10 pagesrat to riches

RAT TAILS ADVENTURE SERIES

Rat To Riches GRAHAM VIVIAN LANCASTER

For Sydney Jade Lancaster.

L TRAYBERRY PRESS

ALEXANDER HOUSE Incorporating

TRAYBERRY PRESS 29 Howick Road Pietermaritzburg 0836388813 Copyright 2011 Graham Vivian Lancaster Copyright 2011 in this published edition TRAYBERRY PRESS All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright holder and publisher.

First published 2011

ISBN: 978-0-9870146-0-3

Cover design: G. V. Lancaster / Maxine Wicks Photography: Graham Vivian Lancaster Art work: Amber Wicks Distributed by Trayberry Book Distributors.

Cell: 0836388813 Tel: 033 - 3427978

Works by the author: NOVELS:

Wind Song Storm Song Strength Of ten Thermocline

SELF HELP: Everyone Can Do It

Its Never Too Late Surviving The Ladder The Cost Of Money Who’s Shrinking Your Money?

The Happy Customer POETRY:

Marks On My Soul Gypsey Whale Song Gravel Roads Fledgeling African Ride Moments of Truth Picaroon Journeys Rusty Gates Poetry Study Guide

HUMOUR: Bert and Co.

Bert Another Story Nothing For Mahala ADVENTURE SERIES:

Wild and Dangerous + Study Guide Secrets of the Sea Cyclone Tracy Wrath Of The Gods Dangerous Alliances When The Earth Thunders + Study Guide Awakening Africa Flying With Eagles Over The Edge + Study Guide The Adventurous Life Of Rory Flint Rat To Riches

RAT TO RICHES Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Antonio, Manuel, Domingo, Joaquim, Julio, Frederico, Carlos, Rodriguez, a dock rat from the Port of Maputo in Mozambique. I have a lot of names, but we’ll get to that.

I’m taking a break in the warm sunshine and thinking how things have changed, which of course took me back to the early days when I was trying to make a buck or two.

I had been busy all of that particular day ferrying goods off the ships and off the dock through customs when the officers weren’t looking. Well – not that it was illegal - I suppose - but rats aren’t suspect as far as customs are concerned. Therefore it must be legal that a case of designer rat sunglasses just slipped off a ship – somehow – right into my path – well – right outside my door.

Anyway, I’m not a lawyer so won’t argue the point, but possession is nine tenths of the law – after ferreting them in through the entrance to my home, a handshake and a small matter of finance with a Japanese sailor rat friend of mine, Yuudai Suzuki, they became mine.

He brought them in and sold them on the cheap, and had left me a pair as a present when he stayed with me while in port. I was hooked on them and onto a good thing. That had been a few shipments before yesterday’s haul.

I must have gone out under the watchful eyes of the customs officers about one hundred times. Going out wearing sunglasses, my head held high whilst tapping the road ahead with a white cane. No one suspected a thing and then I would slip back in through the gates a few minutes later without sunglasses and the cane tucked beneath my arm.

Lefty, my only assistant at that time waited outside the gates in an unused building collecting the sun glasses, making sure they were clean and then slipping them back into their velvet pouches.

Sweet! It had taken a while and I stopped for lunch, hustling a few other goods to dock rats and seeing that orders were delivered. It was eventually done, everyone was happy, Lefty had

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been paid and I had made a handsome profit which was locked away in my safe at home.

Not that I would call myself self-righteous now, but things have changed since then and we try to do things the right way, which of course becomes much easier when there is money in the safe and you aren’t desperate for a meal.

RTR There is always something interesting happening on the docks and it’s an exciting place to live amongst the bustle of people, rats, mice and cats living and working here.

Some of the residents just manage to eke out a living, others manage to live a fine life, but like every walk of life, it depends how hard or smart you want to work. Keep your eyes open, an ear close to the ground so you get the news first, don’t be afraid to work long hours and there’s a lot of money to be made doing what others don’t want to do.

Life for me is grand, food is plentiful, I live in a warm comfortable place which I fitted out, but it is getting a little cramped. Besides, I am making a bundle and thought it time to spread some of it around to get the economy going, move into something bigger and make myself really comfortable.

Looking at how full of neatly bundled money my safe was becoming, I did a count the other day and nearly fell on my back.

Somewhere my rough mental check had lost track of all the money in there, which isn’t earning a cent in interest, so it’s time to invest in my future.

I was sort of keeping half an eye out for a new house - when I wasn’t too busy, but some old scrapped containers down at the end of the docks seemed a good place to start. No one went there and it would be a quiet place to relax at the end of a hard day’s work.

I am mainly in the grain business. Mainly, I say because, like I said, on the docks opportunity springs up out of nowhere and whoever is wide awake gets to pick the flowers, so to speak.

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I secured the contract with the railways to clean out the wagons of grain as they are offloaded into the ships, which means they have to be swept out before being taken away. It’s hectic work as there is no time to waste.

I collect and sell the maize and whatever grains, beans, soya beans, sunflower seeds or peanuts are swept onto the docks, or load into sacks inside the wagons. There is a good supply because the wagons are shunted onto the docks in train loads and a big ship takes a lot of train loads of grain to fill it.

That means we have a lot of work, which has to be done as quickly as possible before the trucks, tractors and trailers, forklifts and front end loaders that work and drive up and down the docks trample and spoil the spillage, stevedores walk over it or it gets blown away if there is wind.

It is wastage which the pigeons fight over, reach their full height with puffed up chests like sergeant majors to bully the others and show who is boss while the rest are feasting quietly somewhere else.

No one else wants it, excepting for the rats and mice who take some home for the family dinner, so no harm is done collecting it and a good profit is made.

Millie Stitch cuts up big people sized sacks, mainly broken ones which I hustle from warehouses. She sews them into small rat sized sacks and stamps them in bold black, ‘RODRIGUEZ GRANARY.’ Lately though, there haven’t been enough broken sacks because we are getting many new customers, so I have had to buy huge rolls of calico or hessian which she cuts up and sews.

My two assistants, Lefty, Righty and I fill the sacks and leave them standing in rows, which Millie Stitch works her way along, sewing the tops tightly closed with a big sacking needle and tough nylon thread before we take them to the storeroom.

Everyone works hard, but they get a fair share of the deal, more than enough food on their tables, money for extras round the house, clothes, even some in the bank and they are more than happy with the way things are.

Lefty and Righty pull our little cart stacked with sacks through Rat Town, Boom Town and Boom Town Heights, calling on my regular customers, mainly in Boom Town Heights as I sell, take

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orders and collect money. The uptown rats pay top dollar as the produce is clean and the best that money can buy.

We load up the kid rats and give them a free ride for a few blocks down the hill when the cart is empty. They love it of course, with a free peanut or something to chew on, but it’s good for business because they hound their parents to buy Rodriguez Grain so we can come back and give them another ride.

It sounds as though he is really shady, but Lefty is an upstanding guy who got his name because he insisted on being on the left of the cart’s drawbar, which left his brother, Righty, without a choice.

Pulling the cart and all the physical work we did has made us strong and muscular and no one tries to push us around. Until now, when a little bit of an unsavoury element has begun to creep into the docks, but I am keeping an eye on it.

Cash is king and ready money makes for more, so I got into the unofficial banking business for a small cut. The whole business of working the docks is an adventure twenty four hours a day, so someone like Elroy is always on watch to inform me so I can get an early start on whatever is new.

I sort of run the docks. Not that I am a hoodlum you must understand, but with business as good as this, there is always someone trying to muscle in and kick the smaller guys out. I don’t like that sort of thing happening in my patch and deal very quickly with problems which are brought to me. The offender is told in no uncertain terms what acceptable behaviour is and what isn’t. If he doesn’t like it, he is free to find a place he does like, but I don’t tolerate any bullying. Everyone on the docks has the right to feed themselves and their families and make whatever extra they can.

However, with business and harmonious living like this, there are many looking over the fence with an envious eye, so it was inevitable that the authority and leadership which just seemed to grow and be expected of me, would someday be challenged with a view to kicking me out. That of course would allow all sorts of goings on to become the order of the day and the small guys will be out on the street, so to speak.

And so, a huge bruiser of a multicoloured tom cat with many battle scars, two tattered fighting ears and a snarling face happened along. We weren’t sure if he had jumped ship before

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the Chinese dipped him in plum sauce pinched on the end of their bamboo chopsticks and ate him, or whether he had been driven out of Durban Harbour by the big boys operating there, and had made his way along the coast on a freighter.

Whatever the circumstance of his departure from somewhere and his arrival in another place, he was suddenly here, telling everyone, ‘I’m Malone,’ strutting his stuff, flexing his muscles, terrifying and bullying the small boys. I watched carefully as he edged towards our patch, but he knows the boundaries of what is healthy and what isn’t and plays along the edge. I have no doubt he is feeling the water just to see how far he can go and what I am prepared to tolerate and it won’t be long before he puts a wrong paw over the boundary.

The small boys he bullies, cats, mice and rats, come to me with their complaints but I decided he needed to really show his hand before something could be done. Even so, the niggling complaints were beginning to get me down as I waited for Malone to get brave enough to take me on.

It took a while, but sure enough, he suddenly had the confidence, or the strategies he needed and moved over the boundary line into my patch and was causing all sorts of strife and upheavals in the docklands as he tried to muscle in and take over my scene.

RTR I had filled a number of sacks and stood them on the dock where Millie Stitch moved along stitching the tops closed with her sacking needle flashing silver in the bright sunlight.

Lefty and Righty would be along soon enough to load the cart and get the sacks checked in and neatly stacked in the storeroom in the back of my place.

I needed to get a better and larger place as a matter of urgency so we could load the grain directly into the cart, put it in storage and pack the sacks as soon as the docks were clean. It would go a lot quicker, especially with two carts, and Millie Stitch

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wouldn’t have to sew up the sacks in the blazing sunshine. We needed to speed things up because our customer list had grown and we didn’t always clear the docks before night fell, or the rain came and spoiled our supply. Someone else would begin to cut into our market if we couldn’t supply and extra storage would allow us to carry stocks for the months of the growing season when little or no grain came onto the docks.

Now that would really be working smart and would be productivity in action. We would finish a lot quicker, which would give us more time for deliveries and time to ourselves.

“That’s exactly what we are going to do, Antonio.” I nodded in appreciation of my vision. Today, I would set it in motion.

It had to be done, and quickly. This afternoon, as soon as we had cleared the docks of grain, I would go out on a serious search to find a place.

Lefty hightailed it up to me without the cart, all hot and bothered and in such a fluster he could hardly speak.

“B - b - boss! That Malone – that Malone, he confiscated our cart. Righty just managed to get away from him and is hiding in a Chinese freighter.”

I stopped what I was doing and straightened up from the sacks.

“He confiscated our cart?” I asked, knowing the day of reckoning had arrived. Millie Stitch looked at me anxiously and clutched her sacking needle in both hands across her chest.

“Yes, Boss.”

“Is that right” I asked slowly.

“Yes B – Boss.”

“He took the cart?” I asked slowly.

“He was trying to smash it when I ran to call you, Boss,” Lefty looked as though he didn’t know whether to burst into tears or burst into a fit of rage he was so frustrated.

“Trying to smash it…” I began to walk towards where Lefty was pointing, “Where exactly is he?”

“Please Mr. Rodriguez, please be careful Mr. Rodriguez,” Millie Stitch implored.

“He’s having breakfast at Rustycats.”

Rustycat was a huge ginger tom cat, one of the border liners who walked along the edge, just close enough to cause a little

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