Chapter 21. Ferdy Chicken Meets the Threat Face to Face
Schnottblower, Schnottweiper and Droolmeister strode down a country lane on the outskirts of town. Where Schmatzenbladder had turned toward the ritzier side of town, and Obeast and crew had gone straight downtown, these three veered off toward an area where the houses were spaced further apart and the paved roads gave way to dirt. Schnottblower, particularly, had felt himself pale as Obeast had faced down the big blue bug. He had been ready to pick up a rock and stand with his brothers to defend troll honor, but he had been awfully glad to let the rock drop when Gasbag had proved the bug to be dead. For himself, he was happy to pick a route through town that seemed to have little traffic. One dead car had been more than enough for him. He didn’t want to face a live one. The live ones, whining and scurrying their way along whatever mad path they were inclined toward, scared the bejeezuz out of him. Even from a distance, they seemed bent on nothing but trouble, and for his part, Schnottblower was happy to leave them alone.
It was ironic, then, that Schnottblower was the first one to face down a living, breathing, bright-eyed vehicle. A vehicle bigger, even, than the blue bug that Obeast had stared down. Much bigger, in fact. This bug was monstrous, nearly as tall as a troll, and with a strangely mottled carapace.
Schnottblower of course had no point of reference for any sort of vehicle, much less the particular van that was suddenly careening toward him. Equally, he had no referent for fast food, or any sort of human food, really, other than decomposing hot dogs. Certainly, he didn’t recognize the advertising on the side of the creature as representing a pizza. And even if he had known that the growling insect that approached the trio was not an entity unto itself, but was in actuality a mode of transportation being controlled from within by one of the land trolls, he wouldn’t have been able to understand that the land troll in question considered himself to be not an ordinary human but a human subtly altered at the genetic level to hold the best traits of that most noble of birds, the chicken. And not just any chicken, either, but a chicken resplendent in orange tights and a yellow cape. A chicken with all the pluck and verve of your typical barnyard fowl, though smarter and taller and altogether grander, even if he was a bit hunched at the shoulders, a bit thin in the hair, and a bit big in the belly. A chicken, we might add, with enough evolutionary chutzpah to know the value of a good pair of hiking boots.
“Aha!” said that chicken as he caught sight of the trio of Lake Maebiewahnapoopie Monsters in the middle of the road. He had just taken a corner on two wheels, flying past yet another stop sign. When the tires of the van once again achieved full contact with the pavement, and when the steering wheel was once again more or less centered, Ferdy had taken aim the monsters that stood directly ahead. They were huge creatures, gray in color, gray at least in the moonlight. They had stout forms, with solid legs and big bellies, wide shoulders and large heads. They looked like creatures out of an ordinary human’s nightmares, but for Ferdy, they were a dream come true. Finally, he had a purpose in life. Finally, he would be able to prove his worth. He only wished that his mother were still around to see him in his moment of glory. He slapped his booted foot down onto the accelerator, and felt the van surge forward.
And here, time seemed to stretch out. Within the spaces of that time, Fred Chickweed observed his mother coming out of the depths of his mind. She was trying to tell him something, something that she had often told him during the trials of his teenage years: one couldn’t, she had so often said, go in two directions at once. She was right, he now knew. One couldn’t go in two directions at once. One couldn’t both deliver pizzas, for instance, and hunt monsters. It had to be one or the other. The monster hunter who tried to walk the occasional pizza pie onto someone’s front stoop was a monster hunter bound for failure. One had to make one’s choices, in this life. One had to take the slow road going nowhere, or the fast lane of fame. He, Ferdy, had been going down that slow road far too long. It was time to take charge, to leap up the evolutionary ladder, to make something of himself using all the gifts that he had been given but which were being sloughed away day after day as he peddled pizzas.
But why was she coming to him now, after he had already made his decision? But the answer to that question appeared as he neared the creatures, and they scattered. One shucked off to the left, another to the right, while a third remained in the middle of the road, offering his challenge to Ferdy to come on if he was comin’. His mother, he was sure, was telling him that he couldn’t aim for a trio of monsters; if he tried to run down all of them, he would lose all of them. Better to pick one and make sure he got that one. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Yes, that was it. One couldn’t go in two directions at once. In fact, Ferdy now found, he could go Marge Chickweed one better: one couldn’t go in three directions at once, either. He picked a monster—why not the one in the middle?—and decided that whatever happened, he wouldn’t let it out of his sights. That monster was his.
This moment—having the monsters directly ahead of him, at least one of which would not get away—was a moment that Ferdy had been sure would happen. From the first glimpse of them in the newspaper, he was sure that this very moment was written in the fabric of his personal fate. And yet, he had also been sure that it wouldn’t happen. Nothing in his life had happened as he had known it would. He hadn’t met that right someone. He hadn’t had the three children: twin girls and a younger son. He hadn’t become the chief of police, able to save the town’s citizens from the bad apples amongst them, but instead had been driven underground into a life of quiet desperation and vain hopes. So much had seemed to stack up against him.
And, yet, here it was happening. It hadn’t happened with the calm assurance that he had envisioned, though. Sure that the trolls would head directly to the park, he had gone off in that direction with a van full of superhero equipment and a pizza warmer full of undelivered pizzas. He had gone with a body full of adrenaline and a mind full of ideas. And a gas tank, unfortunately, decidedly low on fuel. But there was no time to think about gas at a time like this: this was his calling. He could only trust that his van would get him where he needed to go. What sort of universe would provide him, finally, with an answer to his longing, and yet not provide him with the necessary transportation?
And yet, every minute that he didn’t find the monsters stretched into an hour of worry, of frustration, of existential unease. The monsters hadn’t been at the park. Ferdy had stopped the van, its headlights aimed at its central tree. No monsters. He had driven around the park, not once but three times, and still no sight of the monsters. A superhero rarely had enough actual data upon which to make his decisions; he had to be able to trust his gut. Ferdy’s gut had told him strongly that the Lake Maebiewahnapoopie Monsters would be arriving at the town’s single tree in Mosquehenna Park. Ferdy Chicken had never known a superhero to be amiss in his gut instincts, but it appeared that he was. Could it be that he was no superhero? Or perhaps these moments of indecision were left out of the average superhero biography. In any case, he had been left with a question: What was the next step?
He had mentally returned to the chicken hawk’s-eye-view of Lone Tree on his wall at home. Quickly, he placed himself in the center of it, right at the park’s boundaries. From there, he laid out a rational and logical search pattern, starting from the bull’s eye that was the park and moving outward in concentric rings. Surely, the monsters wouldn’t be able to get past the city limits before he tracked them down if only he used his scientifically attuned mind to outwit them. The right search pattern would lead him to them in no time at all. He was sure of it.
But Ferdy’s poor mind wasn’t up to any sort of scientific rationality, as it turned out. He found that he couldn’t concentrate on any single idea for more than a second or two before his mind made a random jump to something that may or may not be helpful. His body, truth be told, wasn’t up for it either. His nerves were jumpy and his muscles twitched. Asking his organism to calmly cooperate in this most dire and exciting of times was too much. So Ferdy once again floored the accelerator and careened down the street, taking corners as the whim struck him, sometimes on less than all four wheels. Perhaps, he thought, some more irrational or even cosmic intelligence would take over, and lead him where he needed to be.
And hadn’t it? Here he was, a man with a plan, a man with a van, a tan man with a plan and a fan and a pizza pan, a can-do tan man with a bran muffin and a cran-apple flan and a chickeny clan…. Ferdy Chicken removed his hands from the wheel and held his temples. He stopped himself. He shook his head. “Enough of the bouncy brain,” he told himself. He forced himself to concentrate on the work ahead of him. The work that was even now standing before him, setting its stance and raising a fist in his direction.
Truth be told, it took Schnottblower some amount of time to unfreeze his locked knees as he saw the van hurtling toward him. He stood in the middle of the street, more like a boulder than a troll, and the van screamed its approach. Schnottweiper, he saw out of the corner of his eye, was ducking his head and loping toward a grassy lawn. Droolmeister, similarly, had taken three big steps and vaulted over a short ranch-style fence on the other side of the road. Both of these trolls, Schnottblower thought, must have better survival instincts than he, because all he could do was stand there staring into the hot white eyes of the rapidly approaching beast. Time seemed to stretch out for Schnottblower, who had time to note each chrome tooth as the creature neared, scowling in its hunger and rage. No matter how hungry this beast was, however, and no matter how many shiny teeth Schnottblower could see would be tearing into his flesh unless he moved out of its way, his knees remained locked. His ankles refused to respond. His feet seemed joined to the ground.
The only part of his body that he could move at all, Schnottblower discovered, was his right arm. His punching arm. He held out his arm out in front of him, extending his mighty fist.
While it might seem to an outside observer that Schnottblower was winding up for a good old Rabid Band roundhouse wallop, Schnottblower himself felt differently. He didn’t seem to be in charge of his own actions. Rather, he felt like a character in someone else’s movie. He wanted to run, to join Schnottweiper on the side of the road, to hurl something at the van to stop its inexorable approach. But he was helpless to do anything but stand there, his fist held firmly in front of him at the end of his stiff arm. He made a sort of extended “OOOooooooooohhh” sound as he stood there stoically awaiting the van. He wondered if this was his end. He wondered what kind of story the others would tell about his demise. Would he end up sounding like a hero, facing down this monstrous screaming beast? Or as a martyr, saving his friends from certain doom? Or would he simply be seen as an idiot, too stupid to stand out of the way of an oncoming predator?
In order to give this moment its due, to preserve the scene of a suddenly fragile troll facing down his worst nightmare, and also the scene of a suddenly inspired superhero facing down the terror of the lake and also the terror of his mother’s ghost, and to give the reader the delicious and frustrating feeling that accompanies a cheap cliffhanger ending, the chapter ends here.
The author, sadly, wonders if this is his end as well. Will he, a middle-aged man confronting his own mortality, live to write another book? What story will the world tell about his demise? Will he end up sounding like a hero, relating this tale of the monsters that had hereto now been censored in the mainstream media and the consciousness of America? Or as a martyr, doing such work for little reward and no money? Or will he simply be seen as an idiot, giving in to cheap authorial tactics such as the cliffhanger ending, which has brought fame and ignominy to so many writers before him?
The reader, though, is asked to look away from the author’s shameful intrusion. Instead, he or she is asked to focus, if possible, on that scene in the outskirts of Lone Tree, where poor Schnottblower is standing in the middle of a street with his arm extended for his appointment with an onrushing van. Or poor Ferdy Chicken, held in a stranglehold between quiet desperation and a last, incautious lunge toward action and meaning and, finally, relevance, with his booted foot mashing the accelerator to the floor and his eyes wide with unbelieving hope.