V - Vonce

Blalach knew he couldn’t avoid the conversation with his father, though he desperately wanted to. With less than a week until his twelfth annum celebration, he knew the talk could happen any day. He was prepared, he figured, as well as he could be. Weeks of practicing in his mind during his sauntering walks between the farm school and home allowed him to be less nervous about the actual words he would say.

The waiting was torture. Blalach barely slept anymore. It couldn’t come soon enough, but he didn’t have the courage to bring it up on his own. When it finally came, his heart nearly exploded in his chest.

“My son. We need to talk about your apprenticeship,” his father, Kuplinn Lamersk, said when he reached home from school a mere five days before his celebration.

I figured it would start like this, Blalach thought. He couldn’t let his father charge over him in the conversation, so he blurted out the first thing that came to his mind.

“I think so, too.” Blalach paused to compose himself, but it did not work. “I know you have plans, but I want to make plans. And I want to be able to make my own decisions, father.” He rushed past where Kuplinn stood near the doorway and into the house. He needed to pace and wanted to do it out of view of the neighbors. He began a clockwise circuit of the front room.

“Father. I know you have told me all my life the important role you play in the city. How you grow the crop that makes rope, clothes, food, and building materials. You have told me my whole life how important it is.”

“Yes, son. I’m glad you heard me.”

“But I’m not sure it’s what I want for myself. I don’t think I can spend my life walking through the outflows of the city sewers even if it is the most important product — second most — that we have in Hatra.” He paused his circuit to look at his father.

Kuplinn stood leaning on the door frame. He shifted his weight and walked in the room at a casual pace. “Second?”

“Sure. You know. The abbies, of course. The doses of medicine are more important, I think.” Blalach reversed his rotation and circled the room in the opposite direction.

“Oh. I see.” Kuplinn sat in a chair near the door in a motion that was at once both smooth and firm.

“I mean, the vonce is what we’re good at, right? You are. You’re the best, father. Everyone says Kuplinn grows the best vonce, and I agree, but I just don’t know if I can do what you do. I’m . . . well I’m just pretty sure I’d fail you. Fail the city. It’s not just walking through poop-water all day that I don’t think is really . . . I mean. It’s not . . . mine, if you know what I mean.”

“Hmmm.” Kuplinn’s face held firm, no expression showing. “There is a secret, you know. To my success, I mean.”

“Sure! I know there is, but I don’t know that I can do it. I’m sure you would . . . you can teach anyone. I have watched you teach the hands. You . . . you are just the best at it.” Blalach paused to take a few rushed breaths and try to slow his now-racing heart.

“Thank you. The secret is really simple, and I know you can do it. I’ve seen you do it.” Kuplinn stretched the corner of his mouth into the smallest of grins.

“I just . . . wait. You have?” Blalach froze and turned toward his father.

“Sure. When you were small, I would take you out with me in a basket on my back. You would ride around with me. I’m not sure now which of us taught the other, actually.” He sat perfectly still.

“Ah. Okay, well that . . . it’s not the point.” Blalach began again in the clockwise circling of the rug that filled the middle of the medium-sized room. He walked a worn circle where his boots trod so many times that the fibers were mashed.

“Blalach. It’s okay. I think you taught me how to sing to the vonce. That’s the whole secret, you know.” Kuplinn smiled at his son.

Blalach stopped cold and stared with a slack jaw at his father. He grunted and squeaked a few sounds of disbelief. He fell back into a plush chair opposite his father. “But. How? You know it’s forbidden. You?”

“Don’t worry like that, son. Why could my crops grow so high and strong? I’m not the first to make vonce grass grow like this. You of all people know I’m no singer. The secret you taught me is living in the simple pleasure of the moment while I work, and to carry on by singing the song that you sung to me while I carried you around. It is one of my most happy memories.”

“I thought.” Blalach’s jaw opened and closed a few times. “But why tell me any of this now? No! Father, no. No. Stop.” He stood up from the chair and put his hands firmly on his hips with his elbows out. “Father. I’m not going to apprentice with you. I don’t love the vonce. I know it’s been good to us, as have the council for your success and your special, um, growing methods.”

Kuplinn let out a thick, rolling, thunderous laugh that went on for almost a minute. Blalach sat back down in his chair absorbing the information.

“Son. Listen. I wanted to talk with you about your apprenticeship because I pulled some of those council strings, and did some apprentice trading. Navier Muntik himself approved you leaving the vonce fields. You aren’t working with me next week after you celebrate your twelfth annum.” He rested his thick, calloused hands on the arms of his chair.

“I’m . . . not? Muntik? You mean . . .?”

“I heard you say you were interested in the technology at school. I worked it out for you to apprentice to the shopsmiths in Navier’s technology department.”

“What? Wait, no. You mean . . .” Blalach said, sinking deeper into the cushions. “I’m going to train to be a technologist?” A smile bloomed slowly on his face that seemed as if it would never stop. His breathing stopped for a few seconds, then accelerated to erupt in a loud hoot.

Kuplinn pulled himself up and stuck out his hands, one over the other, with his fingers hooked back toward him. Blalach sprung to his feet and clasped his father’s hands with hooked fingers, squeezing them tight. They pulled each other close and touched foreheads.

“It has been my honor to learn from you, son.” Kuplinn’s eyes were locked with Blalach’s, and tearing up.

“It has been my honor to learn from you, father.” He wept openly.

They released each other and hugged a moment.

“Come. Before you get ready to go, son, I need your help with one last harvest.”

“Ugh, really? You’re going to make me keep helping you?”

“I’m sure there is at least one more thing you can teach me, son.” He smiled and headed for the door.

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