June walked slowly, studying
the sparse array of plants thriving in deep sand on either side of the path.
Maybe she could take specimens for her garden – this snaky succulent coiled in
a depression next to the blackened stump of a dead tree, that miniature conifer
tipped with flowering pink spires, this rosemary-lookalike with water-swollen
needles and pale stems. She could fill the brick planters with native fauna
instead of the irrigation-sucking ornamentals on the landscaping plan.
Her children didn’t notice
plants, only animals, particularly dogs, which they adored, embraced, named,
followed. Fortunately, the downtown swarmed with unleashed dogs. The children
could have as many dogs as they wanted without bringing a single one home.
She glanced ahead to the sand
ridge beyond the end of the path. Not a child to be seen, nor a dog, a fox, or
a burro, only the brown and white hawks circling overhead, letting loose their
harsh wild cries.
Because Argentina was so far
from northern California, where every schoolroom would decorate a tree, where
every shopping trip would mean holiday music and clamoring ads, the children
had almost forgotten Christmas. From time to time Dylan would ask how many
days, but no one watched the calendar because here, December meant summer,
which made no sense.
Tessa and Fanny had met two
local girls in town, and now that school was out for the season, the four girls
looked for each other in the plaza and played together as if they spoke the
same language. Tessa seemed to know all the Spanish words June didn’t know when
she shopped for food in the market place. Dylan wouldn’t say more than Hola,
but he said it to anyone, which always won him smiles and often silly faces
that made Dylan laugh.
All of which seemed to mean it
was working, the turning their lives upside down in order to escape from the
United States, which no longer seemed the land of the free. Perhaps Argentina
was just as bad, but this far from Buenos Aires, this high up in the Andes,
this grape-growing town felt safer than the Bay Area, where with twelve
shopping days left, Christmas season would be booming. What a treat to miss it
all.
§
Because the children ran ahead
along the path at the foot of the sand dunes, they reached the river long
before their mother. They half-walked, half-slid down the steep manmade slopes
to a rim of stones that divided the dune from a wide expanse of mud flats and
flowing brown water.
“Frogs,” Fanny cried.
“Tiny frogs,” Tessa said, “lots
and lots of them.”
The girls stood awestruck while
frogs, each one smaller than a child’s fingertip, sat and hopped and hopped
again into shallow water where they kicked helplessly against the current until
it carried them to the next mud landing.
Dylan, younger and slower to
descend the sand slope, stretched one foot past the rocks onto the mud and sank
to his ankle. Fanny grabbed his arm and pulled hard enough that he tumbled onto
his back in the sand. His feet waved helplessly, one of them coated with mud
and missing a shoe.
“Ow! ” Dylan said. “Whaaa
–Fanny!”
“I saved you from drowning.”
Next to the indentation where
Dylan’s foot had disappeared, Tessa kneeled on two rocks and scooped mud out of
the swiftly disappearing hole. “Got it,” she said, first holding up a dark
dripping object, then rinsing the mud from Dylan’s green and white flipflop in
a nearby pool of water. She helped Dylan to a seated position and handed him
his wet shoe. “And I saved your shoe. This mud’s too soft to walk on.”
“Frogs. How can we catch them
if we can’t go get them?” Dylan shook his other flip-flop loose and tossed both
behind him.
Hands cupped closed in front of
her, Fanny squatted next to him. “Like this.”
Dylan peered into a small gap
his sister opened between her hands. “Whoa.” He jerked away at the sight of the
frog, then looked again. “That’s little.”
“Frogs are going extinct, you
know,” Tessa said. “Be careful not to kill it.”
Fanny swiveled around to face
the river. “There must be hundreds.” She looked upstream and down. “Thousands.
They’re not extinct here.”
“Can I hold it?” Dylan said.
“Wait.”
Fanny scrambled up to the top
of the slope for the blue plastic bucket they’d carried from the pickup.
Carefully, she transferred the frog from her hands to the bucket floor. The
frog was no larger than her thumbnail, pale brown with white spots. Tiny spots.
She hurried back down to Dylan, the bucket swinging from side to side.
“We can collect them in here,”
Fanny said, “and take them home. We can make a terrarium for them to live in.”
“A museum,” Tessa corrected,
“for specimens of endangered species. Scientists will come from colleges to
study them. They’ll mention us in the papers they write.”
“Frogs,” Dylan said. “I want
one.”
§
“What you got down there,
guys?” June stood on the sand ridge above the river, not exactly surprised but
still relieved to see the three children together, safe.
“More frogs than you’ve ever
seen,” Fanny said. She held up the bucket. “Come help us catch them for our
museum.”
“Mom!” Dylan shouted. “You
won’t believe it! Frogs!”
June glanced at the bucket, the
mud, the river flowing between and around the mud. “I can’t see any frogs,” she
said before she started down the slope.
The bucket was hopping with
frogs, ten at least. Every few minutes Fanny or Dylan tipped in another.
“They’re beautiful,” June said.
Tessa opened her hands to show
her mother a particularly small frog, then released it onto the sand. “They’re
endangered. All frogs are endangered. They’re going to die. We’re probably the
last generation to ever see a frog.”
“Really?” June said. “I
remember there’s a problem, but are you sure it’s that serious?”
“A disease,” Tessa said,
“caused by a fungus. It destroys their moisture-making stuff so they die by
osmosis. American bullfrogs are immune but not for long.”
June bent down and swiped a frog
into her hand. “How do you know this?” When she opened her fingers, the frog
hopped away. “And how awful if it’s true.”
Tessa recaptured the frog and
handed it back to her mother. “Oh, it’s true. Frog species are being decimated
all over the world, nine out of ten, extinct.”
A puzzled look crossed June’s
face. Tessa must have heard or read the word decimated and reused it
without knowing precisely what it meant. One out of ten was bad enough, but
nine out of ten?
“This is a population
explosion,” June said. “Is it possible the disease hasn’t yet spread to
Argentina?”
“Maybe. But Fanny wants to
bring them home, and I think we should leave them here in their natural
habitat.”
June agreed, but for different
reasons. They hadn’t owned pets in California, which was one more reason they
could move away, but too many ecology lessons could spoil the children’s fun.
§
In the end they brought five
frogs back to live in the stone pool that sat empty between the veranda and the
outside wall of June’s bedroom. Tessa googled for Argentine sapos on her
iPad, Fanny ran off to make a cardboard frog house even though Tessa claimed it
was completely unnecessary, and Dylan guarded the bucket while June went
searching for the roll of leftover screening.
On the turnkey house plans
she’d chosen two years earlier, June had thought the pool to be the base of a
fountain and looked forward to the gentle sound of running water, especially
while lying in bed. But the fountain turned out to be one of the numerous
misunderstandings everyone blamed on language, not a fountain but a stone
planter to go along with the dozen brick planters, all of which sat empty
waiting for June to determine whether to plant according to her instincts or
the landscaper’s formal intentions. Her excuse was that they couldn’t plant
until the house was painted, and because the painters were so slow, it seemed
like that might be forever.
“Tessa,” June said, “can you
help me lay this across the top of the pool, and Dylan, can you bring me some
medium-sized stones to hold down the corners?”
“Wait, Mom,” Tessa said, “I’m
waiting for a website to load.”
“I have to watch the frogs,”
Dylan said.
“Okay then,” June said and
dropped the roll of screening onto the veranda. “I think I’m ready for a nap.”
Hastily, Tessa put down the
iPad. “Sorry, Mom.”
“I’ve told you not to tell me
to wait.”
“I know. I’m sorry. Should I go
get some rocks so Dylan can guard the frogs?”
Fanny backed out the screen
door carrying a box almost as tall as she was. “Ta da,” she said, turning and
laying the box horizontally in the pool. “Three wine cartons, all the scotch
tape, five frog doors.” She pointed to the triangular gashes along the bottom
edge.
“Clever,” June said. “Good
recycling, Fanny.” She looked around to see the rocks Tessa had gathered. “When
Tessa and I have the screening in place, Fanny, can you weigh each corner down
with one of these rocks?”
“The pond’s too wide,” Tessa
said. “The screening won’t cover it.”
“Fine, we’ll measure two
lengths,” June said, “and I’ll stitch them together.”
All of a sudden she regretted
giving in to Fanny and Dylan’s pleading. No matter what they did, the frogs
would escape or die. The children would all end up crying. Tessa was right. The
frogs belonged back at the river, and even there, they would sooner or later
die from natural causes or from the diabolical frog fungus, depending on if and
when the fungus arrived in Argentina. What if the fungus was already here? What
would the fungus do to children who touched frogs?
Dylan abandoned the frog bucket
to tug at her shorts. “Mom, now how many days till Christmas?”
§
The next morning Fanny
remembered the frogs first. Tessa and Dylan were right behind her out the door.
June followed when they started screaming.
Foxes or dogs, possibly both,
had torn apart the screening and chewed holes in the frog house. “For the
little snacks,” June murmured too quietly for the children to hear. Surely they
hadn’t gone after the frogs, which were in any case nowhere to be found. Dylan
sobbed into her lap while Fanny continued to search beyond their unplanted
gardens and into the vineyard. Tessa stood tear streaked and worrying next to
the fire pit.
“If it was dogs,” Tessa said,
“and if they ate the frogs, the dogs might be dead, too.”
June stroked Dylan’s head. He
was crying too hard to have heard his sister’s ugly suggestion.
“The dogs have lived here all
their life,” June said. “If they wanted to eat a frog, they would have done it
a long time ago.”
“That’s true,” Tessa said. “I
hadn’t noticed. The dogs are all grownups here.”
§
Because the children wouldn’t
eat breakfast and refused to ride the horses or take a walk, June insisted they
needed to go food shopping. Anything to get them out of the house, bust up
their grumpy moods, put an end to their requests to go back home to California
where they could play with their friends.
“And celebrate a normal
Christmas,” Fanny said.
“What’s normal?” June asked.
“A tree,” Dylan said.
“We’ll get a tree, today, and
you can spend the rest of the day making ornaments.”
“I used all the scotch tape,”
Fanny said.
“Good thinking, we’ll buy more
of that, too.”
“What about candy canes,” Tessa
said.
“Haven’t seen them here, but
we’ll find the local equivalent,” June said. What she could find for presents
to put under the tree was the harder question, but the children wouldn’t ask
it. They counted on her for miracles.
§
June had come to realize that
the children were right. It would be nothing like a normal Christmas. No
Toys-R-Us. No mall. Too late to order physical items from Amazon because they
would take a month or more to arrive. Still, she’d decided what to give them
– downloadable iPad games, more ebooks, individual small things she’d
picked out in the downtown stores. She’d surprise them with everything
necessary to make a gingerbread house on Christmas Eve. She’d remembered to
bring their stockings, which she’d fill with dulces and alfadores.
Her mother always stuffed an orange in the toe, walnuts on the top. Maybe she’d
do that, too.
Paco the painter solved her
dilemma. June disliked him because he made Dylan laugh by sticking his finger
up his paint-spattered nose and pretending to eat the imaginary boogers. “Hola,”
Dylan would say, again and again, hoping the painter would repeat the joke. The
girls watched him, too, and sniggered behind their palms.
“Tengo un regalo para los
niños,” Paco said, with only six days left.
June imagined the gift would be
something his wife had made, cookies or candy. “Gracias, señor,” she
said, and conjured up a smile for his thoughtfulness.
“Lo traigo mañana,” he
said.
June shook her head. “No
entiendo.”
Paco moved to the side and
pointed to Tessa, sitting on the veranda with the iPad, still researching
Argentine frogs. “Lo traigo mañana,” he repeated, louder this time so
Tessa would hear.
“He’ll bring it tomorrow,”
Tessa said. “Bring what tomorrow?”
“I don’t know,” June said. “A
surprise.”
§
No one ever seemed to know when
Paco would show up. Sometimes he caught a ride with El Jefe. Sometimes
he walked. This time he rode the blue bicycle with the child seat, to which, as
usual, he’d strapped his well-worn backpack. Tessa saw him first, and when he
smiled and waved at her, she remembered.
“Hola, Paco!” she
called. “Fanny. Dylan. Mom. Paco’s here. Yesterday he promised to bring us
something.”
Pretending to be nicer than she
felt – after all, what if he also
took this opportunity to do the nose trick – June invited Paco into the house.
His cheek bulged with coca. He carried his backpack in both hands and urged the
children to come closer.
“Hola,” Dylan said.
Smiling too widely to put June
at ease, Paco looked in turn at each child, then squatted in the middle of the
room. “Vea,” he said, unzipping the pack.
First a black tip, then a small
brown nose on a round head pushed its way through the opening, then two paws,
then the rest of the puppy.
Pandemonium ensued. The puppy’s
paws slid on the wooden floor. Dylan chased and whooped. Fanny chased and
cried. Tessa finally captured the soft brown wildness. Hugging it to her chest
with the other two children reaching in to touch it, she carried it to June.
“Can we keep it, Mom? Really?
Please?”
June looked at Paco, standing
by the door, wearing the same pleading look Tessa wore. He’d seen the children
in the plaza. He knew what they felt for dogs.
The children surrounded her, patting
the pup, echoing Tessa’s plea.
“Of course,” June said. “It
just so happens that today is Christmas.”
