The Deposition of Harald Throckmorton, Esquire, the Troll Beneath the Bridge

The Deposition of Harald Throckmorton, Esquire, the Troll beneath the Bridge

by Clint Johnson

 

Clint Johnson is an Instructor of English at Weber State University with an MFA in Fiction. His work includes published long and short fiction, open educational resources and videos, and six years of sports journalism for ESPN’s TrueHoop Utah Jazz affiliate, Salt City Hoops. He has extensive experience teaching writing and language arts to students of all ages and is the founder of the Art is Education Initiative, which seeks to get digital art of all kinds into classrooms for free.

For more information on his work or the Art is Education Initiative, or to contact Clint, see his website (clintjohnsonwrites.com) or contact his Weber State University email, which is found in the university directory.

 

IN THE NORWAY FYLKE COURT

FOR THE FYLKE OF OPPLAND

Case No. 03-BG-029

HARALD THROCKMORTON, ESQUIRE

Plaintiff,

vs. 

BIG BILLY GOAT GRUFF, ET AL.,

Defendants.

____________________________/

Pursuant to Notice, the deposition of HARALD THROCKMORTON, ESQ. was taken on Wednesday, February 15^th, commencing at 1:57 p.m., at the offices of Gringle, Crinkle, Pinkle, and Stout, 1 Main Street, Suite A, GjØvik, Norway, before Fitzwilliam B. Stout, Notary Public.

IT IS HEREBY STIPULATED AND AGREED that the reading and signing of this deposition are not waived.

HARALD THROCKMORTON, ESQ.

duly been sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, testifies as follows:

E X A M I N A T I O N

BY MR. STOUT:

Q. What is your name and address, please?

A. Harold Throckmorton, Esquire. I live at

Ye Olde Bridge #7, Underbridge.

Q. Underbridge? Is that a unit name or number?

A. Yes.

Q. Or perhaps do you mean you live under the bridge?

A. Under the bridge is my residential unit.

Q. So you say you live under the bridge.

A. Yes. That’s right. My address is Ye Olde Bridge #7, Underbridge.

Q. Mr. Throckmorton, may I suggest that residing beneath a bridge qualifies more as homelessness than a residence.

A. Certainly not! My family has lived at #7 Underbridge for generations. I get mail from the postal service.

Q. Let’s move on from this transient issue for the moment.

A. Transient!

Q. Mr. Throckmorton, have you ever given a legal deposition previously?

A. I. . . But you. . . No, I haven’t.

Q. Then perhaps you do not understand that I am an impartial notary trained in asking questions to stimulate your memory and discover the facts surrounding this incident. If you cannot respond calmly and honestly to my questions, it would be best if we stop right now. Would you like to proceed?

A. . . .

Q. Mr. Throckmorton?

A. Yes, please go on.

Q. Very good. Putting aside residential status for the moment, we will proceed to the day and incident in question. Shall we?

A. About time.

Q. Do you remember the day of January 22^nd of this year?

A. I remember, all right.

Q. And you understand that everything you say here is under oath? That it is being recorded and will be used in court to determine the validity of your accusation?

A. Yes.

Q. Very good. So, Mr. Throckmorton, at what time did the incident occur?

A. At around 9:30 or 9:40 in the morning. I remember because it was an unusual hour for traffic and I checked my watch.

Q. Watch? You own a watch?

A. Of course.

Q. A troll with a watch?

A. How else would I know what time it is?

Q. I don’t see you wearing a watch now.

A. I lost it in the river.

Q. So you do not, as a matter of fact, own a watch.

A. I did own one. Before that hairy thug assaulted and nearly drowned me in the river.

Q. Please restrain your wild accusations, Mr. Throckmorton. We will get to your version of events soon enough.

A. My version-

Q. So, to be clear, it was 9:30 or 9:40 in the morning of January 22^nd when the incident occurred, and you know this because you looked at a watch that you do not in fact own. A watch that is, apparently, metaphysical.

A. Wait, I never said that!

Q. Was it 9:30 or 9:40, Mr. Throckmorton?

A. I don’t know. It was somewhere around there.

Q. Wait, so you’re saying that it was not 9:30 or 9:40 in the morning but sometime similar to these specifics? Are you saying that it might have been at, say, 9:34 in the morning?

A. I guess so.

Q. What about 9:39?

A. Yeah, maybe.

Q. So the time of the incident is, at best, questionable. Was the sun up?

A. Of course the sun was up! It was nearly ten in the morning!

Q. We try not to rely on such suspect information in legal proceedings. But you swear you recall the sun being up, under oath?

A. Yes!

Q. Fine, then, during the daytime, with the dubious possibility of sometime in the morning. Please describe what happened.

A. Is this the way this is supposed to work? I’m the victim here, you know.

Q. So you have nothing to say about what happened that day?

A. I was under the bridge checking the mooring brackets for the bracing, as I do every day. That day I found a number loose and so I decided to refasten and tighten all the bolting.

Q. So you were loitering beneath the bridge, go on.

A. Loitering, no. No! It’s my job. I maintain the bridge, just as my family has for centuries. Ever since my grandfather built the thing.

Q. A troll built a bridge?

A. The crown honored him for it. Where did you think we got the honorific of Esquire in my family?

Q. I assumed from some unfortunate who was eaten.

A. What!

Q. All of this is supposition. You were beneath the bridge when. . .?

A. Is there maybe someone else I could have do this?

Q. Did you find any other notary service certified to work in this filke? I mean, did you do a thorough search?

A. Yes. I looked at both buildings in the village. The other is a bakery.

Q. Then perhaps we should proceed?

A. Fine. I was beneath the bridge DOING MY JOB when I heard footsteps on the bridge above me. Now, I’d roped off the bridge like I always do when I work on the supportive bracing. Any loose or missing bolts compromise the load bearing capacity.

Q. I’d ask that you only use words you know the meanings to.

A. Yeah, I’ll keep that in mind. Anyway, so I climbed up to the bridge to warn whoever was on there to get off until I could verify that the supports were safe.

Q. And on the bridge you found?

A. That little goblin of a goat, that’s who.

Q. You might reconsider using such demeaning language, as this will be read in open court.

A. Fine. I found the fattest young goat I’ve ever seen.

Q. I warned you about demeaning language.

A. I’m not being demeaning. Have you ever seen a goat so fat he has no knees? There’s no other way to say it. This little goat was a chunker. No wonder he made such a ruckus crossing the bridge.

Q. So then what did you do?

A. I warned the goat to get off the bridge until it was safe. I promised it would only be about an hour and that he could cross then. The jerk then bleated at me and pranced further onto the bridge. Well, at that point I could feel the bridge shivering, so I stopped the little porker.

Q. And this is when you threatened to eat him?

A. I never threatened to eat him! I told him the bridge was undergoing repair and wasn’t stable, and asked him to go back.

Q. Did you. So then what happened?

A. The smart-aleck told me he was already halfway across the bridge and so he may as well pass to the other side.

Q. Makes sense.

A. There’s a principle at play here, you know. But I decided it wasn’t worth arguing so I told him to walk carefully to the other side.

Q. Did he say why he decided to cross the bridge?

A. Yeah, to get morbidly obese.

Q. He said that?

A. He said, “To eat the grass and get fat.” But if he ate any more grass, that would be one obese little goat.

Q. Just tell me what happened next.

A. Well, next came his punk teen brother. And I do mean punk: pink died beard, at least twelve dozen piercings in those long ears, splintered horn tips. The works. He was pretty tubby too.

Q. Please focus on what happened.

A. I told you, same story. He looked at the roped off bridge and ducked under the barrier and walked right on. He didn’t even care that I was watching him!

Q. So this is when you threatened to eat the goat?

A. No! I never threatened to eat anyone! I just stepped in front of him and told him he had to go back until the bridge was repaired and stable.

Q. How did he respond?

A. The little virus on the grassy bank yelled, “Hey Bro, just run to the middle. Then the dumb troll has to let you over!” So Pinkbeard did, he skipped right and left and scampered around me on those goat hooves.

Q. Pretty agile for a goat as fat as you say.

A. Trolls aren’t made for speed. We’re evolved from rocks, you know.

Q. And his reason for crossing the bridge?

A. Same. When he got passed me he laughed and bleated he could now get nice and fat. These goats have majorly distorted body image issues, I’m telling you.

Q. Just go on.

A. No, this is important. Have you seen their side of the bridge? It’s like a plague of locusts hit that place.

Q. I’m stopping the recorder.

A. Okay, I’m sorry.

Q. Just tell me about Big Billy Goat Gruff.

A. Oh, so that’s their name. Gruff. Humph, fitting. But big? No. . . no way. Big doesn’t begin to describe him. This wasn’t a goat. It was a bear with horns.

Q. We’ve talked about disparaging remarks.

A. You told me to tell you what’s important, and that’s what I’m doing. This goat was gigantic. He had to have some frost giant blood in him. I’m pretty sure that I saw a story on him in the Oppland Whisper. He’s some kind of professional athlete, a sumo wrestler I think. He was caught using GGH.

Q. GGH?

A. Goat growth hormone.

Q. I think this has gone on long enough.

A. But you haven’t even asked me what the mastodon did! I told him before he was on the bridge that he had to wait to cross. I explained why and promised I’d make repairs as fast as I could. And do you know what he did?

Q. I’m afraid you’ve lost your objectivity.

A. Objectivity? That monster butted me in the stomach, hooked his horns around my arms when I doubled over, and hurled me over the side of the bridge onto the river!

Q. Don’t you mean into the river?

A. It was in January in Norway! Hitting that ice felt like falling off a building onto concrete. I could have been killed!

Q. Didn’t you say you lost your watch in the river? That you nearly drowned?

A. That came after. Apparently when my head cratered into the ice like a meteor it cracked enough for me to break through when I tried to stand up after regaining consciousness. Have you ever tried to escape a rushing river covered in ice with a major concussion?

Q. Mr. Throckmorton, this all sounds very dire. It also sounds drastically different from all other reports of the proceedings that day – including the impartial reporting of major news outlets.

A. That’s a conspiracy! There was that reporter from the Whisper on the other side of the bridge doing a story on the Grassy Mountain. Did you know it’s a national park? It’s protected? That is, until the biblical plague that is the Gruff family finished with it! Then they told the reporter all that garbage about me threatening to eat them and those clever lines about, “Oh, please let me go, I’m so scrawny. Wait for my brother. He’s MUCH bigger.” Makes me sound like a glutton. Did you know I’ve got high blood pressure? I’d have gone into cardiac arrest if I’d eaten even the smallest of those tubs of cholesterol!

Q. Mr. Throckmorton, do you know what I’m hearing?

A. I don’t think you’re hearing anything!

Q. I’m hearing that a troll contracted to keep the bridge safe allowed it to fall into a criminal state of disrepair. Then, when three innocent starving goats tried to cross to find nourishment on the far side, this troll barred their way, extorting them by demanding they sacrifice a brother to the troll’s vicious appetite. The clever smaller brothers appealed to the troll’s greed and gluttony, tricking the troll into assaulting the Big Billy Goat Gruff, who valiantly defended himself by tossing the troll off the bridge. It is a happy story.

A. That isn’t what happened at all! Not a single part of that is right!

Q. The only guilty person in this incident is guilty of criminal negligence, assault and battery, defamation of character, and attempted ingestion of Norwegian citizens!

A. Goats can’t vote! They serve goat in restaurants!

Q. Mr. Throckmorton, it is pitifully obvious who the only guilty party in this story is: homo grotesqus.

A. That nomenclature is both prejudiced and misleading.

Q. The villain in this story, and every story in which one appears, is the troll!

A. I don’t appreciate the way you say “troll,” just as I don’t appreciate anything that’s happened here! It isn’t a criminal word, not like murderer or thief. It’s a species. Like hummingbird. Have you ever heard of someone accused of being a hummingbird?

Q. Get out!

A. Now wait. . .

Q. Here, I’ll open the door for you. Get moving before I have it smack your backside on the way out.

A. You’ve been planning this all along.

Q. You’ll be lucky if the defense simply accepts this transcript as grounds for dismissal of the case. I think I’ll recommend a counter suit!

A. I knew I shouldn’t trust a notary in the same office as those goats’ attorney. You’ve been against me from the very beginning.

Q. Everyone is against the troll! The only happy story is a story when the troll loses!

A. . . .

Q. What are you doing?

A. . . .

Q. I said leave, not shut the door.

A. . . .

Q. You wouldn’t.

A. I wouldn’t what?

Q. You said you never threatened to eat anyone!

A. That’s true. I have never eaten anyone, or even threatened to do so. The Gruffs made that up – but it doesn’t mean I can’t. I’m a troll, remember.

Q. Let’s talk about this.

A. Homo grotesqus.

Q. This is being recorded!

A. And every story needs a dramatic ending. How else can a story with a troll end?

Q. A troll is like a hummingbird, remember?

A. A troll isn’t exactly like a hummingbird. I’ll show you.

Q. . . . .

(The deposition concluded at 2:34 p.m.)