, that is their problem and they can suffer the consequences of their own greed and ignorance, their lack of foresight. For all I care, let them rot or let them sell the his and hers Harleys to make next month's payment...but I digress.

Assuming services are on site to hook up to, the basic assembly is rather quick, finishing takes longer, and in some narratives, in the old 1 ½ story housing, the upstairs bedrooms might not have been finished, the basement, almost certainly not. Garages, privacy fences, decks and hot tubs can come later.

Actual plan from the era.

At any time, after the first five years, you could buy out the balance and own it free and clear. This allows for people to resell at a profit and pay off their debt to the Crown and the taxpayers. The initial covenant does not extend to the second buyer. They will pay something a little closer to a going rate.

After five years, the first owner has built up some minimal equity, been ‘forgiven’ the federal contribution to the down payment, and with a relatively stable housing market, the ‘going rate’ for a property of this nature probably has increased a nominal ten percent in value. Simply put, your new home value is at least, (and probably more than) $330,000.00. With payments, offset by interest, over five years, you probably have thirty grand, perhaps a little more of your own equity. If you sold right now, you have paid all monthly costs, but at least you get some if not all of your money back in terms of that $60,000.00 difference in home value.

(Thirty grand of your own and the increase in value combined. - ed.)

You ain’t going to get that in the rental market, are you—and now, perhaps, with a little in savings, with your personal circumstances now different, you might even go looking for something a little more up-market.

Okay, so the government and the taxpayers are not too interested in funding large-scale, tract housing with a bunch of ‘tiny homes’, eight by ten and with a hot-plate beside the door and a tiny chemical toilet in a box under the bed.

We are talking real homes, on perhaps a fairly narrow frontage, in order to maximize the impact of municipal services, including water, sewer, utilities like gas and power. I would suggest forty-five feet with no more than eighty or one hundred feet of depth. This allows for a one-car garage to be built at a later date, and a substantial yard with garden, play areas, etc. It’s a green space.

(The secondary or pass-on covenant, which is passed on to the next buyer, deals with issues like second dwellings, over-sized garages and other obnoxious uses. Human nature being what it is, this will have to be backed up by municipal zoning and ‘covenant’ enforcement bylaws. The financials are free market terms at this point. We would also like to see pure speculators kept out or penalized on subsequent sales. Call it 'capital gains' or something like that. Under the terms of this covenant, the owner must live in the dwelling. Buying one and then renting or leasing it out would be strictly prohibited.)

It is private property after five years. It is yours, free and clear, admittedly with a mortgage on it. In that sense, the right to private property and capitalistic concerns are acknowledged.

I don’t like concrete pads sitting right at grade level. I prefer a two-foot crawl space, this would be well insulated, but it also gives heating ducts and plumbing somewhere to go. It is not a living space and should not be treated as such.

What you want is a proper foundation below the frost line, a wooden deck with floor joists and the like. Construction is ‘stick-built’, but major components are done in a factory. With a floor plan of 30’ x 24’, that floor/deck is essentially three ‘panels’ of rectangular shape, each of which can fit on a semi-trailer. They’re all framed up, all you have to do is to drop them on the foundations and fasten them together. A note here. Some of the original designs were literally sitting on concrete blocks; which may, or may not have been set on footings below the frost line. However, in terms of the front wall or elevation, in terms of the factory-built model, the wall is all framed up, sheathed, insulated, electrical roughed in with coils of sufficient length sort of taped securely. Once the four walls are standing, trusses in place, plywood on the roof, windows and doors in, the wire can be pulled out, routed through the ceiling space to an electrical box in the utility area of the kitchen. Essentially, heat and plumbing are down and under, electrical goes up and over and back down, in my concept. A few bags of insulation for the ceilings, and voila! And it is time to move onto trimming and finishing out, perhaps carpet on plywood for the first few years, but it is a snug and viable home for those who qualify.

There is a new apartment building in town, and there are laundry facilities in each apartment. It’s a compact installation—each unit also has a separate meter for water and electricity, very much a trend in new apartment construction in this country. The rent is one thing, the monthly costs are another. In that sense, it is similar, and yet you own the end result.

To try and improve this design is to make it bigger, which seems fair enough. There would have to be a series of designs, all of them under $500,000.00, including a building lot and all service hookups. When you see the new builds in town here in Sarnia, Ontario, semi-detached and starting at $569,000.00, with a garage, a basement, a second floor, it shows what is possible using some imagination.

Another quick note, virtually none of these buildings are wheelchair or mobility accessible, which would require a single-floor design, with large doorways, ramps for access and much larger bathrooms, specially-designed kitchens for example.

Try putting one of these on its own lot and see what happens.

END

 

A Rational Plan forAffordable Housing.

Wartime Housing Report.

Approved Housing Designs for Ontario Region.

The Floor Plan of an Accessory Dwelling Unit.

What is an Accessible Home.

Here's one on a fair sized lot, $389,000.00

Louis Shalako has books and stories available from Amazon.

See his works onArtPal.

Thank you for reading.

 

 

 

On The Green Berets, and John Wayne as Reactionary. Louis Shalako.

Louis Shalako

Here’s a funny thing. John Wayne wasn’t acting. In the early days, he might have had to do some acting in order to become the role. Those were all westerns, and Mr. Wayne could ride a horse, he was from Texas. He enjoyed the outdoors, shooting, hunting and fishing for example. 

(If you ever see me on a horse, you can assume I am not only acting, but way out of my depth.)

It wasn’t a great leap of the imagination, when it came time for him to get in front of the camera. The man didn’t even have to change his shirt or pull on a set of cowboy boots. He was already dressed for the role, when he came walking in that front door. Once who John Wayne was, or became what he believed himself to be, once all of that had been defined, all he had to do was keep on keeping on. After that, all he ever did was to play himself.

Writers were tasked with writing a film, (or screenplay), and that much is true. It is also true that almost anyone might have been cast in some of the roles. The actual premise went a little something like this: what would John Wayne do, when confronted with a given situation. What would John Wayne do if he was a senior officer in the Green Berets. There is no acting here. The political and social commentary is all John Wayne, ladies and gentlemen.

A sort of cultural anachronism, the rah-rah patriotism, the Battle Hymn of the Republic kind of film. I reckon everyone in this film was a Republican, even David Janssen.

A film so bad, it's taken me three days to watch it and I actually like crummy old war movies. The Green Berets is a reactionary movie in the fullest sense. John Wayne was trying to project, or to correct a narrative, this at a time when there were student protests, journalists were investigating, that 24-hour news cycle was just coming on, with film literally flown home for the evening broadcasts. (It took about 48 hours to get a film back to the U.S., priority jet flight.) Congressional and Senate committees were inquiring into the conduct of the war. There was bad news all around from Vietnam. You can bet the pollsters were all over it, and politicians listen to the pollsters, don't they. Even the Viet Cong are Republicans in this film.

It's interesting to see Batjac Productions stock actors regurgitated all through the film. Most of them appeared in many a western produced by Batjac. I'm recognizing face after face. It strikes me that your politics had better be correct or you would never work with Mr. Wayne. He simply wouldn’t have you, no matter how suitable or how good you were in a role. That is, in a word, reactionary.

Over the years, many people have blamed micromanagement from the White House for the U.S. defeat. They’ve had fifty years to figure it out, and yet they still haven’t. Some have blamed Communist infiltration, paid demonstrators, (sound familiar?), professional agitators poisoning the minds of students. Some have blamed the news media for the loss of the war. The news media do not have the power to deploy battalions and institute military plans. Some have blamed General Westmoreland for fighting WW II tactics and strategies in unsuitable terrain and social conditions. Some have blamed Robert MacNamara’s focus on body counts, and some have blamed the corruption and incompetence of South Vietnamese political and military leadership. (Also, a capitalist leadership. But we'll try and ignore that. - ed.) It is also true that a strategic bombing offensive isn't very effective against mud, hills and villages of straw huts, and when the major city and port of the enemy are off limits. 

Very few acknowledge the fact that the war was unwinnable before the U.S. ever got involved. 

The Japanese found that out. The French found that out at Dien Bien Phu. The Chinese have found out, both before, and since, that time period. The lessons were there, they were simply ignored. The lessons are still being ignored.

Ho Chi Minh, a key figure in Vietnamese history, attended the 1919 Versailles Peace Conference in Paris, hoping to seek recognition and support for Vietnamese independence from France. He used the platform to deliver an eight-point petition demanding equal rights and autonomy for Indochina. While he hoped to meet with President Woodrow Wilson, he was ultimately unsuccessful and did not secure the support he sought. (AI overview)

One of the more obvious lessons here. A motivated and ideologically-pure entity will prevail over a decadent and hedonistic entity by virtue of discipline and energy.

Communism was scary shit to the America of the time, and that still holds true today, even though true communism has never been successful. The idea of Marxist-Leninist communism is essentially dead. In that sense, it is the word that holds power and not the reality. This is why so many Americans foam at the mouth at the word socialism.

More from our AI overview:

However, at the time of the Versailles Conference, Hồ Chí Minh was committed to a socialist program. While the conference was ongoing, Nguyễn Ái Quốc was already delivering speeches on the prospects of Bolshevism in Asia and was attempting to persuade French socialists to join Lenin's Communist International.

That is also one of the lessons, and it is also why when reactionaries talk about socialism, they also point to places like Venezuela, China, North Korea. Which may have communist or socialist overtones, but are anything but benevolent to the common people.

They are authoritarian dictatorships, extractive, exploitative, and anything but benign. They are not only corrupt, from the top down in the usual fashion, but also incompetent. They are, in fact, the antithesis of socialism.

***

Nietzsche believed that a man's belief about himself is not a fixed entity, but rather a product of his own creation and interpretation of his existence. He argued that individuals must "become who they are" by cultivating their unique virtues and facing the challenges of life head-on. This process involves self-discovery, self-reflection, and a constant striving for self-mastery. (AI overview)

In a sense, John Wayne was self-invented. Whether we agree with his political or social views or not, that was one hell of an achievement, ladies and gentlemen. I'm in the process of doing something very much like that myself.

It's crazy enough, it might just work.

Others have done it before.

END

The Green Berets. A John Wayne film and more.

John Wayne.

Batjac Productions. (Wiki)

Battle Hymn of the Republic, sung, ironically enough, by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

Louis Shalako has books and stories on Google Play.

See his works on Fine Art America.

Thank you for reading.

 

 

 

Zen, and the Manly Art of Mountain Bike Maintenance. Louis Shalako.

 

Borrowed image, for the purposes of training and other scholarly purposes.

Louis Shalako

Zen, and the Manly Art of Mountain Bike Maintenance.

It really does something for the male psyche to take something apart and put it back together again. And it works better than it did before.

There is the challenge of manual dexterity, there is the psychological component. It is a mental challenge as much as anything, a test of character.

And I do want to ride that bike. I could live without creaks and groans from the bottom end, and the chain skipping, right about when I need full power to get across a busy street.

Okay, so I had already disassembled the hub of the front wheel of the Trek 3700, 2.5” oversize frame mountain bike, cleaned everything, greased it with wheel bearing lubricant, and reassembled it.

#men

I had the rear wheel of the mountain bike on the table, the shaft and the bearings and the gears removed. With a dab of grease on the end of a small screwdriver, I had set eight out of nine 3/16" ball bearings into the race when the ninth went a little too far, now it's stuck in the middle of the hollow part of the wheel hub. The grease acts as a kind of glue, which has its advantages and its disadvantages. I had a hell of a time getting that out. I gave it up for a while, sat in the living room, and let the dull roar from the lower back simmer down. I’ve done this job before, in fact I have changed a bent shaft after dropping off a curb at a relatively low speed.

The front wheel has shocks, the rear wheel does not.

I might have been a little rough with it.

The problem was no clearance for that last ball, and yet I have counted those little steel balls several times. So, I used the tip of the screwdriver and shoved the balls in their race a bit to the left and a bit to the right. Having finally recovered aforesaid ball, I managed to get that one in. Now it's time to flip the wheel and try the other side, which is easier because it's just like both sides of the front wheel—no inset, deep in a hollow of the gear-set, where I can't see a damned thing. Nine balls in there, nicely set in nice, fresh wheel bearing lubricant, to use a technical term. Carefully sliding the gears on their shaft in from the right side, the tip of the threaded axle shaft came out the left side without disturbing the embedded balls on that side. Now, all I had to do was to screw in the left side cone and the bearings at least are complete. Tomorrow, I will put that back on the bike and install the front and rear brake pads. And I am at peace.

***

So. The front brakes were good—maybe even a little too good. The rear brakes were shit, which means you are depending on those front brakes. Ergo, I swapped the front pads for the rear pads and vice versa. There are some little adjustment screws on the cables, and I could mess with them as well.

I'm toying with the idea of pulling the main crank and cleaning that out. That one will take a good-sized cold chisel and a hammer, as I don’t have a gear puller. A little WD-40 soaking overnight might help, otherwise we might just leave that one for another day.

***

The black plastic gears described in the text are upper left. Then there are the two plates that hold them together.

This is the derailleur of my Trek mountain bike. I have pulled (19), which is a black plastic gear, with two flanged washers, and a stainless steel insert. I sprayed them with WD-40 and began cleaning, in fact scraping with a small screwdriver. This minor assembly is held in position by a hex-drive, countersunk machine bolt. Number 17 will be essentially the same, bear in mind that the chain went behind 19, it is 'in front' of 17. As far as the scraping went, there were something like fourteen years of dirt and grease on those gears, or, for about as long as have I owned this bike; or ever since I got into this three-floor walk-up in the central city. At some point I will drag the bike down three flights and give it a go in the real world. In the meantime, it's an interesting project. Not so much mechanical aptitude, but psychological attitude. It's a mental challenge. I do a little bit every day, watch Youtube tutorials when necessary, and the job will get done. In that sense, the story took a few days to write. First I had to get the hands dirty and figure this shit out…

#zen

So, if you think about it, 17 comes out using the same countersunk machine bolt or screw.

The metal pressed part, 18, will actually rotate out of the way in order to pull the gear.

Okay, I've pulled gear 17 and will proceed to clean that up and put it back in.

#bicycles

It's the upper gear in the derailleur.

***

I had to take it apart and put it together at least three or four times, and yet there is really only one way to get the chain through the derailleur. I even mentioned in a previous paragraph, the chain goes 'behind' the lower black plastic gear, and 'in front' of the upper gear. (It's not like I didn't know that.) I had the bike upside down, and of course the thing is spring loaded, you've got the chain off the front sprockets, and it's in the retracted position. I'm half bent over and my glasses are hanging off the nose. I have the little gear in one hand, the machine screw in the other hand, along with the hex key, and I was using my extreme manual dexterity, all five fingers and very large hands, just to align the front and back parts of the assembly, all the while squeezing the gear in and not losing the inside washer for the tenth time. You have to do all of this while pulling outwards and extending the derailleur…a third hand is what you need, in other words. Now all you got to do is get the screw through the hole...

The author's machine

So, I did the front wheel one day, the rear wheel the next. I did the bottom gear on the derailleur one day, and the upper gear the next.

I reckon before taking that down and trying it out, we’ll go over it in terms of lubricating the chain, anywhere there is a rotating part, a bearing, a bushing, anything that pivots. It cannot help but to be better than it was before.

One thing at a time, right.

 

END

 

Louis has books and stories available from Google Play.

See his works on ArtPal.

Here he is on Bluesky.

 

How to Silence Common Bike Noises.

How to Grease Your Bearings.

 

Thank you for reading.

 

Bogus Social Policy and the Price of Ignorance. Louis Shalako.

iStock.

Louis Shalako 

Bogus Social Policy and the Price of Ignorance.

 

I hate it when people ask me for spare change in front of a business, a store, a bank. I hate it even more, when all I want is a twenty dollar bill so I can go to work—and there are three fucking crackheads, all lined up in a row, using the little ledges under the ATMs in order to heat up their little rocks on tinfoil and sniffing that up their little plastic tubes.

I hate it even more, when one of the twitchier ones is up and active, and gets in behind me when I’m trying to use the machine…that one brings out my own natural aggression.

Bear in mind, every fucking one of them has a knife, a pellet pistol, a spring-loaded baton, brass knuckles…hopefully you get my point—and not one of theirs, right in the kidneys.

It’s so much better when they’re down on their blankets, muttering to God and themselves, invisible things that only they can see, and at least I can keep an eye on them.

Lately, the bank lobby is unlocked at 8:30 a.m. The bank itself opens at 9:30, (although not Sundays). At one time the lobby was open all night, and you could get cash 24-7. For a while, they were opening up at 6:00 a.m., but the homeless would congregate there as soon as the doors were unlocked. It gave them three and a half hours to warm up, or just get out of the rain. Now, there's a security guard there, at least in the morning hours.

The homeless numbers exploded due in large part to bogus Ontario social policy, which includes an appalling welfare regime, a lack of rent control, especially on units which become vacant in the older buildings, and punitive guidelines which means two persons on disability or welfare who cohabit an apartment must give up a good chunk of the so-called housing portion of their benefit. And of course, the rent is simply too high for one person to manage it on their own.

I have in fact been refused tenancy 'because you don't make enough income', even though I passed the credit check, and even though I'd been paying rent for years at another location. That rent wasn't too far off the $800.00/month in the new place. $800.00 per month sounds damned cheap these days, with housing costs having skyrocketed. My mistake was to tell them I was on ODSP—a typical case of someone thinking they're just being honest, and somehow cutting off their own nose. I should have just said I was self-employed; and semi-retired, uh, from a good factory job down in Chemical Valley. At the time, I was a little too young to claim to be a senior citizen. Just for the record, if someone can write a cheque for first and last month’s rent, and it doesn’t bounce, what in the hell is your problem, anyways? And if it does bounce, you are within your rights to refuse the application.

Even now, there are no plans in the Ontario government to raise the rates, even though the results of their policy are all too clear, neither is there any great rush to build affordable, geared-to-income units for our most vulnerable.

In the building where I live, the landlord began locking the outer lobby door at 7 p.m. in the evening, and unlocking again at 7 a.m. in the morning—this again requires more labour, whether one of their own employees or a private security guard. This was due to a small number of incidents of homeless people camping in the outer lobby overnight.

They do it for six months of the winter.

The Contradictions.

Imagine telling a landlord, ‘don’t worry, we’ll be going down to the Salvation Army once a month and applying for rent assistance’, or ‘don’t worry, we’ll be applying to the county, the province, the federal government for all related housing assistance programs’.

Landlord: So, you can’t pay the rent. And you still expect me to let you in…huh.

The bougies can never see the contradictions, funny thing is, they’re the ones that wrote them in the first place.

Homeless numbers were growing even before the pandemic. When something like one-third of the work force was sent home for months and months, naturally, some of them became homeless. CERB, the emergency benefit of $2,000.00/month, simply wasn't enough for some households to survive a long period of unemployment. My point is that at least some of our homeless must have been employed at some point in the past, to the extent that they could, effectively, pay the rent. And when a unit becomes vacant, in the absence of rent controls, the sky is the limit in terms of raising the rent. Also, with a million new Canadians coming in the door in a very short time, housing stocks were clearly going to be under strong pricing pressures. This is where both federal and provincial governments come in, in fact Quebec and Ontario were fighting over quota, in the sense that immigration brings investment, skills, even just warm bodies for relatively unskilled labour to a province or region.

These folks weren't immediately grabbing upscale housing. No, they were grabbing affordable housing...

As for the government(s).

They wanted to have their cake and eat it too. The price of that ignorance, was our most vulnerable going to the wall, ladies and gentlemen.

Here in the Sarnia area, a few new buildings have gone up. There is the Addison, on London Road, there are two new buildings at the old Sarnia General Hospital site, and two fairly large buildings on Venetian Blvd. in Point Edward. This is a municipality bounded on three sides by Sarnia. Then there are public housing projects on Maxwell Street and an indigenous one on Confederation Street. These are nearing completion and staff are combing through the (nine-year) waiting list in the case of the Maxwell St. project. Whether private or publicly-funded projects, these will only take so much steam out of our local housing bubble.

...what the bougies see in their heads when they talk about 'affordable' housing...

***

It doesn't exactly help when local realtors insist on continuing to blow hot air into that balloon, neither does it help when one considers what the bougies see in the privacy of their own heads when they talk about housing...

In one Parthian shot, I would ask Canadian journalists the following question. If, as is so often implied in stories about homelessness in Canada, the sole and only cause of homelessness and poverty is #mental_health_addictions, (all one word in their own minds), how is it that they can never seem to qualify for a disability pension, for example the Ontario Disability Support Program?

No, they're stuck on the street, where they are told they must save up first and last, on two or three hundred dollars total income per month, for an apartment they couldn't afford in the first place.

Or does that question seem impertinent.

Or maybe it's just one more contradiction.

END

Mark Carney makes Announcement on Housing. (CBC, Mar. 31/25)

Approvals are Nothing. Shovels in the Ground Are Everything.

In Depth: The New Landlord.

Tiny Homes for the Homeless. The Big Myth.

Louis Shalako has books and stories available from Amazon.

See his works on ArtPal.

Thank you for reading.

 

 

 

 

 

Dead Reckoning, Chapter Thirty-Two. An Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery #10. Louis Shalako.

Louis Shalako

With the Beretta tucked into the back of his belt, hidden by the long shirt-tails, and keeping his left side turned to them in what must appear an odd move, he moved forward three or four metres. It kept them thinking. He kept those hands up, and that’s all they needed to see. He needed to get well clear of the door, and to divide their attention. The MAB, standard issue service pistol on his right hip, the flap pulled well up and over, and tucked in behind the belt, safety off, would be invisible…hopefully. He stopped, staring off into the woods, puffing contentedly on the cigar.

“Hello? Hello? Is there anybody out there—”

“All right asshole, we’re over here—what an idiot.”

“We’re not here for silly fucking mind-games.” Another voice, separate and distinct.

There were four or five of them, and then there was Capucine, still clutching her basket. Two men had her, firmly held by the upper arms, he could see that much out of his peripheral vision.

He stopped, and turned to his left to face them.

“Life is a game. There are no rules.” He took another left-handed puff and blew smoke in their direction.

They kind of froze when they saw that 7.65-millimetre MAB hanging there in a brown leather holster.

He spat the cigar out, off to one side.

“Fuck you, all of you, and all of the God-damned fucking horses you rode in on…”

“Fuck off, wise guy—I’ll shoot the girl right now if that’s what you want.”

“Hey. Monsieur Blue Eyes. How’s the fishing these days, or were you just trolling for queers.”

The man’s mouth dropped and his eyes bugged out at that one—but this was their friend from the riverbank, sure as hell…

Éliott stared at them, wordless, then engaging the eyes of Capucine. He winked, and the one holding her stared in amazement. His face was turning red. She gave him the slightest of nods and her eyes darted back and forth…thinking it through, measuring distances, calculating the odds here and there…her head cocked a little and she was right back on him.

There were the four toughs and a smaller man, older, in a sleek grey suit.

That would be the boss.

“Maintenon’s not here. Which one of you fucking cocksuckers is left-handed. I will trade you this old hermit that lives here—for that man. You can keep the girl, she don’t mean nothing to me.” He glared at them. “Yeah, I figure it was a left-handed piece of shit that hit that old man on the head, with a big fucking stinking rock that you picked up, right there on the trail. Cocksucker. Right by that log on the riverbank. I want that miserable, low-life piece of shit.”

Éliott made a couple of funny little signs. They knew she was deaf all right, and possibly didn’t see much harm in it—not understanding the significance of it all. Pissed-off as they were. It was like they just couldn’t take it seriously. They were after Maintenon—not him. First, he crossed his hands across his chest, and then put them out wide, just like the fucking Pope. The symbol for love. Then he held up the right hand, palm facing her, index finger pointing straight up. He stuck out his thumb, sideways, then he lifted the pinky finger…the letters I, L and Y. I-L-Y—I love you. He waggled the little finger, just so she got it.

“It’s okay. I’m just letting the girl know everything’s going to be all right—”

She stared, open mouthed as the scumbags looked on in sardonic amusement. They looked at each other, grinning, fools that they were. Tears popped out in those beautiful eyes, and she nodded.

Both hands up and in front again, he closed his fists and then spread his fingers—drop.

Just…drop. And just like all the others, her eyes were on that gun on his belt, and right back up again...

Capucine went limp, half-hauling the stupid bastard down with her, and, just at that exact same second the hermit stepped out of the doorway, shotgun leveled and cocked on the left side barrel. His finger was on the trigger and the thumb right there by the right-side hammer.

Éliott’s right hand, already dropping, slapped leather about the same time they all stopped, turned to gape, to think, and then try and decide what to do with their fucking guns, now that there were two targets, and with the girl kicking up trouble. What were they doing, waiting for instructions…too fucking late, Monsieur.

He shot the one half-standing over Capucine as she rolled and twirled her legs and brought him down anyways. It looked like he’d gotten that one right in the temple and he wasn’t getting up. The one almost directly behind them, his own vision and attention suddenly obscured and diverted, stepping back quickly and trying not to get entangled, flinched about the time the hermit’s shotgun boomed, hopefully taking the one on the farthest left. Éliott had already pulled the trigger on this one. Another hit, right in the guts. He went down, clutching his middle, eyes wide and horrified and staring straight into his own.

He was screaming bloody murder and good for him…

There were a couple of reflexive pistol shots, coming in their direction but they missed, spanking off the ground into whining richochets…

The shotgun boomed again, there was a lot of yelling and now the sound of dogs barking off in the distance. Éliott found the little man in a grey suit through all the smoke and carnage. It was the fog of war, and he lined up on a running target. He squeezed off shot after shot until the fucker went down, sliding along face down until he hit the base of a small tree. One more squeeze and she just clicked. He dropped the weapon and pulled the other one. There might have been a little twitch or two, but the man in the grey suit was definitely down.

Smirnov down after five shots in the back.

Capucine was up on her feet in an instant, eyes blazing at Éliott in one quick flash, and then she was gone, bounding away like a fucking rabbit.

Someone was yelling and fucking clapping…clapping? Dropping into a crouch, he spun to the right, both hands on the weapon. There were people in the woods.

“…don’t shoot! Éliott. Hold fire! Hold fire. It’s me! It’s Hubert! It’s Alphonse and there’s another officer…Constable Garnier.” They were up and crashing through the underbrush. “Hold fire! Hold your fire!”

The hermit, behind, was reloading, hands shaking all over the place in sheer excitement, or sure as shooting…he would have fired already. Two hot shell-casings lay, still smoking on the ground at his feet.

He was cussing and groaning something awful. A fresh shell dropped and he stooped to scrabble at it.

“Fuck.”

“Hold on, sir. They’re friends of mine.” But there were more people coming up the trail, and the dogs were much closer now…just around the next corner. “You okay with that thing?”

The hermit nodded grimly, snapping her shut and cocking one barrel…one at a time, that’s the way.

“Bring ‘em on, partner.”

And there they were, five or six of them, fucking big ugly dogs, straining at the leash and being rather strenuously held back by men in the blue uniforms of the police.

“Hold fire! Hold fire!”

That sure sounded good from where he was standing.

He heaved a big breath, and then another—

Thank God.

Now, the only question was what had happened to Capucine. She sure as hell wasn’t with these guys.

There were five bodies lying around in some state of disarray. They couldn’t all be dead, or so he thought, although the one guy had gone real quiet. His eyes were still open and he moaned and groaned, flat on his back. With a little luck, they might even have one or two left to talk. He put the gun up as the local cops arrived and the three Paris detectives waded through chest-high weeds and stumbled over rocks and berry-canes as they picked their way down the slope. He bent and picked up his own gun. Pulling the clip, he reloaded, also taking a quick look to make sure the tip of the barrel wasn’t clogged with good old topsoil.

Now, it was all over bar the shouting.

Maybe.

Hubert got there first.

“That was a beautiful thing to see—just beautiful.”

This was one report he would enjoy writing.

“Nice shooting, young man.” Alphonse patted him on the back. “You might want to go after that girl, Éliott.”

Éliott nodded, eyeing the new guy, but it was only to be expected. No one was irreplaceable, after all.

“Good morning, detective. I’m Garnier—” He took a good look around. “Nice work, incidentally.”

Éliott grunted in sheer relief.

“Thank you, thank you very much—”

“We’d better check these bodies. Secure those weapons.” Showing his identification, Garnier grabbed a shoulder and went off with one of the locals to do just that.

As for the hermit, he’d taken one look at the descending crowd and retreated back into his hidey-hole; with the door bolted and the curtains closed.

“If that wasn’t Gilles, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.”

“Here.” He handed off the hermit’s Beretta to Alphonse. “Want to make a bet? I’ll give you ten to one, that this weapon is registered to the Inspector.”

“Oh—oh.”

“…you might want to get these damned dogs out of here, or you’ll never get him out of there.”

Éliott could only give the barest of explanations, and then he was off, sprinting down that trail after Capucine.

 

***

érotisme et transgression

Well, she wasn’t at home. The place was locked up and clearly her mother and any other family members were out. It was like he knew virtually nothing about her. She might have locked herself in. He took a look behind the house, and there didn’t seem to be too many bicycles around. With no idea of whether she had friends or relatives nearby, he set off down the road to the village. Banging on doors and windows wasn’t going to do much good if she was still in there, yet he rather doubted it.

It was going to be a hot day after all—

He’d run out of steam but he could still walk. The ankles were still tender, even now.

He hadn’t gotten more than a few hundred metres down the road when a big black car pulled up alongside.

The passenger side window was open and Alphonse was alone in the car.

“Come on, boy, hop in. I’ll give you a ride.”

The vehicle stopped and Éliott climbed in.

“Not at home, eh?”

He shook his head.

“No. I don’t think so.”

“We’ll find her…somewhere.”

“Yes.”

“I doubt if she’ll go to the police station. They’re saying she blew right through them.  One guy fell down trying to get out of the way. It’s a good thing he managed to hang onto the dog, or she’d still be running. Or maybe treed somewhere. She just jumped right over him and kept on going…” He looked over at Éliott. “I understand she has a few ribbons for track and field. Back in high school, you know.”

“Huh.”

Their eyes met.

“Why don’t we try the Church? Wouldn’t surprise me, you know.”

Éliott nodded, but surely, someone around here would have seen her.

It was as good a place to start as any.

 

***

Alphonse had stayed in the car.

A bicycle leaned up against the wall, just beside the steps out front.

Éliott opened up the door to the fine old church and saw a forlorn figure, right side, right up in the front row. She was kneeling at the end of the pew, hands in the classic position.

It was her.

Head down, in prayer, of course she wouldn’t hear the door. The place wasn’t real big. Just then, the door of the confessional booth opened and an elderly woman in a veil came out, clutching her purse and adjusting her hat, glancing incuriously at him on the way past. The door on the other side opened and the priest came out, stopping at the sight of him.

Seeing a stranger in his church, and knowing a little or maybe even a lot about the girl, he came and stood protectively at the head of the centre aisle. All set to provide passive, non-violent resistance or something like that—

The shepherd of his flock.

“Good morning, sir. Welcome. Was there something I can help you with—”

“It’s all right Father.” Éliott genuflected and did the blessing, crossing himself with a little dab of the Holy Water. “I’m Detective Éliott LeBeaux of the Sûreté. I was just wondering. How much does a marriage license cost around here, anyways?”

The priest relaxed. He nodded and smiled.

“Normally, about fifteen francs. In this case, we might be happy enough to waive the fee.” He coughed, reached over and touched Capucine on the shoulder, seemingly oblivious to all around her, eyes closed and lips moving silently. “You, ah—you might want to ask the young lady, first.”

She straightened up, saw the Father, and also, that he was intent on something else.

She looked around.

“Éliott!” In something less than a couple of heartbeats, she was up from the pew and into his arms, which had closed around the girl in something that was both beautiful and natural.

They had eyes only for each other, although the world still turned around them…

Whatever it was, it was as big as all of life—and death, and beyond.

It was—love.

And that was about all anyone could ever really say.

The Father gave his head a little shake. He gave a little nod and fought back a smile.

Turning to the altar, he bobbed and made the Sign of the Cross.

Turning again, he engaged Éliott through the poor guy’s watering eyes.

“There are days like this, when I just love my job.” He glanced up at the Cross in the wall. “Anyways, whenever you beautiful young people are ready, I shall be in my office.”

Turning, with a little swish from the vestments, he headed for a narrow door off to the side.

He stopped and looked back.

“I'll tell you what. I'll pay the fee myself. Just this once.” He smiled. “Bless you, my children.”

And then he was gone.

 

 

The End

 

Previous.

Previous.

Chapter One, Scene One.

Chapter One, Scene Two.

Chapter Two.

Chapter Three.

Chapter Four.

Chapter Five.

Chapter Six.

Chapter Seven.

Chapter Eight.

Chapter Nine.

Chapter Ten.

Chapter Eleven.

Chapter Twelve.

Chapter Thirteen.

Chapter Fourteen.

Chapter Fifteen.

Chapter Sixteen.

Chapter Seventeen.

Chapter Eighteen.

Chapter Nineteen.

Chapter Twenty.

Chapter Twenty-One.

Chapter Twenty-Two.

"...thank you...thank you very much."

Chapter Twenty-Three.

Chapter Twenty-Four.

Chapter Twenty-Five.

Chapter Twenty-Six.

Chapter Twenty-Seven.

Chapter Twenty-Eight.

Chapter Twenty-Nine.

Chapter Thirty.

 

Real Change is Incremental.

Louis has books and stories available from Google Play.

 

 

Thank you for reading.

 

 

 

Real Change is Incremental.

Louis has books and stories available from Google Play.

 

 

Thank you for reading.