The Little White Cloud

In a country called Faroff Land there is a very high mountain; perched at it’s top is a ‘Little White Cloud’. People have been heard to say, ‘the cloud is a very good cloud, very useful to have around’.  But how can it be true that a cloud is  good or bad?  Well, you will see, that in my story, one of many, about ‘The Little White Cloud’ is very useful to have around.

In Faroff Land at the base of Faroff Mountain, there is a village by the name of Faroff Village. The people of the village know for sure that the cloud, their very own cloud, as they call it, at the summit of the mountain is a very good cloud.  They know, because the cloud always gives them the rain they need for their crops in the fields. Occasionally though, the cloud is not there on top of the mountain. “It is not here,” the villagers would say. “It is probably off on one of its good deeds again.”

When the strange and wealthy man had distributed all the money in his pockets, he went to the boot of his very big and shiny yellow car. From the boot of his beautiful shiny yellow car he took out a pair of brand new rubber boots and put them on his feet.

For the villagers surrounding the wealthy man things were getting more and more curious, they were flabbergasted. Talking amongst themselves they were all asking the same questions.

“Who is this man?”

“What is he doing here in our village?”

“What does he want of us?”

A servant accompanying the wealthy man, tended his every need. The servant would not, and did not, answer any of the villagers’ questions as to what they were doing here. The wealthy man then proceeded to walk out of the village and into the village fields, followed by a crowd of ever more curious villagers. He took great care keeping to the paths around the fields. He walked and he walked, occasionally asking people at hand, questions like, “who owns this field”, or, “who owned that one”.  As time went by and the day became hotter he was left with just a few followers; the others went home for their midday rest.

Not one of those following saw him write anything down. He didn’t need to; he possessed an excellent memory.  Eventually, hot and sweaty the wealthy man got back into his car and without a word more to anyone, he and his servant, drove off.

That same evening and the days following, all the people of the village could talk about was the strange and very wealthy man and his most unusual appearance amongst them.

Three days after the wealthy man’s appearance there appeared in the village a group of builders and the man in charge amongst them asked where the Jimjim family lived.  After having been pointed out the house the workers led by their overseer walked up the mountain to the house.

The Jimjim house was the highest of all the village houses stretching up the mountainside and it overlooked all the village and surrounding countryside.  After a short stay inside the Jimjim family house the overseer came out, he then sat down and ate breakfast with his fellow workers.

Within a short time all the Jimjim family was going hastily in and out of their house loading on to the family cart all their belongings. Having finished loading the cart with all they’re worldly belongings and harnessed their big old workhorse, then slowly they walked through and out of the village. Friends and neighbors of the Jimjim family accompanied them all the while asking them beseeching them. “Where are you going, why are you leaving your home, your fields?”

The family just lowered they’re eyes in shame and continued on walking and without saying a word they left the village.

When the Jimjim family had finally disappeared from sight the villagers went up to the hill to the Jimjim’s old house to ask of the workers. “What is going on? Why is the family leaving?

The villagers were astounded to find the workers breaking up and tearing down the old Jimjim house.

“What are you doing? Leave the house alone, who gave you the authority to do such a thing?”

Villagers demanded.

The overseer of the workers stepped forward quite unafraid he patiently explained that the previous family had sold their house to the new owner.

The villagers demanded to know who this new owner is. The overseer answered. “You have all seen him, he was here just a few days ago looking over the village.”

“What proof do you have that the house was sold?”

The overseer was asked, with which he produced a document proving the sale and at the bottom was father Jimjims’ signature.

The villagers arrived at the right conclusion about the identity of the new owner; it was the eccentric rich man who was in the village a few days earlier.

Astounded the villagers went back down the hill animatedly talking amongst themselves about this unexpected and ominous turn of events.

The very next day, very early in the morning, another family left. Leaving their house and fields, they also had sold out to the rich man. When asked why, all they could say and with their eyes downcast was that they couldn’t refuse the rich man’s very generous offer.

Within the next two weeks six other families had sold out to the rich man. Since his first appearance the wealthy man had not appeared even once in the village. All the buying and selling was done through his overseer.

The wealthy man next appeared in the village only some six months later when the Jimjim’s old house had bean torn down and in its place was a completely new house.

The new structure was a grand and handsome mansion much bigger than the previous house. It was three stories high. No other house in the whole region was so high. No other house in the whole region was so high, and it had a grand veranda all around it. It certainly was a very grand house.

The wealthy man’s name was Scun Blackfield. He had wife and ten children. There were three girls, the youngest was three years old, and the oldest (who was also the oldest of all the children) was nineteen. The girls were all terribly spoilt and lazy. The seven boys were all monsters. Whereas the girls hardly ever left the house and the surrounding garden, the boys very soon learnt their way around the village and surrounding fields.; and not long after they had arrived the boys had been given the name ‘the terrible seven’, because they spent most of their time vandalizing, stealing and fighting, and all this without a word of reproach from their father.

“And what about children’s mother?” You may well ask.

Mrs. Scun Blackfield was like a scared little mouse. Her tyrant husband kept her in a state of continuous fear; she quivered at the very sight or sound of him. She had almost no say in her wayward children’s upbringing; her husband forbade it of her, and the children simply grew up wild.

The very first thing Scun Blackfield did after moving into his new house was to cut down all the trees up the mountainside.

When he was asked why he did such a thing, he replied:

“I will do as I wish, and what I wish is to be able to see the mountaintop from my veranda without them stupid trees spoiling the view. If I could, I would also blow away that silly little cloud that spoils my view of the mountaintop. Who knows, maybe I will find a way to do that also.”

To the villagers the cutting down of the trees was a bad, bad omen and the thought of removing their ‘Little White Cloud’ was just pure blasphemy. Just too impossible to contemplate.

All of a sudden the villagers found they had to deal with all sorts of serious problems, problems that hadn’t existed before. They came to realize that trying to talk reason to Mr. Scun Blackfield didn’t help. Most of the time he ignored them completely

The villagers came to the conclusion that the newcomer to their village was absolutely mad. They were wrong. He was simply a very bad and wicked person.

To those who came in contact with Mrs. Scun Blackfield she seemed a good-natured person, but…

After Scun Blackfield had finished cutting down all the trees up the mountainside, he brought into the village fields a big tractor. Nobody in the village before this had owned a tractor. No could afford one.

With his new tractor he proceeded to dig up all the paths that separated all of his newly purchased fields. By doing that, he joined all the little fields he had bought into one great big field. He ploughed up all the crops that were left on his new field and planted sugarcane on all of it.

Scun Blackfield’s workers dug long ditches to catch much of the water that ran off the mountain and diverted it on to his one huge field.

When asked why he did such an unfriendly thing, that up till now everybody in the village respected each other’s water rights, all he would answer was, “Don’t bother me with your silly problems. If you want water you can dig your own ditches.”

The villagers were now suddenly left without enough water for their own crops.

Although “The Little White Cloud” often came down the mountain and spread its rain over the villager’s fields, most of the time it rained or snowed on the mountaintop and the fields were irrigated by the streams that ran down the mountain slopes.

And now the villagers were all terribly upset and angry, but what could they do? If their fields were to dry out they could quite possibly go hungry or starve. They were willing to put up with his wayward children, his joining up of what, for ages had been little fields, his bad manners and arrogance. But his hogging all the water running off the mountaintop was just too much for them.

A delegation of the village elders approached him, to try one last time to reason with him. But again but he would not listen. In fact, he laughed at the villagers and said, “Stop bothering me with your petty troubles.”

As if they didn’t have enough work in the fields, the villagers now had to dig ditches and try to capture some of the water and divert it onto their fields. It wasn’t so simple because Scun Blackfield had captured most of the streams and rivulets running down the mountainside. What was left, the rest of the village had to manage with, and of course, it wasn’t enough for all the villagers.

According to legend ‘The Little White Cloud’, seeing the villager’s plight, decided it could not stand idly by anymore and that it had to intervene.

The villagers’ plight was getting worse day by day, and there was nothing they could do . . . except perhaps take the law into their own hands. But this was something very few of them contemplated. Most if not all of the villagers were a peaceful live-and-let-live people.

So it happened that one day ‘The Little White Cloud’ came rolling down the mountain. It was the dry season, but even in the dry season there was usually enough rainwater running down the mountainside for all the villagers’ needs. But now most of the lesser streams trickling down the mountain had dried up or dwindled to almost nothing worthwhile. The cloud, moving very slowly over the villagers’ small fields, let down out of its fluffy interior enough rain to irrigate all the villagers’ small fields. The cloud ignored the one big field belonging to Scun Blackfield. The cloud then slowly made its way back up the mountain to sit where it belonged, at the summit of the mountain.

Of course the wicked farmer, Scun Blackfield did not do any of the farm work himself. For this he had lots of hired workers to do his work for him, and he treated very harshly and when he saw what had happened . . . how the cloud had ignored his field. He was furious, but he wasn’t to be deterred so easily. He improved his ditches to such an extent that they caught all the irrigating water that ran off the mountainside and onto the villagers’ fields.

And so again after several days, the villagers were suffering without enough water for their crops.

Much of the time ‘The Little White Cloud’ would let go of its rain on the mountaintop so that all Mr. Scun Blackfield had to do was improve his ditches. Or so he thought.

The next time ‘The Little White Cloud’ came down from the mountaintop it blew a scorching hot wind onto Scun Blackfield’s field. The crops in the field dried up, and so did the ditches. The trouble was, some of the wind came off his field and onto the surrounding villagers’ fields, and so again they all suffered. This definitely wasn’t good enough.

“Will this never end?” The villagers kept asking themselves.

Understanding the villagers’ plight ‘The Little White Cloud’ from its perch at the mountain summit again intervened. Only this time it when it rained it rained too much . . . so much rain, that all of irrigation ditches quickly became either blocked up with gravel and boulders and overflowed or were washed away. The villager’s lot was hard enough anyway, but now with everyone cleaning out or repairing their irrigation ditches they were becoming increasingly more desperate, and exasperated with the situation.

Again the bad farmer refused to see that these events were of his causing, and he refused to listen or mend

his ways. To make things even worse for the villagers, his terrible seven sons, increased their harassment and vandalizing, making the villager’s life unbearable. The boys would think nothing of crossing someone’s field and trampling down his crops. Often, they would block the villagers’ ditches by rolling in big rocks, just for the fun of it. Worst of all they always seemed to be looking for a fight with the village children. It got to such a state that most of the villagers would not let their children go out alone without a parent nearby.

Finally ‘The Little White Cloud’ intervened one more time. this time the cloud came tearing down the mountainside at a tremendous speed, and as it went it grew bigger and bigger. The cloud changed its shape, changed its colour and from its interior there came a terrible howling noise. The noise was so loud it could be heard everywhere. It turned from a lovely white fluffy cloud, into dark menacing gray and coal black cloud. It was obvious to all watching that the cloud was about to burst. By the time it arrived above the Scun Blackfield house it was an enormous, threatening, and very frightening cloud. The villagers from down below working in their fields saw the cloud grow into an enormous doughnut shape.

Suddenly booms of thunder and tremendous amounts of lightning came piercing out of the cloud’s interior. The lightning that streaked down from the all-threatening cloud hit the ground all around the house. The whole of Scun Blackfield’s household, his wife, children and the servants, were terrified and fled the house screaming in fear. Down the mountainside they fled until they came upon the villagers who were grouped together in the middle of their fields. They had gathered together to watch the drama unfolding up there above them. The Blackfield household threw themselves to the ground crying, begging the villagers for their mercy and protection.

They implored of the villagers: “Please take us in and protect us from your cloud.”

In spite of everything this family had brought upon them the village people, who were good people, took pity on the family and promised to take them in and protect them as best as they could.

High up on the mountainside only one person had not fled the all-threatening cloud, it was the head of the family, Scun Blackfield. Defiantly he stepped out of his brand new three story house, raised his shotgun, and aiming up in towards the centre of the cloud he screamed out the most terrible, horrible and frightening words: Words that no one in the village dared repeat. He then shot off his gun right up into the boiling underbelly of  ‘The (not so) Little White Cloud’. The noises of the clouds anger, Scun Blackfield screaming in defiance and finally the boom of the old gun joined together into one indescribable roar.

Suddenly and almost immediately after the gun had gone off, there was a silence . . . a complete and utter silence. It fell upon the mountain, the fields, and the whole surrounding area like an enormous threatening blanket. Everything seemed to stop. Time seemed to stand still. Not even the crickets in the fields could be heard. The defiant farmer, the villagers below, all and everyone for that small moment in time, froze. Looking up at the frightful scene from down below all the village people were scared out of their wits. No one had ever witnessed such an event. No one could move; all were frozen in fear. There was nowhere to hide.

It was, one villager said, “as if the cloud was about to burst in anger.”

“It was like a wounded elephant, and we had nowhere to run to. There was no way to guess which way it would charge,” said another.

The people looking up at the terrifying scene didn’t have long to wait. Of a sudden dozens, no hundreds maybe even thousands of bolts of lightning streaked out of the cloud tearing up the ground all round Scun Blackfield and his new house. The noise was even greater than before. The lightening looked like a continuous and blinding wall of flame around the house and its owner. Scun Blackfield and his house disappeared from sight behind that terrible wall of flame.

For those down below in the fields watching, the lightening was the most terrifying of scenes, as if taken from hell itself.  The noise was so incredibly loud that the villagers watching the scene from hell felt their heads splitting from the noise. It was so painful, so unbearable that they all had to put their hands over their ears.  Had they not, for sure they would have been deafened for life.

No one watching could tell for how long this scene from hell went on.

All of a sudden, the noise, the flames, the pandemonium stopped.  Just like that.

Next thing the villagers saw was that the ‘Little White Cloud’ had almost instantaneously changed back to its original shape and colour. Then slowly, sedately and noiselessly, the cloud made its way back up to its perch at the mountain summit.

The villagers and remaining Scun Blackfield household tentatively climbed the hill to see what had become of the house and its owner. Both had disappeared. Astounded, they all stood around an enormous pit, which was all that was left of the house and its owner.

Already one of the irrigation ditches was emptying its contents into the hole in the ground, thus forming a pond.

Time went by, and with a few changes, Faroff Village returned to normal.