The Bikini suit was not in style this year, but Myra wore it because
she knew she looked good in it. George watched her run toward him and
watched her shake her dark hair loose after she removed the bathing
cap. Then he looked at her figure and he knew it was good, so good that
he unconsciously felt the spare tire beginning to blossom out around
his waist, and he blushed. That was another trouble, he always blushed.
Not only that, but he was very fair-skinned. They could spend the
entire summer at their seaside bungalow in this secluded area, and Myra
would be bronzed like an Indian maiden. But George would turn red and
then he would peel. Then he would turn red all over again and then he
would peel again. And he had freckles all over.
But he stopped thinking of that now. It was a general consideration.
The specific consideration bothered him more: there was one circular
area of little red frogs, fifteen feet across. Then there was a trail
of little red frogs on the sand, five running steps long. And then
there was another fifteen foot circle of them. Most of the frogs were
still, but some of them hopped about, and soon the circles had become
irregular areas.
Myra came up to him breathlessly. "Oh, George!" she cooed. "You're
magnificent, really magnificent. Frogs this time. Little red frogs.
You're so--so _Fortean_."
George sighed. He had a lot of friends, and many of them complained
because their wives would call this or that thing Freudian. But
they had sympathy: a lot of men had wives riding the Freudian
merry-go-round. This was worse. To Myra things were _Fortean_. George
had seen pictures of this man Fort--a nice enough looking guy with a
cherubic face and a ruddy complexion, a turned up nose and big bushy
eyebrows. A mild, harmless man. He had passed away; for some twenty
years now he had been dead. But he could impress people. His work had
impressed Myra.
He thought we're _property_, or things are teleported from one place
to another, or we're being fished for, or you can tell a world by its
frogs, or science is whacky and word-nutty and sophistic hooey....
George had heard it all dozens of times. Myra had told him. Myra had
told him so much that he thought he knew Fort's philosophy by heart.
A lot of ridiculous hog-wash--until the rain. How could he call it
ridiculous now?
* * * * *
"See?" Myra said triumphantly. "See, George? This time it's frogs.
Yesterday it was beetles, and the day before, those little birds--and
everything was red."
"Maybe they're communists," George suggested feebly.
"Oh--"
"Well, that's as good an explanation as any."
"No, it's not. Red is the predominant color of whatever world they come
from, so they're red. Or else it could just be coincidence, but I doubt
that. And I told you you were a good catalyst."
"So I'm a good catalyst. So I can make rain. They could have used me
back East a few months ago--if they wanted a rain of frogs."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account