1999 Charles River Review: When They Were Calling You in for Dinner

"I got his nose with the pliers," he said, pointing to the dog. He was explaining how he trained it to hunt ducks.

"I brought the duck up to give him the scent, and then I gave him the pliers," he said. He made a fist in front of the dog's mouth, then turned his wrist.

The dog's nose was black and shiny. It looked soft.

My family was on the Cape for vacation. The day before we'd driven down in the car and gotten in late at night. The ride was long, and Mom and Dad were quiet in the car. Dad locked the keys in the trunk when he was unpacking.

The boy with the dog lived in one of the huts where the lights came on when Dad started yelling. His hut had a porch just like ours, but his was filled with old refrigerators and a couch that didn't have any cushions.

"Have you seen the creek yet?" he said.

I nodded. That morning I'd watched from our porch as he waded in up to his knees.

"Come on." He led me behind the houses to where water flowed between two banks of mud. There was a bridge. He leaned over the rail and spat.

"See those frogs? You ever see any frogs that size?"

I shook my head. They were bigger than anything I had back home. Sometimes I found toads and long worms in our backyard, but they were always smaller than my hand--these frogs were as meaty as my arm.

Later, after the boy's mother had called him inside, I came back with a butterfly net. I crouched by the side of the water, my toes sinking into the mud, and dropped the net around one of the frogs. He tried to jump away, but then he was in the net, and I had him.

I held him up to my eye-level and I could see his toes poking through the holes in the net. His eyes were draped with clear lids that fell and then rose back up slowly.

There was a bucket behind our house that I put him in, and then he jumped out. He lay on his back, stunned, in the grass. His underbelly was whiter and smoother than the inside of my arm, but it kind of looked like the part just below my elbow. I set the bucket down over him and put a rock on top to hold it down.

I could hear the frog inside, jumping against the sides of the bucket.

I walked toward the beach.

The waves were coming up the sand and then rolling back down in rivers, leaving a line of foam below the seaweed. I waded in up to my ankles and felt the water rush around me and the sand build up around my feet. I liked having my feet buried, and the water was cold, and I liked that. I liked our summer vacation because I didn't have to go to school, or to the day camp, and I could be with my mom.

Soon the tide was coming in and the sun had gone over to the other side of the houses. Since my parents still hadn't come down to go swimming, I started back up to find them.

My dad was yelling when I came in, but when he saw me he stopped.

"Where have you been?" Mom said.

"I was at the beach. I've been waiting for you guys to come down and go swimming. You said you were going to--"

"No. No. You can't have it," my dad said. He was shaking his head.

Mom had both hands on the counter. She was leaning over, looking down. It seemed like I was supposed to be quiet.

I could hear my mom breathing, and then she stood up. She looked at my dad, then started over to where I was. "What were you saying, Adam?" she asked.

"You said we could all go swimming," I said. "I was waiting. I was playing in a creek and--"

"Tell him we'll come down. Tell him we'll be there in a minute, Alice."

I looked at my Dad. He had the toaster on the table, and he was opening it up from the bottom with a screwdriver. It wasn't even ours.

"I caught a really big frog, Dad. You won't believe the size of the frogs in--"

Mom bent down and started tucking in my shirt. "Go back down to the beach now, Adam, and we'll be down in a little while." She turned me around to face the living room. I could see the beach and the water through the windows.

There were tiles on the floor in the kitchen--green and black ones--and the floor in the living room was wood. There were slats going sideways, and the paint was starting to peel away. I was careful not to get any splinters.

Mom started talking when I got to the door. I stopped.

Dad said, "Don't start that shit again! I told you we can't afford for you to keep it!"

I went back down to the beach. The sun was starting to disappear and the wind had gotten too cold to go swimming. The water looked darker. I walked up toward the other houses, taking the bucket with the frog. He looked tired, like he didn't want to jump out any more, but his neck was still moving so I knew he was alive.

The lights were on in the other boy's cabin, and his mother was leaning against the doorframe, smoking a cigarette. She looked at me. Their dog was barking. It was chained up and the chain was taut, and he was leaning his weight against it. His front paws were off the ground. I looked back at the boy's mother. She rubbed her cigarette out in an old coffee can and went inside.

I walked away from the dog and ended up at the creek, out on the bridge. I leaned out over the rail and dumped the frog back into the water. He wobbled a little but then he kicked and went under. He was gone. It was getting dark out, but I could still see the frogs. Some of them were floating with only their eyes sticking up, and some of them sat in the mud along the edges. I went back to the bank and found a rock. It was big, but not too heavy, and I carried it back to the bridge and balanced it on the rail.

There was a frog floating below me in the water: he was bigger than both my feet put together, and I could see his big bubble-eyes blinking slowly and his legs spread out behind him in the water. The rock was flat and wide. I held it up over the rail, and then over the water where the frog was, and then I dropped it. It made a plonk when it fell and then there was a splash that came up from the bottom. After that the water was cloudy and I couldn't see anything. Then I saw the white. I saw the color first and I couldn't tell what it was, but then it came up and it was the frog, his pale underbody, and he was floating upside-down on the surface.

I looked at the dark water and the frog and I thought maybe the rock had just stunned him, that pretty soon he would turn over and swim away, but he didn't. He was just floating. Then I went back and found a bigger rock, and I brought it to the rail. I dropped that one onto the mud along the side of the creek where a frog was. It had been up on its haunches, but it hadn't jumped anywhere, and now there was just a rock sunk into the mud. I got some more rocks and I did what I could with them, but then it was too dark to really see the frogs any more, and I had to stop. I could hear the dog barking.

After a while, I could hear the other mothers calling their kids in for dinner, and I could see it was getting late, but I stayed where I was. I stayed there standing in the middle of that bridge until the creek was only water reflecting the moon; I could still see white shapes on the surface.