The Prince of Frogtown Read Online Free
Author: Rick Bragg
to enjoy or endure the company of men like me. He was a sensitive, loving, gentle boy who said his prayers without being told, loved his momma and, to my horror, attached himself to me with fishhooks I could not pull free.
At night, in front of a television frozen forever on Animal Planet, he used me for a pillow, and no matter how much I chafed or squirmed or shoved, he always came back. I would fret and the woman would smile as he dozed on my shoulder, a toxic wad of neon-green bubblegum hanging half out of his mouth. He followed me like a baby duck, stood glued to me in restaurants and stores, and expected me to hug him, as nasty as he was. I hugged, grimacing, as if I had wrapped my arms around a used Porta Potti. He even expected me to tuck him in at night, and as I did I wondered what had happened to me, and who was this nearly neutered man who stood in line for Day-Glo nachos and sticky juice boxes, and paid good money to see the march of the goddamned penguins.
He did not go on the honeymoon, but we felt so guilty we brought him back the next week to Fort Walton. The Gulf was rough and the boy swallowed a 55-gallon drum of seawater, most of which came up through his nose. He would reach for my hand in the water, but the idea of it still seemed wrong to me. “You just stand close, so I can grab you if you go under,” I said. Then a wave knocked him down and beat him up as it rolled him along the bottom, and I had to snatch him up, coughing, spitting. I let him hold my hand for a while as we waded into the shallow water, but as soon as his feet were under him I shook my hand free, because that is not the kind of men we are.
“He’s a little boy,” the woman said.
“He’s a boy,” I said.
“He’s not a little you,” she said. “You can’t make him be like you.”
I only wanted him to be ready. I just didn’t know what for.
I must have dozed awhile. An alarm screamed me awake, my heart jerking in my chest. I expected to see a team of doctors rush in to revive her. But instead a single, solid, middle-aged woman in a sensible smock shuffled in to change out a flattened IV, flicked off the alarm, then shuffled out. I waited for my heart to slow, and caught my mother looking at me. She is seventy now. She likes to quote a poem about an old woman who has come to live uninvited in her house, a wrinkled, ancient woman she can see only in the mirror. I watched her, through the dark and the fog of painkillers, try to figure out who I was. She cannot see a lick without her featherlight, Sophia Loren glasses, but her hearing is fine. She hears with absolute clarity the things she wants to hear, and not one syllable she does not.
It wouldn’t be long till the next shift, the next son. I asked how her pain was and she told me not too bad.
“Well,” I said, “you ought to be ashamed of your damned self.”
My bedside manner was not all it could be in the summer of 2006. I sat by her bed all night for three nights, to watch her breathe. She hated doctors and always had, and that almost killed her. She let a thing as simple as a bad gallbladder degenerate into gangrene, but a sure-handed surgeon in our small-town hospital saved her. I griped in the dark but never told her the truth, how I was never so scared in my life as I was outside her operating room. I mean, didn’t that silly old woman know that once she is gone there is nothing left?
But that was not really true, I thought, not anymore.
“Can I get you anything?” I asked.
“You can bring the boy to see me,” she said.
My boy.
“I like that boy,” she said.
“I know, Momma.”
She plies him with biscuits, and watches him read on the floor. Some women melt around little boys. She did not give a damn that he did not look like us, or come to her in the usual way. He looks like my father’s people, dark-haired, handsome. How odd, he would look like him.
“He’s spoiled,” I said. “You helped.”
She harrumphed. It
At night, in front of a television frozen forever on Animal Planet, he used me for a pillow, and no matter how much I chafed or squirmed or shoved, he always came back. I would fret and the woman would smile as he dozed on my shoulder, a toxic wad of neon-green bubblegum hanging half out of his mouth. He followed me like a baby duck, stood glued to me in restaurants and stores, and expected me to hug him, as nasty as he was. I hugged, grimacing, as if I had wrapped my arms around a used Porta Potti. He even expected me to tuck him in at night, and as I did I wondered what had happened to me, and who was this nearly neutered man who stood in line for Day-Glo nachos and sticky juice boxes, and paid good money to see the march of the goddamned penguins.
He did not go on the honeymoon, but we felt so guilty we brought him back the next week to Fort Walton. The Gulf was rough and the boy swallowed a 55-gallon drum of seawater, most of which came up through his nose. He would reach for my hand in the water, but the idea of it still seemed wrong to me. “You just stand close, so I can grab you if you go under,” I said. Then a wave knocked him down and beat him up as it rolled him along the bottom, and I had to snatch him up, coughing, spitting. I let him hold my hand for a while as we waded into the shallow water, but as soon as his feet were under him I shook my hand free, because that is not the kind of men we are.
“He’s a little boy,” the woman said.
“He’s a boy,” I said.
“He’s not a little you,” she said. “You can’t make him be like you.”
I only wanted him to be ready. I just didn’t know what for.
I must have dozed awhile. An alarm screamed me awake, my heart jerking in my chest. I expected to see a team of doctors rush in to revive her. But instead a single, solid, middle-aged woman in a sensible smock shuffled in to change out a flattened IV, flicked off the alarm, then shuffled out. I waited for my heart to slow, and caught my mother looking at me. She is seventy now. She likes to quote a poem about an old woman who has come to live uninvited in her house, a wrinkled, ancient woman she can see only in the mirror. I watched her, through the dark and the fog of painkillers, try to figure out who I was. She cannot see a lick without her featherlight, Sophia Loren glasses, but her hearing is fine. She hears with absolute clarity the things she wants to hear, and not one syllable she does not.
It wouldn’t be long till the next shift, the next son. I asked how her pain was and she told me not too bad.
“Well,” I said, “you ought to be ashamed of your damned self.”
My bedside manner was not all it could be in the summer of 2006. I sat by her bed all night for three nights, to watch her breathe. She hated doctors and always had, and that almost killed her. She let a thing as simple as a bad gallbladder degenerate into gangrene, but a sure-handed surgeon in our small-town hospital saved her. I griped in the dark but never told her the truth, how I was never so scared in my life as I was outside her operating room. I mean, didn’t that silly old woman know that once she is gone there is nothing left?
But that was not really true, I thought, not anymore.
“Can I get you anything?” I asked.
“You can bring the boy to see me,” she said.
My boy.
“I like that boy,” she said.
“I know, Momma.”
She plies him with biscuits, and watches him read on the floor. Some women melt around little boys. She did not give a damn that he did not look like us, or come to her in the usual way. He looks like my father’s people, dark-haired, handsome. How odd, he would look like him.
“He’s spoiled,” I said. “You helped.”
She harrumphed. It