The Local Giant

I don’t recall if the local giant ever actually claimed to have special powers. It did, however, seem to me that he conducted himself as if he had sprung from the pages of mythology.

What I’m trying to say, I guess, is that this didn’t appear to be just another ordinary, run-of-the-mill giant. For one thing he was a good head taller than any giant I’ve ever seen, and he could balance small children on his nose and juggle dogs without seeming to cause the animals the slightest alarm or discomfort. The dogs actually appeared to enjoy being juggled, in fact. Some of them even slept while the giant was juggling them.

The giant didn’t have much to say, but he was one of those giants whose actions spoke louder than his words. He had a real knack for catching people when they fell, as well as for locating lost objects. He was always returning things to their rightful owners, things that had been missing for great stretches of time –decades, in several notable instances.

Some folks were suspicious of this talent, and spread rumors that the giant had actually stolen the items in question, and was hoarding these things in his lair. To dispel such rumors the giant took out a full-page advertisement in the local newspaper, announcing an open house to which the entire community was invited to inspect his lair and sample his baked goods.

The giant, it turned out, was one heck of a baker, which honestly came as no surprise to his many local admirers. His generous selection of baked goods –many of them quite exotic– put to shame the offerings of any of the small bakeries in town.

Needless to say, those who chose to take advantage of the giant’s hospitality –and there was quite a turnout– saw absolutely no evidence of lost or stolen items. And the very next morning the giant delivered a pristine 1969 Chevrolet Impala, a vehicle that had been missing for over a decade, to the home of its owner, a local school board member.

Any explanation of how or where the giant found these lost objects was never forthcoming. The man was, as I mentioned, notoriously tight-lipped, and most of us had learned to live with his amiable silence.

The giant also had a special rapport with birds; he could persuade them to perch on his head and eat grain from his scalp. On occasion, when he wished to entertain children, he could coax birds to pluck sunflower seeds from his nostrils.

There were some in the community who resented the fact that the giant contributed nothing to the local economy. I have no idea how he survived, but he didn’t seem to have anything to do with money, and eventually there was a successful movement to drive the giant from his lair along a river outside of town to make way for new commercial development.

When the giant left his lair for the last time he did so peacefully, and comported himself with the quiet dignity many of us had come to expect from him. He left behind all of his possessions, with the exception of an opulent, handcrafted, and intricately detailed dollhouse that he carried away in his arms.

A large family of musically gifted grasshoppers inhabited this dollhouse. These grasshoppers, it was said, slept in tiny four-poster beds and filled their little mansion each night with the strains of beautiful music.

The giant finally established a new home for himself (and his family of grasshoppers) in a smaller neighboring community. A short time later we began to hear reports that he was healing people and performing miracles, and that, of course, was when the real trouble started for the poor fellow.

It’s a rather discouraging story, really, and I am too tired at the moment to continue with it, but I shall do so at a time in the very near future.