STUMPYMONSTER

CH 10 · THE LEGEND

BEFORE THE BOATS.

There was Stumpy.

Volume 1 cover — Stumpy Monster.
VOLUME 1 · COVER
FIELD NOTE 001

The Origin

Stumpy is older than the party. The comic tells his side of it — the long version, the one with cypress and cold water and a wake that bends against the current. Read that when you're ready. This page is about how we ended up sharing a bend of the Thornapple with him.

The party started in 2018. We built a weekend around the river — boats, bonfire, fireworks, a potluck longer than the dock — and the first time the wake rolled past without a boat attached to it, we knew we'd set the table for somebody who'd been waiting on us.

We've held Stumpfest every summer since. There was the year we missed — the riverbank was under construction, the cabin was a skeleton, and the Council made the only call we could make. Stumpy was patient about it. He's patient about most things.

We called the thing Stumpy because the first photograph any of us ever caught — blurred, sideways, mostly cypress — showed what looked like a tree stump rising out of the water. The stump moved. The picture, if you stare at it long enough, agrees.

FIELD NOTE 002

The Council Sees Him

The first time the whole Council saw him together was Stumpfest II — a fact none of us have stopped repeating since. We were on the dock at dusk, the fire going, the radio on something country and slow. Somebody was telling the photograph story. Somebody always tells the photograph story.

And then the water did the thing it does. A long wake, against the current, slow enough to be sure of. The whole Council watched it roll the length of the bend and slide under the swim platform. Nobody said anything for almost a minute. The radio finished its song. Somebody said, "Yeah. That." The Boat Captain wrote it down on a napkin we still have.

That napkin is in the boathouse. Filed under EVIDENCE / SOFT.

A page from Volume 1 — Stumpy on the river.
VOLUME 1 · PAGE 05
FIELD NOTE 003

Why He Returns

Some of us think Stumpy comes for the fireworks. Some think he comes because the water gets warm enough, the way an old man picks his afternoon by the porch temperature. The Council's working theory is that he comes because we're here — that the festival isn't for him, exactly, but he likes the noise of it from underneath.

Whatever the reason: every summer since 2018, the wakes come back. We've never had a Stumpfest without one. We missed a year for the construction. He waited. The Council does not believe in coincidence after year three.

So we set the table for him.

Open the Comic Volume 1 →22 PAGES · ILLUSTRATED BY THE COUNCIL · 2024