Django Durango

Though he had been conscripted into the role long ago, Jack Worthing took his responsibility to Wellington Wells seriously. “Uncle” Jack was the face of optimism and stability. He acted as master of ceremonies through the good times and saw the town through the bad, emboldening them when prudent, encouraging them to endure when it was not – or rather he would have if indeed they’d ever had any bad times. When anyone wrote to him about their worries and concerns – which was surely a symptom of having too few problems – he allayed any doubts or questions and set them back at ease. He saw it as his duty to be the very embodiment of keeping calm and carrying on, a shining example of stalwart English spirit that Wellington Wells could rely on and emulate.

He didn’t have much of a memory of how his fellow entertainers felt about their similar standing in the world. So many of them left the industry at some point between the indeterminate then and now, preferring a life of anonymity. Jack was very nearly the only one left, save for some hobbyist musical acts. He had the vague feeling though, that the way Nick Lightbearer was fidgeting and looking unsure of why everyone else seemed so pleased to be in his presence was not becoming of an entertainer of his notoriety.

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There were two kinds of Doctors in Wellington Wells: those who worked at Wellington Health Institute (under which general practitioners also fell) and those who worked at Haworth Labs. One might assume that this was a mere distinction of workplace, determined only by the needs of the town. In fact, there was a great divide in sensibilities of these Doctors and the stark separation in assignment was a symptom of that rift, not the cause.

Haworth’s Doctors tended to be a somber sort with overt concern for the noble dignity of their profession. They carried themselves with stately composure and took things very seriously. They chose work at Haworth Labs for its clean and precise ethic. Pharmacology was a matter of measures and mathematics, and the only variables were in the patient’s response to their compositions.

Health’s Doctors, on the other hand, dealt with biology. The human body was little else but variables and with only some tentative principles on which to work, Health’s Doctors had to be much looser in their expectations. This looseness followed in everything else they did. They did not take the work seriously, they cut up in the lab, and made puerile jokes about bodily functions.

And yet, these two cohorts got along well enough under most circumstances. They each had their separate domains, well away from each other, and only occasionally did they have to set aside their differences and meet each other in the middle. For the most part, it was not a lot to ask for a Haworth Doctor to offer a concessive chuckle at a fart joke or for a Health Doctor to refrain from giggling at how closely the word “organism” sounded like “orgasm”.

For the most part.

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Mikey Forrester always knew the day would come when Sally called in the favor he owed her, but he never thought she’d be so absolutely bollocks-for-brains careless about it. Thanks to her, he would have to skip his lunch break to clean up after the mess she’d made for him. He waited in his office until ten minutes past noon, then headed down the Wellington Health Institute’s records room. Hopefully the girls who ran that office had gone out to lunch.

The records room was clear thankfully. He checked that no one else was in the hall and slid through the door. He needed to find and remove their copy of Sally’s request so whatever she was doing couldn’t be traced back to him.

Mikey scanned the file cabinets until he found the F section, then looked at each label until he found the drawer that would contain his own records. Sliding the drawer open slowly so as not to make a racket, he looked over his shoulder before rifling through the folders. Faris, Farrell, Forrester. There it was. Now to find the B for Boyle file under that and… Mikey yanked out the offending missive and reread it just to reassure himself that it was just as egregious as he thought when he read the original in his office.

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It had been a whirlwind couple of months. If she’d been told that rainy night when she’d left their – Anton’s – house to go to Nick’s stupid party that she would never return, she wouldn’t have believed it. Yet here she was now in her own office with the lights off just in case, snatching notes out of her file cabinets and looting her own chemistry bench. Anton wasn’t in the office. Sally checked with Betty, his secretary, to make sure he’d be out at a lunch meeting when she came to collect her things. The absolute last thing she needed was for him to catch her here making off with company property. She tossed everything – gently, in the case of the chemicals – into a single banker’s box on her desk.

She only needed one last thing. Sally yanked open the fourth drawer of the last file cabinet and pushed the hanging folders back to reveal her new Joy formula notes lying hidden at the bottom of the drawer. She’d finally perfected it a couple months ago and had started using it herself, but she hadn’t told Anton. Her mother had always been so worried about Sally’s ability to keep a man around, but Sally had also learned that it was prudent to have a backup plan in case one needed to rid themselves of a man too. This new Joy formula was hers.

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“I could put some hinges on it, maybe. Or install a knob,” Corporal Hardy said. The only thing Hardy’s skill set as a joiner and that of a shipwright had in common was carpentry work. Fortunately or not, Hardy managed to get the wooden part of General Byng’s boat in working order weeks ago, but that left him with no other improvements to report now. Despite his admitted lack of ability, though, this was a good post to have so he made a symbolic show of looking busy by polishing a smudge of the battered yet shiny hull. “Aside from that, I don’t think there’s much else I can do for it. The engine’s rusted over, but I don’t know the first thing about motorworks.”

“If we was meant to be in boats, we’d be the Home Navy, now wouldn’t we?” Corporal Cheeseman groused. He’d been sent to check on Hardy’s progress in this foolhardy endeavor. “Where does the General think he needs a boat to get off to anyway?”

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