Chapter 29. Ferdy Chicken Utilizes his Tools
Ferdy Chicken, of course, was happy to have finally engaged in the chase. Unfortunately, though, at the moment he seemed to be the one being chased. What had started out as a good way to follow the trolls—to jump on a horse and ride it toward his destiny—was now working against him. Unlike the Ferdymobile, or even the pizza delivery van, the horse seemed to have a mind of her own. Once he had gotten atop of her, she did what she wanted to, and what she seemed to want was run from the monsters. That was exactly the opposite of what Ferdy had wanted, which was for the monsters to run from him.
What he needed to do now was to stop the horse. She, however, had other ideas. She was in fact running all the faster as the number of monsters increased. All Ferdy’s yelling of “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” was going in one ear and out the other. All the tugging and then yanking on the tripwire around her neck was for naught. Further, as the horse ran ever faster, Ferdy’s seat became all the more uncertain. The movement of the horse underneath him bobbled and jounced him every which direction, threatening to dismount him. Now, he held the tripwire only with his right hand, while he gripped her mane with his left. It was all he could do to keep his seat.
But while it wouldn’t do to be thrown from the horse at top speed, it wouldn’t do to remain atop her either, if all he was accomplishing was leaving his prey behind. He looked behind him and could only barely make out the bodies of trolls on the chase. He was outrunning them! His quarry! His one chance to prove himself!
Ferdy Chicken considered jumping from the horse in order to face down these creatures, but he sensed he was moving too fast. Almost surely, he wouldn’t be able to land on his feet at this speed. And, though the trolls did seem to be falling behind, they weren’t that far behind. He didn’t want to be lying on the ground with a busted leg when they caught up with him.
No, there had to be a way to slow this horse. Evidently, it didn’t know the “Whoa!” command. Nor did it respond to him pulling at the reins. Well, that wasn’t too surprising. Ferdy didn’t know a lot about riding, but he knew enough to remember that a horse’s bit went into its mouth, not just around its neck. Was there some way of getting the tripwire into the horse’s mouth?
Ferdy Chicken, holding on for dear life, once again appraised his situation. His position atop this horse, he knew, was tenuous. He didn’t think he could reach the horse’s mouth from the saddle position even at the best of times, and this was far from the best of times. He’d have to find another way of slowing the horse. The traditional method—pulling on the reins—wasn’t working.
What else could he use to stop this rampaging steed? One thing he could do, he guessed, was to try to use his cape as a makeshift parachute. Perhaps he could generate enough wind resistance to slow down the horse’s rampage enough that he could safely jump off. As a child, he had sometimes held his coat above his shoulders, arms in sleeves and hands in pockets, to let the wind buffet him. Could he do that with his cape?
Maybe. But it would have to be a two-handed operation. Ferdy Chicken wasn’t about to let go of the horse’s mane. It was the only thing keeping him steady. Well, somewhat steady. Well, a little bit steady, in a jouncy trouncy bouncy sort of unbalanced way.
Ferdy Chicken mentally went through the list of the options available to him. He had his superhero equipment. Surely it would be sufficient to win out in any situation. His tripwire was already being used. What else did he have at hand?
In a satisfying flash, the answer came to him. It came in the form of an image, an image of a boat’s anchor. That imagined anchor, he knew, held a startling similarity to the grappling hook attached to his rope. Grappling hooks, he knew, were used for throwing upwards in order to scale buildings. But a grappling hook, he now considered, could be used much like an anchor.
How ingenious! he thought. How creative! Here he thought he had been carrying around a grapping hook, when all this time he had also been carrying around an anchor! A land anchor, he amended to himself, which would surely stop a form of land transportation just as a water anchor would stop a form of water transportation! It was a brilliant solution. He would throw the anchor overboard, stop the horse, and then dismount to face down those beasts of the lake. A crackerjack solution. A solution worthy of the worthiest of superheroes. A worthy solution worth millions. A worthwhile solution worthy of the worthiness of the worthiest of the worthful. “Worthful?” Ferdy Chicken whispered to himself. He crinkled his forehead and said it again, out loud this time: “Worthful?” It didn’t sound quite right. But he was sure he had the right idea. “Never mind,” he told himself. “Just never mind. I am worthful, even if it isn’t a word! I am worthful! I am!”
With those words, our worthful superhero switched his grip on the horse’s mane to his right hand, freeing his left. He shook loose the loop of rope from his shoulder. He readied the rope, holding its coil in his left hand. He prepared for the moment when he would toss it to the grass below.
Just as he was about to let it go, however, Ferdy Chicken stopped himself. Just in time, too. He had nearly tossed the anchor overboard! If you tossed an anchor off the side of the boat, it would simply sink, and the boat would continue on. No, one had to tie the rope to the boat. Only then would a dropped anchor stop the boat’s forward motion.
“Boy, that was a close one,” thought Ferdy. “I’m glad I had my wits about me.”
Just at that moment, Ferdy Chicken saw a softball flying past his left ear. He knew what a softball looked like, Lord knew, because he was a member of the Petey’s Perfect Pizza Pies corporate softball team. Not that he ever left the bench. The ball flew on ahead of him, then bounced on the pavement and rolled down the street.
A softball?
Suddenly, something pounded him on his right shoulder blade. It stung. The muscles of his back formed a little knot where it had hit. Another softball? It sure felt like it could have been.
Then, Ferdy heard the smack of yet another softball hitting the hindquarters of his mount. The horse surged forward, neighing a sound of fear into the night. Though Ferdy wouldn’t have thought it possible, the horse ran even faster.
“Nasty buggers!” Ferdy whispered. “Throwing softballs! Pffuh!” But he didn’t have time right at the moment to think about the monsters and their choice of ammunition. He had to get on with his plan to stop the horse.
He had just come to the hard part of the operation. He’d have to tie the rope to himself, which would no doubt require two hands. Moreover, he’d have to do it while maintaining his balance on this wild-eyed horse. Instinctively, he lowered his upper body against the horse’s back and neck. He wanted, he sensed with his gut if not his mind, to have the lowest possible center of gravity. He tensed his legs in a viselike grip around the horse’s barrel chest. Then, slowly, he loosened his grip on the horse’s mane. With concentration and care, he held the rope behind his back with his left hand, and grabbed its free end with his right. Through all this, the horse galloped on.
As he rode, Ferdy Chicken pulled the rope around himself, then laid the grappling hook and the coil of rope between his legs and underneath his stomach. That left two hands free to tie a good solid knot. Or at least a granny knot. He did so as quickly as he could, then, with relief, once again grabbed two handfuls of the horse’s mane. He breathed deeply. The trickiest part of the operation was done, and he still remained atop the horse. In his crouched position, the long flowing hairs of the mare’s mane whipped his face. This horse, he noted, was moving awfully fast. Faster, surely, than the design limits of the average nag.
But he didn’t have long to ponder this notion before the horse gave a magnificent leap. Ferdy Chicken hung in midair. The horse hung in midair slightly below him. The distance between Ferdy’s rear end and the horse’s back increased. Ferdy grasped the coarse hair in his hand ever more tightly, and held on.
Time seemed to stop.
Then, in a rush, time started up again with a vengeance. The horse’s front legs hit the ground. As they did, Ferdy left his midair position and slammed, hard, onto the back of the mare. He didn’t alight there, however; instead, he hit her and then bounced. Immediately, he was in the air again, feeling a total loss of control. Just as the horse’s back feet once again made contact with the ground, he slammed downward again, though this time he landed slightly off-center. The horse, oblivious to the troubles of its rider, was once again running madly into the night. Every step of its gait bounced Ferdy further from center, further from a comfortable sense of balance. Though he maintained a grip on the horse’s mane, he was nearly bounced off her back. His left leg was underneath steed’s belly; the muscles in his arms burned as he held on. He could almost hear, or at least he imagined he could almost hear, the sigh of each passing blade of grass as it called to him.
The only thing that stood between Ferdy and the ground was his grip on a few hundred neck hairs. He maintained that grip, then grabbed again at his tripwire. Between the two, he managed with a final titanic effort to pull himself back up onto the horse.
Ferdy Chicken wanted to breathe a sigh of relief, but things were moving too fast for that. For one thing, he was about to lose the rope that had been stowed underneath him. Fortunately, the grappling hook had snagged a spare loop of tripwire, and was within Ferdy’s reach. But the rope itself was dangling down the horse’s left side and along his own left leg. Its end dragged along the ground, with who knew what consequences. If the horse tripped, as fast as it was running, Ferdy wasn’t sure what might happen. He sensed that it wouldn’t be pretty, though. Loosing his grip on the tripwire reins, he grabbed the rope with his left hand and coiled it as best he could.
What an operation! One simple leap of the horse had nearly undone the whole business. Why had she jumped in the first place? Ferdy Chicken glanced behind him, but all he could see was the grass he had heard calling to him. Beyond that, a small row of bushes stood darkly in the night.
Ferdy puzzled over the bushes for a moment, then realized where he was: he had reached the park. The horse had leapt over the curb and the bushes that encircled the park’s east boundary. Mosquehenna Park. Moon Park. Ferdy Chicken’s final destination. The grass rushed along underneath them as the horse ran ever forward. Ferdy imagined that the blades of grass were still calling to him. Rest, they said. Wouldn’t you like to rest? Wouldn’t you like to leave the back of this mad beast and simply rest?
But no. This was no time to give in to the call of the grass. This was Ferdy Chicken’s time. It was Ferdy Chicken’s place. The time and place in which his final confrontation with the beasts of the lake would play itself out. And, Ferdy was proud to say, he was prepared. It was the superhero motto, wasn’t it? Be prepared? No, wait, that was the Boy Scout motto. But Ferdy was prepared in any case. The grappling hook/anchor was ready. He gripped the coil of rope in his left hand. More importantly, the rope was now tied to something. It was now a fully functional anchor. All he would have to do would be to toss it behind him, and his task would be complete. The horse would stop, the beasts of the lake would catch up with him, and the showdown would begin. His calling as a superhero would be complete as he protected the town from these Monsters of Lake Maebiewahnapoopie. They were his Joker. His Green Goblin. His Lex Luthor.
And now, the time was upon him. With a bit of a cowboy swagger, he swung the grappling hook around his head. He swung it once, then twice, then three times. On the third swing, he let it fly. The grappling hook reached for the sky, trailing the rope behind it. It arced upwards, then downwards, then bit into the ground like the anchor it was.
As the reader might have already predicted, the grappling hook did not stop the horse. The horse, still running for its life, continued on unabated. The grappling hook certainly had a slowing effect on Ferdy Chicken, however. As soon as its claw hit the dirt, the rope connecting it and Ferdy Chicken became immediately taut. So fast that he didn’t even have time to process the pain of it, the rope tightened around his middle and snatched him from his seat. He was in the air for a moment, straining at the end of the rope, but the laws of gravity and inertia soon took over. Without pity, they slammed him bodily to the ground.
When he hit, Ferdy Chicken suffered a concussion that would leave him a bit dazed for the next day or two. Right at that moment, however, Ferdy was unable to ponder dazedness, because for the next four hours, he would remain unconscious. His body lay in the grass, totally inert except for a small trail of blood leaking out of his nose and down his cheek.
It would be daybreak before he would once again look upon Lone Tree, and by then, Lone Tree would be a different place.