THE IRISH
CONNECTION
Roy Dorman
Teddy McAllister had done
his homework. He was pretty sure there were Little People
in the forested regions of Maine and he intended to find them.
Teddy, a retired high school
history teacher,
had recently visited his origins in County Cork and had learned about the Irish
Emigration that had occurred in the 1840s during the Potato Famine. That’s
when his own ancestors had come to New
England.
What Teddy had picked up
in a pub from some of
the regulars in downtown Cork was that maybe as many as hundreds of Little People
had stowed away on ships headed for North America and Australia during those
turbulent times. Teddy had reason to
believe from studying ships’ manifests of that period that some had probably
landed in the State of Maine.
Teddy had been walking the
straight and narrow
for all of his sixty years and now was ready to take a walk on the wild side.
***
Looking to get as close
to the heart of
northern Maine as he could, Teddy now drove the back roads after coming up from
Boston, having driven through New Hampshire.
A little motel, Ed’s
Motel, with a grocery
store and gas station attached to it, seemed like a good place to use as a
temporary home base.
“I’d like to
rent a room for the week if I
could,” said Teddy. “I’ll be going on up
into the woods to do some exploring and may sometimes be gone for a day or two
during that week.”
“That would be fine,”
said the owner, Ed Laurent. “Cash up front, if ya don’t mind. Two hundred for the week.”
“I’d like to
get as deep into the woods as I
can,” said Teddy, counting out the total.
“Is there a road around here that would get me further into the woods
than we are now?”
“If ya go north about
five miles from here,
there’s an old logging road that might serve yer purpose. It’s kinda
horseshoe shaped. It goes into the woods near here and comes
out after about twenty miles on the other side near Presque Isle.”
“Sounds good,”
Teddy said, shaking Ed’s
hand. “Thanks.”
“Now, it’s none
of my business, but since yer a
payin’ customer and all, I feel like I should tell ya to be careful in those
woods. Bein’ by yerself and all.”
“Wolves, bears….,
careful I don’t get lost? What?”
Ed looked over his shoulder
and then leaned in
closer to Teddy. “Little People,” he
whispered. “The Little People are
sometimes kinda jealous-like of their territory.”
Teddy’s mouth dropped
open. “You’ve actually seen Little People?”
he asked, also keeping to a whisper.
Ed looked around again as
if making sure they
were alone. “No, can’t say I have. But sometimes
stuff from the store turns up missin’, and one of these is on the cash
register the next mornin’.”
He’d taken a small
flat piece of metal from his
pocket. It was rectangular, about two
inches by three inches, and a quarter inch thick. And it appeared to be gold.
“Wow,” whispered
Teddy. “Is that real gold?”
“Pure gold,”
Ed answered, nodding sagely.
Teddy shook Ed’s hand
again. “I’ll be careful,” he said.
But he couldn’t wait
to get on the road. Little People!
***
Teddy found the logging
road. It looked like it wasn’t often used.
It wasn’t paved, didn’t even have gravel,
just packed dirt with tall grass growing between the tire tracks. But if it
led to Little People, Teddy was
game.
After driving about ten
miles, what he figured to
be about half way, Teddy pulled off the road into a small clearing. He could
hear a stream rushing in a chasm
below, and when he peered over the precipice, saw what appeared to be a
campsite.
“I think I may have
found some Little People,”
he said aloud.
“Or maybe some Little
People have found you,”
came a gruff voice from behind him.
Teddy whirled around and
faced three very short
men in buckskins. All three had daggers
in sheaths at their waists, and all three were smiling. But they were not happy
smiles. Definitely not smiles of greeting.
The three had long, reddish
- brown hair tied
back in ponytails, long beards, and barrel chests with strong looking arms and
short strudy legs. Teddy smiled as he
noticed the pointy ears. He was in
heaven!
Real live Elves!
“What are ye doin’
out of yer auto and
trespassin’ where ye don’t belong?”
“I came to find you
Little People,” Teddy
gushed. “My ancestors came from Ireland
probably on the same ships yours did during the Potato Famine. It’s like
we’re family. Sorta….”
Teddy stopped because
he saw the
menacing smiles had now turned to outright scowls.
“Come with us,”
said the little man who
appeared to be the leader.
The three turned and started
into the woods,
assuming Teddy would follow. And, of
course, he did.
***
The campsite Teddy had seen
had been just
that. The four had now walked a number
of miles deeper into the woods to an Elfin settlement.
There were maybe thirty
men, women, and
children assembled in an area with a stream and a number of caves obviously
used for housing.
Teddy noticed there was
one normal sized young
woman apparently doing some laundry in a tub.
He wondered what her story was.
He started to walk over
to ask her, but was
stopped.
“Keep ye away from
Ellen,” said the lead Elf. “She’s ours.
Bein’ punished for trespassin’.
“That doesn’t
sound good,” Teddy thought to
himself. Ellen’s clothes were dirty and
torn. Her face was care-worn and she
looked at Teddy with what may have been hope.
“Ye can eat with us
now and then we’ll decide
what we’re gonna do with ye.”
“Do with me?”
asked Teddy. “You don’t have do anything with
me. I just wanted to meet you and, ya
know, compare notes or something. Find
out your history, your stories, your culture, and what you do in these woods. And
I’d like to talk to Ellen and see how she
fits in with your family.”
At the mention of her name,
Ellen looked over
at him again and gave him a sickly half-smile.
He was sitting on a stump
in a circle of ten
Elves; five men and five women. After he’d
said what he’d said, they cast suspicious looks at him and then darting glances
at each other.
The lead Elf, Hogsfoot is
what the other
members called him, looked directly into Teddy’s eyes and said, “Which is why
we’ll be doin’ somehin’ with ye. Just
what remains to be seen. We don’t take
kindly to meddlers.”
***
Teddy was awake at the break
of dawn. The Elves must have been up for a while
because they were already busy with various chores.
Ellen was sitting on a tall
stump, partially
under a blanket to ward off the morning chill, stirring something that smelled
good in a large stew pot.
Since Teddy didn’t
see Hogsfoot around, he
decided it would be a good time to chat with Ellen. He causally ambled over,
tying to look
harmless, and stood facing her on the other side of the stew pot.
“I’m Teddy,”
he said, smiling. “Nice to meet you, Ellen.”
Ellen gave him a tight-lipped
smile.
“Can we talk?
Is it okay to talk to me? Are you
here because you want to be? Because if
you’re not, I can take you with me when I leave.”
Ellen’s eyes briefly
widened at this last
statement and she looked down.
Teddy thought he shouldn’t
press his luck and
decided it was time to get back to his own side of the clearing.
“Think about it,”
he said over his shoulder as
he walked away. “I’ll probably be going
in a day or two.”
***
At about noon, the Elves
gathered in the center
of the clearing as they had for the evening meal the night before.
Hogsfoot had Teddy sit next
to him. Teddy thought it was some kind of honor and
was pleased. He was soon to find out he
was on the hotseat.
“So word is ye may
be thinkin’ about leavin’
us,” Hogsfoot started.
Before Teddy could answer,
Hogsfoot offered him
a large stein of what smelled like ale.
“Drink with me, Teddy. If ye’ll be goin’ so soon, we should at least
have a few drinks together.”
Teddy
listened to what Hogsfoot was saying, but his eyes strayed once again to
Ellen. Had she told on him?
Ellen set down the long-handled
ladle she’d
been using to stir the pot. He watched
as she stood with the help of a crude crutch.
Her left foot had been amputated
at the ankle!
Teddy took a long pull on
the drink that had
been handed to him. And then another.
He made to stand up and go to Ellen and damn
the consequences.
But after just a few steps,
the world started
to spin and everything went black.
***
When he awoke it was pitch
dark. His tongue was thick and his head hurt
something awful. There was also a dull
throbbing ache in his left knee. He
supposed he’d injured it when he fell.
He vaguely remembered the dizziness and the fall, and was sure he’d been
drugged.
He reached down in the dark
to survey the area
that was causing the pain and screamed in horror as he realized his left leg
had been amputated at the knee.
His howls brought some of
the Elves from their
slumber, Hogsfoot reaching him first.
“Quiet, ya damn fool! Ye’ll wake the whole forest!”
“Why did you do that
to me?” Teddy bawled.
“What did I do to any of you?”
“Ye trespassed, that’s
what ye did,” said
Hogsfoot. “If we catch a trespasser,
he’s ours.”
“You cut off my leg
so I’d have to stay with
you? Be one of you?”
“Oh, ye’ll be
stayin’ with us, but not as one
of us, so to speak. We’ll be butcherin’
ya and roastin’ ya on the spit over yonder.
We cut off yer leg just to make sure ye couldn’t go runnin’ off and
makin’ us chase ya down.”
Teddy looked over at the
firepit that had a
spit over it. Could Hogsfoot just be
trying to scare him? But why?
With a large-pronged fork
Ellen speared
something in the stew pot and brought it up out of the pot.
It was Teddy’s leg!
Teddy fainted and that at
least was a
kindness. Hogsfoot pulled his knife from
its sheath and used it as a saw to cut off Teddy’s head. He was then gutted
like a deer and carried
over to the spit. A fire was started and
the Elves would be taking turns turning the spit. Ellen added herbs to the carcass
and would do
the basting.
“He was a big one,
a might heavy,” said
Hogsfoot. “But he should be pretty much
done by dark tonight. Some of you go
yonder and invite the Trolls and Fairy Folk.
We’ll have a feast and share our trespasser with ‘em.”
Teddy’s head had been
impaled on a pole by the
spit. Ellen struggled over to it and
planted a kiss on his cheek.
She had been a trespasser,
and after her foot
had been amputated something in her mind had snapped. She became docile, and
was considered a useful member of the Hogsfoot clan.
In addition to doing laundry,
she was also a
good cook.
As to Ed Laurent, he received
an invitation to
the feast and orders to dispose of Teddy’s car.
He drove the gas station’s tow-truck up to the clearing where Teddy’s
car was parked and walked to the feast.
In a few days, Teddy’s
car would be in New York
City at Slocum’s Auto Body, a front for stolen cars, getting a complete
makeover before its resale.
Some of the locals, though
certainly not Ed
Laurent, say the best advice they can give regarding Little People is
this: If you’re ever in the woods of
northern New England and think it might be fun to tramp around looking for
Little People…, don’t.
THE END
