A Rain of Frogs

A Rain of Frogs

Miss Sweet Potato Pie

I meet the Muse. She expounds upon ancient astronauts and parking meters

The dog, a border collie, was waiting by the parking meter. She was staring at a spot in the sky, somewhere above the heat exchanger on the roof of the Pick N Pay supermarket. She threw back her head for a lonesome shivering howl, a primal coyote crying down blood from the moon. Pen Harrington, walking past, stopped. The dog was talking, apparently to him.

“Heaven! and no one home, a fine state of affairs! The Enemy, the Hegemonist, your Old Testament Jehovah, appears to be out for brunch with the angelic swarm.” She had a schoolgirl voice with just the trace of an accent, a delicate articulation with smoky overtones that hinted an experience beyond her years. Appealing. Swiss? This voice had been raised in the convent, nipping out for a cigarette with the more worldly sisters.

There was a whir of clockwork and a flag with a happy face popped up on the meter.

“Oh fine!” She focused again on the spot in the sky. “Fine and dandy! You have all the time in eternity and I am stuck here like this. You sonofabitch.” There was a small, abrupt yelp and she sat down, flopping over with her back legs open. She gave herself a few desperate licks then, with bared fangs, whiffled relentlessly at an invisible perpetrator.

Pen waited.

Satisfied, the dog looked up. “I am the Lady, I am. But look at me! in hot pursuit of some residual insect parasite.”

Pen Harrington looked at her. She was a medium-sized collie dog. Cute, approaching adorable. Excitable, and talking.

The dog was talking. To him.

“Do you know who I am?”

Pen recalled the American Express commercials.

“You are a dog?”

There was a throaty, low-pitched growl indicating this was the wrong answer.

“I am the Lady of the Wild Things, Queen Rhea, the utterance of fear and desire from before the dawn of creation. The Earth Mother, buddy.”

“Oh. That's nice.”

“Nice. Hmmm, I like that. I have been called by many names, but ‘nice’ has heretofore somehow escaped me.” She was talking to herself, pacing as though nervous for a cigarette, out of character for a middle-sized collie dog. She stopped, seemed to remember where she was, and sat, her head cocked to one side so that her ears flopped over. Adorable, take me home. It was a contrived pose; she didn't quite pull it off.

“Your mouth is open. Close it, please.” Pen closed his mouth. She checked the sky again. “Nobody home. Well, you'll do.”

“Do? Do what?”

“That will come later. I must first inspire trust. Would you like me to do an apparition? You know, like Lourdes? Where is my large-eyed dewy-fresh young innocent full of awe? Where is my Bernadette? You? I laugh: Ha-ha! Look at me, just look at me: I cannot laugh for choking back the tears.”

She essayed a four-shouldered shrug. “Screw Bernadette. You shall be my Tom Sawyer. A boy and his dog. Mark Twain. Surely you have read Mark Twain? Good! I hate to be always explaining myself. Are you ready to be a freckle-faced boy and cater to my every need, you there with the middle-aged spread?”

She regarded the parking meter. “This silent sentinel doesn't really care what time it is. It doesn't care if you get towed or if the world goes to hell in a handbasket. Artifacts have a different schedule of priorities than living creatures.” The schoolgirl voice took on a stagy confidentiality. “For all you know this is a landing beacon for some ancient astronaut. Me. Now what do you think of that? Puts all your petty concerns in a new perspective, I'll bet. This parking meter is obviously the superior local life form. Look at you: full of pride, all alive and strutting around; I'll just bet you think you're the bee's knees.”

Pen looked more closely at the parking meter. It looked pretty usual. “Uh, you are an astronaut?”

“No. I am simply trying to educate you, broaden your worldview. That was only a hypothetical scenario.”

She was pacing again, walking circles about him. “A wee mite long in the tooth if you ask me, and of course you do. That is your first lesson—defer to your betters. Me. I am better than you. Remember this always.” Her lip curled back exposing polished incisors. “Sorry for the outburst. I am the Queen of Heaven and I have a flea bite.”

The dog sat and scanned the sky with a desperate look about her eyes. “You see an adorable, fluffy blonde collie dog. This is not what I am.”

She wanted to play. “Uh, alright.” Pen bent to scratch between her ears. There was a lightning snap of jaws and he quickly pulled back his hand.

“Don't patronize me. I am stranded here chasing fleas unless I can get somebody's attention. Up there.” She indicated the heat exchanger on the Pick N Pay. “Uh-oh. Get rid of this broad. I have to maintain a line of sight contact. Your hat... put your hat over the meter.” The traffic flowing past them had come to a halt. A woman was jockeying a minivan into the open parking space with the happy face on the meter. “These are my landing coordinates. Like the great earth sculptures on the Peruvian altiplano. This is where he'll find me if he ever gets back from lunch. I can't believe he just dumped me here and wandered off”

“Uh, God? God is looking for you?”

“God is one of those big, epistemological terms, buddy. Don't play fast and loose with the local theology, that is my job. No, not God, the local demiurge. He and I had a turf war eons ago, probably even before you were born. I lost, but now I'm back.”

“You're back. And your meter has a happy face. Dogs don't park. You are a dog.”

“Don't belabor the obvious; this is a disguise, or would be if I could get out of it. Like this is the only way he'd let me back. Ten thousand years and I've still got him scared. Now cut the crap and get your hat on the meter, this bluehair is doing some serious cruising.” The woman was waving cars past her on Main Street as she pulled out for a second attempt at parallel parking.

Pen* removed his knit hat and snugged it down over the happy face, smiling apologetically at the woman. She stopped where she was, engaged her hand brake and emergency flashers, and started to get out of her car. There was an irritated honking as cars backed up behind her.

*Pen Harrington, when I think about him―who he is, why he is, and what the hell is he doing mucking up the forward flow of whatever bit of writing I am squirreling about with―is me. An alter ego, doppelganger, avatar, you choose.

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