Ferret Girl Ch. 01

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A day later, Kate was in the lounge again when she noticed the atmosphere change subtly. There were only three of the crew there at the time, but Kate noticed it when they all glanced at her for a moment. Sure enough, the man was back, but this time, he was looking penitent.

"I'm sorry for the way that I've behaved to you," he said.

Kate ignored him and bought herself another beer. She brought it back to her table and sat down.

"May I sit down?" he asked.

"No," she replied and looked the other way.

"Look, I'm trying to apologize to you," he said, "I want to thank you for-"

"Fuck off," Kate said quietly, "There's nothing that you can say that'll give me back the days that I had the unpleasant thought of you on my mind because you'd find me wherever I went. You might have learned something nasty about yourself, but I don't really give a shit. I saw how humiliated your wife was when SHE had to come to me to ask me to give her back the money and the keys to your car down there in the hold. It's her that you ought to apologize to."

He exhaled, and for an instant, she could see that he still didn't get it. She knew that he wouldn't. This was all just window dressing because his poor wife and likely also the captain had demanded that he do this, that was all.

"Bloody hell," he said, his face becoming florid in an instant.

Kate stood up and leaned in close enough to smell that he'd been using some liquid courage for this.

"Stay the fuck away from me," she growled quietly. "Get this close to me just once more, and I'll rip your favorite wanking arm right the fuck off and beat you about the head and shoulders with the wet end. Somebody as worthless as you doesn't change his spots in one day, so keep your bullshit to yourself and leave me alone."

He looked around at the very interested faces of the crew members and walked out. When the door closed behind him, the three crewmen applauded. Kate smiled in embarrassment and drank her beer in peace.

The freighter called at the U.S. Virgin Islands deep water port of Charlotte Amalie and Kate was a little pleased to see the troubled couple leave. Two days later, she was on St. Kitts watching one of the dock cranes at Basseterre off-load the container with Farley and Fanny. From there, they were loaded onto a large flatbed trailer and hauled to the plantation.

Kate was met by Mr. Morris who looked to be a lot more comfortable and almost friendly now and she was shown her quarters in a small house very near to the building that would serve as the garage and service area for the scout cars. Two days afterward, she'd been given the list of names of the people who had volunteered for training. She looked at the list and wondered about one name. There were names such as she might expect to see, some rather Anglo-sounding names and some Spanish ones which she thought probably fit with the past of the small island place.

But that one name, ....

J. Bandermann.

That one kind of stuck out to her just a little. She shrugged and made a mental note to try to meet all of the individuals over the next few days. But first, she smiled to herself, first she had to learn a little bit about the place and where the roads and cowpaths were -- or weren't.

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Kate sat in the meeting room of the old house. From what she could tell, it had once been a huge dining room and the sheer size and length of the table bore that notion out. "I've completed the preparations to the scouts," she said, "Both are ready to go anytime, but for the matter of their armament. Have you gotten hold of another driver yet?"

Morris nodded, "Yes. There were three applicants, but two of them have no experience driving anything like these vehicles. The heaviest thing they have experience with is Jeeps. One of the three has plenty of experience with armored vehicles, both wheeled and tracked, from armored personnel carriers to main battle tanks, but not with Ferrets. He is confident that he can learn."

Kate sat up, a little interested, "Do you have any background on him? Where did he get his experience?"

Errol Cardington looked at Morris. "We have someone like that?"

Morris nodded, "Yes sir. It's the monk."

Kate stared, "You have a tank-driving monk?"

Morris shook his head, "His name is Bandermann. Jürgen Bandermann.

"Kurgan?" she asked, "like in that old Highlander movie?"

"No," Morris replied, shaking his head again, "His first name is pronounced as YOUR-gen."

He smiled, "As far as the rest of it, well, you'll have to form your own opinion. They call him the monk. I don't really know why. He doesn't strike me as being very religious. I suspect that it's just a nickname. I can't really pull his file to show it to you without his permission, but he was in the German Army. I'll provide details that are relevant to you by tomorrow, Ms. Perkins. You said that you had a problem with the weapons?"

She nodded, "Yes. I'm not all that excited to be rolling around with live weapons, but you know your business, I suppose, and I have experience. I was provided with two guns for the scouts. They're the correct type, but I'm not an armorer. I've never had to qualify on that type, so beyond mounting them, I can't do much with them. They're all gummed up with Cosmoline preservative grease."

"I think that the monk may be able to help with that," Morris said.

"From what I know, they're Belgian-made," Kate said. "This man was German Army, you said."

Morris shrugged, "I think that he can likely handle it, and he's the type who can unravel mysteries rather well. Bandermann is a quiet man, but he says that he can drive and shoot anything and I am inclined to believe him. You asked for a certain type of man for a driver. Bandermann is our answer to your request. If you agree to try him out, I'll have him released from his normal shift rotation to help you."

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He seemed to be having just a bit of difficulty today. His fingers had been giving him a bit of trouble. Well it wasn't really a surprise, he thought, he really hadn't played in a year or so since he'd been here. But he'd been feeling the want of it and had searched all over until he'd found a guitar that he'd liked enough to buy. For no reason that came to mind, he was feeling a little more lost than usual and it came out in his playing on top of what he'd have expected at getting back into it.

Lost.

It was a very familiar feeling to him, he thought. Large and lost. He'd been a large, roundish boy, the butt of many of his classmate's jokes all through school. Since he was an only child, there wasn't anything in his home life that acted as a counter or sounding board for his feelings. His father was a truck driver who was most often away from home, and his mother was just stuck in her own world most often. So he was alone at home and alone at school. It didn't do much for his self-confidence back then.

He got bigger as he grew older, but he also grew more and more introverted and shy. It was something that was still inside of him to some degree, though he could force himself past it, or even forget it for a time if there was a need to do that.

There had been a road accident one day in the Swiss Alps and his father had died as a result. His mother had become even more distant. It was his uncle who'd saved him just after her overdose of sleeping pills. Cast into a new family dynamic, he'd just tried to hide, but his uncle would have none of it.

"You might feel like one at first but you are not some stranger here," he said, "I know that you have always felt apart from everything. Anyone can see this by looking at you. But here you are family, yes?"

The uncle and aunt's attempts at integrating Jürgen into the household were at least partially successful. There was more to be done, but the older man knew that a lot of the trouble lay in how the boy saw himself and so he thought of ways to improve the picture somewhat.

That had led to the day where Jürgen stood holding a long flat cardboard box. If contained a gift from his uncle. The boy opened it and looked at something that appeared so foreign to him that he had no clue what it was. All that he saw were two rather odd-shaped handles and five fabric-covered rubber cords.

"What is it?" He asked.

Uncle Heinz chuckled, "You don't have any yet, but if you're not careful with this, you'll find that it's a very effective chest hair remover. This is a chest expander. This is the first step for you," he said, "Come and sit down, Jürgen. We will have a talk between men, you and I."

His aunt laughed a little and said that she was off to visit a friend of hers for the evening. "I have no wish to hear any of this," she said, and she put her hand on the head of her sister-in-law's son and tousled his hair affectionately, "Try to listen to your uncle. You need to come out of your shell at least a little, Jürgen."

His aunt and uncle had always been his favorite relatives, and though he felt like trying to hide under the floor tiles, Jürgen sat and listened as his uncle gently told him what was what.

"I know that if I asked you and if you were honest with me and yourself, how you would describe your body would not be in perhaps very proud terms. We are all different, Jürgen, but I know that your own description would be too cruel and not very accurate. You see yourself as, ... well, rounder than you are. I saw how you worked at cutting the grass for me last weekend, and what I saw was that you are made more like me than like your father, and while I do not wish to take anything away from him, I can say that what you do not like about yourself may be changed.

You are only fourteen years old. There is still a little time, but if you want more for yourself than what you think that you see when you look at yourself in a mirror, then you need to want it very badly and you need to speak up and tell me so."

He chuckled to himself, "And you will have to at least listen and try to understand what I try to tell you."

The adult Jürgen Bandermann smiled to himself as he remembered the first rude shock that had awaited him after he'd told his uncle that he'd do anything to change how he looked.

"The first thing is one of the most important, "the man had said, "You can eat all of the food that you want, but you can't eat very much garbage anymore. That alone will help a lot, and the skin of any young person has enough trouble all by itself. Eating garbage will only turn your face into an active volcano field."

So that evening began Jürgen's long journey. His uncle would only allow him to use the chest expander with one of the rubber bungee cords. "I know that you can pull this easily," he said, "but you cannot pull it two hundred times a day with only one and that is the key, Jürgen."

His uncle got him started and waited patiently as the boy struggled and he helped him through the mountain of doubts. The chest expander was only the first step, because the boy could measure his progress by adding more bungee cords one at a time as he grew. As Jürgen grew stronger, he was given weight training, and Uncle Heinz was there beside him every step of the way. Two years later, Jürgen fell in love with martial arts and it began another phase that Heinz had planned, but under it all was that old gift.

The paint had chipped almost all the way off the wooden handles and the cords looked pretty tired, but Jürgen still used the thing. No one laughed at him anymore, but there was still one effect of his early life left in him. He was a quiet and rather shy man. He was aware of the way that he looked, and had been pleased to find the different body that his uncle had said was in there, but Jürgen still had the shyness.

The guitar had been an idea of his aunt's. "You can turn into Tarzan if you like, "she'd said with a smile, "but you need to have something other than what you have been doing in your life or you will turn into a stupid brute."

Jürgen had no idea what she'd meant, but one night, she took him to a restaurant where the brother of a friend played often. Like anyone his age, Jürgen loved music, but he'd never heard anything like this, and almost before he knew it, he was talking lessons and enjoying it rather than hating the drudgery of playing scales and simple pieces as he began. He'd already learned the benefit of a little mental application.

At seventeen, his uncle pulled him aside on evening. "Time to take stock again, Nephew," he grinned. "If you want to stay the way that you look, you will need to try to find some sort of occupation that will demand at least something physical from you every once in a while. Also, you are still a little too quick to withdraw from others. This might be the hardest struggle for you," he smiled proudly, "but look at how far you have come from where you were when you first came to live with us. You need something which forces you to interact now. It will be hard, but, ..."

"I have always listened to you before, Uncle," Jürgen said, "what would you suggest now?"

A week after his eighteenth birthday, Jürgen enlisted in the Deutsches Heer. He found life in the army to be satisfying enough, and so he'd stayed. It pulled him the rest of the way out of his shell and he liked the challenges that it offered. Whenever he'd begun to get to feeling a bit set in his ways, he shrugged and found more challenges.

But every road has an end, and Jürgen wondered what life "outside" might be like. A few quiet conversations had gotten him some assurances that there was still a place for him if he chose to return within a set time, and so he'd taken two years off, and now found himself wondering why he'd done it. Almost a year had gone by and he was bored out of his mind here as a hired constable working at providing security for what amounted to a large farm on a small island with another year to go to the end of his contracted time.

He sighed and went back to commanding his fingers to obey.

He'd heard the talk that morning at the beginning of his shift meeting that the hired scout cars had arrived and that a driver was being sought. Previous experience driving armored military vehicles would be considered an asset and type-specific training would be available. Jürgen looked down as he noticed several sets of eyes swing towards him and there was a pregnant pause in the room.

"What is the vehicle type and model, if possible, please," he said in his thick accent as he looked up, ignoring the looks.

The shift commander looked down at his notes for a moment, "I'm not sure," he said, "what I've got here is Ferret, if that means anything to you."

"Model please, if it is there," Jürgen said.

"Why?" His boss asked, "What difference does it make?"

"It makes enough difference to me that I would like to know," Jürgen said quietly. "There are three Ferrets on this island already. They are Mark 2s and they are very old. Have you ever seen all three of them running at the same time?"

The commander stared for a second and then thought for a moment. "No," he said, "I can't say that I have ever seen all three running."

"That is because they steal parts from one to keep another one running. If the ones that you are talking about are that old, I have no interest at all."

"What I've got here is that they're Mark 5s, Jürgen. Is that new enough for you?"

"Better," Jürgen replied.

"Oh, and both of them are ex-Australian, if that means anything to a connoisseur such as yourself."

"Even better," Jürgen smiled just a little, "I think that they were the last ones made and the last out of service. I believe that they had the best upgrades too."

"Do you think that you could learn to drive them?"

"Ja, "he shrugged, "I can drive anything. Is there a bonus if I take this additional work?"

"No," his boss frowned, "Are you saying that you won't accept if you don't get a bonus for it?"

"I didn't say that," he smiled, "I was just asking. Driving any armored vehicle in this climate only means sweat. Driving something old means that you sweat even more.

A bonus means that maybe I can buy a fan," he grinned to some quiet laughter around him.