The moon isn’t made of Green Cheese, not even the moon over Kansas.
—Salman Rushdie
"So, Phil, you found your froggies right here?" Tessie
wriggled her blue-polished toenails down through brown water, testing
the muddy bottom of Darwin’s Pond. A pair of swallows swept above the
tips of the cattails on the far bank and disappeared into the wild plum
bushes along the gravel road. The scoop of Tessie’s red swimsuit
exposed her back to the sun. She waded a mucking step deeper, flexing
the tanned stretches of her legs. "I can’t believe a new kind of
frog just appeared like magic. It’s God’s will."
"Magic doesn’t exist," Phil answered, skirting any direct
argument with a minister’s daughter about God’s will. "A new
species is the product of adaptation."
In this summer when the Kansas State Board of Education was debating
whether evolution should be taught in public schools, the last summer of
the Twentieth Century, the summer after Tessie and Phil graduated from
Pawnee Bend High School, Phil was fighting for the cause of science by
trying to stay rational. This required him to tear his gaze away from
Tessie’s hips as she stooped to give her arms to the water. Compiling
data in his best scientific manner, he remembered her embracing Darwin’s
Pond in the same way at the age of eight, when they couldn’t swim
without the company of adults, and at ten, when they could, and at
twelve, when her shape changed, and she stopped coming here.
Then six years passed, during which he became more of a geek and she
became ever more of a belle, the beauty of the class, the town, the
county, and, in his mind, of the state, the country, the planet, and the
universe. Her body grew as far from his reach as if she were celestial.
Until this morning, while he carried her groceries to her car, when,
unaccountably and against all good sense, he had told her about his
frogs.
She lingered at the water’s edge. "And what were they adapting to
here, your froggies, all by themselves in this little pond?"
"Who knows.?" He warmed to his subject, relieved to be talking about
the secret he’d kept for so many months. "Something we haven’t
figured out yet, maybe. Change happens for the survival of the
species."
Beyond the pond, the pasture sloped upward and folded into low hills,
giving contours to the fast-running shadows of the clouds. Two hawks
circled in the sky with hardly any movement of their wings, riding the
thermal updrafts caused by the sun’s baking of the air. Phil envied
their illusion of weightlessness. For a moment he imagined a world with
less gravity, where anyone could soar toward the frosty white puffs of
cumulus. Quickly he put this unscientific thought away.
"My father," Tessie said, "calls the theory of evolution
a blasphemy against the word of the Lord."
"His opinion won’t make the frogs disappear." He risked a
stare, taking in her summer-browned arms and her challenging smile
before he lowered his eyes. "They evolved, right here, into a new
species." Phil watched a grasshopper cling to a stalk. Arguing with
Tessie cost him a huge effort. He tried not to think of her standing ten
feet away and watched himself instead. His legs looked so skinny,
sticking out of his trunks. A swish of water made him look up in time to
see Tessie put her Lycra backsides to the sun and dive under the scum.
Outside the spreading rings of her ripples, his frogs stared pensively,
rows of bumpy eyes protruding from the water. They put Phil in mind of a
church choir. He counted them silently, one frog, two frog, three frog,
knowing Tessie would stay beneath the surface until he got to sixty.
Cottonwood leaves rustled and showed their silver undersides, making him
wish again for lightness. Fifteen frog, sixteen frog, seventeen frog.
Muggy heat and the lingering smell of cattle in the dirt tempted him
toward the dank pond, to plunge, blind in the murk, scattering frogs,
floating and losing his weight while he groped for Tessie with the tips
of his fingers. An unscientific move, he scolded himself, an act of
desperate ignorance. Forty-eight frog, forty-nine frog, fifty frog.
Tires crunched the gravel of the road behind him. An engine raced once
and lowered to an idle. Phil knew the driver must be Tessie’s
boyfriend, Rance. He closed his eyes for fifty-nine frog and sixty frog,
then watched the pond. As if a summons had penetrated the water, Tessie
surfaced thirty feet out, a moss-covered mermaid, and looked toward the
road. "Rance, honey."
While she toweled, she kept her eyes almost closed, showing Phil her
crescents of wet eyelash. She pulled shorts and a half T over her wet
swimsuit and walked past him barefooted.
"Thanks, Phil, for showing me your froggies."
"Don’t tell anybody."
"Oh, I won’t." Her answer sounded careless to him, as if his
secret wasn’t worth spreading around. Tessie’s hair released tiny
rivers down her neck while her eyes, moist and lively, rose up to Rance
in his gleaming truck. "Our last swim at the old pond."
Phil curled into the tussocky brome grass, trying not to show how Tessie’s
movements tempted him to grab her. "See you tonight Tess," he
called as she ran up the slope. Unsteady on the breeze, a corn-yellow
butterfly fluttered past. Phil concentrated on the creature as a
specimen, an excuse to keep his gaze from lingering after Tessie, and
made himself think of the billions of butterflies who had carried their
genetic code faithfully through billions of years to let this little
creature flit so easily in the sunlight. Nothing miraculous, just
science on the wing. Tessie’s father, Reverend Austin, was wrong about
the nature of creation. Phil believed the spreading and changing of life
across the Earth were as ordinary as love.
A gasoline roar carried Tessie and Rance away. Phil thought of Tessie’s
still-wet legs pressed close to Rance’s dusty jeans and struggled to
stay scientific. The frogs crept back to the edge of the pond, not shy
of him. He surveyed them with the eye of a student biologist. Mostly Rana
pipens, common leopard frogs, and some Rana catesbiana,
bullfrogs with their thick heads resting on the surface of the water,
and a few of the others, the ones he called his special admirers, a
white-spotted tribe who didn’t yet own a Latin name, a species never
before identified until he discovered them here.
Reedy croaking from the leopard frogs provoked a throaty answer from the
bullfrogs. Among them, Phil heard the small chorus of slightly different
voices from the newcomers, croaks ending with a rising note as if they
were asking a question over and over. He leaned toward the water,
followed the sound, made a quick grab, and came up with a kicking frog.
Turning it gently in his hand, he traced his finger across the pattern
of dots that made a half circle around the head and trailed down the
back. No other frogs in creation bore these markings.
If far-off powers confirmed his discovery, he’d be allowed to choose
the scientific name for the new species, and he’d have one shining
item to overcome the C’s and D’s in English and history on his
applications for scholarships. Three or four times a day all summer, he’d
been sneaking away from trimming lettuce or stocking shelves. He’d
head for the back door of Wheatly’s IGA, throw his apron on the
stacked canned goods in the storeroom, and walk between the dry puddle
craters in the alley to the post office. When the glass in the box
showed envelopes slanted inside, he’d twist the lock, whispering the
pointer home to the numbers as if he knew a sorcerer’s incantation,
until the door swung open. He always found the usual junk, and he didn’t
know yet whether the National Science Foundation had recognized the new
species of frog and allowed him the discoverer’s privilege of naming it
forever Rana tessie.People
started filing into the American Legion baseball diamond an hour before
sunset for the Fourth of July fireworks show. Families spread their
blankets on the lawn beyond the outfield fence. Mr. Hampstead, the high
school biology teacher, handed Phil a bunch of balloons tethered on
strings. "Got ‘em, Phil? Don’t let the wind blow you
away."
Phil thought Mr. Hampstead maintained a reasonably cool appearance for a man
of twenty-eight. He had short hair, thin glasses, a tight gut, and a
wrestler’s grip as he pressed Phil’s fingers around the strings. The
balloons, in the red and black of the Pawnee Bend Panthers, were
supposed to be a fund raiser for the science club. People were to buy
them for a dollar and then release them into the twilight while Tessie,
on the pitcher’s mound, sang the Star-Spangled Banner to open the
fireworks display. Mr. Hampstead and Phil had cooked up the balloon idea
one night after school amid the charts and aquariums of the biology lab,
caught in the heady influence of formaldehyde while they dissected a
specimen of the new frog species Phil had discovered at Darwin’s pond.
The dead frog lay belly up, splayed and pinned to a board so they could
make its thigh muscles twitch with jolts from an electrode. Phil held a
dishcloth in his lap, ready to throw it over the experiment if anyone
interrupted them. Evolution was a touchy subject at Pawnee Bend High in
the Spring of 1999. Some students and teachers talked loudly in the hall
about the sanctity of creationism. Mr. Hampstead and Phil had decided to
keep the frogs a secret until they learned whether the National Science
Foundation would confirm the discovery.
"Remember, Phil," Mr. Hampstead instructed as a wire sparked and the frog leg
tried to leap, "nothing is real unless it can be measured and
classified."
"Hello?" Miss Swift, the new English teacher, stopped at the doorway to the lab.
She put her heels together and her shoulders forward. Her pretty nose,
wriggling slightly from the formaldehyde, pointed inquisitively toward
their mess of knives and guts. Phil threw the dishcloth over the frog.
Miss Swift seemed not to notice. "Mr. Hampstead," she asked,
"my car is unwilling to start, and I was wondering if you could . . ."
Phil watched all regard for science drain from Mr. Hampstead’s eyes. For
the rest of the Spring semester, the English teacher and the biology
teacher had been discreet, but the whole school had known they were an
item.
Now the July breeze at the ball field used strands of Miss Swift’s dark
hair to tickle her cheek as she claimed Mr. Hampstead from the helium
canister. Phil thought her shorts were rolled an inch too high for a
woman on the far side of college. Mr. Hampstead tilted the helium back
on its carriage, the effort making his arms bulge, and wheeled it behind
the concession shed. Miss Swift picked up the box of balloons and
strings and followed him. They stayed back there a while. Phil sold a
couple of balloons, business not going too well. Most people passed by
with a smirk as he tried to hold onto the three dozen whapping orbs.
Mr. Hampstead and Miss Swift reappeared, his arm around her waist. Both of
them looked self-conscious, Phil thought, as if they’d just agreed to
go public with their romance. A blast of wind jerked at the balloons.
Phil needed both hands to keep them from flying off.
"Under control, Phil?" Mr. Hampstead asked.
"Sure. You might as well go find a seat."
The lovers wandered toward the stands, unaware of anything but each other.
Phil felt himself on the threshold of their world, the land of adults.
He wondered whether he should start calling them Bryce and Diane.
The stands filled. Cars cruised the dusty parking lot, searching for open
spots. Babies toddled, moms basked in the fading sunlight, and dads shot
fireworks all along the outfield fence. Sandy gusts played with the last
force of the day’s wind and heat. Biology and physics, Phil told
himself, are what makes the world go ‘round.
The tugging of the balloons hurt his shoulders, making him feel scrawnier
than ever. His shirttails came loose, and his jeans twisted off line
from his belly button. He didn’t dare to take one of his hands away
from the balloon strings. His glasses started to slide along his nose,
while a committee of sparrows on a light pole watched him squirm.
"Hey, buddy, don’t blow away." Rance tossed his jibe with a friendly
enough tone, causing the three guys with him to cut off their laughter
and howdy Phil with grins. "Here." With one hand, Rance
gathered the strings and effortlessly controlled all the balloons. He
took his time playing with them, which allowed Phil to tuck in the
flapping shirttail and wipe off the steamy eyeglasses. After Phil was
settled, Rance handed back all the balloons but four, which he shared
with his friends. A year ago, this group had been the high school
aristocracy, the entire backfield of the football team. Now the pumped
muscles shown off by their sleeveless shirts looked purposeless. Nature
was forcing them out of the niche they’d fit themselves into, Phil
understood, and he tried to feel superior.
Rance handed him four dollars. "For the science club?"
"No, I’m supporting my habit."
Rance
laughed and his buddies echoed, but Phil realized he’d insulted the
strongest guy in the class twice in one day, first by asking Tessie to
Darwin’s Pond, now by smart-assing.
Flicking
his wrist, Rance caused the balloon he held to bob. "So this money
is for your mutant froggie-woggies?"
Surprise
brought heat to Phil’s face. His glasses steamed over again as he
blurted out, "They aren’t mutants." As soon as he shut his
mouth he knew he’d done the wrong thing by admitting the frogs
existed. One of Rance’s friends started a ribbit-ribbit chant, and the
others took it up. They made a chorus of frog noise loud enough to turn
the heads of people nearby as they followed Rance to the stands. Their
balloons bounced above their heads.
Phil
wanted to be big enough to run after them and make some sort of threat
to shut them up. But he wasn’t. Worse, Tessie’s betrayal grew in
him, as unavoidable as a sickness. She’d taken his precious secret and
given it to Rance. Frustration made Phil’s hands shake so badly that
at first he didn’t notice the kid tugging at his wrist. The little boy
offered a dollar and asked for a balloon, then Phil saw a line had
formed. Rance and his friends had made the balloons popular. Phil sold
balloons as fast as he could, stuffing his pockets with money and hardly
caring. All he could think about was the rumor of the new frog species
getting around town, and some idiot deciding they were an abomination
and dumping poison in the pond. Finally his hands were empty. All the
balloons were gone, and more children were waiting. Telling them to come
back in a few minutes, he went behind the concession shed to see if he
could work the helium cannister.
When
he attached a balloon as he’d seen Mr. Hampstead do and twisted the
handle of the cannister, all he got was a hiss. The balloon stayed
flaccid. He gave up on the project, stuffed the wads of dollars further
into his pockets, and searched for a lengthening shadow below the
grandstand where he could hide. He knew he’d have to tell Mr.
Hampstead about how he’d spilled their secret, but right now there was
no way to find him. The stands had filled, and the sun was setting. For
the next hour Phil would have nothing to do but listen to Tessie sing
the national anthem, watch the fireworks, and make himself miserable.
Bats
who lived under the awning of the announcer’s booth made sorties into
the evening air. Phil loved them for the way their fat bodies and
leathery wings made them dart in odd swoops like mice who had learned to
fly. They lifted off his anger and frustration, but when they fled to
their hiding place, it all came down harder.
The
clenching of his fists made squeaking noises, and he remembered he still
held unfilled balloons. When he dropped the balloons into the box, the
one Miss Swift had carried on her shapely hip, something stirred.
He
jerked his hand away, but his feet stayed still. What he saw held him
fascinated. Thin white tentacles swayed their tips above the edge of the
box, like the arms of some tiny sea creature. Shadows thickened around
the concession shed as the sun set. Phil blinked, but the tentacles
continued to wave. His hands grazed the rough boards of the shed.
Dancing and elongating, the tentacles stretched toward the darkening
sky. He watched and then watched harder, until he understood they were
the balloon strings, come alive.
And
they were not scientific.
Stepping
back from the shadow of the shed, Phil glanced around to see if anyone
had been watching him lose his mind. In the crowded stands, children in
shorts and sandals crawled through adults who hunched forward, shoulder
to shoulder, as if there were a ball game to watch on the empty diamond.
Further away, reclining forms on blankets lost their faces in the dark.
Someone’s paltry Roman candle shot off, the balls of green and blue
arcing no higher than the hedge of spruce trees along the road. Eyeing
Phil sidelong, a dog trotted past, tail-down and dispirited by the pop
and gunpowder stench of the fireworks. A girl twirled a sparkler, the
light cutting circles across Phil’s vision. Tessie waited in the
dugout on the far side of the field, faintly glowing in her white blouse
and miniskirt. Her father, the substantial Reverend Austin, watched her
from the front row of benches in the stands.
Against
the shed wall, the balloon strings still did their hula. Phil touched a
finger to one. Immediately it dropped into the box and became ordinary.
He touched the others, squatting by the box and watching closely as the
life left each of them in turn, until only one hung in the air. He
noticed he wasn’t afraid of them now, and wondered why. Maybe they
possessed a power to disarm his caution, like a venom for the brain, or
maybe his fear was erased by the numbness of knowing Tessie had betrayed
him.
A
voice blared from the loudspeakers on the foul poles. "Ladies and
gentlemen, please stand while Miss Contessa Austin sings our national
anthem." Tessie walked to the pitcher’s mound. A spotlight hit
her. The balloons Phil had sold earlier were released to escape through
the yellow beam. Phil touched the last dancing string and watched it
collapse like the others, then coiled all of them into his palm and put
them in his pocket. Vaguely he thought of offering this discovery to Mr.
Hampstead, but the lunacy of dancing balloon strings seemed like
something better kept secret.
Recorded
music cranked through the loudspeakers as Tessie caressed the micro-
phone
and hit a solid "Oh! say can you see." Like a backdrop for her
performance, the first deep golden arc of a solid harvest moon edged
slowly above the horizon. Tessie hit the high notes, the rising moon
grew, and the strings in Phil’s pocket began to wriggle. He took them
out, and they stretched toward Tessie. But though the sight and sound of
her filled nearly all his senses, Phil could tell the strings were
trying to reach farther. Their purpose lay beyond her. Growing moonlight
gave shape to the fields outside the town, and the strings coiled and
jerked upward as if they longed to spring from his hand. Phil let his
gaze follow the direction of their energy and made himself do what a
scientist must do first of all, which is to watch and wonder.
"Maybe,"
he whispered to himself, "it’s the moon."
Tessie
finished singing, the spotlight went out, a bomb burst in air, the crowd
ooohed and clapped, and fireworks broke overhead with streaks of gold
and red, overpowering the moonlight. The strings dropped lifelessly into
Phil’s hand. Tessie crossed the dark baseball field and folded into
Rance’s arm. A shower of blue sparks from the exploding sky let Phil
follow the tender dip of Rance’s head as he gave her a kiss on the
cheek. Rance and Tessie walked around a corner of the stands. Minutes
later, Rance’s pickup, with only the parking lights on, drove out of
the parking lot.
On
his walk home, Phil zigzagged the streets in the muggy night. When he
crossed under the yellow pools of insect-filled light from the street
lamps, the strings in his pocket stayed lifeless. Between the lights,
when it seemed they could feel the moon, they squirmed as if they wanted
to escape and tugged at Phil until he was sure they would allow him no
peace. He stood on a corner looking at his bedroom window above Wheatly’s
IGA. A corner of his mind which had never before possessed a voice told
him what he must do, and the rest of him agreed. His decision bore no
relation to science. Mr. Hampstead , this new voice said, had taught the
wrong lesson. The most important realities can never be dissected.
Easing
his father’s grocery van down the alley in neutral until he’d rolled
far enough to start the engine without waking his parents, he drove
through streets that were empty except for a few late-night cruisers,
then took a back route out of town and into the shadowed curves of Lost
Creek Lane.
Tire
marks showed a way off the gravel road and over the hump of the barrow
ditch, into an opening through the trees. Ruts and roots bounced Phil
off the van seat. He wondered what explaining he’d do if he got stuck
and cost his father a tow bill. A last blind turn, and the trail led
onto a wide, sloping ridge. The new-risen moon turned the fields a hazy
purple and glinted on the fenders of lovers’ cars.
In
a shadow where a wide gully crossed the slope, Phil saw Rance’s truck.
An owl hooted in the woods behind the van, and locusts desperate to mate
harped their symphony. Miles away over the hills, his frogs would be
sleeping in Darwin’s Pond. Keeping them safe was his duty, and magic would be his weapon.
Cursing
the flash of the dome light as he opened and shut the door, he left the
van and crept down the hill. He winced in the light of an overwhelming
moon. The strings in his pocket came alive and danced. No heads were
visible in the cab of Rance’s pickup. Phil crawled beneath the
tailgate, barely breathing, and rested his hands on the bumper. From
inside the bed of the pickup, he heard Tessie’s whisper, pleased and
indistinct, answered by a murmur from Rance.
The
strings seemed to untangle themselves as Phil pulled them from his
pocket. As quickly as he could tie them to the bumper they stretched
skyward like earthbound moonbeams. A nighthawk flashed overhead,
wingtips sharp in the silver light. Bodies stirred in the pickup bed.
Phil tied the last of the strings to the bumper. It snaked through his
fingers and stretched beside the others. The five thin white lines
undulated like sinuous ghosts.
He
crawled away, sprinted up the hill, and squirmed through the window of
the van to keep the dome light from coming on. Panting from the run,
with one hand on the wheel and the other on the ignition key, he waited
until Tessie’s scream and Rance’s panicked shout told him they’d
seen the strings. They were still howling, and lights were coming on in
cars parked all over the hillside, as Phil eased the van down the lane
and drove slowly home.Late
the next morning, he sat in a lawn chair on the flat roof outside the
back window of his bedroom, with his feet propped on the vent pipe he
used as a stool. The odor of tar rose around him as the sun made the
rooftop sticky. He held a thick, unopened letter from the National
Science Foundation.
The
fire escape ladder rattled, announcing a visitor. Phil had been
expecting Rance to show up and slap some sense into him. He crouched in
his chair and tightened is grasp on the plastic arms. But the face at
the top of the fire escape was Tessie’s, and her single-minded
concentration, lips tight and eyes focused entirely on Phil, told him
Rance wasn’t below her on the ladder looking up her shorts.
She
minced across the rooftop, her sandals making delicate prints in the
tar. Phil unfolded his spare chair. Her expression became the most
important puzzle of his life, yet he couldn’t untangle it. Neither
quite smiling nor quite frowning, she took the offered seat, those
little shorts of hers riding up. She blinked in the sunlight, and
relaxed her fist to show him the five strings. "Phil, what the hell
are these?"
"Why
would I have the slightest idea?" He saw his lie disappoint her,
and wanted to take back the words.
Tessie
squeezed a hand into a pocket and brought a wad of dollar bills into the
sunlight. "We found this money behind Rance’s pickup."
Phil
accepted his second chance to confess. "Balloon profits. Must’ve
fallen out of my pocket."
He
waited, terrified of the all-too-revealed charms of her body, of the
hidden mysteries of her mind, of his lack of a scientific hold on
things. Her expression made a choice and became a grin. "You could
get shit-kicked, Phil, out on Lost Ridge spooking around."
"I
was mad at you for telling Rance about the frogs."
"He’ll
shut up about them. These strings, or whatever they are, scared him
silly. And I’m sorry I told him."
Phil
handed Tessie the envelope from the National Science Foundation.
"Tell me what it says."
She
rested the slack strings on her knee and slit the envelope with a
fingernail.
"Dear Mr. Wheatly," she read, "we are pleased
to congratulate you on your remarkable discovery. . . ." The rest
washed over Phil like the surf of a warm ocean, unbelievably powerful
words and the splash of her voice. She finished, folded the paper into
the envelope, laid the magic letter high up on her lap, and gave him the
full grace of her eyes. "Phil, you named your frogs after me. Rana
tessie."
The
strings started to wriggle. He lifted them off her knee, conscious of
his fingertips grazing her skin for the first time since a mud fight
they’d had at the age of ten, and tied two knots around the curve of
the vent pipe where it poked out of the roof at their feet. The strings
took life and spiraled up.
Tessie
leaned back in her chair as if she’d seen a snake, then she began to
giggle. "What makes them work?"
"I
don’t know." Phil bent the end of one sting and tied it to her
ankle, and then tied another to his. "Magic, I guess, whatever that
means."
They
laughed together as the lightness ran through them. He felt himself
lifting out of the chair and rising to the end of the string, waving in
the air like a human balloon. Tessie floated beside him, hair flying ,
arms and legs spread as she bobbed on her tether, the letter from the
National Science Foundation fluttering in one hand. The wind blew the
edges of her T-shirt up along her ribs. A pale slice of moon still
sailed in the daytime sky.
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