文档介绍：Baartock
Baartock
Lewis Roth
(C)1989
1
Baartock
CHAPTER 1
Baartock was sitting by the side of the old two lane country road,
crying. Seven years old and all alone for hours, but that wasn't why he
was sobbing, tears running down his cheeks. He had grown up in the
forest, he was used to being alone, except for his parents. He wasn't
lost and he hadn't run away from home, though he felt so ashamed he
didn't want to go home. It had been a bad day, a terrible day.
Baartock had been waiting all day to scare someone, but there hadn't
been anyone to scare. It was such a bad thing to happen to a troll on
his first day.
Today was such an important day. Today was the very first day that
Baartock was to go out scaring all by himself. He had stayed up late the
night before and had gotten up early, so he would be all tired and cranky.
He had gone out of the cave where he lived and rolled in the smelliest,
nastiest mud he could find, so he would look his scariest. And he had
practiced his screams and shrieks, until both his parents yelled at him to
shut-up and to go scare somebody. He had set out, going down the old dry
stream-bed, just like his father had told him. On the way, he fell down and
cut his knee, which made him really angry. He threw a rock at a bird that
was singing in the trees, trying to make fun of him. He missed and that
made him even angrier. When he got to the road and looked both ways, he
crossed it and hid in the culvert. Then he waited and listened.
The culvert wasn't much of a bridge. It was just a big, old concrete
pipe that went under the road for rain-water to go through. He wished that
it was a bridge, any kind of bridge at all. Even a wooden bridge, but a real
bridge that he could hide under e rushing out to scare people. He
crouched down to wait and listen.
He knew what he was listening for. The sound of someone walking
down the road. Baartock had practiced at home, just the way his father had
shown him.