Andy Henion was born the day before man landed on the moon and has felt a bit flighty since. He lives somewhere cold and flat with some people and an animal. His fiction, online and print, has appeared in Word Riot, Spork, Ink Pot, Pindeldyboz, Hobart, Storyglossia, Thieves Jargon, Diddledog and numerous other publications.
Season of the Frog (January 20, 2012. Issue 34.)
Midway through his weekly mow, Stan, my neighbor, lies on his side facing the hole in his riding mower that discharges grass. Stan's knees are pulled up near his chest and his shoulders are hunched as if he is suffering pain, or grief. He is perfectly still. On his hip appears to be a toad.
I am one to respect people's privacy but this has gone on too long. I kill the weed trimmer and make my way over, careful where I step. It has been a wet, steamy summer, and even now, in late September, it is ninety-some degrees and humid enough to soak my shirt through. This is the way a jungle must feel, I imagine, critters and all. On the television news last night an expert on anuran amphibians explained that frogs now outnumber town residents three hundred to one. I keep a wire brush on the porch to clean my soles.
The toad is not on Stan's hip after all but just beyond, an optical illusion perhaps caused by the heat. The toad is round as a pie plate. On its back sits a tree frog, a fraction of the size but much more colorful, bright lime and yellow to the toad's mottled brown. They're both facing Stan as if interested by his behavior. Others move around them.
"Stan," I say. After a few moments of silence he sighs and, with his voice echoing into the blade compartment, says, "What are we doing, Charlie?"
I say, "Yard maintenance?" and notice another of my neighbors, Mike, crossing his yard.
He's wearing a greasy gimme cap and carrying a can of domestic beer in an insulated holder adorned with race cars. Behind him the neighborhood grows: six or eight boxy plywood skeletons in various forms of completeness. The subdivision is planned for three phases, eighty ranch homes total. Fifteen months ago it was an apple orchard.
Stan says, "Look at them, Charlie. Jesus Christ, look at them."
I crouch down and squint into the blade compartment. It's dark, so I move closer, until I'm basically on top of Stan. I see red splattered on green, goo on the blade.
"We've got to do something," says Stan.
I stand and notice another neighbor making his way over. This would be Chad, dressed in a brown and white Hawaiian shirt, khaki shorts and designer flip-flops. He is pointing at us and smiling, as if he has some exciting news to relay. Chad wears tinted spectacles, drinks wine and says ground beef instead of hamburger.
"Like what?" I ask Stan. He has yet to move.
"Like save them, for Christ's sake."
"Well," I say. "Here comes Chad."
"So what."
"Mike too."
"Fuck him. Redneck."
This is not like Stan. He's an accountant, a township treasurer, an easygoing fellow with two easygoing kids. I've known Stan long enough to know he played some Division II basketball and married his college girlfriend, a cheerleader. I know he is six foot three and a half with size fourteen feet. I know he enjoys true crime books and eats fig cookies because of his digestive issues.
Mike approaches and says, "Y'all havin' trouble?" Mike is not from the South, he just likes to say words like y'all and dadgum and sumbitch. Earlier this summer he had an Indy 500 party and we all got drunk on skunky keg beer and yelled "yee-haw!" to Mike's country music. He got excited and said he would hold a Daytona 500 party as well.
Stan continues to stare into his blade compartment. Mike looks at me quizzically. At this point Chad arrives in his Hawaiian shirt and says something about having his big-screen ready for the football game. He also mentions something about beer and brats and drinking one for the Gipper. Chad uses modified clichés frequently.
"Dadgum good deal," says Mike, smirking. "Is Donna gonna dance at halftime?" Mike and Chad have this going where they make sexual jokes about each other's wives. Mike really gets into it, although Chad, when it's his turn, goes about it halfheartedly based on the heft and disposition of Mike's spouse.
Before Chad can reply, the toad hops toward Mike's boot and he kicks it through the air. "It's good!" he yells, and holds his arms up like a referee. Stan jumps up and shouts, "Goddammit!" He glares down at Mike for a moment but then looks away, and Mike, clearly surprised by the action of his much taller but easygoing neighbor, says, "What, man? What is it?" Stan stares off into the distance and shakes his head, and Chad, recognizing the tension, says something about heading in to eat some pigskin.
"Sounds good," says Mike, trying to make nice. "Y'all comin'?"
Stan is making his way for the toad, oblivious to his redneck neighbor. "We'll meet up," I say, and follow after him. The toad is on its back against the chain-link fence, kicking two of its legs sluggishly. The other two legs don't seem to be working. The toad is misshapen, torn, and Stan says, "Goddamn him that I have to do this," and raises his shoe and brings it down.
Then Stan sits down on his lawn and wraps his arms around his knees. I join him, noticing a line of tree frogs on the fence above us. Some of their little necks are craned down as if they are staring at the mutilated corpse of their larger cousin.
Stan says, "I'm not going to his goddamn football party. Remember what happened last time?"
I tell him I do. Last time, Mike and Chad got hammered and told the sexual wife jokes until it got out of hand and Chad threw a handful of hot cheese on Mike's neck and Mike tried to put a wrestling move on Chad but wrenched his back and had to lay on Chad's basement floor until the next morning.
We sit and watch the frogs inch toward us like a miniature, peaceful army. After a long while Stan lies on his back and spreads his arms and legs like he's frozen in a jumping jack. He says, "What do we really know about each other, Charlie? I mean, you live right next door but what do you really know about me?"
"I know you played college ball. I know your wife was a cheerleader. I know you like true crime books."
"Trivial shit, man. You know the Jeopardy! version of me."
I consider mentioning his Crohn's Disease, but decide that's uncouth.
"Did you know I fingered the babysitter? Or that I've been giving half my paycheck to the Scientologists?"
I hear myself say "No kidding" as my mind kicks into overdrive on the babysitter, a high school senior named Sasha from down the street.
"My wife knows about both of them and she wants to divorce me for the Scientology thing," says Stan, staring into the sky. "Isn't that irony?"
"Or religious persecution," I say. Sasha is a miler on the track team. She often trains in the neighborhood, her ponytail, a raven black, bouncing when she runs.
Stan is silent again and I begin to think maybe he's waiting for my deepest and darkest. I don't have anything as good as the Scientology thing, let alone the babysitter, so I say, "They said on the news last night that the frogs outnumber the citizens three hundred to one."
"That's nothing," Stan says. "Hell, in Hawaii they had so many tree frogs they had to spray pure caffeine in the air to give them heart attacks. Eight thousand fucking frogs per acre."
"Sumbitch," I say.
"Hah," he says. Then: "They're making a big deal out of nothing. The temperature will drop to fifty this weekend and they'll disappear on their own."
"You're probably right," I say.
"We should just wait them out," Stan says. "Fuck the grass."
By now the dead toad has attracted a fly, which, in turn, has garnered the attention of a frog. The fly is well within striking distance of the frog's elastic tongue, I figure, although I've never really seen a frog's tongue except on television and I wonder now, as I sit near the frog and several thousand of its buddies, if I can remain still enough for it to strike. So I sit and watch for a few minutes until the sound of another lawnmower pierces the air, and Stan, my easygoing neighbor, jumps to his feet and takes off across his yard in a messy, raging sprint.
Trading Places (January 20, 2010. Issue 13.)
Shay saw him first. He was sitting in the wicker chair wrapped in a quilt and drinking a mug of hot tap water. I imagine most seven-year-olds would have screamed upon discovery of a stranger in the basement, but Shay simply shouted up the stairs that, Dad, there’s a man down here. When I got to the landing she was standing in front of him, arms folded, blocking his view of a television program on bear attacks.
“Sure enough,” I said. “And you are?”
“Alan,” said the man. He half rose from the chair to offer a trembling hand. His fingernails were filthy and as the quilt fell from his shoulders I saw that his clothes were old and torn and streaked with dirt. He was homeless, and he was warming himself in our suburban home.
I shook his hand and it was cold and grimy, as advertised. I said, “Give me one reason, Alan, why I shouldn’t call the cops.”
Alan said, “Because I’m you, only grubbier. The harmless sort. A forty-something overachiever who trends liberal in the voting booth, reads mystery novels and enjoys the occasional taste of the very bud growing behind that door.”
Shay’s eyes grew wide. “You smoke Daddy’s special medicine too?”
Alan smiled and said, “You bet I do, sweetie.”
“Daddy smokes his special medicine every night.”
“Shay, honey, go upstairs and do your homework.”
“It’s Saturday,” she said.
“Upstairs,” I said.
When she was gone I silenced the television and sat across from Alan.
“Who are you?” I said. “Sheriff’s office?”
He shook his head and leaned in. “DEA,” he whispered, then sat back and laughed.
“Don’t flatter yourself, fella. I’m just Alan, that’s all. Alan the Homeless Guy.”
“Alan the Homeless Guy,” I repeated, minus the mirth. Then: “So, you can smell it, huh?”
“You can smell it,” he confirmed.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said. “Why are you here?”
He nodded: fair question. “Your neighbor across the street is looking for a manager for his golf course. I was the best links man in the state until I fell on hard times.”
“Glanville,” I said. Our neighbor. We were feeding his two calicos, King George III and Mr. Snuggles, until he returned from a Pacific isle in a few days.
“The sliding door was unlocked,” Alan said, nodding at the pane.
“And you heard us coming home,” I said, “and you decided against leaving the way you came.”
“I couldn’t feel my toes,” he said. “At some point you put your faith in your fellow man.”
“And you’re expecting, what, a couple hours to warm up? A pair of long johns for the road?”
“Actually,” said Alan, “I was hoping to stay, at least until your neighbor returns.”
“Stay?” said my wife, standing on the landing. She was petite and stepped like a bird. She moved toward the homeless man.
“Angie,” I said. “Alan here—”
Angie held up a hand: She had heard. She proceeded to examine Alan with a squint, the way she did with her new clients. Angie was a veteran social worker and an excellent judge of character, or at least she thought so, and after a few moments she nodded and told Alan he could stay in the basement until he got back on his feet. Then she instructed me to retrieve the bag of clothing we had prepared for the Salvation Army.
“I’m going to brew a pot of coffee and thaw some pumpkin bread, Alan, how does that sound?” Alan said that sounded wonderful, Angie, thank you for your hospitality. Then she turned and headed up the stairs, my wife, nearly ten years younger than I and blessed with the tightest of backsides.
“Cute,” said Alan.
*
After Alan shaved and showered and reported to the dining room dressed in my old clothes, my wife and daughter could not contain themselves. They giggled and high-fived and pointed at the two men sitting at the table.
“You’re twins,” Shay shrieked.
I shook my head sheepishly, but she was right. From the blond brush cut going gray on the sides to the weak blue eyes to the broad shoulders, we could have been brothers. Alan grinned and looked down at my hands. I was the one trembling this time. I put them under the table.
“So, Alan,” said my wife. “Tell us about yourself.”
He grew up on a golf course in Columbus, he explained, and went to Ohio State just like his hero Jack Nicklaus. In college he met the most wonderful woman in the world and married her straight away. She supported his quest to join the pro tour by working midnights at a pharmacy. Although he didn’t make the tour, he hired on as assistant manager of a pro shop, eventually rising to managing partner. It was good money, he said, and a job he was good at. He and his wife would have twins—a boy and a girl and both of them excellent golfers.
“Are they in elementary school?” Shay asked.
“No, sweetie, they’re older. Actually, they’re both going to Ohio State, just like Mom and Dad did.”
“Tell us about these so-called hard times,” I said, eliciting a glower from Angie.
“Absolutely I can do that,” said Alan, turning my way. “It’s pretty basic stuff. I started drinking and then I started snorting cocaine and pretty soon I lost my golf course and my family and I was living on the streets.”
“How long ago was this?” I said, and this time Angie shook her head and told me that it was none of our business.
“It’s totally fine,” said Alan. “You have a right to know. Five years ago now. For the past eighteen months I’ve been clean and sober and working part-time at the shelter. Best of all, I’m thinking about golf again. The passion’s back, you could say.”
All of this bored Shay. “Do you play Yahtzee?” she asked. Alan waggled his eyebrows at her and said he played like nobody’s business and Shay ran downstairs to get the game. Angie took the opportunity to take a jab at me.
“Are you still going to the office? Again?”
I was a bankruptcy attorney and business was booming. I had been working fourteen-hour days, weekends and holidays, taking as many cases as possible to pad our savings account. It all went back to the trembling hand; to the rioting cells in my body. For her part Angie didn’t understand my hoarding behavior. She said family was most important right now. I told her I agreed—that I was protecting my family the best I could.
Now, as I thought about this stranger alone with my wife and daughter, I told her I’d be staying in tonight to play a little Yahtzee. I managed three games (winning one) before bowing out and slowly retreating to my basement office, stopping twice to steady myself on the steps. By the time I fell back in my chair I was retching on pumpkin bread.
I lit one up. Then I took three pills, two purples and a white. The combination had a way of producing anxiety, a sweaty hallucination or two, yet it was only way I knew to stop the pain. Or slow it down, anyway.
A couple hours later I had just dug into my paperwork when he knocked. It was after ten.
“I miss the party?”
“I thought you were clean and sober.”
“Weed doesn’t count.”
I agreed with him on that much and fired up another. We sat smoking and talking. I told him I wasn’t much into golf but rather preferred full-contact sports. He described with unsettling detail some of the things he had seen as a street person. The way he had been treated, he said, led him to conclude that human beings were for shit.
This brought a reflective pause as we finished up the blunt.
“So this helps with the pain?”
“Not for what I have,” I said, and winked.
Alan smiled and shook his head. “Your secret’s safe with me.”
A moment later he said, “How long?”
“Six months, give or take.”
“And you haven’t told Shay.”
“Not yet,” I said. “But we will. I will.”
“She deserves to know.”
I looked at our guest, wanting to admonish him for his meddling, but there was no condescension in his tone, no raised brow of superiority. He was a modest guy, a straight-shooter, and I felt a stab of disappointment. Why couldn’t he be a raging asshole? Alan wasn’t our first houseguest—Angie’s teenage troublemakers came and went, a night here, a weekend there, despite agency policy—but I knew he was the first one who could have a lasting impact on my family.
I thought suddenly of the movie where the man whacks his wife’s lover on the skull with a snow globe, an odd if efficient kill. But I was getting ahead of myself. I was perspiring. I wasn’t the murderous type.
“You’re not looking good,” said Alan.
“I was picturing you with blood running down your face,” I said.
“Maybe we should turn in,” he said.
*
I sat in bed watching my wife sleep but fearing for my daughter’s life. Her bedroom was on the ground floor, sandwiched between ours on the second floor and the stranger’s in the basement. It was paranoia, I suppose; Alan didn’t strike me as a violent man. But I couldn’t let it go. So I showered off the pot smell and headed down to her room.
Shay was on her side with her mouth open: a drooler like her old man. I eased onto the bed and scooted up behind her. She stirred but didn’t wake. On the ceiling was a sea of glow-in-the-dark stars I hadn’t noticed before. I heard the faint sound of music and realized she had fallen asleep with the plastic buds in her ears. I recognized the song as one of my favorites from my youth. Angie must have downloaded it for her from my collection.
I pulled the blanket over us. I inhaled the scent of her hair and thought of her future as an astronomer or a folk singer or maybe a social worker, like her mother. I worried about some little prick breaking her heart. I regulated my breathing and remained as still as possible, trembling only slightly. And eventually I slept, no longer thinking about the man in the basement.
*
When the cancer was diagnosed throughout my bowels and vital organs, the doctor pronounced it inoperable, gave us the standard spiel about seeking a second opinion and then came around his desk to deliver a lecture about the importance of catching it early.
“Help me spread the word,” he said, opening his arms above me like an evangelist. “Consider yourself a walking billboard. Tell all your friends, your family members. You can help me save lives.”
“He said that? You can help me save lives?” Alan was sitting in the wicker chair.
“Just like that,” I said. I was now in a makeshift hospital bed set up in the basement. But I was feeling better: a second wind. A good day among the bad.
“H. Christ,” he said. “Fuckin’ doctors, anyway.”
I was drinking warm Irish beer, Alan coffee, while we watched our respective alma maters bang heads. Ohio State clung to a three-point lead over Michigan in a cold, muddy contest.
“I’m curious. How could you not know?”
“I pretty much ignored it for years. Passed it off as heartburn. Lactose intolerance. At one point I had a colonoscopy, but when it came up negative I felt like a hypochondriac. You know how it is.”
“So they missed it,” he said.
I shrugged. “Who’s to know about these things. They throw a bunch of medical jabberwocky at you, recommend Treatment X, Treatment Y, but I said screw all that. I’ve watched too many relatives die in a cold hospital room when they would have rather been at home.”
I drained the last of my beer and watched the Ohio State punter shank one to the sidelines.
“So, tell me about your interview.”
Glanville had arrived home two days ago. Angie had set up the meeting, thinly guised as lunch at our house. Alan had worn one of my suits.
“I knocked it out of the park,” he said. “Best interview I ever gave. Problem is, he’s already filled the spot with his brother-in-law.”
“Huh,” I said. “So all this for nothing.”
“Hey, I’m just getting warmed up. I’ll find something soon, you watch.”
“And in the meantime, what? Continue eating the food and courting the wife of a dying man?”
“Indeed,” he said with a big grin. Ever the wise guy.
*
A couple weeks later I had another good day, a decent day at least, and decided to go in and clean out my office in the early evening. It was a Friday, two weeks before Christmas. Angie was at work dealing with the latest emergency; Shay at a cousin’s for the night. Alan offered to drive me but I told him I could handle it, and not to expect me for a few hours. I hadn’t been outside in weeks.
The fifteen-minute drive was no problem. There were only two people in the office, a couple of law clerks who promptly buried their heads in their work rather than interact with The Sick Man. Which was fine with me.
On the way home I stopped at an old haunt and ordered a beer and a shot. I didn’t recognize any of the patrons or the bartender, a wrinkled specimen who looked like he had escaped from a nursing home.
The pain had reared up. I took a handful of pills. I longed for a joint.
I thought. About everything. We had finally told Shay—talk about anticlimactic. “I already knew that, Dad,” was her response. Yet rarely did she come down to the basement anymore. I knew I was looking rough, with dark circles under my eyes, sunken cheeks. She was playing soccer now and she was fast like me and determined like her mother. God I’d miss watching her play.
Alan had fixed just about everything imaginable around the house; unlike me, he was quite the handyman. He had even started cooking meals and cleaning floors—earning his keep, I suppose. He would come down every night to watch a little TV, smoke some herb. I couldn’t bring myself to hate him. Not all the way. I respected his courage to walk into a stranger’s home and fall in love with his wife.
I wondered if Angie had told him yet. That we had decided on divorce before the diagnosis came down. That our marriage had digressed to one ceaseless, bitter quarrel.
“You okay?” the ancient bartender asked.
“Not so much,” I told him, and dropped a twenty on the bar. “I’ll be dead soon.”
“You and me both, buddy.”
It had started to snow. The pain doubled me over several times on my walk to the truck. Still, I remembered how much I loved the outdoors, the crisp air a magnificent shock to the senses. I wondered suddenly why I was spending my last days shut inside a dank basement. I resolved to get out of there and go the way I wanted to—if only I could drive my sick ass home first.
I was a mile away. The oncoming vehicles were drab smudges. Horns blared. I pressed at my temples for clarity.
When I finally pulled in I didn’t dare attempt to maneuver the truck into the stall. I opened the garage door to find Angie’s car in its usual spot. Stepping out, I fell to the driveway, skinning my face. I went to my hands and knees—a familiar position these days—and lurched forward. It took three or four minutes, but I made it into the house.
And heard a ruckus from the guest bedroom. Moaning, grunting, the beating of walls.
I crawled closer, as far as the kitchen, and laid my cheek on the cold linoleum and listened to their fucking. It seemed to go on forever. I had never heard these sounds from my wife. I was angry, spiteful, but worst of all I felt like a visitor—an unwanted visitor—in my own home.
*
At three in the morning I put the gun in his mouth. It was a little .38 I had bought a few years back when Angie was getting threats of a sexual nature from one of the hooligans on her caseload.
Alan’s eyes opened in surprise.
“And Merry Christmas to you,” he managed around a mouthful of barrel.
I sat there for a bit, dripping sweat, feverish. I had meant for this to be quick: one for Alan, one for me, end of story. I had expected him to struggle against the weaker man, but goddamn if he didn’t just lie there looking up at me. He wanted my wife, but he also wanted my blessing, the son of a bitch.
I pulled the hammer back. Alan nodded slightly, ready for what was next.
And laughed. The gun was clanking against his teeth.
“Damn it to hell,” I said, trying to steady my hand. “There’s three of you.”
“Shoot the one in the middle,” Alan said.
And that was it. I slumped to the floor, letting the gun fall to the mattress. So I wasn’t a killer. A noise rumbled out of my throat: relief, mostly.
I felt a hand on my back, a reassuring rub. “Let me help you up,” he said, and the homeless man half carried me back to my deathbed.
*
The day after New Year’s, with everyone back to school and work, Alan took me for a drive. He was dressed in a pair of my best slacks and my favorite sweater; I wore his homeless clothes. The pills were stuffed in my socks and underwear. Otherwise, he said, they’d get stolen in the first hour.
“I have a confession,” he said. “I’ve never read a mystery novel in my life. And sometimes I vote Republican.”
“You cocksucker,” I said, and we laughed.
The weather had broken. It was fifty degrees and sunny. This would make some of them aggressive, Alan explained, so be aware.
“Got it,” I said.
“You know, most people in their last days, it’s all about being with family, reliving the good times.”
“I’m not feeling it,” I said. “I’ve had my good times, made loads of money—”
“On the backs of others, no less.”
“Thank you, smart ass.” I looked over at him. It was like looking in the mirror. I said, “You know, I look at it this way: I already agreed to move out, right? I’m just keeping a promise.”
We got downtown and Alan made a few turns and soon we were in the ragged part of the city, with homeless people sitting on sidewalks and milling about in vacant lots. I had never realized there were so many.
“I’m taking you to the farmer’s market,” Alan said. “There’s a wall there that used to be mine. Me and Dezzy and Barb. I wonder if they’re still around.”
It was a white wall, covered with graffiti. Dezzy and Barb were not, in fact, present, but many others were. I looked at their tattered clothing and bloodshot stares.
“They won’t care that you’re sick,” he warned.
I nodded. “You know, when my daughter left for school this morning, she asked me when I was going to die. As if I were holding up progress.”
“Kids say the damndest things,” said Alan.
“Honest things,” I said.
“You sure you want to do this?”
“You know, I’ve changed my mind. I think I’ll grab a private room at Mercy, let the nurses give me sponge baths until the money is gone.”
He reached across me for the door handle. “Adios, partner.”
“Ha. Listen, man, bring them by every once in a while, could you? Tell them it’s a shortcut to the mall or whatever. Just drive by so I can see them.”
“I can do that,” he said. But he never did.
