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The Good Folk of Guilford Gulch
The good folk of Guilford Gulch smiled sunshine as they shoved Trolls into small iron boxes. They’d smile and drip apology but it was all for the good. Trolls were bad and bad was evil and evil was best put in small iron boxes, closed, locked and tossed over cliffs or forgotten to the bottom of the sea.
The good folk of Guilford Gulch shone with piety and sang songs of virtue as they pranced through the countryside rounding up Trolls. Big ones and little ones, old ones and young ones, a Troll was a Troll was a Troll, and if they weren’t locked in small iron boxes then they wouldn’t be Trolls. Or so the good folk of Guilford Gulch thought.
And it was fine family fun, the hunt for the Trolls. Bring Jimmy and Johnny and little Suzy Boo. Bring Grampa and Gram-ma and old Spot the Dog. Bring family and friends, bring axes and knives. A little blood on the shirt and some guts on the hand, what did it matter, evil didn’t belong in their land.
But after some years all the Trolls disappeared, either locked up, moved out, or erased by cold fear. With nothing left to sustain their righteous lust the good folk of Guilford Gulch did what any good folk must. They crafted an evil out of bones and stale dust. It made sense. It was logical. Evil abound, everyone could feel it defiling their land.
So they looked at each other and decided right then to create a huge, iron wrought pen. Then they threw in the odd balls, the kooks and the quacks. They threw them all in and locked ‘em up tight. And time did its dance and when those ranks depleted they moved to the small and the fat and the dumb. The blacks and the blues, the yellows and reds, they tossed them all in and nodded their heads. They threw in Little Jimmy and Johnny and Joe. They threw in Sally Boo and her dolly Sally Too. They threw in their neighbors. They throw in their friends. They threw in all evil, until.
One day a wandering Troll happened by and asked what they were doing and why. Why were the all good folk of Guilford Gulch locked up in a pen the Troll wondered aloud, a good distance off. And the good folk of Guilford Gulch responded, “It is you we locked up. The evil and greed. It is you who is imprisoned and us who are freed.” The Troll, none to bright, just scratched at his head and walked away from the iron wrought fence and the good folk of Guilford Gulch cheered.
One cheer punctured quickly by cold looks and hard stares. They could smell it, each of them could, a faint but undeniable stench of evil. Where did it come from, who was the source and what was the course inside their small pen?
The good folk of Guilford Gulch smiled sunshine as the tossed their weak and wounded into small graves. Weakness was bad and bad was evil and evil had no place inside their small iron wrought pen.
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