She is on a tear this morning!"
"What's a tear?" Asked my little brother
"That's where you run around the house, tearing your hair out!"
Sudden a loud voice boomed from our summer cottage!
"Where is my hair brush, has anyone seen my hair brush, don't tell me you forgot to pack my hair brush!"
"Wow, you are so smart sometimes!"
My little brother said while feeling of his head, thankful that our summer butches hadn't grown out yet.
We were standing on the dock, which was about as far away from our summer cottage as one dared get without leaving a note saying you had run away from home. Dad was in the house trying to find the car keys in the cushion on the couch while my sisters sat like perfect little angels at the kitchen table. Not me, I had to get out of there. I looked out across the lake.
A story formed in my head and I turned to my little brother and started to tell him the story of the lady of the lake. It was a good story and I smiled to think my little brother believed every word of it.
It had started about seven o'clock. Mom had already been up for a couple of hours, She had come quietly into our bedroom and woke us. She had talked real quite about maybe wanting to go to church this morning. Somehow the sleeping eyed nodding of two little boys had convinced her she had made the right decision for she ended the conversation with the suggestion that we go ahead and start to get dressed. Then she moved on to the bedroom where our sisters lay sleeping and woke them.
The real problem started when mom went in and woke dad to announce that she and the kids had decided that we wanted to go to church this morning. He had rolled over with a low moan and preceded to try and talk her out of it. Mom had gone right into riot mode. Dad had shot straight out of bed and had stood at attention while our mother informed him in no uncertain terms that we were going to church and that he was taking us. I was watching from the bedroom door. She turned away from dad and didn't see his hail Hilter salute. Well almost, she turned back around and caught him putting his hand back down.
After that mom was on a mission from god. We were going to church and get our souls saved and that was that. At this point we all knew that if we were to let her circle the inside of our sleepy little cottage seven times and then blow her horn. The whole cottage would come down around our heads like the walls of Jericho, so we all scurried about like little church mice getting dressed!
"What do you want?" She asked, looking at me in the doorway.
I had been on a mission to find my socks, but when her eyes hit me something else came to mind.
"I have to go to the bathroom!"
"Well then go!"
"Can't, there are girls in there!"
"See, I told you we needed to add another bathroom to this place!" Mom declared to dad, then she realized what he was trying to sneak back into bed and said
"Oh no you don't mister, you are going to help me get these kids ready for church!'
"What?" My father asked as he started moving the covers around, "I was just making the bed!"
"Yea right and the Easter bunny lays pink and blue eggs too!" Retorted my mother.
I turned to head for higher ground only to find my little brother standing right there behind me with his Sunday go to church shirt on backwards.
"Its true then, the Easter bunny does lay those eggs and you told me that the Easter Bunny was a figment"
Mother heard my little brother and turned to address the fact that I had told my little brother the Easter bunny was an imaginary creature, but I was way ahead of her. When she turned around, I and my little brother were both long gone.
I un-cupped my little brothers mouth and helped him take his shirt off and put it back on so that it buttoned down the front instead of the back. I then grabbed a tie and expertly tied it for him.
"It's too tight, your choking me!" My little brother said, as he made a slight coughing sound.
"It's supposed to be tight, other wise it might fall off!" I lied
My little brother gave me that half believing look, as his eyes started to pop out and his face turned blue.
The bathroom cleared out and I headed for it only to have one of my sister's beat me to it. I pounded on the door yelling!"
"I was next"
Mother came out of the bedroom with her make up half done and her hair half out of curlers. The sight of her startled me.
"I was next, I had to help my little brother, but I was next mother!"
"You boys will just have to use the out house!
"Ah mom"
"Don't ah mom me and take your little brother with you, you know he has trouble with zippers!"
I got my little brother who had reached up and loosened his tie, He was just starting to breath normally again.
"Come on, You and I have to go to the outhouse!"
"Why, I don't have to go!"
I tightened his tie up again and replied
"If I have to go, so do you!"
I dragged him outside and we stood there in front of the out house. It was early in the day, but already the flies had formed a black cloud over the top of it. My little brother pulled back from me.
"I don't have to go, I tell you and I don't want to go in there, I won't go I tell you!"
"Here," I said as I reached down and grabbed a few small pebbles and handed them to him. "There, now if that troll that lives down there tries to reach up and grab you by your little talley wacker, throw these at him!"
"He'll get me, I know he will!"
"No he won't!, I said as I reached down and grabbed a hand full of pebbles for myself, "I'll be right there with you and I'll get him even if you miss. Besides, he has to find your little tally wacker first!"
I held my breath as I opened the door, The leather straps that served as hinges since the metal ones had rotted away let the door drop down as it opened. My little brother jumped back and cried, "But I don't have to go!"
I turned my head and took a deep breath, I reached out and grabbed my little brother and dragged him into the dark recesses of the trolls lare. Summoning the strength, I lifted the piece of plywood that served as a toilet lid. Spider webs stretched and broke as I lifted it. I spider ran across my fingers and I shuttered. I quickly helped my little brother with his zipper and commanded him to go. He looked over at me and then down into the hole.
"You stay down there now you evil troll!"
I fumbled with myself and then let out a soft moan as a morning duty too long held back made its way downward into the hole. My little brother finished first and then he held up his hand. He threw his pebbles down into the hole and shouted.
"Here take that you dirty nasty troll!"
A buzzing sound came from down below, it grew louder and seemed to be coming towards us!
I got a little scared myself and threw my own pebbles down into the opening and the roar got louder and turned to a black cloud headed our way. I turned to my little brother and cried.
"Run!"
We both ran out the out house screaming, There we met dad, we nearly ran up one side of dear old dad and down the other as he too was having to fulfill his morning mission in the family out house.
"Whao, boys what it the problem?"
"Its the troll dad, he almost got us!"
"What troll?" My father asked of my little brother while looking straight at me.
"The troll that lives down in the deep dark bottom of the hole!" My little brother replied, directly quoting me
"A troll heh?"
Dad looked at me with acquisition in his eyes. I looked out at the lake and declared
.”Oh look a blue heron!"
Dad didn't say anything more, I knew he and I had another little father and son talk about being mean to the little brother coming. I couldn't tell him, but it really wasn't needed this time and I think my eyes told him this. I had decided not to tell my little brother anymore tales about trolls that lived in the bottom of the out house or anywhere else for that matter, least I again start to believe the stories I told myself.
Dad reached down and grabbed a long stick and looked at me again
"Well, I'd better take this with me then!"
I am my little brother watched as dad advanced on the outhouse. He flung the door open and with the stick held before him as if it where a sword, he went valiantly in. The flies that my little brother and I had stirred up with our pebbles swirled about dad's head. The door swung closed on its rusty spring and then dad yelled.
"Take that, you nasty troll. And that and that, oh lord no, he has got me boys, he is pulling me down!"
My little brother had sheer terror written all over his face. The vision of his father being pulled down into the hole by his talley wacker was an imagine printed right upon his eyes!"
"We have to go get mom, dads in real trouble!"
"He is just funning us!" I said as I held tight to my little brothers hand, not allowing him to move
A loud bang startled us into looking once again in the direction of the out house.
Dad came out of the out house putting his imaginary pistil back in his belt. He came up to us carrying the stick he went in there with and stuck it in my face. There was a very suspicious looking glob of brown stuff on the end of it mixed with what looked very much like toilet paper
"There I killed him see."
"Are you sure?" Asked my little brother
"I think so!", dad said as he turned to me, "Fritz does this smell dead to you?"
I went through the motions of smelling the stick, but my heart wasn't in it.
"Yes, Dad, that troll is not only dead, he is very, very dead!" I declared, speaking more about myself then of any troll.
Dad threw the stick aside and reached out and hugged my little brother. My little brother hugged my father back for all he was worth, as he now viewed dadd as a real hero. I Walked behind them for a pace or two and then dad turned and rubbed my head with his knuckles and softly laughed at me.
"A Troll heh?" He asked. I shrugged my shoulders and dad laughed and pulled me in for a group hug. We then headed back to the house.
My little brother couldn't wait to tell mom what a hero dad was
Mom just stared at my dad and then chided him
"John, I sure wished you wouldn't fill these boy's heads with those stories of yours, it is bad for them to know their father lives with his head in the clouds most of the time."
Dad looked at me and that hole that I had helped dig and then put a troll into got a little deeper.
Dad started to protest, but then thought better of it. Meanwhile I felt a week of extra chores coming on.
My little brother was not be denied though. He went on to sing the praises of our fathers killing of the troll to my sisters and they looked at father and declared in near unison. "Disgusting!"
Mom then declared Breakfast, which turned out to be pancakes that had been cooked at six in the morning when mother woke up and couldn't go back to sleep. They had been sitting in the oven for an hour and a half and they were much like that nasty old troll, they were well past dead.
I wrinkled my nose at them and took one, Dad gave me a dirty look so I added a couple of more and then passed the plate that served as their make shift coffin to one of my sisters.
I pondered over my cold dead pancakes knowing that somehow I deserved all this. We were going to church this morning. The devil himself couldn't stop my mother once she got something like this in her head.
There in church prayers would be said for young men that told their little brother that the Easter Bunny was not real, that pulled their sisters pigtails for no good reason and that told stories about a Troll that dwelled in the outhouse, not to mention the lady of the lake, which would later have his little brother scared to enter the water ever again. I knew there would be no specific mention of me and my evil deeds in church, but The congregations prayers where still going to sound an awful like they were meant just for me.
I raised a bite of cold dead pancake to my mouth, hearing the sound of those church bells in my head and thinking of something I had once heard, "Do not wonder for whom the bell trolls, It trolls for thee.
