The Tinweed Man

by Daniel Scott White

  Sensing a change in the air, the warrior with the knife relaxed a bit. All the warriors felt immensely satisfied, as they had partaken in the scalping a man and no harm had come to him. Oddly enough, the experience had put a smile on the little man’s face. What strange world this little man must come from, they said to each other through the exchange of odd glances. Who in the entire wilderness would be so happy just to have his hair cut? The one warrior still holding the knife in his hand hefted it a few times, and after feeling the weight, tossed it at the nearest tree, where the blade went in and the knife was left hanging.

  Jon Tinweed walked over and pulled it out. He still had a good bit of tree-gruel slime on his one hand and was tempted to wipe it off on the tree, but hesitated, wondering if there might be a nymph hiding inside. He put the knife back in his belt and turned to thank the warriors. Only this morning he’d been forced out of the boat by those treacherous swine, but if they could just see him now, making new friends and influencing strangers, what would they say? It was their loss, not his.

  Just when he was about to hug one of the warriors, the wind shifted and the tree behind his back swayed. What the warriors heard was a loud creaking sound, but what Jon Tinweed heard was a voice from a place somewhere deep in his past: “Apology accepted!”

  This startled him. He’d run away to the other side of the ocean in the hopes of never coming face to face with that same tree nymph again. Could it be possible she had relatives who lived here and knew the story of his stinking shoe?

  The warriors, once they had regained their senses, took him peacefully back to their tribe where he could meet the elders. The elders, sitting around a fire and smoking god-knows-what, found the little man an entertaining sight and asked in a foreign tongue if he could dance for them. They wanted to get a kick out of laughing at this little puppet of a man who had come to visit them from the far side of the ocean. They had no idea what the warriors had witnessed in the woods. Some of the warriors still thought Jon Tinweed might be possessed by magic. What do elders know?

  Jon Tinweed had no clue what they were saying, as language, any language, was not his natural gift. One of the warriors pantomimed doing a dance, and as he moved playfully around the fire, to the amusement of everyone, he slipped on a tender piece of wood-sponge. It rolled under his foot and he fell head first right into the flames. This caused everyone to laugh to the point of exhaustion. And then, being tired out, they decided to eat and drink a little more before taking a nap.

  The warrior who’d fallen in the fire pulled himself out with little harm done, except that his eyebrows were gone and his pride was no longer intact. The two sat down beside each other, John Tinweed and the shamed warrior, being outsiders. Here the beginning of their friendship took root. The warrior was often called Samsuch. Jon Tinweed had heard him called that, although he didn’t really know if that was his true name or just a taunt people liked to throw at him.

  Samsuch offered Jon Tinweed a wooden cup full of berry juice, and a slab of meat. The juice, just short of wine, filled Jon Tinweed’s little stomach, seeping all the way into his bones. The meat tasted a lot like turkey. It had been suspended over the flames and allowed to cook for days, giving it an exquisite smokey flavor. It was something special. He’d never before had anything like it.

  Things were turning out well for him here in the New World. He grew excited at the prospects of his new life. He forgot about the tree nymph. He forgot about the kittens who’d forced him out of his home. He even forgot that he couldn’t speak the same language as the people sleeping around the fire. He babbled on for a full five minutes before he noticed the angry expressions on their faces. Mostly, they were upset at having been awakened from a decent afternoon nap.

  Since nothing was getting through to them, he thought he would jump up and down, as he imagined a wild turkey might do, although he was wrong about that. He ran around the fire and at the same time he flapped his elbows, mimicking flight. He wanted to know where he could find more turkey. His intention was to get across the message of traveling to some place new, some place with plenty to eat, a place he could call his own. He pretended to drink from an invisible bottle as he moved sporadically about, being careful not to fall in the fire like Samsuch had done.

  About this time, some the elders sitting around the fire took notice, and thinking he’d finally decided to dance for them, prodded the others back into a state of wakefulness. They watched as Jon Tinweed circled around the fire, moving dangerously close to the throes of lunacy. And they got a kick out of it. This stranger from another world could make you laugh at times, until you nearly peed yourself.

  The other warriors, the ones who’d first found Jon Tinweed in the woods playing with the slug, looked on in shock, not quite sure what they’d brought home with them. Was this some phantom from the deep? Had they upset some unknown deity, and now, it was among them, sure to bring about a plague of destruction? No one in his or her right mind would ever act so odd, not twice in the same day. The young warriors mimicked laughter, trying to please the elders, but gave each other glances, their eyes revealing a deep fear that was welling up inside them.

  The one with leadership potential, thinking haste was the best course of action, consulted with the elders, seeking advice from them about the newcomer. Once he’d stopped twirling about madly and the banter had died down, the warrior explained that they wanted to take the little man to the Spring of Truth, which was far away in the mountains, and ascertain what rank he should hold as a new member of their tribe, now that he had come to live among them. In reality, they tricked the elders, who were often tricked by the youth. The warriors did not trick them out of disrespect, but as a matter of sport. Although they said they wanted to find the truth from the spring about the virtues of this little man, if he continued to show signs of malignant behavior, they intended to tie his hands together and throw him into the deepest part of the pool and leave him there to drown. It was a dangerous game they were playing, but little did they fear. They were warriors of the bravest kind.

  Part Three: The Spring of Truth

  It would take days to reach the place in the mountains where the sacred spring was located, following the trail they’d decided to follow. Little did they know this wasn’t the shortest route. This was a long and weary route to traverse, walking being the only means of transportation in the New World at this time. There had been a breed of horse-type creature living here millions of years ago, but they’d all become extinct. It wasn’t until later, when the second kind of settlers came, that the mechanical horse was introduced to this environment, a kind of horse that polluted the atmosphere and destroyed the environment. The pollution they would eventually generate would cause all kinds of terrible mutations in a plethora of species when it came down to the next leap in evolution. The trail the warriors would take to the Spring of Truth was a hiking trail that only the strongest could master.

  Bright and early the next morning, the warriors and the little man set out on foot, following a path that went on forever. In the lead were the seven warriors who’d first encountered Jon Tinweed playing in the woods, followed by the little man himself, and then, taking up the rear, his newfound friend, Samsuch. Overnight this warrior’s name had come to mean dances-with-fire-and-loses-his-eyebrows, as warrior’s names have a tendency to change over time due to unforeseen events.

  The trees all around were turning brilliant colors and the smell of them perspiring lifted everyone’s spirits about the journey ahead. As Jon Tinweed climbed the trail up the mountainside, he walked with a bit of a wobble, being unfamiliar with the proper way to climb a mountain path. He’d never been so high above anything before. It made him dizzy, with the thinning atmosphere and the heights. They’d hardly climbed more than a hundred meets in elevation above sea level and already he was short of breath.

  Because he walked with such a faltering gait, he slowed the whole procession down, but they never said a word about it. Silently, they loathed him
, cursing the day they’d met him, which was only yesterday. They wandered slowly up the trial, dreaming of the moment when they might finally reach the Spring of Truth and throw him into it. Wouldn’t that be fine? Each warrior kept his fingers crossed, hoping the little man couldn’t swim. They were not far from the truth.

  Samsuch was often verbally abused by the other members of his tribe, just as Jon Tinweed was insulted by the people he’d left behind in the Old World, and not having a heart made of metal like Jon Tinweed, Samsuch had retreated from society, becoming an introvert in nature, never caring much for what other people liked or didn’t like about him. Let’s just say his value system was a bit misaligned from that of the average woods-folk. Although he had a soft heart and was often crushed by the demeaning remarks dumped on him, he was a thinker of sorts, meaning he thought about things more than other people did. This really didn’t amount to much thinking at all, though, because most people never really think much about anything.

  Samsuch had also noticed, like his fellow tribesmen, that Jon Tinweed constantly fell behind the rest of the group. They often had to stop and wait for him to catch up, which allowed them to catch their breath. And then, the moment he’d arrive, they’d set out again, the results being he was never really able to rest like they were. During these resting periods, when Samsuch looked down the hill behind him and watched the little man hobble in his direction, he thought about his newfound friend’s dilemma, who still had a bad case of sea legs. That’s when the solution to the long delays occurred to him.

  “Boo pity bee pity bop,” is what he said when Jon Tinweed arrived at the next plateau, nearly out of breath. At least this is what Jon Tinweed heard, because it was in a language foreign to him.

  Jon Tinweed wasn’t thinking too clearly, feeling dizzy and disconnected. This would have made matters worse, except that he rarely thought clearly in the first place, so nothing really was going on out of the ordinary here. He said nothing.

  Samsuch encouraged him to sit down on a rock of rather small stature, about the perfect height for someone as majestically disabled as Jon Tinweed was. To say he offered him a seat is an exaggeration towards politeness. The truth is Samsuch by this point had grown as disgruntled as the rest of the warriors at the constant delays they were facing. He pushed Jon Tinweed backward and watched him totter. Not having two solid feet on the ground to support him, the little man pantomimed a short fall before actually landing flat on the ground.

  Samsuch leaned over and tried to remove the shoes from the feet of the little man, thinking it would make more sense to go barefoot than to walk around with those cumbersome clod-like things on. He hoped they would travel more quickly this way.

  Jon Tinweed had never considered this option before. He was a civilized man, a modern man, and this kind of thinking was below him. The idea of living in the same fashion as his newfound brethren, the wild tribesman he now traveled with, with no shoes, this thought had simply never entered his head before. He had to have two solid shoes on his feet at all times, if ever he hoped to get anywhere. The way was forward, not backward.

  And although Samsuch had good intentions, one thing worked to his disadvantage. Jon Tinweed didn’t want his shoes removed. In fact, he questioned whether or not his friend was really a friend at all, or was just pretending to be friendly. He wondered if Samsuch and pals had taken him out into the woods to a mountainside far from home, a place where no one would ever hear him screaming for help, as they stole the one good thing Jon Tinweed had in life, a pair of decent shoes. They clearly didn’t have any shoes of their own and might want a pair. The little man at that moment decided he would have to watch his misguided brethren more closely in the future, in case it turned out his hunch was right and they were only leading him onward to his own demise.

  Samsuch gave up after exerting a great deal of effort and sweating profusely and losing his breath and cursing the day the word shoe was ever invented in any and every language. He sat down next to the little man and tried to regain his composure. This was the cue the rest of his fellow tribesmen had been waiting for. They took off, leaving him and Jon Tinweed both to lag behind forever.

  Up above, the clouds appeared to slide sideways, which would have been odd enough to see, if anyone had been watching the skies, but nobody was. At that altitude, where clouds liked to laze the day away, the wind was moving in an entirely different direction than it was near the ground. Next, the sun moved in a peculiar way, and the clouds and the sun converged on the same desolate spot in the sky and the day abruptly grew a whole lot darker.

  Thinking it might rain and they better hurry along, both Jon Tinweed and Samsuch eyeballed their chances of upward progress on the side of the mountain. They ascended without delay, Samsuch leading and the little man lagging behind. Unknown to either of them, the shadows on the trail, which normally fell to the left, had shifted to the right. These odd shadows hid the fact that the trail just up ahead forked. The way they should follow appeared to only go to the left when it also went to the right. The stone marker pointing out the direction was obscured in near darkness.

  As soon as they entered the leftward trail, the clouds shifted back, the sun came out, shadows realigned themselves and the fork to the right was again as plain as day. Samsuch and Jon Tinweed had no idea that this had happened, for they’d already progressed a ways up the left branch in search of their traveling companions. The rest of the party had followed the trail to the right. In this matter the two parties became separated and went down different paths in history. The pack of warriors heading off to the right was never seen or heard from again.

  Little did it matter to the bigger party heading farther and farther down the right fork in the trail, because they were bound and determined to arrive at a mountain cave by early afternoon where they knew shelter from the rain awaited them. The way the clouds were dashing and bumping into each other, a rainstorm of the fiercest kind was imminent. The lead warrior spoke aloud these thoughts and his crew hastened onward, surviving the twists and turns in the trail at the cost of a scratch to the back of the calf by a thorny bush and the occasional foot banging against an oddly placed rock.

  Although it sounds like they were on the best path to the Spring of Truth, they weren’t. They were taking the longer route. The branch to the left was far shorter. But they’d never seen the fork to the left before, or the stone marker, because it was normally hidden in shadows at the time of day when they always arrived there.

  Survival was all that mattered to these young warriors who’d ventured farther than anyone could imagine into the woods in this sparsely inhabited part of the world. In the afternoon, when they were fast asleep in the cave, snoring deeply after gorging themselves on a meal of salted jerky, and at the same time caring less if Samsuch or Jon Tinweed ever arrived, they were discovered by a troll who came along and devoured them.

  This was a troll who hadn’t had a decent meal in years. He enjoyed every bite, finishing the warriors off in a fashion that only a troll knows. But the meat in their bellies was salty and it gave the troll a tremendous thirst. He drank deeply from the waterfall nearby the entrance to the cave, and then, needing to pee, set off in the direction of his favorite potty hole.

  When Samsuch stopped at a turn in the trail to wait for Jon Tinweed, he got the idea it would be fun to scare the pants off the little man. He bent down on all fours, in which case the little man would be looking right in his deranged eyes. He practiced making a face like a fierce imaginary beast. As he waited he practiced a variety of other faces as well, thinking he might be even scarier to behold if he imitated his mother-in-law. He finally settled on the appearance of the fiercest imaginary beast that roamed the woods, the kind that ate selfish warriors who took innocent people and threw them in the deep end of the Spring of Truth. Doing his best, he imitated a hungry troll.

  About this time, Jon Tinweed was really starting to enjoy himself, as the walk up the mountainside had done his health a bit of good. His so
re back had stopped hurting and his heart was pounding like a horse. The fresh oxygen to his brain was a novelty. The little man came around a bend in the trail and stopped short, staring right into the face of Samsuch. It appeared to him that Samsuch was squatting down, probably attempting to take a shit, and the look on his face, the agony when things don’t come out as smoothly as one would like, confirmed Jon Tinweed’s assumption. He knew just the solution for a nasty bout of constipation.

  “What you need is a lot more fruit in your diet.”

  What Samsuch heard was this: “Boo pity bee pity bop.” It was all in a foreign language to him.

  Looking around the clearing, the little man spied a cluster of long-thorn berries. Whatever long-thorn berries are we might never know, because Jon Tinweed tended to name things he found in the woods whatever sort of name he desired. He grabbed a thorny branch with plenty of berries on it and handed it to Samsuch, who was groaning by this time, disappointed that his surprise had failed. He knew he would never make a great warrior, if he couldn’t even scare the pants off someone like the little man.

  Samsuch rolled over on his back, looked up at the sky and shrieked like the wind. This worried Jon Tinweed terribly, thinking the problem with the warrior’s bowels might be much worse than he had originally anticipated. He continued to offer the berries to Samsuch, pointing out that he should only eat the sweet part and spit out the seeds, if ever he was to regain control over his bowels again. Samsuch took the berries and was about to toss them into the wind, when he screamed again. It was a scream of such magnitude that it shook the foundations of the earth, a scream like none he’d ever emitted before, with such deep, venomous poison in it that Jon Tinweed took a quick step back. He tripped over an earthworm inching by and fell down on what might be called his butt.