Adventures of a Cat-Whiskered Girl (13 page)

"Fifteen feet?" Molly asked.

"Well, not all of them get to be that big. There are sharks in the river too, from time to time."

"Sharks? In a river? Don't they prefer salt water?"

"The Hudson is what you call a riverine estuary," Harold said. "It's salty, or brackish, all the way up to Poughkeepsie, and it has tides, like the ocean."

There was another splash. It sounded close.

"How often do those sturgeon jump into boats?" I asked.

"It hardly ever happens," Harold said. "It has never happened in all my time on the river."

"How long has that been?"

"Let me see. I bought the coracle about a year ago, and then I had to spend some time fixing it up, so ... six months?"

Molly and I sat quietly. Harold paddled. After a while, he began to sing.

"
Loudly the bell in the old tower rings,
Bidding us list to the warning it brings: Sailor take care,

Danger is near thee, beware, beware, beware,
beware—

Many brave hearts are asleep in the deep, so beware, beware.

Many brave hearts are asleep in the deep, so beware, beware.
"

"How jolly," I said.

"He has a nice voice for a giant," Molly said.

He started another song.

"
Wasn't it sad when the great ship went down?
Wasn't it sad when the great ship went down?
Uncles and aunts, little children, lost their pants.
It was sad when that great ship went down.
"

The moon got high. It was almost full, and very bright. It cast a beautiful light on the river. Molly and I looked around, hoping to see a sturgeon jumping, preferably not too close, but it never happened.

"Look! You can see the castle!" Harold said.

Far down the river, we could see the moonlight glinting off something—it was hard to say if it was a castle. As we got closer, it did start to look like a castle, a weird, extra-fancy one with all kinds of turrets and towers and decorations. All the windows were dark, and it looked about twenty times spookier than Spookhuizen.

"That's it? That's where Chicken Nancy wants us to go?"

"No, we said we wanted to go," Molly said. "She said maybe we wanted to go, and we said we did."

"Right, and the night before, she went out while
we were sleeping to hunt up a giant with a boat, and bring him home," I said.

"Don't let first impressions prejudice you," Harold said. "You may have a lot of fun there."

"Oh, I can see it's a million laughs," I said.

"You don't want me to row you all the way back without even looking it over, do you?" Harold asked.

"No, we'll take our chances," Molly said.

"Great," Harold said. "Because I am never going to make a trip this long in this crappy boat again."

"What? How did you plan to get us back?"

"Well, I figured when you were through on the island, I'd put you on a bus."

"Bus? What bus?"

"Right over there," Harold said, pointing to the shore. "You can catch a bus. It takes about half an hour to get to Poughkeepsie."

"Wait a minute! So we could have taken a bus down this far in half an hour?"

"Maybe forty minutes."

"And then just rowed out to the island? In a rented rowboat or something?"

"Well, yes, I suppose so. But then you would have missed the whole trip on the river," Harold said. "We have to stop talking now. These currents are really tricky, and I need to pay attention."

The currents
were
tricky. We shot right past the island.

"Drat!" Harold said. "This isn't easy. Now I have to turn the boat around."

Harold was struggling with his paddle. The coracle was trying to spin. Twice he almost managed to get us back to the island, and then the current got the better of him and carried us downriver.

"I think I have to go way over toward the other shore and sort of swing around and come up to the island on the west side," Harold said. "I never saw such crazy water."

It turns out that in addition to the castle, which was really just a warehouse for old cannons, gunpowder, army shoes, cooking pots, and swords and such, Mr. Bannerman had built a mansion to live in. When Harold finally managed to get close to the island, we saw it, and a big stone arch over the water, which he was able to paddle through. There was a sort of stone patio or dock right in front of the mansion with a set of steps leading up to it. Harold caught ahold of a big iron ring and held the coracle close to the steps.

"Okay, girls, up the steps you go," he said.

"Up the steps we do not go!" I said. "Do you see what is standing in front of the mansion?"

Standing in front of the mansion, on a sort of veranda lit by a couple of torches in iron brackets, were four or five monsters taking the air, their thumbs tucked into their waistbands! They all had fat bellies, and big heads, and a couple of them had horns; all but one had a wide mouth with lots of sharp little teeth, and the one that hadn't had a beak like a parrot's and feathers growing out of the top of its head. They all had big feet with claws. A couple of them were smoking pipes. Their expressions were not unpleasant, but they were monsters! They could afford to look friendly.

"So? What is the problem?" Harold asked.

"You ask what is the problem? There are wild things right in front of you, and you want to know what the problem is?"

"Well, you must have expected there would be something unusual on the island," Harold said.

"Of course we did," Molly said.

"What? And you want to go visit them?"

"Well, maybe not without permission," Molly said. Then she shouted, "Hey! Monsters! Is it okay for us to come ashore?"

"You're the kid who scared off the Muffin Man!" one of the monsters shouted. "Sure, come ahead! We
won't bite you!" Then all the monsters laughed. I wished they hadn't done that.

"Wow, that only happened last night, and already they know about it," Molly said. The monsters were all gesturing and beckoning us to come to them.

"And you're Elizabeth Van Vreemdeling!" one of the monsters said. "Also known as Audrey from another existential plane."

"That's it. I'm going ashore," I said. "There's destiny going on."

Molly and I scrambled up the ladder.

"Have a good time, girls!" Harold said while pushing off in the coracle.

"What? You're not coming with us?"

"Not me," Harold said. "I've visited here before."

"Is that Harold in the boat?" one of the monsters asked. "Yah, yah, Harold! You're scared to come in because you lost your pants playing klabiash with us last time!"

"I'm going to paddle down to Yonkers and catch an all-night movie," Harold said. "I'll come back tomorrow and see if you're ready to leave."

"Yah, yah, Harold is scared! Some giant!" the monsters called.

"Wait!" I called to Harold. "Are we safe here?"

"As long as you don't play for money, you're safe," Harold said, and the coracle disappeared into the darkness.

"We would never play for money against children," one of the monsters mumbled. "Do you have any money, girls?"

"Not a cent," Molly said.

"Me neither," I lied. I had twenty-six dollars pinned to my underwear.

The monsters were Hudson River trolls. Their names were Phil, Fay, Helen, Joe, and Uncle Bernard. We thought that Helen and Joe were the children of Phil and Fay, and Uncle Bernard was their uncle. They were all the same size and appeared to be the same age. Hudson River trolls live four or five hundred years. They believe they are descended from sasquatches that lived on the Esopus Creek. They didn't explain the reason that Uncle Bernard looked like he was part bird and the others looked like they were part bear or part gorilla or part buffalo—and there didn't seem to be a polite way to ask about it.

They lived in the mansion on Pollepel Island, which is also called Bannerman's Island. They said
they were looking after it for the Bannerman family, should they ever decide to come back, and besides, it was deserted and would have gone to waste if nobody lived there.

The trolls loved to gamble and would place bets on whether the castle, which was half full of gunpowder, would blow up the next time lightning hit it. And they kept us up until two in the morning playing klabiash.

The trolls were answering no questions and would discuss nothing until we had played klabiash with them—so there was nothing to do but play.

Klabiash is a card game. Their other favorite game is filthy euchre, but they thought klabiash would be easier for us to learn. The dealer gives each player three cards, face-down, until the thirteenth card, which is dealt face-up. Then the players grab cards, throw cards down, and shout things like "Menell!" "Yass!" "Deece!" and "Shmice!" Yass is worth twenty points, Menell is worth fourteen points, and when anybody calls Shmice, they throw the cards in the air and run around the room, jumping over furniture. The game ends when everybody is sweaty and exhausted. The trolls said we were good players, even though we had no idea what we were doing.

"Time for you to sleep," Phil said. "Go upstairs. There are thirteen bedrooms—take any one or ones
you like. We will have pea soup and Danish pastries for breakfast."

The bedroom we chose was simultaneously fancy, old, and crummy. It must have been the height of fashion when Mr. Bannerman built the place in the 1880s, but it had plenty of time to get out of date, and we were not surprised to find that the trolls were not careful housekeepers. We pulled the dusty bedspread off the big old bed, which was made of dark wood, carved all over, and had a canopy. The sheets seemed reasonably clean, and there were no mice in the bed. We were tired after a day on the river and the energetic game of klabiash, so we climbed in and fell asleep in a minute.

Molly must have been really tired. She slept all night and did not climb the drapes or do sound effects of the Battle of Britain with her mouth, or practice tap dancing. In fact, she was still asleep when I woke up early in the morning. I dressed and went downstairs. The trolls were sleeping in too, so I played with a cute frisky puppy I met in the parlor until the rest of the house woke up.

The puppy scampered off somewhere, and the trolls came thundering down the stairs with Molly bouncing after them.

"Breakfast!" Helen called. "Split-pea soup and Danish pastries! And who wants prune juice?"

"Me! Me! Me! Me!" Phil, Joe, Fay, and Uncle Bernard shouted.

Helen got busy in the kitchen, and soon the old mansion was full of good smells that did not go together.

"After breakfast, we can play cards!" Joe said.

"Or we can talk with our guests," Uncle Bernard said. "What brings you to our island, girls?"

"Well, do you know Chicken Nancy?" I asked.

"The wise woman? Of course we know her," Fay said. "We've known her since she was born."

"Chicken Nancy suggested we come here," I said.

"She was telling us about the Wolluf," Molly said. "And she said this was the best place to see it."

When Molly mentioned the Wolluf, the trolls went pale and gasped. There was a little period of silence. Then Uncle Bernard spoke slowly. "Great pineapple, preserve us! You
want
to see the Wolluf?"

"Well, yes," Molly said. "We're curious."

"Most people would rather run a mile than see the Wolluf," Fay said.

"We see it all the time," Joe said. "And we are big strong trolls, brave as anything, and afraid of nothing—and even we have to get ahold of ourselves to keep from losing our prune juice."

"Is it horrible?" Molly asked.

"It is worse than horrible," Phil said.

"Is it evil?" Molly said.

"Not so much evil as frightening," Fay said. "It's the kind of thing you can hardly bear to look at. I would rather see a half-dozen regular werewolves than look at the Wolluf. And yet you dare not look away."

"Of course, that would not apply to little Elizabeth here," Uncle Bernard said. "She has never had a
problem with the Wolluf—and she is the only one of whom that can be said."