Bull and Frog

When he stepped onto the train platform, we saw only the red bull painted across his face, the torso covering both eyes and the tail and head reaching toward his temples. The legs, unusually long, seemed to drip down his cheeks like tears.

We knew then we would call him only Bull. He tried to introduce himself using another name, but we couldn’t hear it, it was stuck in his mouth like he spoke through cotton candy. Okay, Bull, we’d say, having made no space in our memories for the name he tried to tell us that we hadn’t even heard.

When he told us where he was from, we grasped at it, it slipped through our fingers like smoke. At the corner store, we each remembered his answer differently. Each story with details that deviated from our own cast doubt on what we had heard so we were never sure if he was being evasive or if we simply couldn’t learn about him.

We wanted to know him, to see why he was different from us and why he was the same. We said, “Bull, tell us about yourself!” And then bragged to each other that we had learned about him, but we didn’t listen to his answers so we only learned that we thought we were learning.

He moved into the old apartment above Vick’s Lickour. Vick, or Victor to his mother, had named the place with the jokey misspelling as a fuck you to his ex-wife, Lora, who told him it was a terrible idea. The apartment above the shop was well known for ghost activity, but Bull could not have known that coming in from Wherever, nor did he seem to care. He had only the belongings in his bag, as far as we could tell.

Vick said he didn’t have a phone line or internet up there, so maybe Bull didn’t have anyone to talk to. Some of us thought that was sad, others thought it was suspicious.

Bull rolled into town like the dull hum of an approaching earthquake, but he quickly became background noise. He was a buzzing mosquito drowned out by an air conditioning unit.

Soon enough, we were all asking him the same questions we asked everyone in town: How’s your Ma? Nice weather, isn’t it? Think you’ll go to the barbecue later?

He had integrated and we all forgot he ever came from anywhere else. All of us but me, that is.

Who is this guy? I stayed up at night sometimes wondering and wondering. I tried to pull the details of what train he had arrived on several months, or years, ago. It was like pulling taffy too far apart so that it drooped in the middle. Did he haunt anyone else? I drifted to sleep every night thinking he must. It seemed impossible that he didn’t.

I sat at the dinner table pushing my peas around with my fork, rolling the strays into my pile of mashed potatoes. Thinking. Thinking.

How was school? My mother said.

Did you get that test back? Said my father.

Both looked up at me expectantly. Mother’s eyes were slightly downcast, she knew I hated to be asked questions. Father’s hair was sweaty and pasted to his forehead except for one piece that had fallen and was resting lightly on his right eyelashes. He tried to brush it away but tapped his glasses instead, leaving a finger smudge.

Stop! I dropped my fork loudly on the plate and said, Stop. Please stop.

Well hon, we weren’t trying to be- my mother began before my father cut her off by reaching his hand over to grasp hers.

I simply cannot pretend that everything is fine, I told them.

My father removed his glasses from his sweaty face and wiped them sloppily with his dirty napkin. My mother cleared her throat.

Dear, she said shakily, with what was certainly the most firm tone she could muster, we cannot talk about this again.

Well, she was wrong of course, because there was no limit to the number of times I could try to convince them that Bull was not one of us, as I had most nights for at least a month. They were equally forceful in their attempts to convince me that he was one of us and how could I possibly believe otherwise. He’s um, well isn’t he Brady’s nephew? I’m sure we met him when you were about ten, didn’t you two play for the same soccer team? I swear he was just in the row behind you in the class picture. One night they reminded me gently that his parents passed away and that’s why he was living along above the Lickour store, and shouldn’t we be kind to him after all he’s been through?

I would often concede after one of my parents became practically inconsolable at the thought that I was so far detached from what they saw as reality. Sure, of course, mother, I’d practically whisper across the table, I’ll be kind to him. And she would nod sullenly and we would all continue to eat our peas.

This night, the night I said Stop and then Please stop, I said Stop again, a third time. And to my surprise, they did. My parents were suddenly frozen in place. My mother’s head immobile halfway between being shaken fervently left to right, my father’s hand holding his messy glasses as he reached up to set them back on his nose. A single pea suspended in air that had been jostled by my mother’s shaky stressed hands.

Well that is odd, I thought. I waved my hands in front of both of their faces and reached to snatch the runaway pea between my fingers. I was arrested mid-snatch by the sight of Bull outside our dining room window.

He stood in the light from the streetlamp, in the full face paint of his very first day in town. He blinked at me through the glass, each blink hiding the whites of his eyes in the torso of the bull. Finally, he kept his eyes open and bore his stare down on me. I understood and I nodded. I left the pea in the air above the perfectly pleasant half-eaten meal on my mother’s plate and I turned and walked through the front door and into the night.

Good evening, Bull said, his voice gravely and tired.

Good evening, I ventured, my voice robotic and seeking.

Bull turned and walked and I followed him. We walked down Main Street and the whole town was frozen too. Vick was mid laugh with a customer, coins paused between his hand and theirs, the cash drawer mostly but not quite closed. The library door pushed open so Gemma could exit, her book bag weightless as she skipped down the stairs. Roger waved to her from within, a slight blush on his cheeks from the cold air.

I did not ask Bull where we were going and he did not tell me. When we reached the swings in Grand Park, he gesturing that I sit. He took a seat in the neighboring swing.

For an indeterminate number of moments, we pushed off the ground away from and toward each other until we were perfectly in sync. Bull put his boots out into the sand, coming to a fast stop. I stopped kicking and he waited patiently for me to be still.

I must ask you to stop asking to stop, he told me. I can be only Bull, that is how it is. And you are Frog.

Alright, I said, I will stop stopping.

We swang a bit longer, and even after what felt like an eternity, our legs were not tired because no time had passed, because time was frozen. Bull walked me home, and I went upstairs to bed. Since I was not asking to stop anymore, I knew that life would resume tomorrow.

When I woke, I smelled dust and coffee, I heard rumbling and humming and distant conversations. I opened my eyes and looked out the window at the landscape rolling by. When I tilted my head upright, I saw an old man grimacing at me from the seat across. When he saw me notice him, he tucked his face behind his newspaper once more. A small child stared from across the aisle while pulling in their mother’s sleeve to point at my face.

When the train screeched to a halt, I collected my bag and shuffled off with the few other passengers. Unlike them, there was no one to greet me at the platform. As I walked toward my house, I caught sight of myself in the glass of the butchers. I blinked at my face, painted precisely with a large green frog in profile. The frog’s mouth was open so that the crease met with the corner of my eye. A pink tongue reached out and curled around my left ear.

All the people I had always known looked out at me as strangers. I ignored them and walked home, leaving muddy footprints in my wake. I reached my house and fumbled for my keys in my pocket. Before I found their familiar weight, the door was flung open and my smiling father stood there.

Good morning ——- we are so glad to see you! Please come in and out your things down. He had said a name, my name perhaps, but it was garbled and croaked. It was lost to me immediately.

We have set you up in the guest room and we think you’ll be very happy there, said my mother, emerging from the kitchen. It used to belong to ——— but you’ll find it comfortable.

Sure, thank you, I told them, as I walked upstairs to my own bedroom, exactly as I’d left it. The bedsheets were folded back and there was a vague indent from my head had been the night before. I opened my bag to unpack, but there was nothing at all in it, not even a pencil. I set it against the dresser and went down for coffee.

After a few days, the garbles my parents were calling me formed into definitive words. Good morning, Frog, they said, each morning, excited to see me. It wasn’t but a week before they remembered that I had been there all along.