Chapter 133 Hank's Family
Forty-three soldiers were detained in the disciplinary department under the Military Law Department of the Innadri City Defense Force Headquarters.
The Military Law Department's Discipline Department, which is directly supervised by the Military Police, is obviously not a good place... Of course, this place is used to detain soldiers who have made mistakes and were trained at great expense by the Bartles family. The environment is much better than the cells of the Westram Militia.
The special single room where 25-year-old Sam Hank was imprisoned not only had a toilet and a sink, but the small single bed was also covered with starched sheets and quilt covers. It looked more like a place to live than some factory workers' dormitories.
But it is impossible for Sam Hank to calm down just because of the better prison environment...
When the military police wearing white hats and white uniforms took him out of the cell and brought him into the interrogation room, facing the military interrogator with sleek hair and meticulous uniforms, Sam couldn't help but yelled half aggrieved and half angry: "What do you want to ask? Do you suspect that we betrayed Innadri? I've already said that we didn't do that!"
"Calm down, Sam Hank. Losing your temper will do you no good." The interrogator, whose face was smoother than his hair, said with a fake smile, "Repeat your answer again, Sam Hank. Do you still plan to gather your kind and return to Westram?"
Sam was about to explode with anger, his face livid as he said, "Sir, please allow me to point out your wrong choice of words. We are all soldiers of the City Defense Army, and we were forced to retire only because the higher-ups misunderstood us. We can all prove to each other that we never betrayed Innadri or the City Defense Army during our captivity. Please don't call us 'the same kind', thank you!"
"Well, Sam," said the interrogator calmly, "then why do you want to return to Westram, the place where you were captured, imprisoned, and brought shame upon yourself?"
Sam took a deep breath, trying to control his anger, and said resentfully: "That's because we were forced to retire, sir! If we leave the city defense army, we have nowhere to go!"
"I think you should know how difficult it is to find a decent job in Innadri. My family has run a tailor shop for generations, and I have never touched needlework since I joined the city defense army at the age of seventeen. If I don't want to learn tailoring from scratch, ordinary people like me can only become mercenaries or pay someone to arrange for me to work in a factory!"
"It's really hard to find a job in the world now." The interrogator nodded in agreement and spread his hands. "But at least there are job opportunities in Innadri. Sam, you and I both know that Westram has nothing. There is not a single factory there, and there are very few decent shops and workshops."
"That was in the past, sir." Sam tried his best to be sincere. "There are plenty of job opportunities in Westham now. They are rebuilding the main road in the town and transforming the former brothels into formal factory workshops. I have seen the operation of the soy product workshop with my own eyes. There are many advanced machines there that can squeeze soybeans into oil, and the remaining bean curd cakes can be made into delicious tofu. I brought back some tofu for my family to taste. They are recruiting workers everywhere, and you can apply for registration without spending money. In addition, there are many vacancies for operators in Westham Town Hall..."
Sam Hank was a relatively smart young man. He never mentioned the name of "Wagner Pete" and avoided the horrifying fact that the highest governor of Westham Town Hall was a ghost. In order to avoid making the other party think he was lying, he also wisely kept silent about Westham's employment conditions.
Sam, who tried to impress the other party with his sincerity, was doomed to be disappointed...
After listening to Sam's "excuse", the interrogator did not give a clear answer, but just asked him to wait patiently for news, and then asked the military police to take Sam back to the cell.
As Sam was being led out of the corridor, he found another brother being brought in from another corridor by two military police and brought into the interrogation room.
Sam kept looking back, feeling very uneasy...
Two hours later, Sam was taken out of the cell again by the military police and brought before the greasy-haired interrogator.
"You can leave Innadri." The interrogator said as soon as he saw Sam, "You can take your family and anyone you think needs to be taken away. Sam, Captain Horn will give you half a day to prepare everything. After you leave, you and the people you take away will never be allowed to return to Innadri. Do you understand?"
"What?!" Sam was shocked. "Sir, I don't understand! Isn't this exile? But we didn't do anything wrong!"
The interrogator still had a fake smile, but his eyes and tone were colder than before: "Sam Hank, are you questioning Captain Horn and the orders of His Excellency the Third?"
Sam shuddered and his heart sank.
In Innadri, there is only one honorable man called the Third—Adela III of the Bartles family!
"No, sir, I didn't mean that." Sam closed his eyes and lowered his head in despair.
Sam's father died early, and his mother, Mrs. Hank, ran a tailor shop in Mary Street Market.
Mrs. Hank was very good at mending skirts and shirts, and she could mend them so perfectly that even if you looked closely, you couldn't see any signs of mending. She was very popular among the middle-class clients in the several blocks around Mary Street. Not only did she support Sam and his two siblings with needlework, but she also raised Sam to be tall and strong.
The person Sam is most grateful to is his mother, Mrs. Hank. If his mother had not inherited his grandfather's craft, he would never have been able to enjoy a carefree childhood and adolescence. He might have gone to work in a workshop when he was fifteen or sixteen years old.
Sam always brought home his generous salary. With the endless flow of money he brought back, Mrs. Hank's life became much easier. In recent years, she no longer had to work late at night like before. She also had her eyes cured and had enough money to add an extra layer of beautiful tulle to her and her daughter's skirts.
During the time when Sam was captured and lost contact, Mrs. Hank almost cried her eyes, which had just been healed with great difficulty. If her relatives and friends had not tried their best to dissuade her, she might have risked running to Westham to see her son. Mrs. Hank was most happy that her son could return safely. After being forced to retire, Sam was depressed, and it was Mrs. Hank who always encouraged him to cheer up.
Seeing Sam being escorted back by the military police, Mrs. Hank immediately ran out of the store and hugged her son tightly.
"That's great, Sam is finally back." The old neighbors from the next door shop heard Mrs. Hank's crying and came out to see what was going on. When they saw Sam being taken away by the gendarmerie, they were very happy for their family.
The military police escorting Sam looked coldly at the neighbors who were watching, without any intention of hiding anything for Sam, and read out the military judge's exile order for soldier Sam Hank to Mrs. Hank in the street.
The crowd was in an uproar and retreated hastily, fearing that they would be implicated by Hank's family. Mrs. Hank was so frightened that she almost couldn't stand.
"How could this happen?" Mrs. Hank was terrified and tried to plead with the military police, "Gentlemen, is there any misunderstanding here? My Sam has never done anything wrong. Our family has always been honest and upright. We are not wrong, are we?"
"It was Jim Hank's own request, ma'am." The military policeman shook off Mrs. Hank's hand impatiently. "They want to go back to Westham."
"I, we're not going, Sam, we're not going to Westham, we're staying here, okay?" Mrs. Hank pulled her son in panic and begged bitterly.
Sam was silent.
"This is the order of His Excellency the Commander and His Excellency the Third, ma'am." The military police said sternly, "You can't just go back on your word. Where do you think His Excellency the Third is?"
Hearing the title "Your Excellency III", Mrs. Hank felt dizzy.
The next half day was like a nightmare for Sam and Hank's family.
They had to pack up their belongings and leave Innadri before dark, and were permanently forbidden to return - such a strict exile order made everyone avoid them as much as possible; when Mrs. Hank cried and wanted to give away the belongings that she could not take away, the neighbors who had lived with them for decades all closed their doors, for fear of having anything to do with them.
Mrs. Hank took the unsent-away belongings home with a disappointed look on her face, and cried to Sam, who was under military police surveillance the entire time, "When I sent the tofu fruits you brought back, they were not the same as they are now."
Sam shook his head and said nothing, concentrating all his energy on packing his luggage.
Before it got dark, a horse-drawn carriage guarded by the gendarmerie arrived at Mary Street. The gendarmes roughly forced the Hank family, who had hastily packed their belongings, into the carriage and sent them out of the city along with another soldier family that also lived on Mary Street.
Mrs. Hank, clutching her luggage in one hand and holding her little daughter in the other, huddled in the corner of the carriage, looking out the window in panic at the old street where she had lived for decades.
No neighbors came out to see them off. Only a few ladies who were on good terms with them quietly opened a corner of the window and waved their handkerchiefs to them cautiously and furtively.
Mrs. Hank burst into tears again.
Forty-three soldiers and their families were driven out of the city before dark and dumped near the Mule and Horse Market Square outside the city gate. Some relatives and friends heard the news and rushed to see them off. For a while, the Mule and Horse Market was filled with cries...
It was okay for a small family like Sam's family that split up because the older generation of elders had passed away, but some soldiers were from large families where the oldest male head of the family was still alive and the family had not split up. Dozens of people were expelled from the city because of one person. The level of chaos was simply indescribable - even in the mule and horse market, several families fought because of internal quarrels.
In the chaos, several veterans stood up, got all the families together, and rented carts from the mule and horse market to move overnight - after all, these soldiers knew the situation in Westham, and they all believed that all problems could be solved once they arrived in Westham.
Some soldiers' families had already accepted their fate, but some soldiers' family situations were more complicated and they started arguing again when the issue of moving to Westham was mentioned.
Amid the quarrel, several soldiers' large families separated on the spot, with some families going to Westham and some going to other villages and towns to make a living.
Sam found a family to share a carriage with him. All the belongings of the two families were loaded into the carriage. The women and children squeezed into the carriage, and the men could only walk behind the carriage. There were too many people renting carriages at once, and the rental companies in the mule and horse market took the opportunity to raise prices, and no one was willing to pay the extra money.
It was almost eight or nine o'clock in the evening when the bloated convoy started to set off.
Before leaving Innadri, Mrs. Hank squeezed into the corner of the carriage with her little daughter and kept looking back at the familiar yet unfamiliar Innadri West Gate, tears streaming down her face: "Your uncles didn't even come to see you off... I should have known not to share the salt and spices you brought back with them. It's better to sell them to a grocery store than to give them to people like you."
Sam, who was walking beside the carriage, raised his hand and held his mother's cold hand, and whispered, "It's okay, Mom, those salt and spices are nothing... When we get to Westham, we can have as much as we want."
Apart from his mother, the second person Sam was most grateful to was Mr. Gould, the butler of the Bartles family.
If he had not been seen running on the street carrying a large bag while helping his family deliver goods five years ago by Mr. Gould who happened to be passing by in a carriage, he would not have been able to rise in class from the eldest son of a tailor shop to an entry-level middle-class person with an annual income of more than twenty gold coins.
Among the captured soldiers, Sam was probably the one who hated Westram the most and was most upset about this misfortune - he was very reluctant to lose his golden rice bowl in the City Defense Force, and he very much hoped to continue serving in the City Defense Force until he retired.
Sam returned to Innadri with his companions and waited anxiously for a few days, hoping for a lucky break. In the end, he received an order from the headquarters to force him to retire. Sam felt a darkness before his eyes...
He was only twenty-five years old, and he could still serve the city defense army for at least twenty years. He could have received a salary and allowance of several hundred gold coins, and a pension after retirement, but all of this was gone. The severance pay of six gold coins ended all his ideals.
Sam was extremely depressed and drank alone at home for several days. He didn't wake up until he found out that his mother had secretly lowered the living standards of everyone except him. He forced himself to pick himself up and prepare to take on the responsibility of being the family's financial pillar again - go back to Westham to work and earn money to give his family a better life.
Sam never expected that this choice, which seemed ordinary to him, would lead to him being imprisoned by the Military Court and causing him and his family to be exiled.
As much as Sam once admired and worshipped the Bartles family and respected Mr. Gould who changed his destiny, as much resentment he feels now.
