Chapter Fifteen: Popcorn and Prize-winning Pumpkins
“I know the answer! The answer lies within the heart of all mankind! The answer is twelve? I think I’m in the wrong building.” -- Charles Schultz
There had been a lot of tough nuts in Rebecca Costanello’s life. Kids who’d grown up in poverty and parents who thought of them as only so much available labor around the farm. Kids who were not bright, were too smart, or just too energetic for their own good. People who wanted the schools to teach narrow versions of the truth, be it religion or history. School boards and town council members who always expected more to be made out of less and less. It was a sorry way to try to educate the young, but she had always liked a bit of a dust-up, and Becca found that when her fists were clenched her mind was clear. She also liked the unusual, the out-of-place -- the odd man.
Aaron Ghorn was the odd man. Very, very odd.
She would have sworn on the Holy Book that this guy had never been on a date before, let alone to the movies, and yet he didn’t carry himself like some sort of hick from the back country. At times he was very sophisticated, almost courtly. Once he understood something it was easy for him. But there was so much that he’d clearly never encountered before. She didn’t mind paying the quarter apiece for them to get into the Egyptian Theatre that sunny Saturday morning, but it seemed odd that Aaron had no idea that money would be involved. He had caught on by the time she’d steered him to the candy counter, and he paid a dime each for popcorn and a soda, a nickel for the bag of lemon drops she asked for.
“I told you I’m a cheap date,” Rebecca laughed, seeing his puzzled expression as she steered him through the ornate lobby to the darkened theater. They took seats in the back, eschewing the balcony as the haunt of horny teenagers and the front rows as the domain of rowdy children and overworked parents. Aaron dug into the popcorn enthusiastically and seemed to think that watching the crowd was the whole idea of the excursion. When the lights dimmed and the Movietone newsreel started Aaron went stiff and focused on the screen with a frightening intensity.
“Is something wrong?” she asked him, as the story jumped from water ballet at Busch Gardens to a woman in San Diego who painted pictures of people’s pets onto dishes.
“Where are these people?” Aaron asked, his voice loud enough to elicit a ‘shush’ from the couple seated in front of them.
“What people? You mean the people on the screen?”
“Screen? They are not here?” He was looking around intently, trying to figure out the trick.
Rebecca would have laughed at him if it wasn’t so odd. “These are just pictures, Aaron. Moving pictures. They were made a while ago, in another place.”
“Moving pictures,” Aaron whispered, popping a lemon drop into his mouth and staring at the screen determinedly.
She tried to get him to sit back and enjoy the coming attractions. It was a lost cause. But by the time the main movie had started Aaron was willing to relax a little bit. He watched ‘Dark Passage’ with a degree of interest that would have made Bogie and Bacall proud.
Professor Tolkien moved out of the town of Oxford that spring, taking a small country house with a large plot of land. He was close enough to commute to work and classes, but he spent far less time on the college grounds then he used to. Rumor was that he had engaged himself in a very large project, possibly something to do with the war effort, so no one in his circle of friends pressed him to explain. By midsummer he seemed to be getting somewhere, and he was heard to mutter in strange languages while walking the courtyards and halls of the venerable institutions.
The grounds of the Tolkien place had been neglected for years, and yet in the course of just a few months they became a showplace of fecund abundance and lush growth. The gardens grew almost wild, with none of the normally orderly lines of proper English planning; anyone who saw them was amazed at the variety and beauty of everything that thrived there. Vegetables and herbs interwoven with grasses and flowers, and saplings came up around the perimeter like a natural barrier to the outside world. The local gardeners went nearly mad with curiosity, especially when Mrs. Tolkien refused all entreaties to join the local Women’s Institute and share her secrets. Though rumour had it that they had they’d gotten their own gardener, no one was ever seen working on the land.
That autumn Mrs. Tolkien ventured forth enough long enough to enter a few things in the produce competition at the village fete. Every single vegetable won its class for size and flavor, and the local ladies seethed with envy. The entry tags were their only clue, and they read simply ‘Tolkien, Mrs. & L.Golas.’ This Golas the gardener became a sought-after personage, but no one ever laid an eye on him, or her, or whoever they were.
Aaron took her hand softly in his as they strolled the dusty sidewalk of Taos, glancing into windows and talking haltingly. She loved to hear him speak, all the more so when he lapsed into unknown dialects, his voice such a pleasing cadence. Rebecca lifted Aaron’s palm and looked at the strange pattern of calluses and old wounds. Whatever he’d done before, it had involved working hard with his hands.
“What is this?” she questioned, tracing a long scar on his wrist.
“Orc knife,” he told her.
“Orc? What’s an orc? Is that something you use to blacksmith horses?”
She’d clearly spoken words he didn’t know yet, and Aaron shrugged. He paused and hunched his shoulders, making a horrifyingly ugly face and growling. “Orc. Orc...bad Man - not a Man. Want only hurt Man. Orc, good not here.”
His face made her laugh, and they continued. “Cripes,” she muttered. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. What about this one?” She pressed her finger to a white scar on his other hand.
“Goblin arrow.”
“Okay, okay! I’ll stop asking! Come on, let’s go to the corner fountain - get a root beer float.”
“Beer? Beer is very good.”
“Oh ho, you understood THAT word just fine, didn’t you! Men...you’re all alike.”
Rebecca Costanello couldn’t be more wrong.
Legolas snugged his back into a hollow in the old oak’s roots. He fit there as if the tree had formed itself into a chair, just for his personal ease, and the Elf pulled up his knees and closed his eyes. He wasn’t singing today, but a hum in his throat still carried to the living things all around, and nature took notice of the glorious being residing in this tiny pocket in the English countryside. Little birds chirped in sympathy, flocking to the branches above. As he did every day, Legolas sent his inner mind out to the world around him, no longer too frightened to look, but saddened enough to realize that he didn’t expect a reply. He got a fuzzy feeling of the humans nearby, and Colin’s distant presence far off in London. But no bright burning spark of Aragorn’s special flame. He reached as far as he could, but though the Elf’s gifts could span enormous distances, he could not conquer time. He had no way of knowing that the Ranger had indeed come after him, but would not arrive for seven years.
Legolas stopped humming and folded in on himself sadly. He was still alone in this world. The oak did what it could to comfort this royal presence in its keeping, but even the trees here spoke a different language. “Fret not, father,” Legolas told the woody presence at his back. “You are ancient among your kind, but are but a seedling to my reckoning. I have time, time enough to wait. It is not my fate to perish here. Something will happen. Someone will come for me.”
“Legolas?” called the Professor, coming to look for him.
“I am here,” he said, just loud enough to be heard. “Come, I will tell you more stories.”
Aaron and Rebecca were sitting in the window booth at the drug store when a friend of hers from college walked by with three other girls. Becca knocked on the glass and laughed at their startled expressions, and her friend took leave to come inside and say hello. They hadn’t seen each other since a meeting at the school last winter.
“Sadie!” she gushed, rising to kiss her friend’s cheek. “What are you doing in Taos?”
“Visiting my aunt and uncle! It’s so good to see you, Rebecca! How’s your class working out?” Her question was for her friend, but her eyes were only for the man who’d risen from his seat and was waiting to be introduced.
Grinning, Rebecca gestured at her companion. “This is an acquaintance of mine...Aaron--”
“Aragorn,” he said softly, dipping his head and smiling warmly, taking her hand gently and lifting her knuckles to his lips. “Your servant.”
Sadie’s eyes widened at the dignity of the move, and she found her mouth spilling over unexpectedly. “Aragorn, you say? Ha! You must have read Mister Tolkien’s book as well! It’s the talk of the campus, in certain well-read circles.”
“What?” Rebecca asked. Aragorn was asking too, with his puzzled, sky-blue eyes.
“’The Fellowship of the Ring’, that new book. There’s a fellow in there who calls himself Aragorn, or Strider. Something called a Ranger.” Aragorn stood taller, his gaze now brighter and more intense than the sun itself. “You know,” Sadie continued, flustered, “the Lord of the Rings? Evil guy Sauron, Gandalf the Wizard, Hobbits and Elves and all of that! Surely you’ve read it.”
Aragorn sat down hard, his mind reeling as he tried to understand what was being explained.
There had been a lot of tough nuts in Rebecca Costanello’s life. Kids who’d grown up in poverty and parents who thought of them as only so much available labor around the farm. Kids who were not bright, were too smart, or just too energetic for their own good. People who wanted the schools to teach narrow versions of the truth, be it religion or history. School boards and town council members who always expected more to be made out of less and less. It was a sorry way to try to educate the young, but she had always liked a bit of a dust-up, and Becca found that when her fists were clenched her mind was clear. She also liked the unusual, the out-of-place -- the odd man.
Aaron Ghorn was the odd man. Very, very odd.
She would have sworn on the Holy Book that this guy had never been on a date before, let alone to the movies, and yet he didn’t carry himself like some sort of hick from the back country. At times he was very sophisticated, almost courtly. Once he understood something it was easy for him. But there was so much that he’d clearly never encountered before. She didn’t mind paying the quarter apiece for them to get into the Egyptian Theatre that sunny Saturday morning, but it seemed odd that Aaron had no idea that money would be involved. He had caught on by the time she’d steered him to the candy counter, and he paid a dime each for popcorn and a soda, a nickel for the bag of lemon drops she asked for.
“I told you I’m a cheap date,” Rebecca laughed, seeing his puzzled expression as she steered him through the ornate lobby to the darkened theater. They took seats in the back, eschewing the balcony as the haunt of horny teenagers and the front rows as the domain of rowdy children and overworked parents. Aaron dug into the popcorn enthusiastically and seemed to think that watching the crowd was the whole idea of the excursion. When the lights dimmed and the Movietone newsreel started Aaron went stiff and focused on the screen with a frightening intensity.
“Is something wrong?” she asked him, as the story jumped from water ballet at Busch Gardens to a woman in San Diego who painted pictures of people’s pets onto dishes.
“Where are these people?” Aaron asked, his voice loud enough to elicit a ‘shush’ from the couple seated in front of them.
“What people? You mean the people on the screen?”
“Screen? They are not here?” He was looking around intently, trying to figure out the trick.
Rebecca would have laughed at him if it wasn’t so odd. “These are just pictures, Aaron. Moving pictures. They were made a while ago, in another place.”
“Moving pictures,” Aaron whispered, popping a lemon drop into his mouth and staring at the screen determinedly.
She tried to get him to sit back and enjoy the coming attractions. It was a lost cause. But by the time the main movie had started Aaron was willing to relax a little bit. He watched ‘Dark Passage’ with a degree of interest that would have made Bogie and Bacall proud.
Professor Tolkien moved out of the town of Oxford that spring, taking a small country house with a large plot of land. He was close enough to commute to work and classes, but he spent far less time on the college grounds then he used to. Rumor was that he had engaged himself in a very large project, possibly something to do with the war effort, so no one in his circle of friends pressed him to explain. By midsummer he seemed to be getting somewhere, and he was heard to mutter in strange languages while walking the courtyards and halls of the venerable institutions.
The grounds of the Tolkien place had been neglected for years, and yet in the course of just a few months they became a showplace of fecund abundance and lush growth. The gardens grew almost wild, with none of the normally orderly lines of proper English planning; anyone who saw them was amazed at the variety and beauty of everything that thrived there. Vegetables and herbs interwoven with grasses and flowers, and saplings came up around the perimeter like a natural barrier to the outside world. The local gardeners went nearly mad with curiosity, especially when Mrs. Tolkien refused all entreaties to join the local Women’s Institute and share her secrets. Though rumour had it that they had they’d gotten their own gardener, no one was ever seen working on the land.
That autumn Mrs. Tolkien ventured forth enough long enough to enter a few things in the produce competition at the village fete. Every single vegetable won its class for size and flavor, and the local ladies seethed with envy. The entry tags were their only clue, and they read simply ‘Tolkien, Mrs. & L.Golas.’ This Golas the gardener became a sought-after personage, but no one ever laid an eye on him, or her, or whoever they were.
Aaron took her hand softly in his as they strolled the dusty sidewalk of Taos, glancing into windows and talking haltingly. She loved to hear him speak, all the more so when he lapsed into unknown dialects, his voice such a pleasing cadence. Rebecca lifted Aaron’s palm and looked at the strange pattern of calluses and old wounds. Whatever he’d done before, it had involved working hard with his hands.
“What is this?” she questioned, tracing a long scar on his wrist.
“Orc knife,” he told her.
“Orc? What’s an orc? Is that something you use to blacksmith horses?”
She’d clearly spoken words he didn’t know yet, and Aaron shrugged. He paused and hunched his shoulders, making a horrifyingly ugly face and growling. “Orc. Orc...bad Man - not a Man. Want only hurt Man. Orc, good not here.”
His face made her laugh, and they continued. “Cripes,” she muttered. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. What about this one?” She pressed her finger to a white scar on his other hand.
“Goblin arrow.”
“Okay, okay! I’ll stop asking! Come on, let’s go to the corner fountain - get a root beer float.”
“Beer? Beer is very good.”
“Oh ho, you understood THAT word just fine, didn’t you! Men...you’re all alike.”
Rebecca Costanello couldn’t be more wrong.
Legolas snugged his back into a hollow in the old oak’s roots. He fit there as if the tree had formed itself into a chair, just for his personal ease, and the Elf pulled up his knees and closed his eyes. He wasn’t singing today, but a hum in his throat still carried to the living things all around, and nature took notice of the glorious being residing in this tiny pocket in the English countryside. Little birds chirped in sympathy, flocking to the branches above. As he did every day, Legolas sent his inner mind out to the world around him, no longer too frightened to look, but saddened enough to realize that he didn’t expect a reply. He got a fuzzy feeling of the humans nearby, and Colin’s distant presence far off in London. But no bright burning spark of Aragorn’s special flame. He reached as far as he could, but though the Elf’s gifts could span enormous distances, he could not conquer time. He had no way of knowing that the Ranger had indeed come after him, but would not arrive for seven years.
Legolas stopped humming and folded in on himself sadly. He was still alone in this world. The oak did what it could to comfort this royal presence in its keeping, but even the trees here spoke a different language. “Fret not, father,” Legolas told the woody presence at his back. “You are ancient among your kind, but are but a seedling to my reckoning. I have time, time enough to wait. It is not my fate to perish here. Something will happen. Someone will come for me.”
“Legolas?” called the Professor, coming to look for him.
“I am here,” he said, just loud enough to be heard. “Come, I will tell you more stories.”
Aaron and Rebecca were sitting in the window booth at the drug store when a friend of hers from college walked by with three other girls. Becca knocked on the glass and laughed at their startled expressions, and her friend took leave to come inside and say hello. They hadn’t seen each other since a meeting at the school last winter.
“Sadie!” she gushed, rising to kiss her friend’s cheek. “What are you doing in Taos?”
“Visiting my aunt and uncle! It’s so good to see you, Rebecca! How’s your class working out?” Her question was for her friend, but her eyes were only for the man who’d risen from his seat and was waiting to be introduced.
Grinning, Rebecca gestured at her companion. “This is an acquaintance of mine...Aaron--”
“Aragorn,” he said softly, dipping his head and smiling warmly, taking her hand gently and lifting her knuckles to his lips. “Your servant.”
Sadie’s eyes widened at the dignity of the move, and she found her mouth spilling over unexpectedly. “Aragorn, you say? Ha! You must have read Mister Tolkien’s book as well! It’s the talk of the campus, in certain well-read circles.”
“What?” Rebecca asked. Aragorn was asking too, with his puzzled, sky-blue eyes.
“’The Fellowship of the Ring’, that new book. There’s a fellow in there who calls himself Aragorn, or Strider. Something called a Ranger.” Aragorn stood taller, his gaze now brighter and more intense than the sun itself. “You know,” Sadie continued, flustered, “the Lord of the Rings? Evil guy Sauron, Gandalf the Wizard, Hobbits and Elves and all of that! Surely you’ve read it.”
Aragorn sat down hard, his mind reeling as he tried to understand what was being explained.
Subtitles
- Chapter One: The Leap
- Chapter Two: Landing on your Feet
- Chapter Three: All the wild Things
- Chapter Four: Funny Paper Heroes
- Chapter Five: Caught
- Chapter Six: Blitz
- Chapter Seven: Hitting the Road
- Chapter Eight: Being Wrong
- Chapter Nine: Assumptions
- Chapter Ten: Coffee and Hot Cross Buns
- Chapter Eleven: Fate of the Brave
- Chapter Twelve: The Forest for the Brave
- Chapter Thirteen: Arrow in the Dark
- Chapter Fourteen: Little Brown Birds
- Chapter Fifteen: Popcorn and Prize-winning Pumpkins
- Chapter Sixteen: The Distance Breeched
- Chapter Seventeen: A Song to Light the Dark
- Chapter Eighteen: The Meaning of Fellowship
- Chapter Nineteen: Meanings Behind Words.
- Chapter Twenty: If Elves were meant to fly
- Chapter Twenty-one: Across the Western Sea
- Chapter Twenty-two: Atcheson Topeka and the Santa Fe
- Chapter Twenty-three: Strange Feathers
- Chapter Twenty-four: A Bitter Fruit
- Chapter Twenty-five: Looking for the Exit
- Chapter Twenty-six: Tainted
- Chapter Twenty-seven: The Killing Blow
- Chapter 28: Epilogue