Apollo counted to one hundred before he moved up the block. When he reached the house, he actually gasped. The old man had left the front door wide open, the light above the front entrance turned on.
Apollo almost took the stairs. Almost. He set his foot on the first one but stopped himself before he tried the second. He watched the open front door. He looked both ways. Many of the other houses on the block showed lights on the first floors, a few on the second. People were home, but no one seemed to be watching him at this moment. And yet he hesitated to simply walk inside. He looked behind him but didn’t see anyone peeking out from behind the curtains there.
Apollo walked around the side of the house and down the open driveway. Houses like this always had more than one entrance. He found a second door along the side. He assumed this one led down to the basement, but this door had no handle, no lock either. After only a second standing there, a light flared on above his head. He leaped backward, letting the suitcase fall, scanning in all directions. He stood in place, and after another moment, the light snuffed out. Apollo stepped to the door again, and the light, on a motion sensor, flipped on again. Apollo pressed at the door once, but it was barred from the inside. He stepped back, and the driveway returned to darkness.
He picked up the suitcase handle and went farther along the house, all the way around the back, and here he found a third door. It opened with a turn of the handle. Apollo left his suitcase outside. He didn’t want to worry about running out with it if things came to that. Inside he found a short set of stairs that led up into a kitchen.
Two plastic bags sat on the kitchen counter. A large pot sat on a burner, the flame turned high, but the water inside still felt cold. Apollo stood quietly in the large, outdated kitchen. There were two open doorways out of the kitchen, leading to the rest of the first floor. One opened onto a dining room, and the other a hallway. He moved toward the hallway and leaned out. From here it was a straight path to the front door. The front door remained open. He stood there a moment listening for the old man but heard nothing.
He moved to the other doorway and entered the dining room. There was a large dining table covered with mail and newspapers, circulars, all still in their rubber bands, a mound of the stuff, some spilling onto the floor. Apollo moved around the far side of the table, trying to keep silent, step softly.
As he moved alongside the table, he found the old man. He stood with his back to Apollo. He waited at the threshold of the front door, hidden right behind it. In his left hand he held a large boning knife.
Apollo scanned the table for some kind of weapon, or at least something he could use as defense. He touched his hand to the nearest rolled-up newspaper, and just as he lifted it, the old man turned.
Apollo raised the newspaper like a club.
The old man pointed his knife at Apollo. “I’m going to tell you a story about a little boy,” he said.
THE OLD MAN spoke as he and Apollo faced each other in that dining room. One man poised with a boning knife, the other with a roll of newspaper. A standoff on the blue shag carpeting.
“There once was a farmer who had three sons,” the old man began. “His farm was so badly off that none of them ever had enough to eat. A large, good forest sat right nearby, and the oldest brother went off one day to chop wood. He hoped to get enough wood to pay off their father’s debts and finally have some money of their own. But he returned before even an hour’s time, and he would not speak of what had happened. He had no wood with him.
“The second son was sent next. He snatched the family’s ax from his older brother and marched off into the woods. But he returned even sooner than his older brother. This time he returned not only without wood but also without the family’s ax! The old farmer was distraught. Only his youngest son remained, and he was just a boy.
“But the youngest, Askeladden, didn’t even wait for the sun to rise before going out to the woods. The moon lit the sky, and the boy left without telling his father, or his brothers, that he was going. He entered the woods as quietly as he could, and in no time he found the family’s ax. It was still stuck in a shaggy fir tree, right where the middle brother had left it. And just below that was a mark in the fir tree where the oldest brother had swung the same ax. Curious.
“Askeladden then heard something moving through the trees. The ground shook and the tops of the trees shivered as something enormous came closer. The boy needed to hide, but the forest floor offered no such places. If he could reach the upper branches of this fir tree, he thought, he could disappear in its leaves. But the limbs were too high up. Then he remembered the ax. He was still small enough that he could climb onto the handle and use it like a stair without shaking it loose. From the place on the handle, he could jump and reach the lowest branch.
“He climbed almost to the top of the fir tree, and there he hid. The cuts his brothers made had caused sap to leak from the tree, but Askeladden didn’t realize it until he’d stopped climbing. His hands and feet were wet with the stuff, strong scent of wood and resin. He tried to wipe it off, but very quickly he had to be still.
“Out of the woods came an enormous troll. Six stories high, with shoulders as wide as a bull. It was hideous and smelled of swamp rot. It growled and coughed. When it bumped the fir tree, poor Askeladden was almost thrown to his death. The troll sniffed the air. If the sap hadn’t been on the boy’s hands and feet, the troll would’ve smelled him right away. They can track the scent of human flesh like a shark tracks blood. But still it knew something was wrong. Hadn’t there been two other boys in its woods not long before? It pulled a face of rage.
“?‘Who dares come into my woods?’ the troll howled. ‘I will eat his bones!’
“Askeladden had an idea. He shouted, ‘My head is right there on the ground! Why don’t you just try and crack my skull!’
“The troll bent low and found a stone on the ground, the size of a boy. ‘I have you!’ he shouted, and bit down hard, but immediately he howled. ‘My teeth! You have broken my teeth with your thick skull! I will do better with your other bones instead.’ The troll became so angry, it could hardly think.
This time the boy shouted, ‘I have no bones! I am made of wood, you stupid troll!’
“?‘Stupid, am I?’ shouted the troll. ‘Then I will chop you to pieces!’
“?‘But where will you find an ax, you buffoon?’ taunted Askeladden.
“?‘There is one here!’ the troll bellowed. ‘And I will chop down this whole forest to find you!’
“The troll had fallen into a fury, and not being very bright, he began chopping at every tree nearby. Finally that fir tree was the only one left in all the wood. All the rest had been chopped into small pieces.