The Troll and his Scroll, Part 2 of 3
The Troll and his Scroll, Part 2 of 3
Absurd Existential Fantasy
ON THE RUN
You might know the following part of our journey if you are on the Golden Timeline. This is what Dangerblade shared over and over again, making it his main story and rise to fame, him riding piggyback on little Jessica’s greatness.
Check yourself before you judge the man. Wouldn’t you have done the same thing, had you and your gang tricked someone like J.K. Rowling before her rise to fame?
“I never drank the potion” I told Jess.
“No? I thought you did”.
“I didn’t. But we should drink it now, in case things get weird as we go back”.
“Okay”.
“Hope for the best and prepare for the worst”
Plop went the cork, as I opened the vial. A sweet, buttery scent escaped it like a candy genie. People walking by the benches and the elms of the half-circle plaza turned their heads.
“Quick” I said, and after drinking my half handed the vial to Jess straight from my lips.
She drank the rest of the glittery fluid, and smacked a satisfied sigh.
The people kept walking.
I arose quivering from our bench. My legs buzzed with energy.
“You feel it?” I asked my sister. She was also standing. “We need to get going!”
“We could run like a roadrunner! Do you remember that picture dad sent, from Sedona?”
“Let’s run!”
“Hey, friends! Is all well?”
The man stood at the edge of Liberty Walk, at the edge of the Walkway crossing the water which we had come by, the way we now intended to return. His smile was incongruent with his words.
“You going to see the troll?” he went on, and pointed his thumb over his shoulder.
And then I saw the rest of the men.
Roguish men with headbands and vests and leather jackets thronged on the Walkway, perhaps a dozen. Many of them smoked cigarettes. Some had hair but most were bald. They were anything between teenagers and middle-aged. They smiled like the foremost fellow, whose black leather jacket was frayed.
This foremost fellow with the frayed jacket, who had addressed us, stepped closer with his dusty boots. I stepped in front of Jess.
“There is a troll jiving over there, you know”.
“Yeah?”
“Hell yeah. Would you dare a look?”
“Maybe”.
“Ah!” said the approaching one, as though he’d understood the stars. “You lack confidence”.
He stood before us with spread legs, hands on his hips. Where his jacked ended, from his belt, hung a rag doll. On the other side hung a plastic scimitar.
And this is the story you probably know. Dangerblade, the notorious attention merchant, got hold of Jess’ attention with his confidence coaching program.
He said she was secretly sabotaging her success by being subconsciously unconfident. She had, according to him, a hidden lack of confidence that was the real reason behind her missed opportunities. This was the crucial thing Dangerblade promised to fix with his unique methods.
He created a problem for my sister so that he might charge her money she didn’t have to solve a problem which had not existed until Jess created it to exist, through Dangerblade’s influence.
It wasn’t the case that 100% confidence is all there is, and that if we ever seem unconfident, we are completely confident about not being confident...
He flattered. He cajoled. He sold Jess on using confidence to be confidently unconfident.
I told her some of the stories she had loved as an even younger child, and made her continue with me, aware of our purpose.
We sprinted across the great parking lot behind the rounded resting place where Dangerblade had intercepted our return, and rushed a good way by Audrey Zapp Drive’s cobblestones, where lawns spread great and green on one side, and the gated marina hosts fancy boats on the other, overlooked by the great city’s fancy buildings. But on that cobblestone street, another attention merchant of the gang played on Jess’ inclination to follow whims. It was as though a new, odd, difficult reality had landed out of nowhere.
And maybe it had...
This fellow, his ragged red flannel hanging open under a black denim vest, was a seller of wellness supplements. He even had a subscription. His products were crucial for Jess.
He convinced her that despite usually feeling fine, her little body likely suffered from invisible toxin build-ups slowly harming her health in ways she couldn’t see. Based on vaguely described symptoms, such as “feeling off” or “lacking full energy”, which was applicable then (she felt off because of him, and she lacked full energy on account of the potion effect now quitting on us), Jess feared she might miss out on a subscription deal framed as the only detoxification that could save her . . . from the unconfirmed threat, which maybe even was no threat. The man in the ragged red flannel influenced her to feel a false sense of urgency.
It wasn’t better to get the situation confirmed by a doctor, in case the disease was far gone and the supplements arrived too late.
He flattered. He cajoled. He sold Jess on abandoning criticism, out of fear.
I told her some of the stories she had loved as an even younger child, and made her continue with me, aware of our purpose.
We rushed the length of Audrey Zapp Drive – on its side, on the grass – to the four-way crossing where Jersey Avenue cuts the Drive off with its connection to Jersey City. And what was there waiting for us? Another attention merchant.
His thing, which he proclaimed in oily words as soft as his long beard looked rough, was trust issues. In Jess, these trust issues were deeply rooted. She had perhaps never realized something was wrong!
But if Jess had ever felt even remotely misunderstood or unfulfilled, the reason was trust issues; she couldn’t build lasting friendships because of her unconscious trust issues. Without taking his masterclass, she might never know just how much these supposed trust issues cost her. This man with a beard and a bomber jacket, however, could tear down her lurking barriers.
It wasn’t enough to say that we always have 100% trust, and that if we ever feel doubt, we are completely trusting in the experience of lacking trust...
I was running out of stories. I told the last ones I knew she loved, or had loved, but Jess still desired the masterclass. She was about to take a yellow cab with the bearded man to get coached in private.
“No, Jess!” I cried, and pulled in her arm.
“Let go” she whined. “You have trust issues”.
I wouldn’t let him have her.
“Can’t you see?” she explained. “I’ll take the trust class, so that I can trust myself to buy the supplements, so that I can be assured of health when I have fixed my confidence. And then I’ll go to Colorado. Only with mother and not with you”.
All the insidious tricks she’d experienced came back, crashing down on Jess’ receptive mind in a cascade of cunning. It was all then, then, then – never now.
And that’s when I realized it: as I clung to my sister’s arm, I was being dragged along. I was halfway into the yellow cab. I was also coming with to get coached in private.
So I let her go.
But I still had energy for one last action. As I released Jess’ arm, and recoiled from my tugging, I grabbed her most valuable shoe and yanked it off her foot.
I flew back onto the pavement. My head struck it with an empty thud. Pain and nausea came banging and churning as my vision became a gray-green blur.
A click. A seat belt click...
Jess, the map, treasure...
The bearded man must have seen what was inside the shoe. Having fastened Jess, he got out of the car and came after me as I struggled up and moved away. His boots clapped behind me.
I pulled out my map piece, joined it with Jess’ to complete the riveting picture of the X, and then – the enchanting wonderlust cleared my mind – I swallowed both on a whim.
The attention merchant caught me just as I put them in my mouth, and threw me on the ground while catching sight of what I did with the map pieces.
“You are mad” he said, standing over me with all his hurry suddenly gone.
“Let’s go” Jess insisted from the cab. “I have an urgent illness”.
“You are mad” the bearded man repeated, his tone at once amused and sulky. “That was a treasure map. Hey, spit it out!”
The headache returned without nausea. The blur stole over my vision with renewed disorientation. From where I lay in the grass, I saw the man’s hairy face snap sideways.
A young girl’s voice demanded departure. The bearded man moved.
Something shut.
An engine revved.
The world vanished.
IN THE STREET
An empowering thought joined me for my rude awakening in the city: I was alone and would now have it easier. No second opinions to negotiate. No whims to dodge.
Then I noticed that I had noticed I was in the city. Above glowed violet heavens while around me, at the edges of my slowly focusing vision, buildings reached tall and square. I blinked.
No, it was real – I lay on a hard surface, looking up and seeing a dozen immense man-made pillars holding up a twilit New York sky.
And I heard things.
I shot up, sat. I heard a lot of things. And I saw...
My spot in the center of the street was a vantage point for countless spectacles and miracles.
A group of three men were busy with a flag. One of them had a square jaw and a steely, focused gaze. Another wore a baseball cap adorned with the very American flag he was manipulating. All of them stood by the building in well-worn jeans and T-shirts, arms tanned and strong. Rugged guys. No-nonsense guys.
They were adding stars to the flag.
Another group of people were having a barbecue next to four crazily parked cars blasting enchanting R&B, in a street otherwise empty of vehicles, a street where jugglers, dancers, and card trick magicians performed. Musicians added their own unique twists to the electric wonders of the synched car speakers. Sitars droned peacefully, laughter rang, shouts bellowed, a horse neighed...
And the whole shebang throbbed with purpose.
That’s when I remembered – the map to my own purpose was in my stomach.
I have never been able to regurgitate on command; and looking back, even if I had managed to throw up the map, I’m convinced it was already too late to spit anything useful. But sure, I did try. I did all in my disorientated power to cast up – this is what I thought – the ticket to my poor family’s well-needed wealth.
I knew alcohol made you sick. However, none of the partying people shared their drinks. I supposed I could overeat, though nobody at the barbecue shared their food. They – the people of New York – were in a strange mood (to say the least). They were hoarding all they had, explaining happily that the world was going under spells. And yet they weren’t frugal with their stuff.
Nothing made sense.
Just how bad my situation was came clear when I saw the dog poop. But what could I do? Not only did I need the map to save my family from poverty; to even get out of this craze, I first had to spew.
Well, again – that’s what I thought. It’s funny what we do with our minds, to get free, when the only reason we appear to be other than free is our using that free mind to assume we are not already free. And then, what happens? Epic irony is what happens.
The struggle to free ourselves of restraints becomes our very shackles...
Anyway, yes – I grabbed that soft, brown dog shit and moved it to my mouth.
A stick hit my forearm and sent the poop flying.
“What’s gotten into you?”
The speaker with the stick – indeed a walking cane – was an old man. He grinned from ear to ear, through a white beard, as though he’d said something way cleverer than he actually had.
“Get some gems?”
I looked at my shit-smeared hand. I looked at the man with the beard. I stood and retreated a step.
He wore an unbuttoned orange denim jacket on a brown sweater. His tight denim had a patch on one knee. He carried a lantern. He wore round yellow glasses. Bare feet connected him to the concrete.
His grin seemed stuck.
I heard myself say “How did I get here?”
“Hah!” the old man wheezed, and in his mouth a gold tooth glimmered. “You’re asking the wrong questions. Who cares? Here we are and here we can do things”.
“I woke up in the middle of the street”.
“Aye” said the old man, and inspected my face with his candle-lit lantern. “Haven’t we all?”
“Sir, I have to get back to Liberty Park. Can you help me?”
A man rode by on a unicycle while juggling small, fancy items that glimmered as the old man’s tooth had glimmered in the light of the lantern.
“Why?” said the old man, dodging the cyclist and grinning still wider for it. “Why would you want to leave here?” He turned. “Hey, Elly! Get this young adventurer some water. And soap too. He just woke up in the streets, God bless him”.
At the absurd street’s opposite side, from a raised planter bed by the pavement, arose a red-haired woman. Also clad in snug denim, she occupied something of a stall. An out-of-place patio umbrella covered her where she rummaged through boxes standing on and below the raised home-to-green-plants row of concrete.
She arrived smiling at myself and the old man, carrying a bottle of water as well as a bottle of soap.
“You’re just our kind of guy” said the old man. “I love the way you talk in metaphors”.
“Metaphors?”
The woman, perhaps half the man’s age, raised my soiled hand by holding my wrist. The water bottle was open. She poured from it, then swapped it for the soap bottle she clutched under her arm, and squirted soap into my palm.
“You finish yourself, feral kid”.
I rubbed my palms together and washed off the dog poop. The woman poured more water on my hands.
“What happened?” she asked.
“I need to get back to Liberty Park”.
The woman and the man exchanged a glance which next morning I wasn’t wondering about.
There were still no moving vehicles. Not even the sound of any. The men adding stars to the Old Glory had torn down another example; silent save for the Sharpie scratches, they kneeled on the street with the red-white-blue flag spread over it.
“You know” said the man with the long white beard, and bumped my shoulder with his lantern. “There is a parallel reality where you and I go see a show in that Music Hall. You know how the tune goes, Elly?”
“I do know how that tune goes”.
“Have you got any whiskey?” I asked.
“Whiskey?” the old man echoed. “Of course. But not for you, if that’s what you mean”.
A bottle top protruded from one of the boxes. It seemed the man was truthful.
“He needs something stronger” the red-haired woman said.
They both laughed. The red-haired woman kissed the white-haired man on his bushy cheek, then turned for what they called a shop, and skipped across the street. She returned with a boombox.
It hung in a strap from her neck. Her hands were free. The old man gave her his lantern to hold, while releasing his cane, which fell clattering on the gray concrete.
“Hey, spellerman”.
It was the man in oily overalls, from the Park.
The old man, bending over the boombox, turned his head. His eyes widened.
“Oh, what a coincidence, huh?” There was no amazement whatsoever in his voice.
“You’re not coming to see the show?” the bass player mumbled, as with a match he lit a cigarette dangling in the corner of his mouth.
“Nah. They said to get on with it”.
“Cool. But you have the tape, right?”
“Just getting this fucker to play it”.
With the woman observing him, the old man tinkered below. The bass player smoked, looking at the men working on the flag.
An accordion came on with a jig in the boombox. The old man stood back. The bass player returned inside the Music Hall still puffing on his cigarette.
The captain sails with a wink and a grin,
his treasure buried deep, where dreams begin.
I was already having a feeling there was something going on. The mere tone of that song doubled it...
He murmurs to the waves, holding a map.
Sending children a-questing, he’s a marvelous chap.
“Yes!” said the man who’d been called spellerman.
The woman wagged to the beat, from side to side, the old piece of tech playing the jaunty pirate song dangling below her waist.
While the little ones dig, wonder in their eyes,
the captain’s secret is a sweet surprise,
for when the wind sings but the seas are still,
their mother joins him in a rendezvous thrill.
My stomach dropped. The accordion played a solo. Spellerman laughed and clapped his wrinkled, old hands.
Dig, little darlings, dig deep for the gold,
your hands in the sands while the stories unfold.
Reality’s hidden in every clue,
but mama’s got magic, and she swallows too.
Spellerman crouched in a fit of laughter. Elly tossed her head back, equally amused. I decided this was my chance, and rushed across the street as the song kept playing across it.
The map’s not just for treasure – it is for you mind,
to teach you how the world is entwined.
“Hey, where are you going?” an old voice called.
I snatched the bottle from the box.
X marks the spot, yet look, little friend –
it’s not the gold, but truth, that’ll mend.
“This isn’t how it’s supposed to go!”
Spellerman’s cries faded, along with the song, as I sprinted around a street corner.
OUT OF MIND
The bottle’s label said ‘Wing it’, and I drank without hesitation as I ran, enough for a grown man. What else could I do? Mystery was pressing in from everywhere, and we can’t embrace that, can we?
We must numb ourselves.
Right?
I don’t know on which street I saw the Shining Line, but it sure was a hoot and four halves, as they say who claim to know. The whiskey had failed me. Despite my drinking for three kids my age and gagging on my fingers, the whiskey had failed me. Or, come to think of it, maybe the whiskey was the thing that granted me the vision. I had no way of throwing up the map I drunkenly expected to be intact, but the red X shone in my innermost sanctum like the tripled letters of the neon signs certain clubs front whose entertainers bounce body parts I had yet to witness at the time of my crazed escape from fun.
On further consideration, I guess it was all those things that made my destination so clear: the drink dulling my awareness, probably imbued with some unearthly stuff the redhead had put in, and the Shining Line widening my awareness with their flute play.
They passed like a dream on that unknown street, handing out gemstones and puffing fairy dust into people’s faces, parading with laughter bubbling just under their awesome non-speech, leaving traces of vivid colors as they brushed past twirling and spinning and winking, as if marking each onlooker with a strange, shimmering knowing.
And then, at least for that moment, I forgot about them. All that remained of their parade were the astonished smiles of us natives and our enchanted whispers; talk of what had actually happened, words forming tales that were as seeds dropped from secret sleeves and taking magical root in the city, at once nourished by the sound which lingered of their music and still lingers to this day.
Eventually the onlookers were gone too. There was just myself and the X and the taxi driver.
“Hell no!” the driver said, when I offered rubies for a ride. “They offered gems to me as well but I took a cab”.
“I have gold” I slurred.
“Okay, baddie. Show me”.
“I have gold where I’m going”.
What I thought I did was convince him. Now, of course, I know better. It was no feat of mine that earned me a yellow cab ride through the Lincoln Tunnel and then back to Jersey Avenue, all the way to the little plaza with the elm trees where Jess and I encountered Dangerblade.
The cab driver reached the plaza by driving over the curb from the parking lot, across the grass, and onto the footpath. The cab fit exactly between the barriers of the Park Walkway.
Out in the water on our side, the Statue of Liberty – glowing, lit up at night – grew bigger and bigger, as my lawless driver, honking for partying pedestrians to move out of the way, took me to the Park where the troll had bounced around with his scroll, and where the treasure lay buried.
The event tent was there and so was the spade Jess had noticed; I saw both from the cab.
The man with the top hat was also there. He approached us even as we bumped off the Walkway onto the grass. He opened the passenger door and welcomed me, doffing his hat.
“Midnight is still a few hours away. My offer hasn't turned into a pumpkin yet”.
“I thought better of it” I said, getting out and holding the door open.
“What’s this?” said the cab driver.
The man in hat and coat nodded his head, eyebrows raised. “You know what’s good for you, son. You’re the man of the household now”.
I reached an arm over the passenger door, grabbed the edge of his coat, and pulled it inside the opening. I slammed the door shut with all my weight.
“Drive!”
“I ain’t going nowhere without the gold”.
“Gold?” said the stuck attention merchant, his eyes grown big.
I ran for the spade.
Behind, the tearing of cloth ripped the night. A car door clicked up.
The spade stood upright by a tent peg, shoved into the ground, and was easy to grab. I rushed with it over the lawn – Crescent Field – moving deeper into the Park. The treasure would be close to a spot where two paved footpaths touched, both of them being curved and forming a kind of X in their own way.
The bushes grew more abundantly on the far side of the touching footpaths. My idea was to lose the salesman there. Perhaps I could hide in a bush until all he had to sell was a pumpkin.
I dropped the shovel behind one of the bushes as I snuck around it.
I fell.
Alcohol surged through my brain with my hot-pumping blood and further crippled my motor skills – that’s what I tell you now. What I would have told you then was that I was dying. I lay on my back waiting for death.
The stars I would be going to spun as they do in time-lapse shots. And there were plenty of stars to see, for the enchanted city had dimmed its lights to better view the worlds which the bold people with new desires longed to befriend.
I rolled over. I threw up.
All that came was an omelet-looking little splotch.
When I realized that I wasn’t dying, and only felt wonderfully sick with whiskey whims of death being but a transportation to worlds which my fellow people might catch up with, I thought I had snuck into another dimension as I snuck being the bush. On the whole, that was a relevant thought; but as for that moment of the chase abruptly ending, no, there were things afoot that were stranger than the regularity of dimensional shifts, such as we commit all the time.
I was alone in the Park. No salesman and no cab driver. Just me and my memory or vision or knowing of where the X marked the spot.
Once I could move, I crawled on all fours to the shovel. Fireworks and music performances rang from the city. In the Park, however, all was silent as the grave.
The X-spot was between two trees that grew in a row along the next footpath beyond my crash site. There, I fell again, but deliberately, on my knees. Then I raised myself and I raised my tool.
Down went the shovel, biting into the ground with a soft crunch.
It stayed in place.
I waited. I looked around.
Bushes, trees, the remote sounds from the dimmed city – those were the only impressions.
And so, adding myself to the unwritten chronicle of those who successfully or otherwise have dug holes in places marked by the X of legends, I tossed aside what I had bitten into, and I dug...
I raised the shovel once again, thrust it down, sank it deeper with my foot, and removed another scoop of soil. I repeated the motions over and over, in a fearful, exciting spree, raising the shovel and thrusting it down, scooping out soil and again raising the shovel, thrusting it down, digging for a hidden treasure.
Thud.
My heart, drunk on alcohol and adventure, pumped like a rocket engine, seemingly without pulse and only boosting. Boosting me up. Because while my feet stood on the ground, my head was in the sky and dreaming of gold; I did not sense the soil I had dug through to meet with promising resistance.
I cleared the hole, and there it was...
The chest – finely carved, its enigmatic engravings looking inlaid on account of occupying dirt, the finest and most mysterious chest a boy could hope for – had a lock. A thick, rounded metal piece hung in the hasp. The lock itself was still buried.
I pushed the shovel blade under the chest, and yanked it. The chest came loose inside the hole. I lifted the chest with surprising ease.
It made no sound; the clinking of coins I had expected never happened.
Sure, it had a padlock. But the padlock hung open.
Panting from exertion and ecstasy, I removed the lock and threw it. As the lock thudded into the grass, I had already grabbed the lid sides, opening the chest.
It was empty.
From behind came the faint din of parties. In the Park, there wasn’t a sound except for my slowing heartbeat; and that sound wasn’t actually coming from the Park, but from me – from my . . . chest.
A peculiar feeling of déjà vu stole over me as I squeezed the treasure chest lid, gazing into the emptiness. Nothing and everything seemed equally real and false.
Swift footfall approached.
There was a thump and a rustle; I was knocked over, and the rustle occurred in what I had squeezed.
Crazy laughter exploded and faded.
A small, hairy shape vanished among the yonder bushes. It had a tail. Its laughter became giggles and then – as the branches the shape had touched ceased to sway – the giggles melted into the faraway New York City revelries.
The chest was no longer empty. It now contained a scroll.
I unrolled the troll’s scroll, and read:
ON THE SHIP
“You brought your mother” said the captain, with approval.
“Yes, we–”.
“Please, sir. We don’t have much money”.
“Easy there, lady” the captain said, and chuckled. “Let us hear the children’s story. It is they who shall tell the tales when we are gone. And we all know that those who tell the best stories rule the world, right?”
“I think that’s all” said a voice, its intense friendliness snapping my attention off the puzzling scroll.
“Yeah, baddie. Let’s take him back”.