Sometimes a bastion needs a bastion of its own, and Greenhorn Bastion was no different; given its absence of law enforcement, the bulwark of societal stability in the village was the pub, easily the oldest and dearest building around. While one may be inclined to dismiss it as a squat and musty cottage that housed drunkards, its humble appearance belied its role as the release valve of repressed emotion, and as a containment zone for the resultant public disorder.

At the centre of this noble institution was the publican Dave, an unassuming name for a power broker who was anything but: like Cal he stood at six foot one, and in addition had about himself a drunkard’s jolliness (of the rotund variety) that others could only dream of achieving in their lifetimes.

Entering the pub, Cal was struck by the auric alcoholism that lingered in the air: it was looming in his suddenly parched tongue; it was present in the sour, dank smell from countless drinks spilt over the years; and it was unmistakable in the sight of Drunkard Joe snoring away at a table in these middling afternoon hours whilst Dave cleaned around him with a wet rag stained from years of service.

Dressed in a thick, stained apron the colour of mud and a faded grey shirt-and-trousers combination underneath, Dave hailed Cal with a raise of the rag. “Afternoon, fella. You’ve just missed the last of the lunchtime rush, though there’s some oatcakes and carp scrapings left if you’d like.”

“I’m good,” Cal answered. He’d felt hungry after his fieldwork, though it’d faded from his list of priorities in the succeeding hubbub; he figured he’d just get something to eat once he got back home.

“Fair enough. So what’s with the strange getup? It’s been the talk of the folk today, ‘sides Milliman’s farm, of course. It reminds me of your father, you do.” He tipped his head towards the bar as a separate question.

“I’ll have one, thanks.” While the publican went about getting him a pint of ale, Cal continued, “Coincidentally, that’s what I’m here for.”

“Huh?” Dave looked up from the pour. “It’s what people typically come here for, so can’t say I’m shocked or anything. Especially on a hot day like this.” His jolly fat face wobbled as he chuckled to himself.

Cal rolled his eyes. “No, not that… well, okay, that too, but I mainly came here to find out more about my dad. From the sounds of it you must have known him rather well. What was he like?” Cal accepted the tankard from Dave. “Big drinker?”

“Drinker he was, for sure, but I knew him for another reason.” The publican paused for several beats with a warm, reminiscent expression. “I suppose it may surprise you but I wasn’t always like this!” he said then with a hard slap to his stomach, the emanating waves growing seismic as he broke into hearty belly laughter; the fluid motions of flesh were near hypnotic at the hands of an expert.

“No, no, I used to exercise back in the day and your dad was my workout buddy. We used to train our strength and endurance until we were bone-tired, tired enough to take root, I tell you. Your dad was the first one to get me into fitness and really whip me into shape.” Dave’s voice took on a tender note, volume dimming. “You know, at times it felt like he was the only one who cared about my health.”

Cal swigged his drink with relief, foam sticking to his upper lip. For some reason he'd felt mounting apprehension coming here, but he was glad to hear Susie’s case was a one-off incident with Dave having a wholesome friendship with his dad.

“Your dad was a good man, Cal. A true gentleman who went out of his way to help, even if it ended up biting him back in the end.”

Huh, I swear Susie said something simi— Cal experienced a spike of dread, but it was too late: he looked around to see he was already in another vision.

In front of him stood his dad, redhead ponytailed hunk in a wife beater vest and loose trousers. Beside his dad was Dave of the past, who looked like Dave of the present but apronless and magnified at 1.5x. He was spherical in shape and loud in his complaints: “You get your hands off me, you barbarian. You think you can walk all over us because you married Liliane. Well, you’v—”

Cal had already felt disquieted when he saw they were standing at the foot of a nearby hill. All the same, his heart couldn’t help dropping when he saw his dad grin, grip onto the sides of Dave with muscles popping out, and cut him off mid-sentence with a hearty grunt.

Lifting the spherical publican, Cal’s dad then tottered up the hill doing a modified farmer’s walk, stopping for quick breaks between the sets where he’d drop the rebellious kettlebell – which seemed to have a mind of its own, what with all its flailing and wailing – anchoring it in place with his bodyweight until he’d caught his breath back and was ready to be off again.

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So baffling was this homespun workout, so audacious its challenge against gravity, that Dave could hardly get a proper word out until they’d reached the top, mudswept men with lungs heaving.

From what Cal had seen with Susie, he could guess what was about to follow and shook his head in disbelief. Surely not… there’s no way, right?

Indifferent to his thoughts, his dad bellowed and gave a mighty push off; the rotund kettlebell rolled down the hill like a snowball, gaining speed and barrelling uncontrollably until finally it crashed into a stump at the bottom of the hill. His dad gave a woot of joy: strike, apparently.

Where Susie’s manhandling had ended at this point, Dave’s was only beginning as the vision cut to a new day, same scene.

The musclehead heaved and waddled, the fatty resisted (attempting to assert his basic civil rights as a human) but lost: the fatty rolled. Although Cal’s sensibilities screamed aloud at what on teral he was witnessing, he couldn’t help but noticing the iterative progress as the vision played on.

Dave was no helpless maiden being carried to his rescue (away from civilisation) as became clear once – following repeated rolldowns and just as many futile attempts to parley – the publican realised there was solely one way to communicate with this barbaric meathead. No longer content just to despair and be pushed around (or down slopes for that matter), Dave ignited with motivation, and it wasn’t long before his resistance to the rollup phase began to increase, his tec improving.

The first uplift in workout difficulty came when Dave learnt to lodge his limbs into the ground and use this leverage to fight back against the brutish powers that be. Although Cal’s dad overcame this through his formidable physical strength, it still forced him to take the exercise more seriously and less as a laughing matter.

Little did Cal’s dad know, however, that the publican – in his desire to win – considered no part of this sacred workout as sacrosanct from his machinations.

First to go was Cal’s dad’s peal of joy at the strike that should have concluded the workout, which was stolen when the Dave figured out how to operate the rolldown phase, his limbs retracting into his torso like a tortoise as he bowled elegantly, missing all obstacles and even taunting his rival after safe passage.

What followed was an arms race between the two men.

Subverting expectations, Dave grew even bigger than at the start but Cal could tell much of this was hard-earned muscle rather than additional blubber. The matches grew more intense and suspenseful until finally the inevitable happened...

It was the rollup phase, Cal’s dad heaving in a feverish mania until he couldn’t anymore, strength fading as he tripped over himself and fell, stumbling to the bottom of the hill. Yet the rolldown phase still followed as Dave made use of his mastered controls for a deliberate strike. And so beneath a jeering publican lay the meathead, well and truly bested.

“Where’s all your strength gone, hotshot? Don’t tell me this is the best you can do?” Dave guffawed with abandon, swivelling his mass around to the tune of bleary-eyed groans underneath. “All your slacking in our previous sessions has caught up to you, huh? Well, you know there’s only one cure for this: let’s see twenty push-ups right now, come on!”

Cal’s dad never spoke in these visions (outside of a few undecipherable sounds befitting a barbarian) to the point that Cal wondered if his dad had been mute, but it was clear he could understand what had just been said. He pushed past exhaustion, his arms quivering and quaking as they raised off the ground with Dave still on his back getting even, counting each rep.

The vision ended here with Cal unable to fully process what he had seen. Was that a bromance? Was that bullying? What was it? After what felt like an eternity, he brought a close to his thoughts by sinking his pint of ale in a single draught. He wordlessly handed over a bronze coin to Dave.

The publican accepted it in one hand while the other swung the wet rag over his shoulder.

He spoke to Cal in a serious tone, nodding approvingly, “I can see your dad’s physique in you, Cal – the same primal strength is peeking out from your muscles. You ever want to get that trained into something usable, you come find me, you hear me? I’ll show you the training your dad and I used to do together – it’ll make a real warrior out of you, I guarantee it.”

Cal’s expression sunk into deep grooves, his face as pale as sheet paper. How that practice could ever be considered a genuine workout is beyond me. “Thanks, Dave. I’ll keep that in mind,” he managed to respond as he walked out.

Outside, he felt ashamed even showing his face in broad daylight before he remembered that none of what he’d witnessed had anything to do with him: the visions made it appear he was a bystander to what had happened but in actuality those were events from years back.

Besides, why should I feel guilty over the sins of a deadbeat dad? He’s just like Penbrooke in that regard. But at least the visions clarified that his dad was indeed a jerk and a bully, even if his victims now reminisced on those memories with strange fondness.

Having reached a conclusion, Cal changed his mind on asking all the villagers and instead set off back home. He could guess at what the villagers had seen in Penbrooke that had reminded them of his dad: it was probably that both figures were largely mute, both indecipherable when speaking, and that Penbrooke’s bizarre behaviour was closer to his dad’s than Cal’s own personality. No wonder the villagers thought his dad’s lineage was waking up…

Given what a character his dad had cut, there was no doubt other villagers had just as colourful stories about him, but Cal felt he’d already learnt enough, and then some, from what he’d seen; those snippets of history had taught him that some truths were better left unexplored and overgrown with weeds after all.

In his journey to understand his dad, he'd come full circle and was now finally at peace with his mum’s explanation that his dad had gone off to get some mountain goat milk and regretfully run into a monster on the way; such were the twists and turns of life.