Chapter 31. Lone Tree Learns the Truth
Lone Tree was in an uproar.
This was a town, of course, that wasn’t conditioned to any state approaching uproar. Apart from a short parade on the Fourth of July, which consisted mostly of the former sheriff on his mangy horse followed by the out-of-step and out-of-rhythm high school marching band, a few floats sponsored by local businesses, and as many cars older than, say, 1960 as could still be driven, townsfolk didn’t congregate much. They preferred it that way.
This morning, however, was different. The town was out, in force. People were on their front lawns. People were in the streets. People, particularly, were gathering on that large lakeside lawn that abutted the high school. They wanted to have another look for those monsters. Where yesterday they had used news of the monsters as conversation fodder and then written off the story, today they felt differently. There had been no small amount of disruption throughout town during the night. Teenage vandals were one hypothesis, but others were beginning to take seriously the notion that these monsters might actually exist. Mrs. Jonathon O’Leary, for her part, had found Schmoozeglutton’s tracks outside her back window. She was a one-woman marketing firm, Mrs. Jonathon O’Leary. Her phone tree extended deeply into the neighborhoods of Lone Tree, an aorta flowing with the lifeblood of any small town: gossip and conspiracy theories and other small tidbits of information. She called women all over town; they called others. Those others called their friends, too, and before long the talk of the town was monsters. Monsters in the lake.
These monsters, thrummed the informal wire service operated by Mrs. O’Leary, were responsible for all sorts of ills. The Mayor’s home had been vandalized. A downtown business had been broken into and robbed. A pizza van had been smashed beyond recognition. One enterprising man suddenly found family heirlooms missing: his grandmother’s gold necklace, and her wooden box of silverware, and her 1873 Colt Peacemaker revolver. He hoped to collect on his loss. Perhaps worst of all, the town’s namesake, its symbol of Great American Heartland goodness and purity, the single tree that gracefully shaded Moon Park, had been destroyed.
Not everyone believed these stories of monsters, of course. The more sophisticated of the townsfolk would hear nothing of that theory. These people were also afraid, though. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to develop the cover story of the monsters for their as yet unknown agenda.
Others were simply livid about the tree. Someone had to be pretty low to go chopping down an innocent tree just to get the residents of Lone Tree to stand up and pay attention. Someone low, and someone disrespectful of tradition. And thus those residents returned to the teenage vandal theory. The teenagers in town were always catching the rap, of course, and this had been true for as many generations as had lived in the town. Yesterday’s teenagers were the ones making today’s accusations.
Whatever one’s theory, though, everyone was talking. Talking to themselves, and talking to each other. Talking to people in the street. Talking, especially, amongst themselves as they looked out over the still waters of Lake Maebiewahnapoopie.
Principal Klieglight had been the first to have arrived at the lake. He had set up on the lawn, awaiting the arrival of his students. Unlike everyone else in town, Principle Klieglight wasn’t concerned with the monsters in the lake. They, in fact, had left his mind completely. His sleep had been overrun by dire images from his short but frenzied dreams. These dreams featured apathetic students, a mayor on the march, and sorcerer’s apprentice newspapers, which reproduced every time he tore one in half.
Today, though, was going to be different. Principal Klieglight was determined to be seen as a man of action. Today, he was going to get those students into their classrooms. No more messing around. If he was going to lose his job on this day, then at least he was going to go down with his ship. He was going to stand at the helm of his cruise ship—pirate ship!—and steer it through the shark-infested waters of learning. There would be no more shirking. No more excuses. Those students were going to be in the school, on time, and tending to their studies. They were going to do so if it was the last thing that Principal Klieglight last accomplished as principal. As, he knew, it may well be.
The townspeople who came to the lake could see that he was outfitted for the job, though what job exactly they didn’t know. When he had awoken that morning, he had pulled off his slept-in suit and instead donned a safari outfit: khaki pants, a chambray shirt, the cowboy boots he ordinarily reserved for the Fourth of July parade, and a pith helmet. The pith helmet had belonged to Harry S. Truman himself, the man who had sold it to him had said. HST, another man of action. As Klieglight had donned the helmet that morning, he had looked in the mirror. Yes, he looked decisive. Solemn. Grim, even. A man to be reckoned with, he thought, as he tightened the plastic strap under his chin.
As he stood in front of the mirror, Principal Klieglight knew that he was preparing for battle. A battle for his principalship. He was dressed for the part. Though, instead of an elephant gun, he had his megaphone. And, he had assured himself, the megaphone was equipped with fresh batteries. He frowned one last time in the mirror, holding the grip of the megaphone (the megaphone he conceived as a portable I900 Central Communications Nexus) in his hand. As a test, he raised the bullhorn to his lips, squeezed the trigger, and said “Fellow students!” in a booming voice. He jumped at its loudness; the mirror in front of him vibrated in its frame. Yes, this would be just the ticket.
Thus dressed for success, and with a fresh 12 pack of Diet Coke for support, Principal Klieglight had arrived on the grassy sward leading down to the lake. No students had yet arrived, but when they did he would be ready for them. He marched up and down on the grass outside his office in a tightly held formation of one. With each pass, he used the megaphone to intone “Fellow students! Return to class at once! It’s not just a good idea…it’s the law!” Then, he would make a 180 degree turn, and begin again. On occasion, he would depart from his script with an adlibbed “Organization and discipline, that’s the ticket!” or “No shirking! No excuses! No passes!” or “There shall be no second warnings!”
Eventually, of course, other townspeople began to arrive. Some were indeed students. They looked to Principal Klieglight with some amount of interest—what was he up to now?—but with no amount of obeisance. They weren’t about to go into the school, and truth be told they weren’t exactly sure that that was what he was on about. Perhaps he was engaged in some sort of political theatre.
Klieglight, for his part, kept at his work. He didn’t break stride. Clearly, the students weren’t heading toward the school as they heard him, and so it was best if he pretended not to see them. It was difficult to appear as a man of action if everyone ignored you. Best, he thought, to ignore them first.
In this way, with quarter-hourly Diet Coke breaks, Principal Klieglight worked away the first couple hours of the day.Mayor King, too, found his way to the lake.
It had been a long night for Mayor King. First, the police had shown up to have a look at his back fence. Mayor King, he had reminded himself, was the commander in chief of the local cops. Or chief commander? Something like that. In any case, he was their boss. For the benefit of his employees, he had tried to act the part. This was made difficult by Victoria Moon King, who demanded of the police more than they could possibly give: that they dust the fence for fingerprints, that they retrieve every one of her babies unscathed (only one of them, Boopsie, had so far escaped the many monsterly marauders), that they get their best detectives and the chief of police on the case. “And be quick about it,” she added. She offered to fire them, to ruin them, to skin them alive if they didn’t comply. Mayor King, while in front of his troops, had wanted to appear to be in charge, but there was no topping Victoria Moon King, except to say “And be quick about it!” as she finished, which of course she had already said.
The cops, of course, were only the beginning. After they had written up their reports and left, Victoria Moon King had grilled him at length about what he knew about the monsters. “You may think that I’m stupid,” she had said, “but you’d be wrong. You may think that I don’t know anything of your top secret city operations, with your code words and city surveillance and intelligence operations, but I do.”
Mayor King, to whom honest answers were not a given, can be congratulated on answering as honestly as he knew how to. With her every statement, he asked, innocently, “Top secret?” “Code words?” “Intelligence?”
“You can’t pull any ‘state secret’ tomfoolery with me, mister,” replied Victoria Moon King. “You’re going to tell me everything you know about those monsters.”
But Mayor King knew nothing, except for what he had read in the paper.
This, Victoria Moon King had finally believed. “I knew you never read that paper,” she said. “A mayor at least ought to read the paper from his own town, don’t you think? His own town’s paper? I don’t know what would happen if I wasn’t on you every minute of the day.”
In this way, Mayor King’s difficult day had funneled into a difficult evening, which in turn funneled into a sleep every bit as restless as Principal Klieglight’s. In the morning, he half-groggily went to fetch the morning paper on his porch, only to find a note tucked into the screen door. He read the note, halting at the more abstruse bits—or maybe it was just the handwriting: Major…uh mayor King, monsters headed toward Moon…uh Moon Pk? Meet you there when the crime is sol-ved. Sol-ved? Oh, solved. Your first…citizen, Freddy…Freddy Chicken?
When he returned to the kitchen with the newspaper and the note, he asked Victory Moon King if she knew a Mr. Chicken.
“Mr. Chicken?” she asked
“Um,” he said, looking at the small piece of paper in his hand. “Freddy Chicken.”
“Freddy Chicken?? She said. “You’re off your crock.”
“Well, I received a note,” he said. “It claims to be from a Freddy Chicken. He says the monsters are at Moon something-orother.”
Victoria Moon King looked over his shoulder at the note. “Moon Lake! They’re at Moon Lake!”
“Moon Lake?” asked Mayor King. “There is no Moon Lake! He must be talking about Moon Park.”
“I’ll have you know that there IS a Moon Lake!” Victoria Moon King said sharply as she pounded her bare heel onto the top of his bare foot.
“Ouch!” cried Mayor King. “Now dear…”
“Don’t ‘dear’ me, mister. The town may not know it yet, but there is a Moon Lake, and you’d better make it official! I’d say you have about…what…two years to get that accomplished, Mister Single Term Mayor?”
“Single Term Mayor” was what she called him when she was angry. It meant, first, that he’d better straighten up. Secondly, it was a reminder that without her family name he was nothing. Unelectable at least, and likely unemployable.
But she wasn’t done yet. “Obviously,” she continued, “at least one of our citizens is ahead of the game, and recognizes the power of the Moon legacy! At least this Freddy Chicken knows that there’s a Moon Lake! Unlike my own husband! Who would have thought such a thing, that my own husband doesn’t know of Moon Lake!” She gave a final crushing twist with her heel. “A lake discovered by my own forebears!”
Mayor King, in different circumstances, might have argued the historical accuracy of this factoid, but this clearly wasn’t the day for academic discussions. Instead, he had gotten dressed and limped toward Moon…toward Lake Maebiewahnapoopie. He, too, had no thought of monsters. Whatever his wife had seen in the back yard and thought to be monsters, he knew better. There was no end to the woman’s imagination, especially when fueled by the rest of the town’s paranoia. Mayor King also had no thought that once he reached the lake he might meet someone named Freddy Chicken. Surely, were there a Mr. Chicken in town, he would have heard of him. Obviously, it was a fake name. A fake name, he pondered, possibly in the form of a trap. Maybe it was some wily journalist’s way of baiting him. But no matter. Mayor King had survived a decade of marriage; no human-made traps any longer held fear for him.
What he did intend to do was put the kibosh on this monster nonsense. Nip it in the bud. It was making him crazy, it was making his wife crazy, it was making the town crazy. Craziness, that’s all it was.
And Klieglight, of course, had been the beginning of it all. He knew what he was going to do about Klieglight, oh yes he did. He was going to get rid of Klieglight once and for all. And then he was going to sweet-talk his voters into seeing the light, forgetting these monsters, opening their eyes. Maybe, if he did so, they’d appreciate it so much that they would reelect him to a second term. That would show her.
Another arrival at the lakeside was Lori Bradshaw, the photographer for the high school paper. Lori had had a stimulating and exasperating 24 hours, as she discovered the power of photographic journalism to communicate a story and incite comment. It amazed her how much a few pictures could change the town’s focus. It also amazed her, though, just how jaded and skeptical people were. The townspeople were so insular. They refused to consider anything outside of their safe, preapproved universe…a universe too small to contain anything like these monsters of the lake.
Today, Lori thought she might do a follow-up story. This time, though, she was going to get it on videotape. Video, she had learned in her journalism class, was much harder to fake than photographs. If she could get some good footage of the monsters, folks would have a more difficult time explaining it away as mere trickery. She brought along Herman Munson—the newspaper’s editor—to run the camera. She thought she would try her hand at the roving reporter role, in front of the camera with microphone in hand.
When Lori and Herman arrived at the school, they were shocked to see the number of people that were congregating. They thought that they were here to collect more photographic evidence of the trolls…and they still might…but they could also see that there was another story entirely to be had. Lori’s photographs, evidently, had had more power than she had given them credit for. Where the excitement yesterday had seemed to die down about the time the school day ended and the students drifted away, many students—and not a few townspeople—had arrived for another day of lakeside vigil.
“Let’s start with Klieglight,” she said to Herman. “See what we can find out.”
The two made their way through the crowd toward the man in the pith helmet.
Principal Klieglight wasn’t feeling well. His tummy hurt, just as it had yesterday, but worse. It gurgled and fumed at him with every step he took, threatening to boil over. He’d have to stop in a moment or two and soothe it with another Diet Coke. But that thought was interrupted by the sight of the reporter—the same one he had sparred with yesterday in his office?—coming toward him, this time with a cameraman. He redoubled his efforts to march in a straight line, to exhort his students to return to school, and ignore anyone who was ignoring him. And, of course, ignore the camera. It would be better if he appeared to any viewers as a man with a mission, a high school principal on the job, a mighty hunter with his elephant gun…er, megaphone…shooting at the cruise ships as he swam with the sharks. Something like that. The metaphor seemed to mix all the more as he considered it. He couldn’t keep his head straight.
Klieglight took a deep breath, depressed the trigger of the megaphone, and tried to concentrate on his words: “Fellow students! This is quite enough! It is now…” Klieglight consulted his watch. “Nine twenty seven! School started…let’s see…45, 47, uh 52? Um…nearly an hour ago! Perhaps more! Suspension proceedings will proceed…um…happen…right away! This is your education we’re talking about here! The only one you’re cheating is yourself!!!”
That last sentence, he thought, had a nice ring to it. He hoped that it was one that would be caught on camera. Not that he wanted to appear on camera. Lord no. What if the mayor saw it? What would he think? Klieglight, outside of the school, during school hours! And all these students out here too!
“Now listen here, you students!” he exclaimed, first without benefit of the megaphone, and then with it. “There shall be…”
But his last sentence died out as he noticed the reporter’s microphone in front of his face. She was looking at him intently, expecting him to say something. It would have to be something decisive, he decided. Yes. Decidedly decisive.
“Um, yes?” he said
Lori Bradshaw repeated her question. “Can you tell our viewers, Principal Klieglight, just what you’re hoping to accomplish here this morning? What brings you out here on a weekend? Are you hoping to catch a glimpse of the monsters of the lake that we read about in the paper yesterday?”
Klieglight felt a panic rising up within him. “I categorically deny any knowledge of any papers. There were no papers released from my school. Any papers that are found must be considered to be nonexistent.” The stern look on his face, he hoped, would show that he meant business.
“Nonexistent, sir?” Lori asked.
Principal Klieglight licked his lips. This woman was quite a bit more on the ball than she had been yesterday. A little taller, too, he thought. And, she had dyed her hair. “Well, perhaps not nonexistent,” he amended. “But at least ill-advised. And probably a forgery. Yes, that’s it. Any papers that are found are sure to be forgeries.” He smiled now, in a concerned but self-assured fashion. He had practiced that smile for years.
“Can you tell us, sir, why you are calling on the students to enter the school?”
“Of course!” Klieglight said. “Of course I can. I was only hoping that you would ask me that question. It is now…” he consulted his watch again. “Nine thirty on the dot. School started at 8:30. As I’m sure you can figure out for yourself, that’s a good deal more than an hour of class time wasted. No shirking! No excuses!”
“I guess that’s exactly an hour,” Lori commented.
“No passes!” said Principal Klieglight.
“Right….” said Lori. Klieglight took it as an agreement. She seemed to be warming to his argument.
Principal Klieglight looked into the distance over Lori’s shoulder. “I’m sure you know,” he said, “that bringing up our young people takes a firm hand. Shall we say…a fatherly hand.”
But Lori had heard all this before. It was a standard line at any school function. She changed tactics. “It was reported that few students attended school yesterday, but were instead milling about out here by the lake.”
“Not my fault!” Principal Klieglight piped. “You may remember that we had a little incident with the school paper yesterday….”
“The paper that doesn’t exist?”
“Yes, that’s the one.” Klieglight’s voice began to take on the hint of a whine. “I spent the whole day tracking down those papers. I was all over town, far too busy to see that the students were in school. The only place I didn’t get to was the monastery.” He thought for a moment, then offered another excuse: “Up until yesterday, you see, I didn’t even know that we had a monastery here in Lone Tree!”
Lori didn’t know how a monastery might figure into it, but she let it pass. “But today?”
“Today, I am definitely not too busy to see that the students are in school. I got here first thing, well before school started, to begin my work. I’ve been using this megaphone until I’m blue in the face! I’ve been instructing them every minute to get into the school. I’m a firm believer that students should be in school.” And here, Principal Klieglight waxed a bit philosophical. “One might even say that the very definition of the word ‘student’ requires that he or she attend school.”
When Lori didn’t respond to that, Klieglight returned to a more concrete approach. “In class. On time. With their materials. Yes sir, that’s the ticket. They should be in school every day, no absences, no tardies, no excuses.” He paused a moment, then added, “No passes!”
Suddenly a perplexed looked crossed his face. “Unless…is this Saturday?”
Lori assured him that it was indeed Saturday.
Principal Klieglight’s face fell. Nothing seemed to be going his way. There was always some curve ball thrown in his direction. If only reality would order itself, he might be able to accomplish something.
To the camera, Klieglight’s thoughts looked only like a dazed confusion. He wasn’t dazed for long, though, before he was accosted from behind by the mayor.
“Klieglight!” said the man, red-faced and blustering. He put a fist in the principal’s face. “I’m blaming you for this! Look at this! It’s madness! There are people milling around everywhere, and it’s all because of your paper!” Mayor King had planned a long speech to Klieglight, laying out an argument full of years of failures and identifying his exact role in the newspaper debacle, but the urge behind the words wouldn’t be held back. Instead of his careful speech, Mayor King yelled, with growing glee, “You’re fired! You’re fired! You’re fired!” Then he stomped off.
But Mayor King only made it three steps before he returned for another salvo. “You’re fired! And don’t even bother to ask for your job back, because you’re fired for good!”
Principal Klieglight had no response. He had been expecting something much like this, but now that it was happening he couldn’t even process it. He fumbled for something to say, but could come up with nothing but a few loose smacks of his lips.
Fortunately for Klieglight, however, fate intervened. Lori was there, arching an eyebrow to her cameraman and launching a question at Mayor King.
“Mayor King, can you tell us why exactly you’re firing Principal Klieglight here, and in public?”
Mayor King’s eyes grew wide. He hadn’t even realized that there was a reporter in the vicinity, and here she was accosting him. His eyes grew even wider when he noted the cameraman behind her. “Why, um, why…” he said, then collected himself. “I wouldn’t dream of firing the principal. It’s…it’s um not even within my authority to fire the principal. That would be a job for the school board, you know.” He shook an admonishing finger in the reporter’s face, as if this was a fact she should have known. His face grew redder. His voice cracked a bit, but soon he modulated it toward the calm tones necessary to working with the electorate. “You may know my wife, Victoria Moon King. She’s the president of the school board. It would be her authority alone to fire Principal Klieglight here.” He smiled weakly. Klieglight, beside him, smiled weakly as well, and nodded in agreement. The two men looked like young children caught with their hands in the cookie jar.
“Were there a firing,” Lori asked, “would it have to do with the school newspaper that was published yesterday?”
“I disavow any knowledge of a school newspaper,” Principal Klieglight responded.
“And might it have to do with the cover story regarding the monsters of the lake?” Lori pushed.
“I disavow any knowledge of monsters,” Mayor King stated. “Not in my city, there aren’t monsters,”
But Lori, though new to this form of reporting, was quick on her feet. “There are rumors, Mayor King, that your administration is not collecting tax revenues from these monsters.”
The mayor puffed out his chest. “I categorically deny the assertion that the monsters are not paying taxes. Everyone, including the monsters, must pay their fair share.”
“So there are monsters in Lone Tree?”
“As I’ve stated,” said Mayor King, beginning to get flustered, “I disavow any knowledge of monsters. I can state unequivocally, however, that the monsters are paying taxes.”
Mayor King had only barely gotten out the sentence when someone pushed a small dog into his arms. It was Boopsie.
“You know very well that there are monsters in this town,” Victoria Moon King said to her husband.
Mayor King responded by smiling into the camera with an assured, mayoral gaze. “As I’ve previously stated, there are no monsters in Lone Tree. My office has done an in-depth analysis…Ouch!”
Victoria Moon King removed her heel from the mayor’s foot. “You’ve seen for yourself the wreckage they’ve left in our back yard.”
Lori jumped in. “Wreckage, ma’am?”
Victoria Moon King preened a bit for the camera. “Why yes. Several of the monsters flattened my back fence last night, and destroyed my Poodle Emporium.”
The mayor piped in. “I deny any knowledge of a Poodle Emporium,” he said. In response, Boopsie let out a little “Arf!” and nipped at the end of his nose with her small sharp teeth.
Victoria Moon King, however, was not to be stilled. “I hear,” she added, “that they’ve vandalized other places of business around town.” Then she looked directly into the camera and stated, “Apparently, they live in Moon Lake.”
“Moon Lake?” asked Lori.
The mayor jumped in at once. “My wife…well, you see, my wife has a personal affliction…um…affiliation?...with the lake. She knows very well that the lake’s true name is Lake Mosquehenna.”
“Lake Mosquehenna?” Lori repeated.
“No no,” said the mayor, and chuckled in a way that he hoped would be mildly self-deprecating. “Of course I meant Mosquehenna Park. I mean Moon Park.
“Moon Park?” Lori said.
“Moon LAKE,” insisted Victoria Moon King. “Its proper name is Moon Lake. Not this…” (and here she gave a small shiver) “Maebiewahnapoopie nonsense. It is the first plank of my husband’s mayorship that the name of the lake must be Moon Lake.”
“Oh, I’d hardly say that, dear,” cautioned Mayor King. “You’ll remember that we decided that crime should be our first order of business, then the lake.” He smiled through the entire sentence, glancing every now and again at the citizens that were beginning to surround them.
Through this entire exchange, Principal Klieglight was getting more and more tense. He wanted nothing more than to escape. Escape the reporter, escape the mayor, escape the school board president, Victoria Moon King. His stomach felt a bit like Mount Vesuvius. Or perhaps it was Krakatoa. Hot lava churned within him. But then, while Lori and Mayor King and Victoria Moon King were having their back-and-forth, Klieglight saw something that no one else saw.
Even though he had seen them the previous night through his office window, the sight of the monsters rising up from the lake, shedding water as they strode up the beach, filled him with fear and awe. Each of the monsters held a large club at the ready.
The worst of it was that no one besides him was paying attention. Everyone was concentrating their attention on the reporter, and upon the town’s first couple.
“Someone should warn them,” Principal Klieglight thought to himself.Then, with a start, he realized that that someone should be him. He was, after all, a respected citizen. He was the one guiding the cruise ship. The play had already been written, and this was his role. The props had already been handed out, and here he was, the man with the megaphone. He looked out upon his audience, felt the fear of appearing before them quavering within his already tortured belly.
The monsters were now clear of the lake, and were heading toward them.
Principal Klieglight raised the megaphone to his lips and depressed the trigger. But then it occurred to him that he didn’t know his lines. Here he was in the final act, and he didn’t know his lines! And there was no one to feed him any lines. He would have to ad lib.
The only thing it occurred to Klieglight to say was this: “Now hear this, now hear this. Incoming at 12:00. Incoming at 12:00. All hands, abandon ship. All hands, abandon ship.”
He didn’t know where those words came from. Perhaps they were from some late night movie he had watched in a particularly insomniac night. It was no matter, though, because he didn’t say them. He couldn’t say them. His throat seemed to be locked. His tongue lay useless in his mouth. Even his breath wouldn’t free itself, but sat inert in his lungs. His lines were dead on arrival.
And now, the monsters were running toward the throng, clubs raised in the air. A woman toward the back of the crowd saw them and screamed. This led other people to look; soon, the whole crowd erupted as a mass into panic and confusion. People ran in every direction. Others screamed and ducked for cover.
Victoria Moon King fainted dead away. Her husband, still cradling Boopsie, knelt and patted her hand. “Now, now, dear,” he said, but of course she didn’t hear him.
And still the monsters came.
Lori Bradshaw, her reporter’s instincts as finely tuned as any professional’s, even though she was only a high school student, kept her calm. Even as Herman panned the panicking crowd and got as clean a shot as he could of the monsters of Lake Maebiewahnapoopie, she ad-libbed some newsy lines, “Folks, we’re seeing the monsters of the lake now. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but rest assured that we’ll be here to cover it.” She was unsure whether or not her words, even with the microphone, would be heard over the cacophon