Chapter 11. The Trolls Emerge
It was late evening. The sun had gone down, and low clouds scudded across the sky, giving everything the look of a black-andwhite photograph.
Lone Tree, never a bustling metropolis, had mostly shut down for the night. The town’s citizens, never an ostentatious bunch, sat behind locked doors and bolted windows, letting the radiation from their TV screens soothe away the indignities of another work week.
The school newspaper had caused quite a stir for most of the morning, of course, but that was just because people needed something to talk about, to complain about, to have an opinion about. No one was truly worried. If there were creatures in the lake, surely the town newspaper would have covered it. Heck, CBS News would have covered it! They would have had vans full of television cameras all over town, awaiting the next appearance of the monsters, beaming their ugly visages all over the country at the speed of light.
Clearly, that wasn’t happening. Here they were, sitting in front of their TV sets through the course of a long evening, and they heard nothing but “All is well, all is well, here’s something new to amuse and distract you. Everything is Under Control.”
Surely, come next week, the hoax of the photographs would be revealed, the high school prankster would make a public apology, and the situation would blow over. By this time next week, no one would remember the monsters of the lake. There would be something new to talk about and complain about and to have an opinion about.
So no one was ready when the Lake Maebiewahnapoopie monsters actually arrived.Schmoozeglutton was the first to reach the surface of the water. He raised his head slowly out of the murk, and looked upon the silence around him. He took a deep breath, both to refresh his lungs after the long swim, and to relish a peaceful moment. The water surrounding him was calm, with only an expanding ring where he had broken the surface. The shoreline ahead of him seemed equally calm. There was none of the commotion of daily activity: he had been right to think that night would be a better time to chart this new territory.
And, truth be told, there was none of the chaos that came with a cave full of trolls. Though it would surely be only be a few seconds before the rest of the trolls broke the surface, Schmoozeglutton enjoyed those few seconds.
It had been a long few hours. Schmoozeglutton had always been put off by Brumvack’s style of leadership, which mostly consisted of allowing the trolls to do whatever they wished, however they wished. Everything happened willy-nilly. There was no order. No precision. No military exactitude. Schmoozeglutton was of the opinion that trolls, when out in the world, should work as a team. Not as a bunch of individuals, each acting on his own impulses, but as a finely-tuned machine. If they were all walking in the same direction anyway, why not march? If they were swimming, why not swim in formation? Trolls, Schmoozeglutton considered, were fearsome beasts. Or, at least, they had the potential to be fearsome beasts. But no one would fear this bunch. The Rabid Band, after centuries of Brumvack’s leadership, were a bunch of lumbering oafs, tripping and shoving and japing with each other, each distractible from the task at hand by the smallest of impulses.
He had tried to bring order to the troops. He had tried to line them up as they left the cave, to make them stand there at attention as he laid out the mission, to send them into the lower lagoon one after another, a precision reconnaissance force. But they would have nothing of it. It was a high time for trolls, hungry and restless after years of sleep, the new food simmering noisily in their bellies, the excitement of a new world and a new leader. It wasn’t that they were unwilling to follow his orders; they just didn’t have his finer understanding of the possibilities. To them, it was all a big game. They stood there, when they were supposed to be at attention, goofing and jibing and elbowing each other.
Finally, he had given up. He had dived into the lagoon not so much to lead the trolls to victory, but just to have a moment of peace. They would follow, he knew, each in their own slovenly way.
Yes, Brumvack had spoiled them, all right. Schmoozeglutton seethed. But oh well. He shrugged his shoulders and sighed. There was nothing for it now. It would take time to bring order to this bunch.
Soon, the other trolls began to break the surface. Schmatzenbladder came first. His head came out of the water up to his eyeballs. Without disturbing the water around him, he scanned the horizon. When he saw that there was nothing requiring his immediate attention, he came more fully out of the water, and pulled on his long earlobes to empty his ears. Schmatzenbladder, Schmoozeglutton noted, was always sensitive about his ears.
Schmoozeglutton figured that one way to begin to bring a military order to his troops would be to conduct a head count. When Schmatzenbladder was done fussing with his ears, he nodded at him and intoned, with gravity, “One.”
Oreo and Oleo popped up next. They were already roughhousing in the water, shoving and splashing each other, but Schmoozeglutton put a stop to that with a belch of disapproval. He glared at each of them as he continued his head count. “Two. Uh, three.”
Bilgewater was next. He came up with a spray of water in all directions. He had a look of panic in his eyes as he took a deep breath of welcome air. Schmoozeglutton rolled his eyes. Clearly, Bilgewater had forgotten to grab a lungful of air before he left the underground cave. Stupid trolls, Schmoozeglutton thought. It was going to be tough, being a leader of this bunch. “Three,” he said. “No, uh, four.” He repeated the number with more surety: “Four.”
Suddenly, three trolls rose to the surface at once. It was Obeast, Schnottweiper, and Biledumper. Schmoozeglutton felt his brain momentarily seize up as he juggled numbers. “Four, no five, uh… seven…uh…six...uh…eight?.” He stopped. This was difficult. Why couldn’t the Rabid Band do anything with control, with decorum, with a little bit of class? It was Brumvack, he knew, who had allowed these trolls to do everything in a slapdash fashion. Anything went, with Brumvack.
His rule would be different. But this, Schmoozeglutton had already seen, was no time to start a new regimen of orderliness. Time was short. When the current emergency had been dealt with, he would have his work cut out for him.
He shook his head and started anew. He nodded once again at Schmatzenbladder. “One.”
He looked to Oreo and Oleo. “Two…” But just then, Slimegobbler rose up next to next to Schmatzenbladder. Schmoozeglutton glared at him for a moment, thought of naming Slimegobbler as number three, but then Oleo was supposed to be number three…. With a smooth precision that surprised even him, he quickly counted Oleo as number three, Bilgewater as number four, and Obeast as number five. His brain was in the groove now. He could feel it. The numbers were coming, coming, coming, and even in the right order. Schnottweiper, he called out, was number six. Biledumper was seven, which made Slimegobbler number nine. Wait! Wait! Number ten. Eight! He slowed for just a moment to sort that out, but didn’t get far before Droolmeister showed up, nose first, just in front of Slimegobbler, throwing the whole mess into confusion.
Schmoozeglutton looked at the sky in a patient, pleading way. He weighed his options. As he saw it, he could begin the count anew, admittedly a project with a some chance of failure, or he could fake it and pretend that he had completed the count to his satisfaction.
He looked at the trolls as he considered this quandary for a moment. He could see that they were beginning to get restless. “OKAY,” he said. “Everybody’s here.”
The words were just barely out of this mouth when Schnottblower splashed to the surface. All of the trolls look at him, then back to Schmoozeglutton.
Schmoozeglutton took a deep breath. He held his temper. This, he now knew, was going to be the hardest part of being a leader: holding his temper. He pursed his lips for a moment. He pretended to be deep in thought, preparing his remarks as their leader, biding time for any more trolls to appear. He considered counting to ten to pass a few more seconds, then dismissed the idea. Counting hadn’t ever been his strong suit. Still, he waited another long moment. The trolls looked at him expectantly, but he didn’t say anything for yet another moment. Finally, he once again spoke: “Okay. Everybody’s here.”
Gasbag, as if on cue, emerged directly in front of Schmoozeglutton. Schmoozeglutton snapped. He batted at Gasbag’s head a couple of times, only vaguely hearing the voice in the back of his mind that said “Hold your temper, hold your temper, hold your temper….” When the voice finally stilled, he grabbed Gasbag’s big ears and pushed his head under water. He held it there for a full minute, and then another minute. He held it for a third minute, until that smallest of the trolls began to flail his arms and legs in the water.
Only when bubbles started rising from Gasbag’s nose and mouth did Schmoozeglutton lift him out of the water to the level of his shoulders. Gasbag tried to shake his head to clear water from his nose, but of course his ears were still pinned between Schmoozeglutton’s thumbs and index fingers. He gasped at the air.
Schmoozeglutton looked him in the eye for a moment and whispered, fiercely, “Are you ready to give your leader his personal space?”
Gasbag managed to nod his head slightly up and down even against the viselike pressure of Schmoozeglutton’s grasp. Schmoozeglutton looked deeply into his eyes for another moment, perhaps with a final look of warning, then pushed him backwards, releasing him. Gasbag, with relief but also fear in his eyes, looked at Schmoozeglutton and then ducked under the water. He swam under water for a few yards, then reappeared next to Schnottweiper.
“Okay,” Schmoozeglutton said with a long-suffering sigh. He felt a little bad about going crazy like that, but surely he couldn’t be blamed. These trolls, he was discovering, were morons. Very tedious morons. Fat, smelly, tedious, stupid…. But he stopped himself.
Schmoozeglutton set his jaw. He paused for a moment, considered once again trying for a head count, and then decided against it. “Okay. Everybody’s here.” He shrank back a little, daring a newly appearing head to contradict him. When it didn’t, he went cautiously ahead. “Everybody listen up!” he said, and gave such a belch that it echoed across the surface of the lake. It must have been hidden deep within the recesses of his gut not to have been expelled during the challenge. He wiped his arm across his nose so as to be rid of any hangers-on, then continued. “Be back at the lake before the sun returns. Foodwhoop. Let’s go.”
Now, the attentive reader knows that we’ve heard the word “foodwhoop” before. In this case, however, the word has a slightly different meaning. This time, it wasn’t a cry of the hunt, but a reminder to the trolls that they were on their honor to let others know of any sizeable portions of food they found. Schmoozeglutton saying “foodwhoop” was a warning that if they were caught with a stash of food they hadn’t told the others about, they would be strung up by their heels and used for bait.
Then, he set off, sure that the others would follow.
To look at a troll, one wouldn’t think they it could do much in water but sink like a rock. They were in fact quite agile swimmers, though. Through the latter decades of their lives (minus the time they had spent in the Big Sleep), they had developed sufficient grace in the water to catch mudfish. As soon as Schmoozeglutton gave the word, they swam to shore in a rough bunch with amazing speed.
It was on land that trolls became more sluggish. Once they were within a few yards from shore, their bulk got the better of them and they trudged more deliberately. Still, it wasn’t long before all of them were out of the water and congregating on the grassy shore.