Tintype Trolls

Teresa Milbrodt

M y partner Madigan converted our tiny spare bedroom into a developing lab for their tintype photography. They need a place with small windows they can cover so it’s perfectly dark, and just enough space for folding tables, trays of chemicals, and space to hang negatives while they dry. Tintype photography is lovely and imperfect, prone to streaking, but people come from a two-hundred-mile radius to get their picture taken. For weeks they’ll ponder what they want to wear and the perfect expression for the picture. It takes an afternoon to do one photo, but folks like watching the process and it makes Madigan feel productive during weeks when life is a strain.

On cool nights after Madigan’s customers have left, the trolls come out from under their bridge in the backyard and sit on the porch for a chat. They tend the stream and don’t ask for goats or gold like trolls of old, but prefer macaroni and cheese and having their picture taken. They polish their tusks with a toothbrush for those occasions. Ulyana and Grisha are three feet tall and fastidious about grooming their lime green hair so it falls gracefully away from their gray eyes. Madigan has exhibited photos at the county fair and won ribbons. People want to know where we found such elaborate costumes. They say we could make a mint on those masks. Madigan smiles and says our friends want to remain anonymous.

W e wear goggles, aprons, and gloves in the darkroom since the trays of chemicals Madigan needs for photography are toxic. By the end of the process we’re lightheaded – the pictures come into focus as we lose ours – so we try to get fresh air fast. Ulyana and Grisha often help me make dinner, since they like having something to do besides clean the stream. After a long day at the grocery store, I understand why it’s important to change the routine.

I spend half my time cashiering and the other half in the bakery, grateful that my boss looks the other way when I slip bags of three-day-old cookies, brownies, and muffins into my backpack. They’re bound for the dumpster otherwise, and she knows we’re hard up for cash. Sometimes I split the treasure with Amanda, my co-worker who’s a single mom and lives with her dad who watches her kids after school. He had a heart attack a few years back and is on disability, but between the two of them they manage rent and utilities.

“I shouldn’t take home so many cookies,” she says, “but those boys eat so much. I don’t know where it goes. At least Dad and I have learned how to stretch a dollar on pasta and peanut butter.”

I nod at the ever-present balancing act of a checkbook. Madigan has a part-time job working afternoons and weekends at the garden supply store, but sometimes they take off early when a pressure change brings on a migraine. The store manager’s sister and mother get migraines too, so he’s merciful when Madigan needs to cut their shift. Other employees give them the stink eye, but Madigan’s paycheck gets cut as well. They have a migraine medication, but it’s expensive and not without fine print side effects: brain fog, problems sleeping, heart palpitations.

Ulyana and Grisha get brain fogs sometimes when they’re cleaning the river. They’re not sure when it started, or if it’s due to chemical runoff from the fields, but that’s what Madigan suspects. Doing tintype photography gives both of us a headache, but Madigan says it’s different because it’s pain we can control, pain we choose, worthwhile pain. I wonder if the pain in my arms, legs, and shoulders from working ten hours in a bakery is also worthwhile pain, but usually I don’t think about that too deeply. I just eat another three-day-old cookie.

I hate getting my picture taken, or rather, how I look in photographs. My blind eye often seems to be peering in a different direction than my sighted eye, which looks weird.

“It sees all the aliens, ghosts, and witches in the world, and doesn’t tell the rest of you,” Madigan says. I say if that’s the case, it’s unfair.

I’ve been blind in my right eye since I was a baby, so it’s part of my normal. Having just one sighted eye isn’t a problem, until it’s a big problem, like when I’m taking a hot tray of cookies or muffins out of the oven and pivoting on my heels to slide it onto a cooling rack. I worry I won’t see one of my co-workers carrying a frosted sheet cake, and slam right into them (the stuff of slapstick nightmares). Other times when I’m cashiering I don’t see a customer on my right, and they don’t realize they’re hiding in my empty space. I fear seeming rude, like I’m ignoring them, though that isn’t the case. They’re simply in the world of aliens, ghosts, and witches.

M adigan and I rent a drafty farmhouse from Lloyd, a seventy-five-year-old farmer who’s hell bent on doing all the repairs. He’s fixed cupboards and toilets, replaced our garbage disposal, and done some electrical work. When we have him over for coffee and cookies, his hands relax gratefully around the mug.

I don’t think trolls in the backyard would surprise him.

Madigan has taken Lloyd’s picture, his wife’s picture, and pictures of all five grandkids in exchange for two months’ rent.

“It’s really something how much I look like my great-great-grandpa,” Lloyd says. “I’ve only seen him in old pictures, but this makes him feel closer.”

Many people who get their pictures taken are celebrating something – birthdays, anniversaries, retirements, any occasion that means they want to get their image etched on something more than their tiny phone screen. Not unlike Lloyd, they often remark on how much they resemble long-gone great-aunts and uncles.

“It’s a different piece of me,” says one lady, a first grade teacher who wore her grandma’s lace dress. “She looks harder. Stronger. Sadder. Something about her eyes. But I always get that feeling about old photos when I imagine what those people were like.”

S ince I work at a grocery store I learn a lot about people through the contents of their carts, which tell me too much while I’m scanning barcodes. Tea or coffee? Cookies or crackers? White or whole wheat? Any dairy? Lean meat or ground chuck? Bran flakes or cereal with marshmallows even though they don’t seem to have kids? I read grocery carts like tea leaves, intuiting anxieties, celebrations, pay raises, the results of the last doctor’s appointment.

It’s also a small comfort to have regular customers, ones who stand in my line to ask how my partner is doing and tell me why they’re buying flowers or a cake mix or canned pineapple bits to try a new recipe. I want to remember their names, but usually know them as the lady with the purple glasses or the guy with the comb-over who wears bow ties. I’m always sad when I see their faces in the obituary section of the local paper and read details about their lives I didn’t know, grieving how I won’t ring up a can of sardines for them again.

T here are many things trolls can’t eat because of digestive problems, which we’ve figured out through trial and error: citrus fruits, spicy food, red meat, raw spinach or tomatoes (but they’re okay cooked). Trolls can get the flu – snotty trolls are quite irritable – but Ulyana makes an herbal tea for their symptoms. Still, illnesses worry them.

“We never used to get colds,” Ulyana mutters while she cleans the stream. “And Grisha hated being indoors, but now…” She shakes her head. The bridge used to provide enough shelter since trolls don’t like warm weather, but recently they’ve been shivering so they’ve taken to spending the night in our unheated utility room in the rear of the farmhouse. It’s still a bit chilly, but more protected than under the bridge.

“We’re not finding the same number of roots and mushrooms, and if we have children we’d need to gather more,” Ulyana says. “Grisha talks about moving to the city and how we’d have an easier time finding food, but I don’t want to dig every dinner from a trash can. Some trolls have started little communities, I’ve heard more of them are migrating with the promise of all the pizzas and cheeseburgers they can scavenge, but others came back to our streams.”

I watch the shimmer from her gray-green fingertips, note the smell of rain that wafts from her skin, a magic that makes streams cleaner and fish healthier.

“This takes more out of me than it used to,” she says. “The water is dirtier. Grisha thinks we could manage toxic streams in the city. Not likely, even with younger trolls around.”

The city must be warmer because of the crush of people, buildings, and machines, but there’s a lot more water to clean. There’s also no solid science on how changes in environment and diet affect troll health. No doctors are running around doing interviews and research studies. We’re left to speculate on the connections.

When Madigan takes their photo, Ulyana and Grisha look like the trolls of old, ones with black marble eyes and yellow teeth who kept bridges in good condition and guarded the forest with horned fervor.

M adigan’s boss calls me sounding slightly panicked when my partner faints at work behind the cash register. He suggests that Madigan go to the doctor, take time off, and get support socks to help their blood pressure. It will be a hit to our finances, though it’s a worse blow to Madigan’s pride. They like working at the gardening supply store and know a good bit about plants, birdfeeders, and fertilizers, enough to make intelligent suggestions.

“I want to be useful and can’t do that sitting around here all day,” they say. Before I go to work, I take Madigan to the public library to help people on the computers. My friend Nicole is one of the three librarians, and says older folks need assistance with web browsing, younger ones need help with online job applications, and she’s busy with the circulation desk and doesn’t always have time for them.

“We could give you a volunteer position for now, but it might turn into something more?” she tells Madigan. Her voice is too light, too hopeful, and the library is underfunded. I bring home more three-day-old bread and bruised produce from the sale bin.

Madigan promises their doctor a tintype photo since we don’t have money for the copay. She says that’s fine and it would be a nice anniversary gift for her partner.

U lyana toes shyly after me when I offer to let her borrow some of my scarves and socks. They’re quite colorful with their stripes and polka dots and floral patterns, and I have too many since my mom and grandma must think I’m never warm enough. I tell Ulyana she can use as many as she likes, and I bring one of our sleeping bags for the trolls to bed down in the utility room. I figure everything is okay until Ulyana appears at the back door, wearing a pair of striped socks and two scarves and crying. Grisha left a note saying he was hitching a ride on the trucks that go back and forth from the city, and he’d be back to visit. Gone with no ceremony, just a good-bye like he had to leave before his mind changed.

“Keeping up the stream and bridge has been too much for him and he didn’t want to admit it,” she says. “He has a cousin I’ve never met who says life in the city is easy, and concrete overpasses are simpler to maintain than our rickety little bridge.” She shakes her head. “I never thought he’d leave.”

She sits on the stepstool in front of the washing machine, so I sit on the floor, put my arms around her, and let her cry. That’s when Madigan’s doctor and her partner knock on the front door, here for their photo. Madigan keeps them on the porch since they want the picture taken in front of the farmhouse. The old horse-drawn wagon Lloyd parked there makes our yard look like a calendar photo.

Lying in bed that night I fret to Madigan. How could Grisha hitch a ride to the city so easily? It would be dangerous for trolls to grip the undercarriage of trucks, even with their horns and tough skin, and what if he doesn’t find a good bridge?

Madigan clears their throat and says not to worry, they’re sure Grisha is safe.

“How do you know?” I say. “Grisha has never been to the city, and he expected to find this cousin. He’s more likely to get lost and have who-knows-what happen.”

“I gave him a ride when I went to buy chemicals for plate processing,” Madigan says quietly. “He can’t do his share of stream cleaning anymore, hasn’t been able to for months, and they both know it. Grisha feels beyond useless. He hopes he can help his cousin a bit.”

I’m upset with Madigan but hear the catch in their throat, understanding how someone feels like they need to contribute even if their best beloved says that their company is more than enough. They ache to do more and feel awful when they can’t.

“I’ll check on him when I go to the city,” Madigan says. They make the trip once a month to buy photo supplies and things we use in bulk: oatmeal, flour, sugar. “Grisha’s cousin seemed nice. He’s a big guy and he’s been there for a while. Several members of the family have, I guess. They’ve adapted and they’re fine.”

I exhale a long sigh. None of that helps the sad troll who’s asleep next to our washing machine, swathed in my scarves.

O n afternoons when I don’t work, I sit by the bridge to keep Ulyana company. Cleaning is boring when it’s solitary, she says.

“Here,” she says, holding out her hand. I touch her palm and feel the cool flow of running water, but in solid form. That’s what they do for streams, she says. Make their bodies into filters.

I convince Madigan to bring me along the first time they visit Grisha. I need to make sure he’s okay, then we can figure out whether to tell Ulyana his whereabouts. It isn’t easy to pick my way down the muddy embankment, I guess that’s why trolls have claws, but we only call a couple times before Grisha emerges from the weeds, bleary-eyed but smiling. He gives a shy wave. I don’t know if he’s looking healthier or just better fed, but he says he found a restaurant with good salads.

“They throw out so much lettuce every night,” he says. “Lettuce and carrots and radishes and mushrooms. I don’t worry about Ulyana gathering food for both of us while I sit like a lump. She needs to find another partner who can help her with the stream. Here I share the work with all my cousins, so we’re fine.”

Grisha pauses to take a breath, smiles, then breaks down crying.

“I miss her so much,” he sniffles, while Madigan and I ease down to sit next to him. “My cousin says I can stay as long as I want, and Ulyana is welcome, too, but she’d hate it here. The noise. The work. We can’t clean the water as much as we’d like, but I’d hate to think what the river would be like without us.”

“She misses you and she’s worried,” I say.

“I can’t pull my own weight.” Grisha wipes his eyes with thick green fingers.

“Being there is enough,” I say.

“Being there and feeling guilty,” he says. He didn’t leave because of anything Ulyana said, but from his own shame. Is that love, pride, or selfishness?

“Would it kill you to know I feel the same way much of the time?” Madigan says on our drive home.

“But you haven’t thought about leaving me,” I say. They’re quiet. “You have thought about it?” I say. “You know I wouldn’t want you to do that.”

Madigan sighs and rests their hand on my knee. They’re on my right side so I can’t see them, but I know their smile, mouth half-quirked. “Pride makes people do strange things,” they say. “Other people are much kinder to us than we are to ourselves when we need help.”

D uring the visit, I quietly took a picture of Grisha on my phone. When Ulyana sees it, she gasps.

“He doesn’t look well,” she says. “His horns lost their shine, and his skin is so gray.”

Madigan said they wouldn’t reveal Grisha’s hiding place, but I didn’t make the same promise. The next weekend, a scarf-swathed Ulyana and I go to visit him under the bridge. He looks worse than before, has developed a cough, and his eyes widen when he sees Ulyana.

“Don’t get too close,” he mutters. “I have a cold.”

She tackles him in a hug, then they start talking in a language of trolls that I can’t understand. It’s a lot of gutturals and whispering, but their words are insistent, angry, urgent, hurt. Ulyana makes wide gestures. Grisha curls into himself, doesn’t move when she wraps her hands around his arm and tugs. I’d hoped he’d return with us, since Ulyana practiced her argument on the long drive down.

Grisha remains under the concrete bridge. Ulyana cries all the way home.

M adigan has been coughing after their photo sessions, even with all the protection we wear in the darkroom. They shake their head when I ask if they’d consider taking fewer pictures.

“It’s income,” they say. “And it’s what I love. What’s wrong with suffering for your art?”

“Hospital bills,” I say.

“I’m fine,” says Madigan. “This is the only way I can contribute extra money.”

Hospital bills, I mouth when their back is turned, but I know they want to feel useful and productive, especially since they can’t work at the store. Still, I’m happy when they sit by the stream with Ulyana and chat about fish, the weather, edible plants, sometimes Grisha. Ulyana and Madigan take meandering walks upstream, stopping to rest on the shore, which is how they meet a troll repairing a wooden bridge.

“Not many do that anymore,” Ulyana says that evening, “but turns out she knows one of my cousins. She stopped by this afternoon since I told her our bridge needed replacement boards, and she showed me how to replace the old ones with new.”

“I remembered where Lloyd kept the spare toolbox,” says Madigan.

“It was kind of fun,” says Ulyana, “and that section was near rotted out.”

We have a pile of scrap wood in the garage from Lloyd’s household projects, and a supply of nails in the basement, so Ulyana starts tinkering with her newfound knack for carpentry. She pounds loudly, she pounds softly, and sometimes she seems to pound for the sake of pounding. She fixes our broken cupboards, wonky drawers, and the creaky boards on the porch, then builds a small table for the laundry room where she can put my scarves and socks before she goes to sleep.

O ne of my customers mentions they need more volunteers at the elementary school to listen to kids practice reading. It’s another unpaid job, but I mention it to Madigan at dinner. They greet the idea with a nod and a “Maybe,” but two days later they say they’ll go to school on Thursday and try it out.

“I hated reading in class when I was a kid,” they say. “It was embarrassing.”

When I ask Madigan about the tutoring that evening, they say it was okay.

“The kids had to get over being shy and realize I wasn’t going to yell at them,” Madigan tells me. “I said I had problems sounding things out when I was younger, and they appreciated hearing that. We had corn dogs for lunch.”

I call Lloyd, explain Madigan’s continuing job situation, migraines, and fainting, and that they might tutor at the elementary school for a bit. Lloyd is quiet, but I hear the rustle of his nod over the phone. His grandkids go to the elementary school.

“We’ll see what we can work out for rent,” Lloyd says. “At least for now.”

For now is the best we can do. We may need to move into town, to a smaller place close to my job but without a room for Madigan’s photography. Madigan promised they won’t do tintypes for three months. It’s getting cold, not a good season for pictures. Ulyana is adding to her pile of scarves in the laundry room.

W e get Chinese take-out, a treat, when we visit Grisha in the city. He says he’s fine, holding his own with water cleaning. He looks thicker about the middle, and grayer, and his voice has acquired a rasp it didn’t have before. I blame city air. Later Madigan says they didn’t notice a difference.

“Let Ulyana know I’m okay and I love her,” Grisha says. An invitation to live with him? To visit? We don’t tell him how Ulyana pounds out her sorrow around the house. Her cousin’s friend has visited a few more times, a roving troll without a bridge of her own, but she likes it that way. Ulyana enjoys the company.

“Some days are easier than others,” is all she’ll say. I’m sure she worries over Grisha like she did before, but it has taken on a different flavor. Often she joins us for dinner, especially macaroni and cheese or French toast. Madigan moved the photos of her and Grisha to our bedroom where Ulyana doesn’t wander. They have fewer migraines, but get fainting spells when they stand for too long. The doctor says it’s not Madigan’s heart, but she doesn’t know quite what’s wrong. She says we’ll wait and see and maybe do more tests.

Madigan has started drawing little cartoons for the kids they tutor at school. I didn’t know they had a knack for drawing. They said they didn’t, either. Their students think they should draw comics or illustrate a book. Madigan likes sketching trolls.

T hings don’t work out in most love stories, only those aren’t the ones that get told. It’s sad, I think, because then we assume something is wrong with us if we don’t find a love that comes with the illusion of lasting forever. Just as important are the stories about love that shifts, ebbs, flows, burns and burns out like any candle will do.

Every happily-ever-after should be continued with “and then…,” which would involve more hope and heartbreak and turns in the road. I’ll end with the hard rhythm of a troll pounding nails into my front porch, fixing what’s broken until it breaks again.

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