A small part of the granite wall of the high cave that Gos lived in and suffered in and survived in all those years ago can yet be seen. But it’s not easy to find and it’s difficult to get to. Even solid rock yields to time.
And the daily fight to survive that once so desperately engaged Gos, was nothing in the rushing torrent of time, time that sweeps us all away as dust, or to a higher destiny. Still, while we live our short lives, the work of daily survival becomes paramount:
A Business Trip
Vos’s father took the lad along on a business trip to the city. Two days of non- stop discomfort ensued, for parent, Mos, because Vos wanted to study everything he laid eyes on; he was as curious as a thousand cats. Vos, while loving every minute of the outing, was a monumental nuisance to his dad. At home again, Mos collapsed into an armchair and spilled out his story to wife, Kossie. “I love the little guy like you do, Kossie, but he’s so toxically fanatical about how everything works that he can’t keep his hands to himself; there’s nothing safe when he’s around.
“For the trip to the city, as you know, we called Taxi Debbie. By the time we reached the train depot, Vos had detached the window winder, taken the ashtray apart and managed to lose the cigarette lighter. He said he had been trying to fix things. Debbie said she understood and not to worry.
“I had no idea how many things could come loose from their moorings. Vos turned, screwed, yanked and rattled at everything in reach. I was tired out from stopping him and we weren’t even on the train platform yet. And Vos had to investigate every piece of luggage he could get at and fiddle with and read the labels out loud; I did nothing but apologize to people.
“It got worse as the train headed for the city. If Vos stopped messing with everything he could reach it was to read signs, mile posts and advertising posters in a loud voice but with the wrong pronunciation. Our compartment had seating for eight, but we had it to ourselves before we reached Lurg.
“Right after we emerged on the street in the city, Vos yelled that he’d ‘seen that yellow taxi about six times.’ When I told him that yellow taxis are in the city by the hundred, no way was he embarrassed; instead, he set about counting yellow taxis in a loud, clear voice.”
Kossie understood. “I know how it is,” she groaned, “last week, he dug a trench across the front lawn, starting at the faucet. I asked him why he did it, but all he would say was that he wondered where the water came from. I helped him refill the trench to avoid a fuss. Once you got back from work. A few years ago, I was constantly muttering at him to leave ladies’ handbags alone. If I took my eyes off him, he’d pick up some unguarded purse, remove some item from it and ask me what it was. Follow-up questions too. Thank Heavens he left off doing that.”
There was silence in the room for a few minutes, then Mos said that he’d been agonizing over what to do about Vos’s ongoing education. “I hope you’ll agree, Kossie, but I think we should encourage Vos to take on an apprenticeship once he finishes high school. He’s such a hands-on, hyper- active blighter that a long tertiary course wouldn’t work for him or anyone else.”
That’s how Vos became a plumber and went into business for himself, right there in town, a pleasant, personable young man; much respected. No drippy tap or leaky pipe was safe when Vos was about; he rendered plumbing services of every description with the utmost skill and competence.
Years Later
Bad Butcher, Les Diamond, and plumber, Vos, had been friends for a long time, all the way back to when Les opened his butcher shop on Main Street and Vos was beginning in the plumbing business. Neither of them had much money in those days, but their energy and enthusiasm more than compensated.
Early Saturday morning, Les was busy trimming fat off big red steaks and arranging them on a white enamel tray ready for the window display. And a colorful, appetizing display it was, too: pork slabs, legs of lamb, chops and neat trays of pure white lard. And not a fly to be seen in the whole place. Vos came in the rear door of the premises though it was not yet open for business. “Hey Vos!” called Les, without looking up, “you here to check out my plumbing system again? It’s great that you do this for me because I’m hopeless with that sort of thing.”
Vos, in those beginning days, had done everything needed to change an old dress shop into a clean, efficient butchery. What Les did know was that everything Vos did, he did wonderfully well. “Twenty years ago,” he thought, “I bought this place; had no money except a deposit. This young Vos guy, had no money either. I didn’t know him from Adam, but he wanted to help get the place ready for business, (“just for the hell of it,” he said.)
Ever since, he has made the shop his baby. “Yer could have floored me when I saw how much work had to be done,” thought Les, “but Vos got right into it; he knew what to do and he was mad keen to do it just right. The whole of the floor had to be broken out. The pipes, cast iron the lot, jointed with lead, four inch diameter. Instead of bends, under the new concrete, he put sealed concrete pits with shaped floors in the pits so nothing like a blockage has happened, not even once and that’s saying a lot in this greasy butcher shop environment. The pipes have a one in 40 slope like it says in the regulations. Finally, he built me a sealed grease trap, to prevent the town sewer getting blocked up with fat, which hardens once it cools down. The plumbing inspector, Billy Riverside, said it was the best setup he’d seen. And he took photographs and wrote about it for the state Plummer’s Association magazine, which attracted other butchers to come look the place over. “
Thus, Les was proud of his shop and stayed close friends with Vos who said he’d showed up early this particular day to look over the system and check for leaky valves and that sort of thing, because he was planning an absence.
Leaning against the counter as Les worked, he continued; “Well, Les,” he said, “as a little kid, I wondered about everything I heard or saw. It fascinated me that things worked the way they did. Everyone yelled at me to leave things alone. They all said I was a nuisance, fiddling and pulling at stuff and trying to take it apart. When I started in high school, I was in Mr Pedler’s science class. The very first day, I knew this was for me. I pored over physics, chemistry and mathematics, and everything related to it.
The first morning, Mr Pedler took our class out to the playground where there was a teeter totter. He carried two buckets and put them each end of the board and moved them a little bit till the board was exactly horizontal. Then he sent a couple of us to cart water, some cold, some hot, from the lab. He yelled at us a bit, to silence the wise cracking types, before guiding us to very carefully fill the buckets precisely full, one with cold water, the other with hot water. The bucket with the hot water went up and the bucket with the cold water went down. Then, Mr Pedler spoke very sternly and seriously: ‘Never forget what you just saw. What’s true with physics is true in this little class and on the most distant star in the galaxy.’ I’ve never forgotten that introduction to physics.” When I started work as a plumber, I learned to relate the schoolwork with on-the-job physical things. So, you see, my daily work seemed always an extension of what I’d studied and wondered about.”
“There’s something else,” said Vos, “I’ll be away for six months. I’ve contracted with a drilling company. They are in the area, prospecting for ground water. Pipes galore to look after. There’ll be constant moving about and camping out. The farmers are desperate now that the drought has persisted so long. But my business here in town will stay open. Young Jacob can attend to emergencies and routine jobs. Margherita in the office knows the stock and sales, so all should be well. If you think of it, remind Constable Frank about me being away, so he’ll keep an eye on my place at night.
“And tell Uncle Alf where I am, and that I’ll come Saturday mornings when I get back. The folk who come here to talk and hang out owe a lot to Alf for the sensible way he manages to turn what is just a bunch of customers waiting to pick up a meat parcel, into a special group conversation. There should be more of it. Yet, Mabel complains to the other women. And, I’ll bet she squawks a bunch at poor uncle Alf at home.”
Six Months Later - Saturday Morning Again
Nine customers were standing round chatting and waiting to give their meat orders. A few seconds elapsed before anyone recognized Vos who entered quietly. He was much thinner, but as brown as rust and fitter looking than ever, and he wore strange clothing. Yet what stood out more than anything else was a bright, excited demeanor. Everyone was keen to be updated on what had been going on with Vos while he worked with the drilling crew, so he shushed the group and spoke up: “The pipe maintenance contract was but a small part of working with the drilling crew; my instinct was to connect with all sorts of drillers of the earth. I felt that I’d gain access to a fraternity of people connected to all sorts of drilling projects, shallow and deep, local, national and international. I know what you’ll be thinking. Like, big deal, what’s so great about making holes in the ground? Well, rocks don’t lie; they bear stern and true witness to earth’s past, millions upon millions of years of earth’s history, and near-recent history as well.
“And the engineers who drill are connected to scientists who study drill cores and investigate ways of deriving more and more information. All this was new to me; I started with a feeling of excitement. That’s all. I have learned from people who learned from other people, who move from project to project and from lab to lab and write in journals which they read and study relentlessly.
“Drilling goes on every day, on land, on ocean floors, through, perhaps, more than a mile depth of ice, and in locations from the poles to the equator.
Marvelous new sensitive tests correlate depth with time and temperature and gas content, and dust that has ever floated in the air through time immemorial. In short, these champions write strictly, compliantly with the inviolate laws that mandate how everything work, how things work in our kitchens, how things work on our streets, how things work on our planet, how things work across the Milky Way and throughout the heavens. For my part, I have a belief that I’m meant to be involved, that I am fulfilling an epochal role, crafted for me a very long time ago.
Hear me next Saturday, and leave with your spine half numb and a renewed sense of revelation about what the universe is working at, magically and wonderfully, for the future of we humans.”
With that, Vos left the shop, leaving butcher Les Diamond and his nine customers all very much astonished and sobered and with a tense anticipation for the following Saturday’s learning.
End of Part Two