Генри Берд - Bored of the rings

In the Sty as a whole there were at least a dozen of these curious settlements, linked by a system of roads, post offices, and a government that would have been considered unusually crude for a colony of cherrystone clams. The Sty itself was divided into farthings, half-farthings, and Indian-head nickels ruled by a mayor who was elected in a flurry of ballot-box stuffing every Arbor Day. To assist him in his duties there was a rather large police force which did nothing but extract confessions, mostly from squirrels. Beyond these few tokens of regulation, the Sty betrayed no signs of government. The vast majority of the boggies’ time was taken up growing food and eating it and making liquor and drinking it. The rest of it was spent throwing up.

As is told in the volume previous to this hound, Valley of the Trolls , Dildo Bugger set out one day with a band of demented dwarves and a discredited Rosicrucian named Goodgulf to separate a dragon from his hoard of short-term municipals and convertible debentures. The quest was successful, and the dragon, a prewar basilisk who smelled like a bus, was taken from behind while he was clipping coupons. And yet, though many pointless and annoying deeds were done, this adventure would concern us a good deal less than it does, if that is possible, except for a bit of petty larceny Dildo did along the way to keep his hand in. The party was ambushed in the Mealey Mountains by a roving pack of narcs, and in hurrying to the aid of the embattled dwarves, Dildo somehow lost his sense of direction and ended up in a cave a considerable distance away. Finding himself at the mouth of a tunnel which led rather perceptibly down, Dildo suffered a temporary recurrence of an old inner-ear problem and went rushing along it to the rescue, as he thought, of his friends. After running for some time and finding nothing but more tunnel, he was beginning to feel he had taken a wrong turn somewhere when the passage abruptly ended in a large cavern.

When Dildo’s eyes became adjusted to the pale light, he found that the grotto was almost filled by a wide, kidneyshaped lake where a nasty-looking clown named Goddam paddled noisily about on an old rubber sea horse. He ate raw fish and occasional side orders to travel from the outside world in the form of lost travelers like Dildo, and he greeted Dildo’s unexpected entrance into his underground sauna in much the same way as he would the sudden arrival of a Chicken Delight truck. But like anyone with boggie ancestry, Goddam preferred the subtle approach in assaulting creatures over five inches high and weighing more than ten pounds, and consequently he challenged Dildo to a riddle game to gain time. Dildo, who had a sudden attack of amnesia regarding the fact that the dwarves were being made into chutney outside the cave, accepted.

They asked each other countless riddles, such as who played the Cisco Kid and what was Krypton. In the end Dildo won the game. Stumped at last for a riddle to ask, he cried out, as his hand fell on his snub-nosed .38, “What have I got in my pocket?” This Goddam failed to answer, and growing impatient, he paddled up to Dildo, whining, “Let me see, let me see.” Dildo obliged by pulling out the pistol and emptying it in Goddam’s direction. The dark spoiled his aim, and he managed only to deflate the rubber float, leaving Goddam to flounder. Goddam, who couldn’t swim, reached out his hand to Dildo and begged him to pull him out, and as he did, Dildo noticed an interesting-looking ring on his finger and pulled it off. He would have finished Goddam off then and there, but pity stayed his hand. It’s a pity I’ve run out of bullets , he thought, as he went back up the tunnel, pursued by Goddam’s cries of rage.

Now it is a curious fact that Dildo never told this story, explaining that he had gotten the Ring from a pig’s nose or a gumball machine—he couldn’t remember which. Goodgulf, who was naturally suspicious, finally managed with the aid of one of his secret potions [2] Probably Sodium Pentothal. to drag the truth out of the boggie, but it disturbed him considerably that Dildo, who was a perpetual and compulsive liar, would not have concocted a more grandiose tale from the start. It was then, some fifty years before our story begins, that Goodgulf first guessed at the Ring’s importance. He was, as usual, dead wrong.

When Mr. Dildo Bugger of Bug End grudgingly announced his intention of throwing a free feed for all the boggies in his part of the Sty, the reaction in Boggietown was immediate—all through the messy little slum could be heard squeals of “Swell!” and “Hot puppies, grub! ” Slavering with anticipation, several recipients of the invitations devoured their little engraved scrolls, temporarily deranged by transports of gluttony. After the initial hysteria, however, the boggies returned to their daily routines and, as is their wont, lapsed back into a coma.

Nevertheless, jabbering rumors spread through the tatty lean-tos of recent shipments of whole, bewildered oxen, great barrels of foamy suds, fireworks, tons of potato greens, and gigantic hogsheads of hogs’ heads. Even huge bales of freshly harvested stingwort, a popular and remarkably powerful emetic, were carted into town. News of the fête reached even unto the Gallowine, and the outlying residents of the Sty began to drift into town like peripatetic leeches, each intent on an orgy of freeloading that would make a lamprey look like a piker.

No one in the Sty had a more bottomless gullet than that drooling and senile old gossip Haf Gangree. Haf had spent his life as the town’s faithful beadle, and had long since retired on the proceeds of his thriving blackmail racket.

Tonight, Fatlip, as he was called, was holding forth at the Bag Eye, a sleazy dive more than once closed down by Mayor Fastbuck for the dubious behavior of the establishment’s buxom “B-boggies,” who were said to be able to roll a troll before you could say “Rumpelstiltskin.” The usual collection of sodden oafs were there, including Fatlip’s son, Spam Gangree, who was presently celebrating his suspended sentence for the performing of an unnatural act with an underage female dragon of the opposite sex.

“The whole thing smells pretty queer to me,” said Fatlip, as he inhaled the acrid fumes of his nose-pipe. “I’m meaning the way Mr. Bugger is throwing this big bash when for years he’s not so much as offered a piece o’ moldy cheese to his neighbors.” The listeners nodded silently, for this was certainly the case. Even before Dildo’s “strange disappearance” he had kept his burrow at Bug End guarded by fierce wolverines, and in no one’s memory had he ever contributed a farthing to the Boggietown Annual Mithril Drive for Homeless Banshees. The fact that no one else ever had either did not excuse Dildo’s famed stinginess. He kept to himself, nurturing only his nephew and a mania for dirty Scrabble.

“And that boy of his, Frito,” added bleary-eyed Nat Clubfoot, “as crazy as a woodpecker, that one is.” This was verified by Old Poop of Backwater, among others. For who hadn’t seen young Frito walking aimlessly through the crooked streets of Boggietown, carrying little clumps of flowers and muttering about “truth and beauty” and blurting out silly nonsense like “Cogito ergo boggum”?

“He’s an odd one, all right,” said Fatlip, “and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there weren’t something in that talk of his having dwarfish sympathies.” At this point there was an embarrassed silence, particularly from young Spam, who had never believed the unproved charges that the Buggers were “scroll-carrying dwarves.” As Spam pointed out, real dwarves were shorter and smelled much worse than boggies.