Frog

by Stephen Dixon

  “Memory of it starts with them stepping off the train, then standing alongside it, conductor near them, same uniform it seems train conductors have always worn, gray cold day, cold gray day, but that’s the way he always pictured it, contrast of the dark train and gray backdrop, his mother looking this way and that with an expression what’s she supposed to do now? She told him to sit on the bench inside the station while she looked for a cab. Next thing he remembers they’re sitting at a luncheonette counter in town, which they must have walked to for through the window he can see the train station across the street. While he ate she called a few taxi services in town but no cabs were available. It was wartime, gas shortage, gas rationed, scarcity of cars, cabs were considered a luxury out here, she was told, two of the three taxi services listed in the phone book weren’t even in business anymore. Most of that he got from talking about it with her years later though never telling her the main reason he was interested in the trip so much. There was about an hour, a half-hour, during it when he can’t remember ever having felt so close to her. The counterman said the one operating taxi service would take her if she were a local or a regular customer off the train, but since she just spoke to them it was too late for that. Two men seated at the end of the counter near the wall phone asked if they could help her. She told them what she’d come out for. First a trip to a gas station several miles out of town to show the people there a photo of a dog and ask if they’ve seen it around since he jumped out of a car there a month ago. Then to the local dog pound to look for the dog. They said they’d take her and her boy, no charge except for the cost of the gas and maybe if they could bum a few cigarettes off her. She said no, really, that was too kind, but they could certainly have the cigarettes. They said it’s OK, they’ve nothing doing at the moment, just so long as she doesn’t spend all day at the garage and knows they’re going to leave her at the pound; it’ll only be a mile walk back along the boulevard to the train station if she can’t get a cab or another hitch. Next thing he knows he’s walking beside his mother, his hand in hers, across the street to the corner where the car’s parked. Next thing after that he’s in the back seat and the men in front. When the car was pulling away from the curb the driver quickly rolled down his window and spoke to a man running up to him, either a policeman or someone in the army or marines. Their conversation was jovial, seemed to go on for minutes, then the man outside waved goodbye to the men in the car and bent down to where his face almost touched the back side window and smiled and waved to Howard who was right behind the driver. By this time there was lots of cigarette smoke in the car, from his mother and the two men, but it didn’t seem to bother him. Maybe because of the fresh air from the open windows, maybe something else. He wondered how the two men were able to fit in front. Only because his mother and he were so crowded in back. Was the front wider than the back? He didn’t see how, still doesn’t, at least not by that much, for the men were big and there seemed to be plenty of space between them and between each man and his door. When they started driving he thought the men might be bad men who were going to do something awful to them. Kiss his mother, steal her pocketbook, kill them both. She must have sensed what he was feeling for soon after she patted his hand and said don’t worry, it’s going to be a nice trip and I hope we find Joe. But sitting in back with his mother. This part of the trip has come back to him many times, maybe even a hundred, when no other part of it has. In fact, to get to think of any other part of it, it almost always comes after he thinks of this. Pressed close to her, the scratchiness of her wool jacket or coat, her arm around him, other hand stroking his hair, part of the way his head on her lap, cool silk or rayon dress or skirt, her hard leg his head rested on, hand stroking his cheek and the back of his neck, he even thinks he remembers her leaning over and kissing the top of his head, but most of all his eyes closed and his head and torso squeezed against her side and her arm around his shoulder or back and other hand smoothing his forehead and running through and curlicuing his hair. They’d been alone outside lots of times in different places. She once took him to a movie at night. They sat in the mezzanine and he was allowed to find the men’s room by himself and then to choose any one candy he liked from the two candy machines. All the times she took him to Indian Walk for shoes and after that to Schrafft’s where she’d let him pocket a few sugar packets and he’d have a vanilla ice cream soda and have to sit on a phone book to reach the straws. Cabs to several places, usually the doctor’s. But they’ve never, he believes, been alone together in so enclosed and cramped a space. He’s saying maybe that’s the reason, helped it happen, or maybe it was also something she was feeling toward him or something else at the time that made her act to him the way she did. Maybe even the cigarette smoke had something to do with it, for them both; he just doesn’t know. They must have gotten out of the car at the gas station, but he’s never remembered it. When he’s talked about it with her she’s said she doesn’t remember any gas station, just the train and dog pound and quite possibly the luncheonette, which does strike a bell, maybe from all the times he’s mentioned it—‘Though if that was the case,’ she’s said, ‘I don’t see why not the gas station too’—but she can’t say they were there for sure. So maybe she changed her mind about going to the gas station or the men suddenly didn’t have enough time for both the gas station and pound or else convinced her not to go: that it was silly, for example, to think the dog would go back there once it escaped. During the drive the men turned around every so often to ask her questions and she answered them gaily. He remembers smoke pouring out of her mouth and nose when she laughed and spoke. Actually, he doesn’t know how accurate that memory is. It could have come from lots of other times, for she always smoked and spoke a lot and at the time laughed a lot too. She was having a good time though. That he definitely recalls. She smiled and laughed like the times when his father put his hand around her waist and planted a kiss on her cheek or grabbed her around the shoulder and with his eyes open kissed her lips hard or when he grabbed her waist and hand when there was some radio or Victrola music on and did a couple of dance steps or twirls with her or when he teased her in front of the children, all this was in front of the children, or said something about how beautiful their mother was or what a great figure she still had, though he usually jokingly called it ‘figger.’ He felt cold in the car—probably because of the open windows for the smoke—and putting her arm around him and their bodies so close made him warm and probably made her warmer too. He doesn’t know why they waited a month before going out there to look for Joe. Phone calls to the gas station and pound and the man who lost Joe were made but that was all. His guess is that he badgered her till she gave in or she thought that after a month of him being depressed about it, only going out there to look for Joe would make him feel better. She’s said ‘I suppose we went out there when we did because it was the earliest I could find time for it.’ ‘I know we got a cab to the pound,’ she’s said, ‘and I’m almost positive it was from the train station. Though I might have gone to the luncheonette just to call for it, but there were certainly no men.’ ‘Well I definitely remember them,’ he’s said. ‘Two of them in the car, that they were young, the car old and leather-smelling till you all started up with smoking. Big bushy hair on one of the men. I forget the other’s hair and I can’t say whether the driver or guy beside him had the bushy hair—I think the driver. Maybe the car was actually a cab and the driver was a cabby and the guy beside him a friend going along for the ride or a passenger going in the same direction as us but getting off last. And this passenger or friend was the one with the bushy hair and the driver’s I never remembered because I couldn’t see it under the cabby’s cap. And the uniformed man hurrying over could have been a fellow cabby and the uniform I saw might have only been his cabby’s cap. Or else he wore it to complete what I think was sort of the standard cabby’s uniform then and that was with a waist-length yellow jacket, leather or cloth, though maybe I got the color wrong and even the ma
terial and design. But what’s it matter really? And it also wouldn’t account for the luncheonette I swear we met those two men in. Maybe the driver and his friend were having lunch at the time and one of the cab companies you called from the train station, you say—the only one you said was still in business because of gas rationing and no new cars being made—or even from the luncheonette, if let’s say the phones at the station were tied up and we crossed the street to call from there—said if you want a cab you’ll find their one available driver having lunch this very moment at the luncheonette across from the train station, or the same one you’re in. Or maybe we went in there to call for a cab or have a bite before we did and met the cabby by accident. But all of us sitting at the counter for at least a few minutes—so maybe you and I didn’t have lunch there or even a snack, though I could almost swear the men had plates and coffee cups in saucers in front of them. Then walking to the corner where the cab or private car was parked. And the pudgy uniformed cabby or policeman or soldier hurrying over to the driver’s window right after the car pulled out, and the man waving goodbye to me good-naturedly, though that might be an embellishment, his smile and bending down to me to wave; still, it stays. But without question the cab or car ride, long or short, to the dog pound, which I might have slept part of the way through, so comfortable and close was I in the back with you, even if my head was lying on or up against what I remember as your itchy jacket or coat, which normally would have kept me awake.’ They went to the pound. Neither recalls how they got back to the train station, though she thinks she told the cabby that took them there to wait. ‘That’s what I’d usually do in a situation like that and in an area I wasn’t familiar with. And cabs were cheap then and the waiting period particularly, or else I just called for another cab from the pound. For sure we didn’t walk.’ The man at the pound said it was unlikely their dog was there, she said, after so long and especially since the last time she called him about it, but he’d show them around. They went into a large airy room with about forty cages with dogs in them and a few cats. They walked down one aisle and back along the other. None of the dogs looked at all like Joe. Then he heard a dog barking from behind a wall. ‘Listen,’ he said, and listened. ‘That’s Joe.’ ‘Don’t be silly,’ his mother said. ‘This gentleman will tell you: if he’s not in this room, he’s not here.’ ‘That’s Joe, I’m saying—coming from through there. I know how he barks. He knows I’m here—must have smelled and heard me—and wants me to come get him.’ The man said the next room was where they kept animals that had recently been brought in. ‘If they don’t show any signs of illness or anything, we let them in here. I know not one of them even remotely resembles an airedale.’ ‘It’s him, don’t tell me,’ Howard yelled and started for the door to the room. ‘Just to amuse him could you let him in there?’ she must have said something like. She doesn’t remember saying it, neither does he, but it’s what he thinks she would have said from the picture in his head of her at that moment. They went in. It was a small room with no windows and only a little artificial light. Four or five dogs in cages on tables and they all started barking when they came in. ‘At least we looked,’ she said outside the pound. He wanted to go to another. Said something like ‘Joe was a great runner and could have run twenty, even fifty miles in one day from where he jumped out of the car.’ She said they’ve done enough to find Joe today, that she’s already called every pound on Long Island twice but would call each of them a last time this week, but that they now have to catch a train so she can get home in time to do some other important things, and so as far as she’s concerned the matter’s closed for the day. If she said that in those words he probably said what does she mean when she says a matter’s closed? He probably also cried but stopped in a minute or two or just quietly sobbed but went along with whatever she said. He doesn’t remember any part of the trip back or anything more about that day or ever thinking of doing anything to find Joe again. Memory of it ends with them in front of the pound, wide gray sky behind her. He assumes the whole trip took about six hours and that it was dark when they got home.”