Frost and His Whales

Jerica Jiles had been hunting “Knowledge Frogs” half the day. She stank by now. She knew how uncomfortably deep she was in this wicked mountain mud. But she was, however, one who finished what she started.

Legend conveyed catching these overgrown tadpoles would land you a living diary entry on anything they’d surveyed in their spheres of influence.

The clever beast she sought—the amphibian one—additionally derived its name by being impossible to capture since they perceived their hunters' thoughts before the hunters formulated them. An unfair advantage, except for Jerica who was not only a seminarian (something which estranged her from boys), but she had a quick, limitlessly creative mind such that no brain-reader could satisfactorily cage her thoughts.

Spying the half-gooey lizard, she set her mind to exploding with random ingredients for “hemlock soup”: a collection of herbs, mushrooms, mineral-stones, moss, all findable in these Oregonian trails, all capable of making sustenance from deadly brew.

While contemplating the bitterness of wormwood, the ticklishness of alfalfa, and the sweetness of certain caterpillars, Jerica snapped her right arm to where the frog surveyed.

With both hands on its squishy sides, she held it to her cheek and whispered a question. It replied in narrative form; this particular toad sounded like an old president. She sat cross-legged and closed her eyes:

The out-of-breath, poorly dressed man sat on bluff’s ledge, kicking his fat legs. It was a pleasure and not yet a sadness, this accomplishment of his. He kept eyes trained on two things: The beach-side resort down below, where innfolk ran about, slowly surrendering to chaos and smoke. And the other gargantuans, the “great fish” as they were once called, until Jonah named them “Whales”.

Every 5 minutes the scientist picked up an oxygen mask for precisely 30 seconds. You’d think he’d need more to survive the vapors which adequately dealt with the “tourists” below. But he’d calculated those things (against his mass, his breathing training, the food he’d eaten that day) just like he calculated all important matters. He knew this regiment would inspire his lungs beyond these fateful hours.

The frog hopped away. She reached for her necklace and opened it. The little silver heart-locket contained a passage she held dear. “Suffer the little children to come unto me”.

The words brought a smile.

Jerica was a girl for sure. But in certain light, due to a sort of lion-face, she looked boyish. It was the only frightening feature about her. Well . . . there was the part about being thick in the legs and arms like a boy. But those aside, she was gentle and fair, straight through. Except . . . maybe . . . for how she’d hardened her disposition slightly to wall against the world’s reactions, so some of her persona was gruffish to boot. But her inner longings were dainty and girl-soft as any who had gone before.

She jumped some broken logs and headed upward, continuing her track of the behemoth who’d temporarily captured her curiosities and compassion.

She’d encountered “Werble Frost” at the Pizzeria where she drank wine and sketched wildlife. She knew his name from the receipt he’d left in a wreckage of piecrusts. He’d also left a napkin with some preliminary functions, equations and drawing, which involved light-beams, chemicals and slingshot trajectories. He’d pocketed a final version but had left the original.

She’d made her own journal entry that day which she re-read now in her own voice:

Quiet does two things: soothe a soul or wreck one! The night trekker in these woods suffers the latter. Long has he needed answers from the atmospheres, and now his moose-like eyes are as glazed as the broken glasses which torture his bulbous nose. And yet he plods.

Something’s slimier in this “Devil’s Toe” mud than normal moss-grease and lumber-sweat.. A few structures of man pepper the clean yet fermenting slopes. When the rain is medium other principalities crawl its valleys and mounts. What rots in this beauty is more than confettied cigarette particles aswim in frog urine; there is something more organic, even spiritual.

The clumsy clop of Werble Frost goes two clicks left and one right, sloshing about like a harpless giant. Two unique and dangerously complimentary objects reside in those fists which metronome a cadence to his somber adventure. A rabbit and fox scurry out of his robotic way as he intrudes more deeply the Privet and Thorns.

The gap narrows between forest and ocean. His own labored breathing joins the tide-sounds to threaten the silence. Our man mutters curses for fuel, mostly a complaint to God on the mistake of his birth.

The moon breaks and strikes Frost’s backside. You see what the Pizzeria patrons saw, a vision of a fellow who’d owned but not washed his garments for months. A phone buzzes his rear pocket, unwelcomedly tickling his giant buttocks. A meaty arm swings backwards, swats the device, knocking it senseless, as he wishes somebody might do to him.

In his left paw he muscularly grips a thing resembling a cardboard balloon or coconut. It has a long stem suspiciously trailing, and in the other hand a cheap fluorescent-green lighter. You could guess this a form of explosive, but only a few carnie-types would recognize the rec-bomb as a commercial-grade firework.

Further up the treelines are swept with their own capacity for brilliant light by a car traveling that eerie closeness with commerce and communal opportunity called a highway. To our giant these beams are like sea gnats which disturb you when you hunt the beach for bauble and trinket.

Before Jerica had lost her giant, she’d tracked and studied him. He’d seemed harassed by texts from the same person, answering nearly none of them, as if someone were trying to convert him off his aims. It was his determination which semi-quelled her fears of his mission.

Eventually she’d been careless, and Frost had sensed her. She’d skittered away, losing his trail.

At one lucky point, alone with her midnight-doused fire, a knowledge frog had walked right over her. Startled, but prompt, she’d cashed in. This time she’d asked the future of these travels. She’d heard somewhere frogs knew as much. This one had.

It spoke with falsetto-ish voice, but still comforted her in the night as it told its tale:

The water was warming. The naked and brainy oaf swam alongside the reddish whale now called “Simon”. Something about the quiet his post-apocalyptic world had created, seemed to decelerate his aging.

He scratched a comfort spot on the fish as he told it his tales. Whales made good listeners, understanding human intonations and moods, singing and humming pleasantly, with nary an arguing click.

There were 3 other sea-beasts which Werble communed with, normal blue-grey in color, and similar in size to each other. He kept track of who was who by gently pegging colored batons into their brows. They hadn’t rebutted.

Next morning, the young theologian woke, said prayers to the Creator, and assessed her terrors. After washing her face and armpits in the stream, she began frantically seeking more frogs. Over the day, she nearly squeezed the life out of 3 “normal hoppers”, and finally discovered and pleaded with a bluish one. This she tormented even more since she was certain it was gifted but refusing her. Finally the Salamander spoke a word.

“Backwards” was all it said. Frustratedly she meditated on that one, finally deciding what to do.

“Tell me his motivation”, she asked it. The frog complied, in the voice of a scared child:

Schlack Frost, Werble’s father, was a horrible giant. While it’s true he was small in the family, his mental rage and cold heart made him the giant they all looked out for. He’d sit the garage for hours, spitting phlegm and invectives. He’d watch old film footage of only he knew what. He’d pick books from an old metal shelf, scour them momentarily, replace them carefully to exact but different slots.

Sometimes he was upstairs in his “war museum”, reloading buckshot in old civil war casings.

One of Schlack’s rules was “friends don’t go around here”. “A man’s castle is his castle” was the cryptic justification. Werble used to repeat those confusing words to himself. He remembered when he’d broken them. His father’d been away on business for a week and Werble had wanted to show a classmate his slingshot targets. The boy had excitedly come to the otherwise daunting property.

How far into the joys of shooting bullseyes and old milk-cartons did they get? Just deep enough for Werble to believe he’d finally caught a break in life, only to be stalk-approached by a drunk and early-returned father, spraying slobber beer all over the boys and chasing them around with a pitchfork full of dead hay. The younger Frost actually received a landed tine in his fortunately already-rhinocerous-tough hind, but his classmate somehow escaped, galloping quickly back to school to spread the legend of the “Freaky Frosts” and therein ending a normal boyhood pursuit of friendship for Werble.

A tear found the eye of Jerica Jiles. It was how she’d been built. A tender girl in a husky boy’s body. A gentle soul, with the action of a man.

To her own surprise, she grabbed the frog she should’ve loosed, tucked him in a pocket. She left her camp and gear and ran for dawn’s light.

She knew there was a precipice she and the strange man climbed to.

Some will argue she hadn’t enough water. Others will say, it had been days since she’d slept. But the truth involves greater and trickier dimensions. For as she went the ground removed itself from her way. Creatures that footnest, scurried and made way for this would-be saviorette.

Birds called, ships sounded. And on ran Jerica for a plan not fully made.

Her speed wasn’t that of one who runs upward. Instead she ascended with gravity in tow. But in all this, Jerica was yet unfit for the race. For suddenly she collapsed between rocks.

Meanstwhile, destiny kept landing. Frost found his ledge and collected components. For Werble had climbed this hill many times before. He was nothing if not prepared.

What we haven’t covered is those men in those condos, down at those beaches, where the chemicals first mixed. Many were not just Jack- and Joe citizen. Many were fellow scientists who’d blocked Werble’s path. Who’d stolen his glory. Who’d stepped on his heart.

Yes, the whole world would tremble at Frost’s tools of war. The formulas he’d worked out. The experiments he’d tested. But none would see it all coming like his comrades below. Those men who’d mocked him like old Schlack had done.

And so it came.

It was at that collision of whale-spray and cannon-burst, lasers touching waves coming in. As elements blended to form compounds of Frost’s choosing, the frog in Jile’s pocket awoke and called out.

As if it perceived, like any smart frog, the danger at hand, it called for its peers. And slowly they arrived and did belch certain odors, expel certain slimes. components all their own. And the sleeping Jerica, alive, did ingest them, and somehow was protected from what Werble unleashed.

But for what was she saved, this noblest spitfire? Why perished she not in the waves of Werble’s War?

The waters they were mild, as she swam out to meet him. Naked Werble who’d never gone suchwise with women.

It wasn’t easy or automatic that choice in her twenties, that choice with Werble who doubled her age. But such were the callings and needs of some moments. Adam’s children, the Benjamites . . .the holocost of Frost

But she didn’t go with gall in her heart. Her’s was a soul much given to service.

And who else would have her, that lion hearted face? And now she knew the sadness that could open her. In some strange way, she saw the point of her life.