Once there was an awful pie-faced little girl, with a nose like a thread-spool, tiny appleseed eyes, a mouth as wide as a ditch and a great lolling tongue as thick as an elk’s. Her name was Little Trenchmouth, or at least, such would have been her name had anyone ever thought to give her one, but at her birth her father had taken one look at her and enlisted in the Foreign Legion, and at the sight of her new babe, her mother had wept until she died of dehydration. As she grew, the child became such a dreadful, unpleasant-looking thing that most people only called her “Hey there,” when they thought to call her anything at all. “Hey there!” they would say, “Come here!” Or with far greater frequency: “Hey there! Go away.”
All the other children made great sport of her because of her horrid flat face and great gaping mouth. “Hey there!” they would call out, “hey — no, no. Stay where you are. Yes, that’s better. But hey you over there! What an awful little pie-faced girl you are!”
And so she was a sad and friendless little trenchmouthed creature, sleeping in doorways and nibbling on stale crusts the baker would throw her out of pity for her wretched state. “Hey there,” the Baker would say, “Here are some stumps of yesterday’s bread for you to — no, no! Keep your distance. Yes, that’s fine. I’ll just toss them to you from here.”
All Little Trenchmouth desired in all the world was to be cared for and loved, even if only for a moment, but sadly, her mouth was so very like a trench that it was not to be.
One day, as Little Trenchmouth sat dozing in the warm sunshine in the town square, she heard someone cry out in alarm, and when she opened her eyes, what should she see but a great dark plume of smoke rising from the church steeple. A careless scrubwoman had overturned a candlestick inside the church, and now the whole of the little structure was smoldering like dry tinder.
All at once the whole town came running, carrying buckets and pans and cups full of water, in hopes of dousing the fire before it could spread to the rest of the town. Man and boy they toiled, passing basin and pail hand over hand from the well to the church, but the fire raged on despite their labor.
Then all at once, who should come racing toward the church, her head tipped back and her vast cistern of a mouth brimming with well water? It was Little Trenchmouth, who despite her ill-treatment by the villagers had come to help to quench the terrible flames!
“Hey there!” cried the man closest to the church. “That’s the girl, come along — No! No, no! That’s close enough — Ah! Well. There’s nothing to be done for it, I suppose.”
And he picked up Little Trenchmouth by the waist and dashed her headlong toward the church, sending forth an astonishing quantity of water onto the flames.
When he set her down again, Little Trenchmouth ran back to the well as fast as her feet could carry her, to fill her remarkable trough of a mouth again and again, until at last the fire was extinguished, and the people of the town stood awkwardly regarding her hideously beaming face.
“Hey there,” they said. “Hey there! That was … quite something. Much obliged."
And after a moment they went about their business, leaving Little Trenchmouth to bask in the glow of her mighty deed.
The next day, Little Trenchmouth woke with a feeling she had never known before: a sense of accomplishment and hope. At last, she had found her place in the world. Unfortunately, nothing else caught fire that day, nor indeed the next day or the day after that. And so, on the night of the third day, while her neighbors slumbered unaware, she found some paraffin and a box of matches and set light to the schoolhouse.
Gaily she trotted off to the well and filled her gaping maw to the brim. As the sleepy townspeople gathered in bewilderment around the suddenly and inexplicably burning schoolhouse, she presented herself, her great full mouth slopping over onto the paving stones, to the man nearest the fire.
“Oh! Um — it’s you,” he said, in great confusion. “Well. I suppose we’d better …”
The man lifted her by the waist and hurled her streaming mouth at the flames, then set her down again. Once more she skipped merrily off toward the well, and soon enough the fire was subdued. A little faltering cheer went up from the crowd, and as her new friends stumbled home in relief and mild suspicion, Little Trenchmouth breathed a happy sigh of belonging.
Still, it was a small town and there weren’t that many public buildings in it, so in the ordinary course of events, large conflagrations were a comparatively rare occurrence. Little Trenchmouth waited as patiently as she could, but when a week passed and nothing else caught fire of its own accord, she hied herself to the Chandler’s shop.
Standing on tiptoe, Little Trenchmouth brandished a silver penny in one hand, while pointing eagerly with the other at the shelf that held the kerosene.
“All right you,” said the Chandler. “I’m on to you. Stay there while I send for the constable.”
And so Little Trenchmouth was run out of town with an angry mob at her back, and from that day forward she never stayed in any one town for long, but everywhere she went, she left behind the thrilling tale of a sudden, unexpected fire, and of the hideous little pan-faced girl who saved the day.
For in this life, every one of us has a special talent. It only takes finding it out, and putting it to good use.
The end.
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