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by Bosley Gravel
Mainstream, 8 pages.
Originally Published in The Deepening, 2006
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Sedrick dug in the mud with a broom handle. He was a thin boy, perhaps ten years old. His brown hair was covered with the hood of his bloated parka. The sky was November gray, clouds built mystical shapes high above the earth and cast their gloomy shadows on Sedrick’s efforts . The hole at his feet was widening. He leaned down and extracted a drowsy toad. He held his trophy skyward.
Sedrick had caught his toad.
* * *
Tessie was playing in front of the apartment when he got home. She ran to meet him as he somberly came up the sidewalk with one hand in his pocket, the other swinging his stick.
“Mom wants you to go to the store.”
“Do you want to see my toad?” He held it out on his palm.
It lay, still in hibernation, one eye half open, the other glued shut with a peculiar slime. It kicked one foot in a pathetic motion.
“Gross.” Tessie wrinkled her pug nose and made a face.
“That’s disgusting.”
“Toads are not any grosser than sisters,” he said.
Tessie stuck out her tongue and wiggled her bottom defiantly.
“Mom wants a gallon of milk. She says she wanted it an hour ago. I told her you were probably out playing with those other boys.”
Sedrick put his toad back in his pocket.
“She got mad.”
“Who cares?”
“I’ll tell you said that.”
“Tell!” he said and pushed her benignly with his fingertips. She stepped back a little too far.
“Now, I’m really telling.”
He stroked the toad with a fingertip and walked up the sidewalk to the house.
“Don’t take that toad in the house!” She yelled.
“Shut up,” he said and opened the door and went in.
Tessie picked up her jump rope and began bouncing up and down, her pigtails swinging in the cool air.
Boys are rotten made out of cotton
Girls are nice made out of spice
Boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider
Girls go to Mars to get more candy bars
One, two, three . . .
Sedrick walked by, she stopped in mid-swing.
“Sedrick?”
He kept walking. She skipped along beside him.
“Can I go with you?”
“No,” he said.
“Please?”
“Go back or I’ll hit you.”
She stopped skipping and walked beside him.
“You don’t have permission. Go back, or you’ll get Mom mad.”
“Sedrick?”
“What?”
“What are you going to do with your toad?”
“I’m going to eat it,” he said earnestly.
She stopped dead in her tracks. Sedrick kept walking.
“I’m telling!” Tessie said mortified, “Mom is going to ground you if you eat that toad. You’ll get warts on your insides!”
He turned his head and stuck out his tongue.
“I don’t care.”
Tessie started bawling.
“You can’t eat a toad. I’m telling.”
Sedrick, without a further thought, turned and kept walking. Tessie was running towards the house, her jump rope trailing behind.
* * *
She must be a fairy, Sedrick thought, a crying fairy, sitting on the curb of the Quickie Mart drinking a 44oz soda. She was beautiful; her long blond hair hung down to her shoulders. He caught just a whiff of hair spray (which he mistook for perfume). Her nails were painted an electric blue. Her lipstick had been pink, but it was worn a way at the center of her lips. She took a long sullen slurp of her soda.
A fairy! Right here in front of the Quickie Mart. He was staring, he knew that, but it didn’t matter. He felt the toad jump in his pocket.
“Whatcha looking at, little man?” She said, trying to be rude, but not quite making it.
Sedrick felt his face filling with blood.
“Nothing,” he said, and left the fairy to slurp her soda.
The inside of the Quickie Mart was deserted. A lone clerk sat on a stool and picked his teeth with a matchbook, his eyes on a tiny black and white television. A cigarette burned in the ashtray on the counter. Sedrick picked out a gallon of milk and paid the clerk with a grungy five-dollar bill. The toad was hopping around like a lunatic. The poor thing had finally woken from its hibernation.
“Thanks,” the clerk said, not looking away from the television. Sedrick opened the door, keeping his eyes closed. Perhaps the fairy had already left.
But, no, she was still sitting there, staring at the ground. He couldn’t help looking at her. He felt like he did in class when he didn’t know the answer on a test. His eyes were drawn like iron to a magnet, and what if he did sometime catch sight of an answer? Was that really so wrong?
“So, -- [End of Preview.]