Billy Goat Gruff

[Author's note: This is somewhat autobiographical. It takes place around the Providence house on Dante Street where I lived until I was 5. I tried to write it the way I remember thinking.]

I pedaled my new red tricycle around and around the flat patch of cement that was the back yard of our house. On each lap, I dinged the silver bell mounted on the handlebars. My mother was hanging wet laundry on the clothesline – stoop, shake, stretch, peg-peg – and she looked up and smiled. I tried to catch Bernard's eye from where he knelt digging in his little garden. He snapped his old gray head up every time I dinged the bell, but he didn't smile. He just looked.

We lived in a huge castle with three floors. It had balconies like a castle, but I wasn't allowed to play on them because they were too high. And it was owned by a land Lord and a land Lady, just like a real castle. All the other houses on Dante Street had three floors too, but I think ours was the only castle.

My mother said our house had three stories. I liked stories, and my father read me a story every night before bed. The first story in our house was Elsa, and this man she was married to, Pete. Elsa had yellow hair and smiling teeth and was very beautiful. Sometimes, I could hear them play records, slow songs my mother called romantic. I imagined them dancing to the music, and wondered if Pete was kissing Elsa. I would have. You were allowed to touch ladies if you danced slow. I knew how to do the Mexican Hat Dance, which I had seen on our TV, but that was a dance that you did alone, and it was too fast for kissing.

The second story in our house was the best, because it was ours. We had our own door, with a keyhole that you could put the key in and also peek through. We had a kitchen, where we ate, and a living room, where our TV was. My father was a car mechanic, and he came home with the TV one day after work. It was very heavy, and my Uncle Ralph helped him carry it up the stairs. My mother got that frowning face she had when she thought we spent too much money, but Uncle Ralph told her the TV fell off a truck, and she lost her frowning face and pushed Uncle Ralph a little and told him not to do that any more. I think my father must have caught our TV when it fell off the truck, because it wasn't broken at all. That was very lucky. It had a round window about as big as my head, and you could see real people on it, though they were all gray, not like at the movies where they're every color.

The third story was that Bernard lived on the floor above us. I never dared to go up the dark stairs from our door to his. Bernard was eighty, my mother said, which meant he was old. He was big, bigger than my mother, even bigger than my father. His hands were like catcher's mitts. He wore bib overalls every day, and a long-sleeved flannel shirt, even in summer. He had heavy leather work boots with thick soles that would smash me like a corn flake if he ever stepped on me. Sometimes, if I played too loud in our house, he would stomp his big feet, boom-boom, on our ceiling, and my mother would make her shh sound and I would try to be quiet. His face was covered with whiskers as pinchy and white as a toothbrush. He wore a denim apron when he worked in his garden with his tools, which was the only thing he liked in the whole world. I knew that Saint Bernards were big friendly dogs, but this Bernard wasn't a saint and he wasn't friendly. He was a mean old troll, and he lived right upstairs from us.

I learned about mean old trolls from the "Three Billy Goats Gruff" story my father read to me. That story was my favorite. There's a troll who's mean to the billy goats gruff, until the biggest and strongest billy goat gruff knocks him off the bridge into the water. I asked my father if I could have a billy goat gruff to knock Bernard down. He didn't say I could, but he didn't say I couldn't, so I kept thinking about where I could get a billy goat gruff from.

Instead of a billy goat gruff, my father brought me my red tricycle one day after work last week. My mother got her frowning face again, until my father said it was Second Hand. That meant it was a special kind of tricycle that I had to use both hands to steer, and I was always careful and never went near the Street. I liked ringing the bell the best, but that was the part Bernard didn't like at all.

That day when I was riding around, my mother went back in the house to get another basket of laundry. Bernard looked up at me from where he was kneeling in his garden, and said, "That a nice bike, sonny." He thought my name was Sonny. He pointed right at the bell on the handlebars and said, "You be careful or somebody steal it on ya."

Sometimes I couldn't understand what Bernard was saying. He had a deep growly voice and almost no teeth and talked funny. My mother said that was because he came from the Old Country, which was where old people came from. I wondered why he had left the Old Country, and hoped he'd be going back soon.

I couldn't tell why, but what he said scared me. I saw bad guys steal things on TV. My mother and father liked to watch stories where bad guys stole things. Bad guys wore dark suits and hats, and had guns. Good guys caught the bad guys and put them in jail, where they have iron poles so the bad guys can't get out the door. If I was in jail, I could squeeze between the poles because I was very thin. But I still didn't like the bad guys stealing things, and I didn't want them to steal my tricycle. That's why I always kept it right next to the back stairs, which was far from the Street and was very safe.

I thought that maybe I could ask my father to lock my tricycle in the cellar. The cellar was dark and quiet, and chilly even in summer. I didn't like to go down there, because it had spider webs and hiding skeletons. But each floor in our house had its own little room in the cellar to keep things. Bernard kept his special garden tools locked in his room. Elsa, and that man Pete, had a little room, too, probably with married stuff. My father told me that the rooms were made of plywood covered with chicken wire. I had never seen a ply tree, but I think it must be something like an oak. There was an oak tree near the end of Dante Street. I couldn't figure out chicken wire, though. Sometimes I thought it was made of chickens, but when you looked at it, it was iron, not feathers or anything. Or maybe chickens made it, but I didn't think that chickens could do that. It didn't look much like chickens either. Chicken wire was a real mystery.

Anyway, I thought maybe my father could put my tricycle in our little room and lock the door. Then my tricycle would be safe.

But I forgot to ask him.

*****

The next day, I ran down the back stairs to ride my tricycle, but it wasn't there. I didn't know where it was, and I began searching for it. I wondered if maybe my father put it in the cellar after all, but I remembered that I never asked him to. Then I thought that bad guys stole it, and I ran to tell my mother. She came out, drying her hands on a dishtowel, when I told her. She put her hand on my shoulder and we walked all around outside the house looking for it, even near the Street. She kept shaking her head and making a huffing sound.

When we got to the back yard, we saw Bernard there, kneeling in the dirt, digging with his tools. My mother asked him if he had seen my tricycle.

He looked up at us. "Hey, that's no my job. You take more care, not be ding-ding-ding alla time."

"I know it's our responsibility," my mother said, in the slow way that made me scared when I was in trouble. "But we can't find it. Have you seen it?"

He scrunched up his face in a toothless grin and shrugged his big shoulders. "I don't see it all day. Maybe some other kid musta took it, huh?"

My mother stared at him in a scary way. "Maybe," she said. "Come on," she said to me, and guided me toward the house.

I looked back at Bernard. He was back to his garden again, back to his tools. But he raised his head slowly and looked at me with something dark in his eyes. I knew then that he was the one that had taken my tricycle. He wasn't wearing a dark suit or a hat, but Bernard was a bad guy.

*****

When my father got home from work, my mother told him what happened. I watched my father when she told him she thought Bernard might have taken my tricycle. His eyes got squinty and his mouth clamped shut. When he stood up, he had never looked bigger – just like the biggest billy goat gruff. My father opened our door and started upstairs, and my mother ran after him and told him not to do anything foolish. He didn't answer her.

My mother and I stood in the kitchen and listened. We could hear my father talking in a loud voice upstairs. He said something about a kid's bike and hand it over.

Bernard's voice was low and almost laughing. "Why I take kid's bike?" he asked.

I wanted to shout, "It was the bell. He doesn't like the bell." But I didn't, and my father didn't say anything else, either. Then we heard his footsteps, and the door upstairs slammed, and he was coming down the steps.

He frowned at my mother and spread his hands. "What can we do? We don't have any proof. Maybe it wasn't him anyway."

My mother sighed and went into their bedroom. She closed the door.

My father touched me on the shoulder and said, "I'm sorry."

*****

I was sitting in my chair at the kitchen table, kicking my legs back and forth, thinking hard a lot. What I was thinking was: where was my tricycle? Bernard stole it, but where did he put it? He didn't have a car, and he never went anywhere, so he must have hid it in the house or yard someplace.

But if it was outside, I would have seen it. There wasn't any good place to hide things. When we played hide-and-seek in the yard, my mother always found me. In my head, I could see the outside, and I drew a big X over it.

I didn't think it could be on the first floor, either. Elsa, and that man Pete, would tell me fast if they had my tricycle. Elsa liked me, and when she watched me ride my tricycle she would laugh, and touch Pete with her elbow, and then pat her tummy with her hand. I drew an X over the first floor, too.

We sure didn't have it on our second floor. Another big X.

I thought about Bernard on the third floor. He never carried anything upstairs. My mother said, as big as he was, he had a bad back. I thought all of him was bad now, but she meant that he couldn't lift things good. Even when the groceries came, he had the boy from the store bring the bags up for him. If he couldn't even carry his own food, I didn't think he could carry my whole tricycle up. I drew another X.

Then where could it be?

And I thought: the cellar! Maybe Bernard pulled it down the stairs into the cellar, and locked it inside his room there.

I jumped up. I wanted to tell my mother and father where my tricycle was, where Bernard was hiding it. But then I thought: how could we get it? If Bernard locked it up, he sure wouldn't give us the key.

But maybe it wasn't locked right now, maybe only sometimes. I didn't tell my mother and father anything, but I quietly opened our door and walked on my toes down the stairs to the cellar by myself.

It was almost night now, and darker than I'd ever seen it down there. I thought about the skeletons, and tried thinking about Mickey Mouse instead. "Mic-key Mouse," I sang to myself, "Mic-key Mouse."

The light in the cellar was on a string, I remembered. I reached out my hand in the air and moved it around until my fingers touched the string, and I grabbed it and pulled. The bare bulb lit up every bit of the cellar, and I felt a little better. I still kept singing "Mic-key Mouse" though, just in case.

I walked over to Bernard's little room and looked at the door. A heavy iron lock was holding it shut, the kind of lock that takes a key. I poked my finger in the hole and twisted, but it didn't open, and I didn't have a key. I looked up at the door, which was very tall, and then I noticed something: the rooms didn't go all the way up to the ceiling. There was a space at the top, over the plywood-and-chicken-wire wall. I could fit over the top and get inside.

I started climbing up the wall. It was real easy. Chicken wire is good for climbing, because your fingers and toes fit right in. Maybe that's why the chickens like it.

When I got to the top and peeked over, I couldn't see inside the room. The light from the bulb didn’t stretch in there. I let go of the top and fell down, right on some nice soft burlap sacks that Bernard used in his garden.

It was dark in the little room and so quiet that even my own breathing sounded loud. I smelled damp and dirt and something like the little turds Tommy Morton's hamster makes. The light actually did peek in a little between the plywood boards, and after a while I could see better.

The first things I saw were Bernard's special tools, all lying carefully on an old towel near the door. There was a big trunk that looked like a pirate's treasure chest. I wondered if maybe Bernard used to be a pirate. Then I thought maybe not. My gramma had a big trunk like that, and all it had was clothes for ladies. And she wasn't a pirate, either. There was a chest of drawers, and a small table, and some cardboard boxes.

And in the corner was a heavy gray cloth with something underneath. I pulled the cloth up, and there was my tricycle! I smiled and jumped and almost rang the bell on the handlebars, I was so happy. I had been right after all.

Then I thought: how can I get my tricycle out of this room? I pulled and pushed at the door. It didn't open from the inside either, even though there was no lock on this side. I looked up at the top of the wall and gulped. I didn't see how I was going to get even me out of this room, never mind my tricycle too.

I sat down and felt like crying. If I did cry, someone would hear me and come down and find me. They would open the door and see that Bernard had stolen my tricycle.

But then they would see that I had climbed into Bernard's room, and I suddenly thought that maybe I wasn't supposed to do that. And then I remembered I shouldn't even have left our floor without telling my mother or father. I was in trouble! I had to get out of here myself somehow. And then maybe figure out how to get my tricycle too.

I looked all around the room. The boards were right up against the cellar wall. But the wall was all crooked: it had bumps where big rocks stuck out, and other parts where the boards didn't even touch. Down low on one side was a space where maybe I could squeeze through. I hunched down, and stuck my head out. I felt better, just having my head outside the dark little room, and I started wiggling out.

Then I stopped, thinking. My tricycle would never get out through this hole. But maybe there was something else I could take with me.

I crawled back inside the room. I wrapped up Bernard's special tools in the old towel, pushed them through the hole first, and then squeezed through myself.

I hid the towel full of tools outside near the back stairs, where nobody could see them.

When I ran back up to our floor and tiptoed quietly into our kitchen, my mother came in, saw me, and said, "Look at your clothes! I told you not to crawl behind the stove again. Into the tub, young man."

*****

The next morning, I was playing with my cowboys and Indians on the back steps, while my mother hung up more laundry. My cowboy hat was on the ground, near my feet.

Bernard came jumping up the cellar stairs. He was frowning even more than usual, and his hands were shaking.

He saw my mother and yelled, "My tools! She gone! Where my tools?"

My mother stuck one hip out, folded her arms across her chest, and pouted at him. "What's the matter?" she asked, not friendly.

He had to catch his breath a lot, telling her that his tools were missing. He locked them in his little room last night, and today they were gone.

My mother sighed, and said, "Oh, all right. Wait here, and I'll look around the house for you."

She stomped away around the corner of the house, saying something as she went. Bernard just stood there, looking around like he was lost.

I said, "If you help me find my tricycle, I'll help you find your tools."

He gave me a look and waved me away with one of his big hands. "No bother me, Sonny. I'm no foolin' here."

"But I'm real good at finding things. Look at what I found already." I reached under my cowboy hat and pulled out one of his little shovels. "I'll bet I could find the rest. If I got my tricycle back."

He stared at the little shovel and his hands stretched out for it. He looked from me to the shovel and back again. "Where … where …" he said. Then something changed in his eyes as he looked at me. It was like he was trying to smile, but he forgot how.

He licked his lips. "You wait here," he said. "I maybe think where those kids musta took her." He went down the cellar stairs in a jerky fast walk.

My mother was coming around the other side of the house, looking around carefully, when Bernard climbed up from the basement again, this time holding my tricycle. He set it on the ground just as she got to the back yard.

"Mommy," I called. "Bernard found my tricycle!"

She stopped and stared at my tricycle, and then at Bernard.

He wiggled his feet like he had pinching rocks in his big work boots. "I looking for my tools," he said with his toothless smile. "I find he bike in back the fence." He pointed at the fence between our yard and Tommy Morton's.

He was saying a lie. I could tell. I looked at my mother, to see if she could tell, too.

"That's wonderful," my mother said, but like she didn't believe him. "I'm sorry, but I didn't find your tools."

"That's okay, mommy," I said. "I'm gonna help Bernard find them."

"I see," she said, then went up the stairs to the house, looking back at us once from the doorway.

When she was gone, I pulled the old towel out from behind the back stairs.

Bernard scooped up his tools with real happiness, hugging them to his chest. "You good boy," he said, patting me on the head before he hurried over to his garden to dig.

My mother came outside with another basket of her wet clothes. She looked at Bernard digging in his garden with his tools. Then she looked at me. Her face had a funny look as she started to hang up the wet clothes.

I got on my tricycle and took a spin around the cement. I reached for the bell.

Ring, ring!