Chapter 26. Ferdy Chicken Rides Again
Ferdy Chicken was a little dazed. He sat in the driver’s seat of the pizza delivery van, looking out the windshield. Or, what once had been the windshield. Now, the glass sagged in a sheet upon the dash, broken into a billion little squares.
The monsters were already moving beyond his range of sight, dark as it was. He knew where they were headed, though: they were going to Moon Park, which lay a couple miles directly ahead.
Moon Park! Of course they were going to Moon Park. He had known it all along, hadn’t he? He should have trusted his instincts, he now knew. He should have remained in the park. He could have set up a blind there, and simply lay in wait for them. He could have set his tripwire. He could have figured out a use for his grappling hook. The park, of course, had no buildings to scale, but surely a grappling hook could be used for other purposes. Just what purposes he couldn’t imagine, but he could have found one. It was no use having a grappling hook if you never used it.
Now, though, he was a chicken without a ride. The Lake Maebiewahnapoopie monsters would get there well before he would, get there and leave, possibly, before he ever arrived. This was a circumstance he so often found himself in: a day late and a dollar short. It was depressing.
He glumly opened the driver’s side door, and exited the now defunct vehicle. He’d have to hoof it.
Ferdy Chicken opened the back door of the van to retrieve his tools. He picked up his long coil of rope and slung it over his shoulder. The grappling hook bounced gently off of his ribcage as he did so. His tripwire, though, was a different story. During the course of his mad search for the creatures, his trip wire had slid around in the rear compartment of the van, and was now snarled beyond use. When he picked it up by one end and pulled, the snarl tightened into a knot. He pulled at the knot, but it only became tighter.
This, as it turned out, was a good thing. Ferdy believed that he had no immediate use for his grappling hook. Had he thought about it, there was no immediate use for a tripwire, either. He carried it simply because it was a tool of the superhero trade. No superhero, he thought, should be without a tripwire. But while he had no real use for a tripwire at the moment, he will very soon have use for a snarled length of woven filament. The snarl, in addition to the ugly knot which so vexed our hero, had also created a taut but flexible loop, which Ferdy would have at hand just at the moment when a horse inexplicably and fortuitously trotted by.
But of course Ferdy Chicken didn’t have the benefit of this authorial tidbit. The tripwire, in its snarled state, just brought more frustration to an already frustrating situation. Here he was, in a hurry to get somewhere—finally, he had somewhere to go, he was no longer hero without a calling—and the equipment he had spent so long preparing had gone afoul. It just wasn’t fair. The very moment the town needed him—finally needed him—everything conspired against his success. If his car had been running, everything would have been fine. His car was equipped with a double-knobbed expandable no snarl tripwire storage device that prevented just this sort of accident from occurring. What foresight he had shown in inventing such a thing! If only he had evidenced just a bit more foresight. Then, he could have invented a portable double-knobbed expandable no snarl tripwire storage device!
In any case, if he had been driving the Ferdymobile—if fate hadn’t brought him to this particular end—he would already be following those monsters. He would be on the trail, not standing around and fussing with his equipment. But no, he had been driving a pizza delivery van. A pizza delivery van, he noted, that was DOA in the middle of the road. More than that, its hood had been impaled with a stop sign. How was he going to tell his boss about that one?
He fiddled with the knotted tripwire. It was looking more hopeless all the time. He was tempted to just toss it aside. Forget it ever existed. But, he reminded himself, superheroes don’t give up. What if, against all odds, he did make it to the park, only to find that the situation called for a tripwire? How would he feel then? He’d feel like a failure, he knew, a feeling that was far too common in his life already. He renewed his concentration on the knot.
It was just this collision of events that led Ferdy Chicken to be standing there, holding a large loop of a tangled tripwire, just as the former sheriff’s horse came trotting down the middle of the street.
Ferdy’s reaction was immediate. “If only I had a rope,” he said to himself, “I could catch that horse and chase after those monsters.”
The next thought through his head was this: “Oh, I do have a rope. It’s right here on my shoulder. If only I didn’t have my hands full. Maybe then I would have time to grab my rope, tie it into a lasso, and catch this horse.”
One might think that this retinue of self-defeating thoughts might continue for some time, but in truth things were moving too fast. The last thought through Ferdy’s forebrain was an incomplete one: “Dang, that horse is moving fast. I’d better do something or I’m gonna…”
Before he could finish the thought, before he could offer up yet another internal excuse for his myriad failures, Ferdy Chicken stepped from behind the van, twirling the loopy end of his tripwire around his head. He had no practice with a lasso, but with unconscious ease he tossed the loop into the air. He saw with slow-motion clarity the loop sailing ahead of the horse’s trajectory, then settling around its head, then tightening around the steed’s neck. What a throw! What a lovely throw! And on his first try! No rodeo star, Ferdy Chicken thought, could have accomplished the feat with as much grace.
When time sped up again, Ferdy Chicken was jerked off his feet. The tripwire, secure around the horse’s neck, was also secure around Ferdy’s left wrist. It tightened painfully as he was dragged down the dirt road.
Ferdy’s mind couldn’t process what had happened. He had never before been dragged down the road by a horse. He tried to formulate the perfect response to such a situation. Feebly, his mind proffered a word: stop. But that wasn’t exactly right, was it? He concentrated, as much as a man being dragged bodily by his wrist can concentrate, and thankfully the correct word emerged: whoa. Whoa, yes, that was it. He opened his mouth to yell out the word, but by the time he had his brain and his tongue coordinated, the horse, shaking its head and snorting, had come to a stop on its own.
Shakily, Ferdy Chicken got to his feet. He blinked his eyes a couple of times. He managed, with effort, to untangle his wrist from the tripwire. Then, he considered the horse.
One might think that the mare, already panicked by the scent of a troll, would be more panicked having been caught by a man in lumpy orange spandex. And indeed, she showed signs of distress. Her eyes were wild, her nostrils dilated with her heavy breathing. But if Ferdy Chicken had little experience with horses specifically, he knew animals. He was better with animals than he would ever be with people. “There there,” he cooed. “Shhhhhhhhh. It’ll be okay.”
As he mumbled whispers of comfort to the horse, he led her backwards a few feet, then reached down to pick up his rope and grappling hook that lay in a dusty heap on the road. Still making calming noises, he led her toward a pickup that was parked in front of a ranch house. With the makeshift reins in one hand and his other hand resting on the mare’s back, he stepped up onto the pickup’s rear bumper. Then, with a smooth motion, he pulled himself up and threw his leg over her side. The horse skittered away from the truck, but Ferdy Chicken was solid on his mount.
It was never easy riding a horse bareback. Ferdy Chicken, in fact, hadn’t spent much time on a saddled horse. But, he knew, it was just the sort of thing that a superhero must be prepared to do.
“Giddy up,” Ferdy commanded.Evidently, the horse didn’t know the word. Or, perhaps she had heard it too much in her long life to be willing to listen now. In any case, she stood stubbornly where she was in the middle of the street. But Ferdy had more than one trick up his sleeve. He kicked both heels into her flanks.
This worked better than he had expected. The horse, despite her advanced years and poor constitution, leapt forward. Before long, she was at a swift canter.
Though there had been an unexpected detour in the proceedings, Ferdy Chicken was once again on the trail of the trolls. And this time, he knew just where he would find them.
As he rode along, his cape fluttered behind him like a flag in a stiff breeze. Had folks been watching, which none were, they would have seen that yellow cape, emblazoned with a big red F, flowing behind him. That cape announced to the world the glory that is possible when one adopts the philosophy and grace inherent in a barnyard fowl.
Schmoozeglutton saw all this from behind a tall fence. He hadn’t been happy to see that his hunt had been joined by one of the land trolls. As he watched the land troll handily snare his prey, his instincts clashed within him. Part of him wanted to pound the land troll and re-engage the hunt, but another part of him admitted that he would rather not come face to face with a land troll, even as small and weak as they were, on this first foray upon the land. Maybe Brumvack had been right: maybe it would be better to watch them for a while, see what kind of clubs they had. These warring thoughts kept him behind the fence, watching instead of acting.
And then, he also had to admit that the land troll had some gumption. He couldn’t believe his eyes when it actually got up on top of the beast.
This was a trick for which Schmoozeglutton had a good deal of admiration. He himself had never tried to get atop an animal, though he had seen it done. Slimegobbler was the one amongst the Rabid Band known for finding his way on top of the occasional beast.
It had happened by accident, as perhaps all great moments do. The Rabid Band, one afternoon back in the ice ages, had been facing down a big bull mastodon. It had surprised them as they were tracking a much smaller mastodon—one they were more likely to be able to bring down. As the bull stood in front of them in a threatening way, breathing great gusts of steam into the cold air, they stood in a pack. Each troll held his club firmly in hand. Each troll waved his big arms. Each troll yelled at the top of his big voice. This spectacle, they hoped, would intimidate the bull into backing away.
The mastodon, however, was not to be intimidated. Instead, it had blared a trumpet call through its sizeable nose, then charged. More than one troll thought he had just seen his last great hunt.
Such a fate was not to be, however. Slimegobbler, in front of the bunch, and with his club at the ready, ran forward and met the beast. The mastodon hit him, at speed, taking its best shot at trampling the troll under its big flat feet.
The mastodon hadn’t yet mastered the art of trampling, however. For a mastodon, though, there are many ways of injuring those smaller and less fortunate. As it ran toward Slimegobbler, the big beast shook its head, meaning to gore the troll in front of him with its massive tusks.
Slimegobbler didn’t get gored, but he did catch the brunt of the tusk’s momentum. It hit the inside of his thigh, launching him into the air. With a grunt, he lost his club in midair, then landed belly first on the mastodon’s back. As he hit, the air whoofed out of his lungs. The trolls saw his breath leave his body in an icy cloud.
Slimegobbler was stunned. He couldn’t tell what had happened. Raggedly, he gasped for breath, but his chest was tight, and no air entered. Dazedly, he looked around him. The world turned in dizzying directions.
The mastodon, for its part, was looking wildly about, in search of the creature that had so recently been standing in front of it. It bucked and jived and turned in mad circles. Slimegobbler held onto the pelt of the mastodon as it rocketed left and then right. He grabbed handfuls of the mastodon’s long reddish coat and twisted it around his fists. Slowly, he was coming to sense his position and his peril.
The rest of the trolls watched, slack-jawed, as Slimegobbler played out his final minutes. Slimegobbler, they knew from their extensive experience with bull mastodons, was a goner. He wouldn’t be the first troll to fall victim to these mighty beasts.
Slimegobbler, though, didn’t share their despair. He was breathing again, the air cold in his lungs. He was able once again to look around him and make sense of the world, even if it was from a perspective quite a bit loftier than what he was used to. One thing he saw was his friends quite a ways down below, standing in a huddle and looking worriedly at him. His first impulse was to yell out a feeble “HELP”, but as he noted that all eyes were upon him, he reconsidered.
It was a rare event that a troll was able to maintain an audience. To Slimegobbler, it was clear that this was his moment. He had always been a performer at heart, and now was his chance to shine. He squelched the panic within him. Instead of a plaintive cry, he said, “Hey guys, watch this!” Then, as he held on to fistfuls of the mastodon’s long reddish hair, he raised himself up to a sitting position on the back of the mighty beast.
The mastodon, still raging, finally noticed that its foe was atop it. It shook its shaggy head, and once again bucked a time or two, trying to dislodge its rider. When that didn’t work, it trumpeted and ran full bore toward the east. Before it got too far, it pivoted on two legs and ran to the west. As it thundered past the trolls, they felt little icy pellets that sprayed up from its feet as it ran.
Even against the force of this display, though, Slimegobbler was able maintain his seat. He even kicked at the beast a little, pretending that he was the one controlling its berserker movements.
And then, Slimegobbler had another idea. Once he had weathered yet another 180 degree turn—the turns were the worst— he raised himself up and, still squatting, got his feet underneath him. Then, as the beast made its mad dash in front of the trolls, he let go of its hairy pelt and stood atop the mastodon, riding it like a surfer. He waved his arms wildly enough that he managed to keep his balance for a short time. When the beast made its next crazy turn, Slimegobbler skidded off its back and landed on his feet.
The trolls were flabbergasted. They were amazed. They were stupefied. Together, they erupted into a roar of approval for their cave mate.
Slimegobbler made a small bow, then went to pick up his club from the snow-blown ground. All the while, the trolls yelled their approval and shook their fists in the air. But Slimegobbler didn’t have long to enjoy their admiration before the mastodon made another of its bugle calls, bringing the trolls back to reality.
If the mastodon had been mad before, it was furious now. It was almost as if it sensed the trolls had gained some victory. Once again, it stood in front of the bunch, stomping the ground and shaking its massive head. It snorted its anger.
If the mastodon wanted a fight, though, this day it would be disappointed. The trolls, giving up on their prey for the day, backed off, and made their way back to their cave. They felt changed, somehow, by Slimegobbler’s feat. They felt as if they had gained one more notch of control over the wild world.
Through the years, more than one troll had attempted to ride a mastodon. More than one, too, had found himself pummeled into the ground. Several had gotten onto the back of one of the beasts, but none had accomplished it with the panache that Slimegobbler had showed. Mastodon riding, as exciting and dangerous as it was, eventually became not an activity but a memory, and most only remembered that first mastodon ride. Slimegobbler’s ride. For his efforts, Slimegobbler was afforded a special position within the troupe of trolls: he was called Beastmaster.
And here in front of him, on a much later day in a much different world, Schmoozeglutton had seen another beastmaster. One of the land trolls had repeated Slimegobbler’s feat. The fact built within him a sense of respect for these land trolls. As small and wimpy as they were, still they weren’t afraid to get on the back of a wild animal.
And, he noted, that animal was now once again trotting away from him. Almost running away from him. With a sense of panic, Schmoozeglutton emerged from behind the fence and ran after it. He was determined to make this kill his own, land troll or not.
But the beast was moving awfully fast, and Schmoozeglutton was losing faith that he alone could catch it. With just a bit of disappointment, he called in the assistance of the others. He took a deep breath, pointed his head to the sky, and let out with a long, long foodwhoop.
It was a sound that this world had never heard.