Stomp saves the Revolution for colonial pie
When a drunk Paul Revere passed out in the Charleston Inn, someone had to make that ride.
Trigger warning: The following story contains fictional moments of revolutionary alcohol abuse, comical maiming, and British redcoat bonking. Read at your peril.
On the dank cloudy night of April 18th, 1775, Joseph Warren summoned Paul Revere to make the ride to Lexington to tattle on the British. What Americans generally don’t know is that there was a second rider, William Dawes, who also took off for Lexington. What history also also doesn’t tell is that Dawes and Revere crossed the river and met up with their friend Samuel Prescott at a tavern in Charleston, and Paulie Revere may have shotgunned one too many tankards of Boston brew.
With Paulie passed out in his breeches, the colonials still needed to warn of the British. They needed to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock they were in danger of arrest. They needed a new rider.
It just so happened there was another young rebel in the tavern, hunched in the shadows, who would do just about anything for pie.
April 1775 – Boston outskirts, in a thicket
“Oh!” he groaned. “I would punt a man so hard for a good pie right now.”
Stomp lay prone in a bramble overlooking Boston from the west. He peered through a sailor’s monoscope he had won off a Spanish werewolf in a game of dice at the port of Tortuga. Heavy rain poured down on Stomp and the surrounding countryside and the trembling surface of pockmarked water surrounding Boston city. A transient mist laid heavy on the hills and heavier where it came off the cool harbor. Stomp pulled his burlap traveling satchel forward into the cover of a cranberry bush. He felt the mud soaking his young bigfoot loins.
“RUGGGH.” He slapped a giant paw in the puddle. “I better not get no worms again.”
Blueberry, apricot, whatever. He would MURDER for pie. All up and down the coast at every pubstump, he heard tales from drifters and thieves, fine folk and thievin’ snaggletoothed wildeboars. It didn’t matter who. A black bear in Virginia had told him at a blackberry bramble buffet that the pies in Boston were “worth shaving your mother’s ass” for.
Stomp had to have one of those.
He took the monoscope down off his eye so he could see better. His pupils dilated and his naked eyes assessed and defined shapes at 20 miles off. Over toward Lexington way he could see the denser, lower mist that rested calm and heavy on a marsh. He zoomed back out and detected movement, tiny specks of red a mile down, working out of Boston towards Concord. What none of those folks told him was that there was hardly a way into this treasure trove.
On all sides, the city had guarded its pies with water.
Stomp rubbed his scruff. “Guard your pies with a moat. Cleva girl.”
It had been suspicious here all week. All the armed men in the city had been leaving out for Concord – it was like they wanted Stomp to tramp into Boston and rob their wives. Just this morning, some redcoat fellas had been haggling up and down the outskirts, asking questions on the road, swaggering around with their pointy explody sticks. Stomp was certain he was well-hidden. They were after someone else.
Now there was a new contingent, organized, working out towards Concord with a pace. They drifted in and out of the mist. Stomp shrugged and squirmed, feeling the mud packing into that extra furry gap between his thighs. He felt the hunger working up in his gut, that pre-berserk warm tremor – his early warning.
He stood up and assessed. The wind moved from the northeast. And the land bridge that gave him good wind came up from the south. But every ‘squatch knew a bottleneck was a death trap. That’s how old Ebediah Freedomfoot met his demise back in ’62. Run through by blades while clutching an elderberry tart.
Stomp tugged his lightweight burlap sack out from the prickers. A hollow bone sound clinked against a rock, like that of a horn. He secured it around his waist with a thick hemp belt that ran through the sack’s lining. He arose and moved down the hillside toward the north end, a creature from the deep, passing through the sheets of rain like they were stalks of jungle growth shedding a path before him.
He would come in through the river.
Boston smelt like doo doo.
He could smell it across the river. He was in a tiny town north of the city. Empty, it was. He stamped past scattered houses without screeches of terror or ponytailed men giving chase. He passed a tavern and his fur bristled at the scent of boozy spirits. A blocky wooden sign hung above the door.
Charlestown Inn
The town’s packed mud gave way to sanded grit of shoreline. The fog was a mass, a blanket of muted mist, still and silent with its secrets.
Stomp walked up until his toes rested against the lapping waves of the Charles River. Up and down the shore were rickety piers and the white curtains of moored ships. Marshy mudflats were specked across the river. He checked up and he checked down. Nobody was around. He bent into the grit mud.
Tap-ta-tap-tappa-tap. Tk-tp-takka-tak-tap. Tappa-tap.
Two fingers. Gently. Right atop the crest of a lapping wave.
In the center of the river, the water trembled. The tremor coagulated as a dark shadow and turned and grew shape. A silver flash meshed beneath the surface. The flash stirred and wheeled toward the shore. Stomp felt the breeze come off.
The shoreline in front of him boiled. It grew cohesive and then so solid there was no discernable gap. The shimmer rose to the surface, churning yet steady. It was hundreds of river eels, writhing together in unison to form a living raft.
“Ah, good old gillferry.”
A hardened tail slapped the surface and a pair of spiky black claws climbed up from underneath the churning ferry. A sulky beaver, dressed out with a red bandana tied around the head and a wooden club in a waist belt, stood with its little hands on hips.
“What can I do faw ya?”
Stomp stepped back. “I’m sorry, I misheard.”
“Wheeuh you going, young one? Dis fawry is gawna kahst you.”
“Oh, oh. Of course. Yes, I need a taxi over to Boston. Just a brief day trip to rob some colonial wives of their pies.”
“Gaht payment?”
“Um.” Stomp pulled his satchel from his shoulder and rummaged around. The eels waited, glassy-eyed and toothy. “Here, I got this toothpaste from a trading post in Toronto. Wax up those nice log chompers.”
The beaver scratched a big tooth with a little claw. “Fair enough. Hawp on.”
The squirming mass of eels hardly bowed under the weight of a 600-pound colonial criminal. Stomp kneeled for support and the ferry squealed once in unison and wheeled.
The living ferry churned the water quietly, smooth as heated ice. Stomp could see a warship loom up through the mist and the lettering on the side.
hms somerset
Twelve minutes later he stepped off onto moist sand. The Beav gave him one more toothy discerning glare.
“Be cahful. Wah is coming.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t—”
“I said, wah is coming!”
“Ah, of course. War is coming. Just, your accent…”
“Wah is coming!”
“Yes, yes - noted. War is coming. Got it.”
The skipper saluted once briskly and then dove under. The eels separated with a scattered flash and were gone.
Here already Stomp felt a strange silence. He stepped forward. His furred toes left the coolness of packed mud and felt the stubbled texture of cobblestone.
“Ooh,” he grunted. “Tickles.”
He was exposed.
All around him were rows of connected brick homes, Georgian architecture with its cavernous chimney bays. A drunk feller lay under the eaves of an overhang, streams of water tumbling off and drenching the man. He was asleep – or dead. Dressed rustic, too. He’d traded with men like this out west. Whatever. Stomp ripped off the man’s tricorne hat and linen hunting shirt and made himself look Boston.
He lifted his nose and sniffed once. This was North Boston, huh. Had to be some good bakeries to terrorize around he—
“You, sir!”
“Huh.”
Stomp shrugged about.
A single redcoat soldier, barely more than a pup, stormed out of the sheet of rain. He carried a pointy explody stick with one of the extra pointy sharpy things. He gave his wig ponytail a little whip and huffed at Stomp.
“Oh, hello, fine soldier sir.”
“You have a suspicious air about you, giant.” The man-boy’s eyes narrowed and his prim arrogant face twisted in entitled puzzlement. “Why are you out here in this deluge?”
“I’m just a simple furred 600-pound colonial, taking a walk in the rain.”
“Have you seen Samuel Adams?”
Stomp craned his neck down and felt his stomach churn. “Who?”
“How about John Adams?”
The man-boy turned his pointy stick and prodded Stomp with the butt of it. “You have the look of a rebel and you smell of wet dog.”
“I’ll ask politely that you not insult m—”
The soldier prodded Stomp once more.
“Turn around, dog!”
Stomp reached one hand out and twisted the musket barrel up into an unrecognizable mangle. Stomp closed his fist and raised it.
BONK.
The soldier’s eyes rolled up.
BONK. BONK.
The poor redcoat’s skull caved in and a pulpy gloop fell out onto the cobblestone. The body twitched once and fell.
“Oops.” Stomp glanced around at the empty street. “Two too many bonks.”
He dragged the body off into an alley and got his bearings. He was next to…he looked around for a sign. The nearest home had a little address marker on the door. Stomp squinted.
19 North Square
It was still pouring. He looked around and gazed down at the dead soldier’s mushed head. He needed more camouflage. There was only one way.
He peeled up the man’s hat and tugged on his wig.
Sluh-urrrrp. Gloop.
The wig suctioned loose and the redcoat slumped over. Stomp patted the alley corpse on the cheek.
“There there, now. No one will hurt you anymore. You just rest here.”
Stomp smushed the goopy wig down over his head and tucked the patriot hat back on top. That’s better. A good proper costume.
He began to walk, hugging the buildings. He sniffled. Scent was dampened in the drench. Had to be a bakery around here. A squat building with a faded wood sign loomed out of the mist. Voices poured out, and mugs clinked. Stomp smelled liquid fuel.
He found himself placing a hand over his heart and a great welling stirred up. He turned and stared back. The narrow blackness of the alleyway was back there, nondescript – just another alley. This one had a crumpled-up redcoat kid dead in a wet heap.
Stomp swallowed it down and went in the tavern.
It was candlelit. Dank. Stale with clothes that smelled of wet straw and spilt beer. A baby pig ate potato peels in the far corner. A great long oaken board stretched to the back and ended at a pile of flour sacks. In front of it were men in chairs with drinks and guns.
Stomp saw a huddled group of three men in that back corner, conversing in the low light with dark eyes. The hiders – these are my people. He shuffled to the back and pulled out a chair next to the outermost man.
“…At nightfall, ye’ll have to ride hard and fast, Revere. Stay close on the road with Dawes.”
“And the lanterns is already lit?” asked another.
“Already lit.” The guy named Revere had a swishy little ponytail and smelled like he bathed in kegs. “Got three—no…” He was holding three fingers up and stared at them. He took one hand and pulled one finger down. “Got two lantern lit in the…hiccup…Old North Church.”
The barkeep approached Stomp.
“What’ll ye have?”
“Hello, sir. I’d like your finest pie.”
“Pie?” The bartender looked like a scruffy pirate cook. “We drink ale here.”
“Of course.” Stomp drummed his furred fingers on the counter. “I’ll have four of those big gaudy tankards and please give a round to these fine conspiring gentlemen in the corner.”
The barkeep obliged. He slid four pints in front of Stomp. The huddling men were startled to receive a fresh round, except for the Revere fella. He held the mug in both hands like a toddler and stared deep into the booze.
Stomp hooked his fingers in two glasses with one hand and hooked his other fingers in the other two tankards. He raised them to the patriots in the corner and they returned the gesture.
GLURRRRPPPPP.
He slammed down the glasses. He could feel the hunger in his belly now coupled with the churning broil in his heart that came on after he b’donked that soldier fella. He raised his hand once more.
“Four more ale-brews, please.” Stomp looked over at the suspiciously terse gentlemen gathering.
“And four more for the conspiratorial table next to me, the one with the historic gravitas.”
The barkeep, with his burly hairy barkeep arms and muttonchops on his smushed up pirate face, waddled off to pour eight more beers.
The beers came. Stomp drank. The one named Revere knelt down to the table with no hands and ate an inchworm from the oak top.
“…eh, Traveler.” It was one of the men. “You tryin’ to get us hammerish?”
Stomp shrugged.
“…ye gotta stop, Paul. You must ride yet. Ya been in the suds since dawn.”
Revere waved them off. Stomp could feel the vigor and the sadness fighting inside him. There was a commotion.
“Ah, no. Lookit waht he’s doin’ now.”
Revere was standing, wobbling against a brick pillar, with a wide stain spreading across his breeches.
“Nut noh.” Revere shook his head hard. “Pauly pee peed.”
Revere sagged down and fell into his chair.
Thunk.
“Ah, no—Warren, he’s completely bewitch’d! How we gonna warn Adams and Hancock?”
Warren shook his head. “We need a second rider.”
Stomp could feel the eyes on him. He turned slow.
“You a Son of Liberty, big traveler?” It was the Dawes patriot. “Looks like you could fight with those hands.”
Stomp looked down at his giant paws. “These? Yes, thank you—they have bonked many men.”
“But can ya ride?”
“Oh, ho.” Stomp laughed and stood and the men raised their eyes to his full height. “The patriot wants to ride, he says.”
Stomp summoned the gruffy bartender with his ruffly arms and grumply demeanor. He snooted four more beers and motioned to the pair of wannabe tattletalers.
“You boys better strap your little ponytails in.”
Samuel Dawes and Dr. Joseph Warren clung onto Stomp’s back for dear life.
They felt the wind whistle through their bobbing ponytails, as their booze-smelling steed galloped at thirty miles an hour and punched holes in the darkened midnight earth. The soil trembled.
In the misty night drizzle, curious townies peeked out doors to see the commotion, this rippling stretch of dark muscle in a tricorne hat and waistcoat with two men jostling like raggedy dolls on its back.
“DEVIL HORSE!” a woman screamed from her door, as she shook a raw cabbage defiantly.
Like the anatomy of all continental he-squatches, Stomp’s saliva, sweat, and tears manifested as distilled alcohol. The wind was pulling tears from Stomp’s eyes and whipping them back into Samuel Dawes’ mouth. He sputtered and smacked his lips. Then dry-heaved over the side.
Dr. Warren’s pale face looked up to see Stomp’s wig hopping up and down with each stride. Little pieces of dried brain were flailing off and spackling his face.
“The British are rowing cross Charles River to capture Hancock and Adams.” Yelled Warren. “This is a great service to your country!”
Stomp burrowed his head down and picked up speed. “I’m in it for the pie.”
PEERRNNN.
The bullet grazed through Stomp’s neck fur and passed on. The muzzle flashed again out in front. Stomp rode harder as flashes erupted in the dark. Redcoats poured into the road from alleys on each side. They streamed towards the middle and turned to face the riders with bayonets glistening in the rain.
“They’ve fired upon us!” yelled Warren. “This moment will be remembered forever!”
“Nope.” Stomp grunted. “Can’t have that.”
The redcoats were obstinate, crouched behind a wagon and ready to loose another volley. An officer in a plumed hat held his sword in the air.
“HOLD!”
Stomp wasn’t ready to begin collecting bullets with his body for a hobby. The air whistled by. Time slowed. He was yards away.
“HOLD!”
Stomp leapt.
The trio was floating, floating, almost clearing and…
STERNT.
That was the sound Stomp’s front paws made when they landed on the officer’s sword arm and the bone snapped. Stomp kept running. The officer was caught up underneath Stomp’s undercarriage, being dragged by his paws.
“Raahhhh! Rahhhhh!” The man screamed. “Rahhh—”
KERNCH.
Stomp’s paws landed in a soft area of the face and Dawes checked the rear view. The officer’s body tumbled and rolled off to a ditch. Stomp looked back and frowned.
“That one is so not my fault.”
They passed out of Charlestown and up to the northwest, into the countryside.
The air was thick with glimmering mist motes that drifted through shards of cloudy moon. Coyotes yipped in the woods. The marsh Stomp had seen from 20 miles off in the mid-morning rain was here, thick and brambled, impenetrable. Eyes glowed in the dark and faded back into the shadows. A ghostly whistle simmered and oscillated out of the bog.
Phe-oo-phe-oo-phe-oooooo
Stomp could see a pair of flippers holding open some bulrushes, and the wide-beaked smirk of a creature backing into the marsh, like it taunted them. The murky lights of a town showed over a rise as Stomp dipped them down the hill into Lexington and the marsh was left behind.
“Here we are.” Dawes patted Stomp’s backshank like a horse. “Pull into the drive there.”
The imposing timber-frame house stood square and dominant, but still simple with its monotoned horizontal slats. In the moist garden plot out front, a militiaman stood. A commanding deep bass voice rung out:
“Hilly tilly, blueberry bear, dilly willy who goes there?”
Dawes responded:
“Hoity toity mommy please, let my friends and me have some cheese!”
The man came out of the darkness.
“Dawes. Warren.” The man looked befuddled and nodded at the heaving creature on all fours. “Beast.”
Warren was drenched in sweat from the ride, both his own and Stomp’s. “British are coming up,” he heaved. “Gonna grab up Hancock and Adams. Gotta move ‘em out of Lexington.”
The militiaman walked briskly towards the door and sniffed. “Come in.” He turned. “Bring your stinky steed creature.”
Stomp smelt it immediately. He stood in the foyer by a hearth with a smoldering mound of embers. Through a causeway, back past a flight of stairs and the sound of low conversation, he smelt pie.
Two regal men with little ponytails at a big table ate sugared plums from a bowl. Each of them had an air of working-class aristocracy, like they were churchgoers who shunned brothels but weren’t above meeting the neighbor’s wife in the horse stalls on Tuesday evenings for some rough pony grooming.
“Dawes! Warren! Where’s Revere?”
Dawes took his hat off. “Hello, Samuel. Revere tink-tinked in his breeches. It was our unexpected friend here who brought us here at impossible speed to get you out of Lexington ‘fore you are captured.” Dawes waved to Stomp. “This ride will be remembered in history.”
Stomp stood back in the shadows, awkwardly. He raised one furred hand halfway in a simple greeting. The rising electricity in his gut mingled with the beehive in his chest. He was in a no-windowed bay room with strange men in a house of decadent pie. The anxiety was palpable.
Adams looked Stomp over, up past the custom-fitted buckskin pants and burlap sack on his waist to the tuft of hair that spiked up at Stomp’s eight-foot crown, all the way back down to the dried human blood and mud crumbling from his feet onto the floor.
“Disgusting.” Adams whispered. “Dawes, we have a stable for these.”
Hancock dropped a sugared plum back in the bowl, as if the thud would translate his displeasure. “The creature has helped our cause for liberty.”
Adams snorted. “Yes, well we can’t very well have the future of this nation represented by pagan woodland mythos.”
Hancock continued to appraise him. “He’s a forest smuggler.” He raised his nose. “With talent.”
Adams face was slowly rising to a dim shade of burgundy. “I cannot imagine how we could repay him.”
Just then Hancock’s maid strolled through with a steaming, artistically immaculate tray of fresh-baked warm sensuous pastries. Stomp couldn’t take it and crumbled to one knee. He was on the verge of fainting.
“A simple pie might melt the fatigue of a 20-mile murder gallop carrying two grown men.”
“Ah-hah! The beast commands a price.” Adams bellowed and raised the wooden plum bowl and licked at a bit of plum glaze stuck to the side. “Dawes, Warren—carry on to Concord. Warn the militia.”
“Sir, we can get there twice as fast—”
“Carry on.” Adams dismissed them. “Sergeant militiaman Henry.”
“Yeah, sir.”
“We must reward this patriot. Take this one who crawls on all fours to one of our finest outbuildings and treat it to a bag of oats.”
“Yeah, sir.”
The militia guard tugged Stomp up from the floor by his neck scruff. Stomp mournfully followed the guard and gazed back. The smell of sensuous dessert clung to his nostrils a moment longer before being swept out to evaporate forever. As they walked through the front door, Stomp heard the kitchen conversation with Sam Adams.
“…Paul Revere completed this ride, all the way to Concord.”
“But Samuel, that’s simply not tr—”
A fist pounded the table.
“I’ll not have this revolution birthed on the bravery of one of those night-raider-child-orphaners. Paul Revere completed this ride.”
The door slammed shut.
Stomp lay on a thin bed of straw in a horse stall. The broil in his belly simmered like a slow-heated kettle pot. He hungered, and the boy soldier and the one he clip-clopped to death created another thin layer of plaque on his soul.
A shadow clopped towards him. A brilliant white mare came out of the shadows.
“Oh, hey. Hey, girl. So glad to see you.”
The mare huffed and turned and kicked a pile of dank straw in Stomp’s face.
Out the stall opening, Stomp could see the low fields and the road that curled down from the manor. Through the murk in the distant twilight, he could see the low dense fog of the marsh, and hear that taunting whistle.
Phe—ooooo Phe—oooooo
Stomp reassured the horse with a long rub around the ears and rose and stumbled outside. He took down through the fields, a stumble building into a slow lope, passing creatures who raised their heads at the rare sight of a ‘squatch wandering the east coast on a dank April night.
This wetland, already diminishing and drying, still stretched deep for miles. Stomp arrived at the brim and stood, his toes touching the first line of waves and waves of cattails and gnarled roots. He strained his night eyes and could hardly discern a faint glow, deep in the bog. Through the thick he could hear the tremor over the settled water—someone was singing.
Mix the pulp and nitroglycerine, dynamite go boom
Mix the pulp and nitroglycerine, the dynamite go boom!
Put the boom boom in the oven, it’ll all be ready soon
Take the boom boom out the oven, now we blow up the moon
Stomp surged forward and plunged into waist-deep swamp muck. He swung his arms back and forth, churning forward. Tiny critters of the night, toads and lizards, plopped off and fled. The rushes seemed to open before him. A sliver of a current picked up from behind and nudged him forward.
The light grew stronger. Stomp kept churning and the singing stopped. He could see it now—it was swirling and vibrant—a firefly lantern. It hung from the gnarled overhang of a stubby swamp bush, with a platform of raised roots large enough to hold a makeshift tree and branch hut. Upon this root island, a squat, round creature shuffled around, humming and stirring a kettle that billowed out steam. It had a pipe dangling from its smirk-beaked mouth and blew out a constant stream of puffs.
Stomp approached and stood still, feeling the swamp mud oozing uncomfortably into his buttcrack.
“Well, are you coming up or not?”
The voice was rich and deep, and young. Whatever he was, he wasn’t from Massachusetts. Stomp could see its hardened features now—it carried a giant speckled shell, covered in moss and lichens.
It was a turtle.
Stomp pulled himself up onto the dry roots and shook his fur. Sprays of stanky mud flew off and glopped into the turtle’s boiling soup.
“Oh, hoh!” The turtle laughed at him and tapped some ash out of its pipe with an elastic, membraned flipper that had the grip of hands. “You’re a big sassy mess, aren’t you.”
“You whistled at me.”
“Yes!” The turtle puffed his pipe. “I was bored and I like to haunt the villagers.”
The turtle smiled a goofy smile so big that its eyes closed.
Stomp leaned forward and peered into the cauldron, which was made entirely of packed clay. “What are you doing?”
The turtle’s eyes narrowed as he took a long drag off the pipe, and Stomp could see the settling of euphoria into the turtle’s relaxing features.
“Introductions first.”
The turtle reached out a flipper and Stomp reciprocated. They shook.
“Stomp Freedomfoot.”
“Gesuvio the Exploder. Or…Gesuvio the maker of boom boom sauce. Or you can call me ‘Demo’, like ‘Demolition’. I haven’t decided.”
“Oh. Very elaborate. You’re Italian, huh?”
“Nope, shores of Vancouver. And you?”
Stomp shook his head and as if on cue, the horn in his satchel clinked. “No idea.”
Stomp leaned in again and was tempted to touch the glowing neon beans that seemed to be sprouting in the cauldron. “So…what are you doing?”
“Harvesting the gunpowder seeds. They’re everywhere in these marshes. Gotta stir ‘em up to activate the boom boom.”
“Uh huh. I thought that was made with human stuff. You know, chemicals.”
“Yes, but those are so full of preservatives and bad for everyone,” said the turtle, describing this proponent of bloodshed. “My boom booms are all organic.”
Stomp folded his arms over his knees and sat cross-legged near the smoldering embers that stoked the boil. His head dipped and he jerked it back up, dipped again and felt the hunger. “I kind of like…just Gesuvio. It’s got mystique.”
Gesuvio shuffled over to Stomp and looked down. He was an imposing creature for a turtle, radiating a sense of crinkled wisdom and youthful danger. He tapped one flipper against a sagging Stomp. Stomp’s body responded with a slow gurgle.
“I think it’s time we lift your spirits.”
The funky marsh chemist disappeared inside an opening in the gnarled tree trunk, a wide, low space darkened but warm. Gesuvio reappeared, with two flippers held out in front, holding a cold, stale blueberry pie.
“Sometimes I creep out the marsh to see which settlers will let me rob them, then I jar their screams and sell them to the bog trolls.” Gesuvio patted a stack of canning jars and shrugged. “A simple hobby for a simple turtle.”
A single tear fell from Stomp’s eye. He reached out longingly. The pie was stale-crusted and fermenting and starting to fester with maggots – it was beautiful.
He held it to his nose and soaked in the trills of crickets and the owls, the curling mist, the glow-lit abode dripping with dew and moss.
“Is this what love feels like?”
Gesuvio’s eyes were full of mirth and the neon beans jumped excitedly in the cast iron. “Love would be stirring a pot of dynamite stew with a friend.” He smiled. “But this – this is just the lonely swamp.”
Their voices echoed over the still marsh and carried, as a flickering island glow radiated into the night…
“So you stir it just like this, you see?”
“Uh huh. And if I put my paw in like this—”
“No, no—don’t taste. That’s mercury. And also boiling hot.”
Oh. Sorry. Hey, I bonked a redcoat to death earlier. He was all like, ‘hey you, stop, dog!’ And then I..I bonked and his head fell off and now my tummy burns.”
“Oh, did you? That’s wonderful! Now, here – stir in the beans real good…”
In the morning, the war was on. But all this swamp remembered was that some of the truest friendships are made in the dark.
I’m so glad you came along for this story sliver of Redcoat-bonking and Boston kinship in 1775. If you’d like to support Stomp Roams, you can share the story or tap that little “subscribe” button. Learn more about the author at www.jonathandelp.com or follow @ljacktwain.