Wherein eight gartenzwerge go on the lam down Strawberry Creek after Ruddy’s overzealous jellyspreckling of the crocks cracked their (the gartenzwerge’s) kilning bond and incited a hasty flight of now-strubly zwerge from the old bounds of Aunt Sandy’s driveway.
The habit of dipping and bobbing through moony shadows ran right down to their mineral-laden toenails, as did a pure joy of cunning, so it was with ancient lithic rhythm that they all awoke in the dark and took peeks through the reeds. It was late summer, and the air was still and heavy, but the racket of frogs on this swampy bend was making the cattails quaver. After a great many stretches, grumps, and look-abouts, a discrete and tidy fire was lit. Not a flicker would be seen from any bank.
There were eight of them, of course: Coot Schmidt, Caklin Leer, Grampy Heini, Jan Grot, Ruddy Honker, Dimber Doppick, Kirk Reeker, and Icki Oddkin.
“Big river tonight,” Grampy said. “After that—.” He showed palms.
“Oughten we eat then,” Coot said.
They needed no goading. Eight fat grasshoppers and a trio of crayfish had been spitted together on a twisted bit of coat hanger. Icki pushed three crabapples next to the flames. It would do nicely, they all agreed, certainly besting the usual grub jerky and birdseed that formerly had passed for midnight breakfasts.
“All out the open,” Jan said, nodding vaguely north. “It’s a wide river.”
Grampy nodded.
“Stay under trees,” Coot muttered.
“And a little glimmyglam,” Grampy finished.
Icki was the first to break his wind.
After final ablutions and a cinching of breeches, they sauntered into the escape tub and drifted into the swampy dark.
Grampy’s assumption about their new liberty (that is, the failure of sunlight to hold them during the day) had been that Ruddy’s surplus handfuls of jellyspreckle in the last batch of mash had “cracked the kilning bond.” On further argument, they all agreed that this must have been what happened. Jellyspreckle was a rough and juddery ride. It rarely behaved as expected, and there were always things like bruises and incontinence to be dealt with afterwards. But this never deterred them—as if a hankering for punishment lay under the thirst for devilment. Any number of times in summer—mostly whenever they came across it growing in some dank crevice—they would gather the sprecky to add to the next crocks of mash-and-creekwater that fired their revels. Two handfuls were enough for each batch. How much Ruddy had added that night months ago would never be known.
Kirk flapped his arms and made a small kareek before settling against the starboard wall. It was the first time he had done it since waking. The urge was subsiding. If the recent sordid revel had heaved them up unshackled, none were yet thinking of the next bout—phantoms of the last still twitched in their limbs.
Coot’s pole pushed them clear of a final stand of reeds. A tug of current gave them a spin, and then the tub was in a clear stretch, with a tall bank overhanging the starlit water on the right. Ahead, town lights pinkened the tree trunks. Grampy pushed to the front.
“Keep the middle. We stop after the tunnel.”
“Tunnel,” Dimber said.
“Like a cave,” Jan answered.
The current picked up and they drifted briskly down a corridor of trees, brightening with neighborhood streetlights. Then a jog as the creek broadened, and the tunnel came into view. Bridge lamps lit up the area, but nothing moved above them. They floated into the tunnel darkness, with Jan dragging hard on the pole to slow them.
At tunnel’s end, the creek met a river. They pulled the tub up onto the bank and took stock. It was big and dark, flat and quiet. There was a fascinating smell in the air.
“Buttercream church wedding cake,” came Icki’s belly.
“It was so silky,” Icki sighed.
Icki’s belly had been quiet for nearly a day, but it had only been a matter of time before its burbles began again.
The provoking smell came from somewhere above. Coot and Ruddy had already climbed the bank and were crouched at the top. Then Ruddy stood up and walked into the brightness. From below, they could see Coot grab for him. He missed, but in a moment, he too stood up and disappeared.
Grampy and Icki led the rest of them to the top. There they stopped and gaped. The building across the street glowed and blinked in shades of dandelion, strawberry, and swamp gas. Pictures of confections in bizarre shapes plastered its sides. The cloying smell of old bananas and spilt syrup hung in the night air.
“Freez-eyes, er, Freezy’s,” Grampy sounded out the glowing word.
All eight had gathered before its door without a word.
Dimber’s shovel was produced. Grampy grabbed it and climbed onto Dimber’s shoulders. With a deft plunge, the door latch was popped.
The sugary smell from inside brought on a swoon, and the ensemble nearly toppled. But they were soon all inside, vaulting to the counters above.
Though Icki and his belly might have dreamt of garish desserts, and Dimber had once seen part of a waffle cone in the driveway, most of the colored sweets and syrups were exotic to them. Jan found a cup and he and Coot went on a tasting down a row of containers, Jan holding the cup below, and Coot stomping on the sticky spigots. Dimber pushed up a lid and disappeared into a bin of sticky white flakes. Sugar beads and sprinkles were soon arcing through the air as Caklin and Ruddy exchanged volleys.
It might have carried on much longer if the sound of a nearby kattywauler fight hadn’t brought them out of it. They slung sporks on their backs and filled pockets with nonpareils and rainbow sprinkles. The sprint down the bank wasn’t necessary, but they had energy to spare now. Coot gave the tub a hard push, and they watched the blinking lights of Freezy’s dwindle away.
“Look for islands,” Grampy said, pointing at the middle of the river.
“Oars to get there,” Coot replied.
There was a tally, and it was discovered that three sporks had not made it onboard, making five. They agreed to spork-paddle away from shore and look for islands. It was a gamble.
It was also hard work, but their arms soon blurred like tiny propellers. The tub moved erratically to the middle of the river, with only a few comments of high color coming from the two-spork side.
An hour passed this way, and finally they paused for a break, long enough for Icki and Kirk to recommence picking coconut flakes off Dimber’s shirt and eating them. The sky ahead was getting lighter.
A big bend to the right was coming up. To the left they spied a high bank lit by light poles. A high chain fence stood at the bank’s edge. Below it was a round opening like the tunnel they had gone through earlier.
With dawn coming, they made their decision. The tub was turned to the far shore and the windmill-rowing resumed. But it was an exhausting crossing. The current pushed harder as they neared the bank, and they landed well below the clearing. But here the tub could be tucked and covered for the day. With sporks buried and breakfast tucked into pockets, they clambered out from the mucky underbrush and made for the tunnel.
There was a barnyard smell in the air, and as they drew closer, there was no doubt that it came from the tunnel.
Suddenly Jan cackled.
“A furz fart pipe!”
They scavenged wood and brought it in, setting up camp far enough inside that a fire would not be seen.
The fire turned out to be a good idea, as it did somewhat clear the air. With slightly sticky napkins rolled for pillows, they settled against the round walls for the day. There was a heavier than normal bout of breaking wind, as the air of the pipe worked some uncouth reaction in them, but soon every cap was pulled snug and a light chorus of snoring was echoing down the walls.
Coot woke up first. In his dream, he had been roasting crickets on Aunt Sandy’s garden chair when the fire began making vulgar comments. These soon became gurgling sounds. Then he was awake and hearing the sounds coming from somewhere further up the pipe.
A pungent breeze preceded it.
Coot’s yelp gave them only seconds to awaken and brace for the surge they sensed coming. And then it was upon them, an unsavory flood that carried them out of the pipe and into the afternoon river.
As luck would have it, the rain was coming down hard. Grampy rolled and gave a shoreward glance—nothing moved on the big lawn. There was a moment of wheezing and gasping above water and then they all sank.
It was a rarely used skill, but they could walk for some distance underwater. With the weight of the earth in their feet, they might trod along, even against strong currents, to lurch up on far banks and resume their journey. And so, the eight made their underwater way along the river’s bank to the mucky stretch of tree roots where the tub had been hidden.
A wrenching and rinsing of garments commenced in a bushy inlet. The candies were unsalvageable, and their gaudy colors now bloomed from bum pockets. But the tub and sporks and pole lay where they had been left. Grampy paused in his ablutions and watched Dimber, who seemed to be rubbing his face with equal parts muck and water.
“Jan and Ruddy, hey! Be a swamp root here, the one what makes the hands brown?”
“Mudwortle? That’s all about,” Ruddy said. “Stain the boat? Why not glimmyglam it?”
“Not that,” Grampy replied. “Us.”
Though they grouched sorely, Grampy was right. Their caps, though faded, stood out in the daylight, as did their faces and beards. And some of their jackets. Not to mention a few shirts and belt buckles. It was a sad thing to be asked.
The mudwortle was collected and rubbed with vigor into clothes, caps, and faces.
Finally Grampy sighed and said, “We’re brown caps now. Strubly toadstools.”
“Strubly brown caps,” Jan amended.
“Strawbully bwowns!” came Dimber’s diphthongs.
There was a gasp, and then the other voices cried “strubly browns!” with Coot even slapping Dimber on the back.
Caklin had begun hopping emphatically on a muddy bank, but this turned out to be unfortunate. The two klappershlong that had been sleeping under a bush were awakened and burst into warning rattles behind him. There followed diving leaps and waist-deep surges away from the bank, the mucky water making their flight deceptively serene. After a scramble in which more sporks were left behind, they shoved off as another wave of rain hit the river.
The afternoon’s downpour became a steady evening drizzle. It was miserable, and there would likely be no supper, but they were all a little easier with the coming darkness.
“Pepperoni oven rolls,” came Icki’s belly after another gust of rain.
“They burn your tongue, but you keep eating them,” Icki said.
“When he ever ate this,” Coot snorted.
“Granny biscuits and ham gravy,” it insisted.
“While I’m in my slippers.”
“For when he had slippers?”
Jan interrupted before Icki’s belly could make them hungrier. “Make us a nice roof, eh Grampy?”
“With what?”
“A lid?” Caklin said.
“A lid? What lid?”
“We make one,” Coot said. “With sticks. And this.” With his pole, Coot fished out something slick and glistening.
“Potato sack,” Grampy sniffed.
But the idea was enough to convince them to angle shoreward and scan the banks. As luck would have it, they were approaching a dock, behind which were some sheds. A little more luck, and they had a scrap of tarp, which was rolled and stored in the back of the tub along with some screws and fish line that Caklin found.
This decided it. At the next bend they angled to a sandbar patch of willows and hauled the tub under a bush. Two safely wrapped caramels were discovered in a pocket, each divided into four pieces, and distributed. Then Jan clambered up a willow and threw branches down.
It took time, but with screws, fish line, and bark, the tarp was lashed to its willow frame and the whole thing gimmicked to the tub. With the leftover tarp, Coot improvised an aft flap, making the whole thing snug. Caklin and Ruddy meanwhile whittled out real paddles from branches.
There would be no fire, but there were snails and crickets to tide them over. And there was now a dry tub to sleep in. The tub was hidden in a bush, and they all settled in as morning broke.
The rain went on through the day and got into their dreams, but they woke to a deep evening fog, perfect for drifting unseen. It was still too wet for a fire, but there were snails to snack on. Icki’s belly spoke on cue.
“Green bean and bacon Sunday casserole.”
“It tastes even better on Monday,” Icki asserted.
“What’s the day it is today?” Ruddy mused.
“Fog day,” Kirk said, gesturing.
“What comes after fog day?”
Answers were various, and included dingle-whisker day, butt-chin day, jelly-head day, and fanny-face day, with additional answers continuing as they climbed into the tub and disappeared into the mist.
Nights when fogs closed in thick were nights that Grampy favored for lore. And so when they had drifted for some time, Grampy said by way of preamble that he had heard it from that previous Grampy who had come from the east and who had maybe even heard it from some other Grampy.
“We were kilned that way,” he pointed into the murk in the direction they were heading. “Kilned, I say, but there beforetimes.”
“Asleep,” Coot said.
“Like enough,” Grampy affirmed. “Found, sifted, shaped, and fired from sleep.”
“I like naps,” Dimber contributed.
“Told me of glimmyglam gotten out the dew what falls through a spinner’s web. Certain kinds only. Catch it on toes and fingers.”
“We know, ya—a master craft,” Jan’s eyeroll was lost in his bushy brows.
“Ha, and rare! But more than this,”—he raised a hand and let his fingers crackle a brief rainbow—“Gather it up and fold it, he told me. Braid it, twist it. Showed me how to bind it up, tuck it into toenails, behind an ear, down the crack. Let it steep there, eh?”
Both hands, palms out, he showed them. His fingers shimmered and began to waver like wind-tossed branches. Then he put both hands on the tub rim and pulled and grunted. Elbowing the others out of his way as he went, he followed the rim, tugging and stretching, groaning all the while.
“Practice and practice. Work and work!”
“Verk, verk, verk!” Jan mocked. Icki broke wind with spectacular timing, leading to a few imitations.
But Grampy’s grimace was more of a grin now. The tub had changed and grown, taking on a boat-like shape, with a pointed prow and swelling hull.
It was bigger too, and here rose bumps that became benches to sit on. This was glimmyglam they had never witnessed before, and they oohed and wowed over it. As an encore, Grampy stepped to the prow and pulled it upward, huffing til it took the shape of a great cap, tilting its tip to fall to the side at an angle, just so.
Coot, looking from one end to the other, finally spoke up.
“How be this?” he asked.
“Be or seem,” Grampy replied. “Glimmyglam.”
Near dawn, they spotted an island well offshore and rowed for it with their new paddles. Earlier in the night they had felt the river change and looked out to see its banks falling away with the fog. Once offshore, they went bobbing down the coast with another current.
The island had a tilted look, with a pebble beach to land on and a rising rock slab making a little cliff at its far side. The center of the island was thick with reedy grasses and cottonwoods, so they hauled the boat up and hid it within.
“I thought rivers went up mountains,” Icki said.
“You’re a dumbhead,” Coot noted.
“Through the mountains, down a river, over the water, and up our river the old-timer said he went. So we do the other way round,” Grampy said. “We could make a sail,” he said, looking at Coot.
Coot stared at his snug tarp and shook his head.
“Wet heads then,” Coot sighed and tweaked a fish line. Then his fingers took to the task and the others joined him. The tarp was draped over the rim and then they piled into the boat for a day’s rest.
With cottonwood for mast and yard, plus some glimmyglam, the sail was put up the next evening. They pulled the boat down to the water, with Coot insisting they unfurl and check the sail one last time. Grampy put a finger up.
“A nice breeze soon maybe,” he said.
Ruddy had begun sniffing the air earlier and had wandered off towards the hill. The excited whoop that came moments later drew them after him.
In a spot where the rock made an overhang was a small grotto. Ruddy stood before it, hands clasped before him.
The funky smell coming from the grotto stole their full attention. It was jellyspreckle.
“Oh dingle,” was all Grampy said.
A line of blackish, crusty-looking lumps with golden seams and pale undersides grew at the base of the rock. Ruddy leaned in and pulled up a chunk, the reek of it stunning them.
This was how it always hit them. A whiff of disgust, and then a schmaltz-ridden longing, pulling them closer until they were filling pockets and breathing hard. There was never any stopping it.
It was tradition to throw the sprecky into a crockful of fermenting mash, letting it mellow into the brew. Impossible now.
“We could cook them. Or throw them in the fire? Or make pipes?” Ruddy asked.
“For an old stone pipe,” Coot sighed.
“No tools for that,” Jan said. “Clay?”
“Here? No. This—” Coot stepped up to the rock face before them and tapped it with a knuckle.
“Kalky.” He nodded. “Find something harder and we mought work this.”
Ruddy, of course, was the first to find a black speckled stone with a fine edge. He was also the second to find another such stone. And he was also the first to find two round palm-sized stones to beat on the wedges and had presented them to Jan and Coot while Jan was still scratching himself. Soon enough, they found a chunk near the overhang, a gray and pocked-looking oblong, but proving undeniably kalky when Jan took a wedge to it. It split evenly.
They sat in a little circle of bent heads, Coot doing the finer work. Two grooves were worked along the center of each. A bowl was hollowed into one piece and completed with a small, carefully drilled hole. Then Jan took some leftover fish line from his pocket and tied the crude pipe together.
Ruddy meanwhile had started a fire, gimmicked a flat heating stone over it, ground the sprecky, dried it on the stone, and graded it fussily. But the others didn’t argue. They took places around the fire. Ruddy cleared his throat.
“To going where is no more klapperschlong, stinkters, crows, raccoons, or kattywaulers,” he toasted.
Then he took the first draw.
Steeped and mellowed in the mash, the experience of jellyspreckle was slow to come on, jagged, woozy, approaching pleasant, but inevitably bringing waves of exhilaration and alarm. It often ended abruptly, as a fall down a staircase might.
As to its use as pipeweed, they had in some way apprehended that it might be smoked in a pipe. In fact, in the woods near their old home, they had sprinkled sprecky crumbs over other bits of smokable dross, to modest effect. This jellyspreckle, with its bountiful golden seams and pungent funk went into the pipe uncut, and while it was quite obviously potent, growing here on this undisturbed island, Ruddy had not even chopped a lichen into it.
“Hee,” he said, passing it to Caklin.
“Hoo,” Caklin inhaled and noted, passing it to Grampy.
“Nought. I’ll keep a clear eye,” Grampy said, passing it to Kirk.
So it went, around the circle, with Ruddy packing it anew and sending it in the opposite direction on the next round.
Faces had gone “dippy” as Grampy observed after the third round. Still, he grumped and prodded until they were on their feet. Going would be better than staying, they knew, and Grampy’s wished-for breeze had come up a while ago. So, with a fresh harvest of jellyspreckle shoved into pockets and underpants, they marched to the water.
The boat was gone.
“Wind took it,” Jan sniffed. “Probably that way,” he pointed.
“Straight out,” Coot added, taking up the pointing. “This is the worst.”
“What wurst?” Icki said, looking around.
“This,” Coot jabbed, his finger now suggesting airborne flight.
“That’s not wurst, nor baloney neither, that’s—” but Icki’s belly was provoked.
“Butter baloney pickle pepper sandwich,” it growled.
“You can eat it in the park,” Icki managed to gulp.
“What’s a park?” Dimber asked.
Grampy stamped his foot.
“Dumbhead dingle-whiskered butt dumplings. Furz!” He sat down and took a long sigh.
That cleared the sprecky from their heads somewhat, and one by one, bums hit the ground. The quiet of the island was deep and dismal.
Kirk was the first to hear a faint tump-scritch-tump from somewhere around the bend of the island. He got up and wandered away to investigate.
This proved a good idea. What he had heard was the bumping and scraping of the boat. It had coasted around the shore into a jumble of half-submerged rocks and its sail was now tugging it this way and that against them. Kirk gave a three-hoot alert and in no time they were knee-deep in the water and giggling as they clambered in, goaded by Grampy’s high-colored comments and wallops. Had he been cooler headed, he might have decided otherwise, as the night was well along. But the breeze was blowing steadily. With a plump sail, they lurched into the dark.
Ruddy had taken the pipe with more vigor than the others, and now he launched into a song with more woos than consonants. The sprecky had put a shellac on his lips and wood in his tongue, making the words hard to parse. Dimber was unpicky about melody, and soon his voice joined Ruddy’s. This in turn provoked Caklin into a fit of tittering. When he pointed at Dimber and continued laughing, Coot slapped the back of his head. Caklin in turn, aimed a kick at Coot but his foot landed on Kirk’s knee. Kirk broke wind in surprise, which Coot took exception to, landing a shiner on Kirk’s right eye. The ensuing rumble was short-lived, as too many punches were landing in the cramped quarters of the boat and Grampy’s return to idiom finally curbed them.
“No songs. Voices carry,” he finished. Then he stepped to the fore and turned his back on them.
Despite a final tally of two black eyes, a kicked shin, a kicked bum, bruises, and a swollen nose, there soon came a fine and easy feeling amongst them. The sprecky seemed almost friendly when put to pipe. This was something to remember.
“Was the old Grampy told me of sprecky in the pipe,” Grampy mused. “If it’s fire, it’s this. If it’s water, it’s that. It doesn’t remember me the what for now.”
Soon enough the horizon brightened. The clouds were gone—no day to be caught in the open. Jan and Coot did what they could with the sail while the others set to paddling shoreward. It looked thick with trees and had the smell of real woods.
“Hie there, that creek,” Jan pointed. “Crayfish dinner.”
The first ray of sunlight caught his highest finger. He just had time to make an O with his lips.
Dimber was the tallest, and the light caught his head next. Then Coot, who had been pulling at the sail. One by one they froze, just as they had done before the night they cracked their bond. Caklin and Grampy reacted fastest, ducking below the boat’s rim.
“Oh it remembers me now,” Grampy hissed. “Make the brew strong enough, cracks the bonds, but a strong enough smoke will seal the bonds, or such. Dumbhead I am. Earth and water goes one way, fire and air the other.”
“You had none,” Caklin pointed out.
Grampy nodded. He stood up boldly, hands out, and stared at the sunrise.
“I’ll get us up the creek then. You stay under the tarp. Start a brew tonight. Make crocks, make mash, bury it. A month at least, oh furz…” Grampy had backed into a frozen Jan, knocking Jan into Dimber, and causing a cascade of crashes. Caklin put a hand up to steady Ruddy, but sunlight nicked his knuckle, freezing him in a posture of wistful reaching.
Grampy looked down at the jumble of still bodies.
“Sprecky der teufel,” he swore.
The breeze that had nearly died was picking up again. It filled the sail and in moments the boat had left the creek behind. Grampy first pulled at the sail, then the arm, but Coot’s devious fish line knots were everywhere. Finally, one came loose and Grampy sidled through bodies to the other side and pried at another.
Busy for some time with this, he didn’t notice the long spit of rocks approaching. Now he saw it. And coming into view around the trees: boat masts and flags. The sail was pushing him right into the rocks. He caught voices on the wind and footsteps on a dock.
When the boat bumped the rocks, it began to spin, inching and bobbing inward toward the boats. It was too late now. Grampy hunkered in with the others, rubbed his hands together, and put his palms on the boat. In a moment it was a mere tub again. Then he threw up a dust of glimmyglam and let it fall over him. Just another reclining zwerg.
They bobbed on small waves through the morning, and Grampy began to hope they might make it to nightfall unmolested. But then big hands yanked the tub from the water. Through slitted eyes, he caught a weathered face above him with a white beard like his own. They were lugged down the dock and carried into a building.
A rigid Jan fell on top of him as they were set down in a dim room. The big hands reached in and lifted up Dimber by his feet; Grampy could see part of him hanging in the air upside down, being ogled at. Why look at his feet? Then Dimber was set down and the big folk went away.
After a few minutes of stillness, he scrambled over to Dimber. Nudging him over Caklin, Grampy looked at the underside of his left foot. There it was: she had written her name and scratched numbers next to it.
He turned his own foot up. There. Caklin’s foot was the same, as was Jan’s. She must have marked them all. He knew those numbers meant trouble—they would be used to find her. And then she would find them. And they would all be in big trouble.
He eased over the tub wall and looked around. A window above the big table, open rafters, coils of rope hanging from pegs—maybe if the window could be opened, they might slide down a rope into the night. But moonlight would be needed to free the others. And it would have to shine through that window. Without a taste of the old silver, no escape.
Grampy found a suitable rope. From the top of a barrel, he hurled it at the rafter until a lob made it over. Then he knotted the ends and climbed to the window. The latch was simple, and the window pushed outward.
That night, he lowered another rope from the window and crept along the edge of the building. It was a cloudy night, and the moon was nowhere to be seen. After a lunch of crickets, he climbed back into the building. It might take many nights and it might even mean hoisting them one by one through the window.
But the next morning, as Grampy sat dozing in a corner of the box surrounded by frozen arms and legs, he heard a familiar rattle outside. Aunt Sandy’s station wagon. Her voice, another voice, footsteps, and the door bursting open. The white beard hoisted the tub onto a table.
He heard her gasp when she came to the box.
“Strubly!”
He struggled to keep his legs still. Oh, they were in for it now. Mudwortled faces, candy streaks on trousers, blackened eyes, soiled bums, and the funk of jellyspreckle about them—they would be put in the shed for sure. There would be indignities. Maybe a month stowed in a box behind the potting wheel. Washing, sanding, more washing. Touchups. Wind chimes and flute music. Incense getting into beards.
But now Grampy knew. Some moonlit night when they might gather sprecky again and steal down to the creek, they would make another batch of mash. Three crocks, made potent well beyond custom, would be ready after three months at most. Crack the kilning bond again and lam down the creek, sail over the water and far away, this time for good.