A Rain of Frogs

The moral of this fable is to never go to bed angry with the ones you love.

It is a common fallacy that light is the fastest thing in the universe. The one thing faster than light is a rumor.

The stories raced down the street even as the car was pulling away. Through the rear passenger window, the diminutive blonde girl could easily be seen. Her eyes looked puffy, as if she’d been crying for a long time, and she stared straight ahead, oblivious or impervious to the stares of those watching the car leave. In the front was a stone-faced man – the girls father. He also stared straight ahead as he accelerated around the corner and off the street.

News had already brought everyone to their front doors. Nobody was going to miss this. The Gunderson had lived on the street since the beginning, when the lawns were still mud and the only trees in the neighborhood were still on the back of a flatbed trailer awaiting planting. Like many of us, the Gunderson girls had practically grown up on the street.

I hopped off my bike beside Jen, who was standing in front of her house watching. The car turned the second corner and vanished from sight. I looked at Jen, and she looked at me. She and Natasha had been friends since kindergarten, and were both about a year younger than I was. The look on her face told me everything I needed to know. Natasha was leaving and not ever coming back.

I looked down the street toward my house. There were clusters of people on the sidewalk, talking in low murmurs. Others hung from their front doors, watching the scene. The rumor had completed its circuit around the street.

Later, after the excitement had faded and Jen had run into her house crying, I returned home, where my mother and my sister were still talking. I caught a few words, here and there as I poured myself a glass of apple juice.

Shameful. Unknown father. So young. Scandal.

I jogged down the stairs to the basement to watch television, and I heard my mother express her relief that I had never associated with the girl. I paused there, on the darkened stairs for a moment. Then I continued on.

Once upon a time there was a great house, the largest and most beautiful in all the land. People from all over would come just to look at it, because it was so wonderful. But the owner had fallen upon hard times, and the house had fallen into disrepair. Eventually, the owner reluctantly sold the house.

The new owner insisted the magnificent house be brought back to its former glory. He hired carpenters to rebuild the porch, brought in skilled glaziers to fix the broken windows, and a family of painters, all brothers and sisters, to repaint the entire house, inside and out.

The carpenters, a father and son, worked tirelessly, soon finishing the porch.

The glaziers showed their excellence, and soon all the windows were again sparkling sheets of glass.

The painters painted. And painted. And painted. They painted the porch. They painted the window frames. They painted the rooms inside. Soon there was only the dining room left to paint, but the painters were tired. The smallest brother was eventually chosen to paint the floor of the massive space.

Under the watchful eyes of his family, he began to paint. He painted. And painted. And painted. His work was without peer, the surface as smooth and perfect as a still pond. But the room was large.

He painted. And painted. And painted, until at last the floor was done.

Proud of his workmanship, he looked up to his siblings for approval. But he found them laughing instead.

“Poor little brother,” they cried across the vast empty room. “You have painted yourself into a corner!”

And they laughed and laughed.

And his heart sank as he saw they were right. He would have to destroy the perfect floor in order to leave.

“Why wouldn’t you tell me so earlier, brothers? Why wouldn’t you save me when you saw my mistake, sisters?” he called to them. Tears welled in his eyes.

And they saw him crying, and their hearts went out to him. “Poor brother, we didn’t mean for you to be upset. Had we known you would be upset, we would never have let you continue. It was just so funny to watch you go. Now that we know, we will never let you make such a mistake again. We will do better now. Everything will be fine now.” they called to him.

But the boy sat on his small triangle of unpainted floor, far from those who loved him, and cried and wondered how those that loved him so much could let all his hard work go to waste.

It had been the hottest June ever, and this week had been even hotter than that. A stifling mass of humid air hanging over the region, defying movement and locking out the wind. Pollution from Detroit, Chicago and Toronto had turned the once blue sky into a brown color that was almost green.

We sat in our sweltering classes, trying to concentrate. Even Sister Corvi was losing her focus in the heat. It was too hot to laugh, or cry, or even move. Everything stood still, waiting.

We knew it was coming. We stood outside at recess in the shadows of the school and the trees, trying to escape the heat; but there was no reprieve. In the west, we could see the line of clouds – storms building like armies on the horizon.

I watched Jay, crazy with the heat, terrorize the playground. His eyes were strange – not on fire, but almost blank, as if there were nothing left holding him back. I saw him kick a little girl in the back, sending her sprawling to the ground. Blood dripped from her nose.

And like the building weather, I felt something build inside me, a cold wave pushing through the heat. I saw myself from the outside, saw myself get up, and saw that same blank look in my eyes. I watched myself stride across the dusty playground towards the girl and her tormentor.

I heard myself call his name, and I saw him turn around. We stared at each other, our blank gazes locked. In our eyes there was a clear understanding. An understanding that this was the last stand, that one or both of us wouldn’t walk away. That it would end, one way or another.

With an enviable sense of timing, the storm broke. The darkening sky flashed with electricity, thunder pealed across the playground and drops of rain the size of tennis balls pattered across the pavement. In seconds the stifling heat was swept away by the tempest, and still Jay and I stared at each other.

The rain gave way to hail that fell out of a sky as dark as night. White ice skittered across the playground, empty now except for Jay and I. Even through the sting of ice pellets, we stayed and looked at each other. From the corner of my eye, I could see teachers with panicked faces running out to stop the confrontation before it began in earnest.

And then, against all reason, frogs fell from the sky. Hundreds – thousands of frogs, replacing the hiss of hail with a chorus of sickly wet thuds. Whatever dark magic had held us to each other in the storm evaporated, and Jay and I found ourselves smaller, less lost.

And then suddenly Jay was gone, and I was left standing alone in a rain of frogs.

From how many sides
Can a man be hit
Till he slumps to the ground
And quietly sits
And finds himself with nothing
But love and darkness?