CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Assault and Battery; Friday at the Country Fair

Wednesday before the Fair rolled around, and Rose House was in a state of Chaos. Ambros decided that he was “in the way”, and slipped out the back to the garage: “I definitely need a new walking stick. I might as well get it done right now.”

An hour or two passed, with him hard at work.

Kim poked her head into the garage: “What’s up?”

He noticed her, and shut off the saber saw he’d been using. He pulled an earplug out and asked: “What’s that?”

“Oh. Earplugs.” She pointed back at the house: “We’re almost ready to head out.”

“Well, I’m about done with this. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

She blew him a kiss and went back inside.

He squeezed a rubber ‘foot’ one-quarter full of glue and seated it solidly onto the end of his new stick.

He swept up the sawdust and shavings and small bits of wood and leather that littered the floor of his very small workroom in Rose House’s detached garage: ‘Most of the room in here is food storage and random tools. Stuff that Marie and Luisa collected over the years.’

He stepped out of the garage and closed the door; he rattled the door to make sure it was secure.

He stepped into the center of the patio and set his feet in a fighting stance. He raised himself on the balls of his feet, ‘feeling’ the prosthetic leg as it mimicked his own. He sighed at the pain in the stump of his leg, where the prosthetic attached.

He closed his eyes, breathing deeply.

He held the new stick on the palms of his hands and looked it over: “I cut this sucker off the plum tree in the rose garden last fall, while I was putting the garden to bed for the winter. Nice and dry now...it planed nicely, and the curve is just right...this wrist guard is pretty subtle, but it will give me a bit of protection if I have to use this in self-defense...’

He took it in hand in the way of a sword, and swung it through a couple quick forms: ‘The prosthetic works...okay, I guess. I just hope I don’t have to fight, that’s all. One wouldn’t think the Country Fair was a place where a fight was waiting to happen...but one did happen to me there last year.’