Toads Down Deep in the Loam
On the morning of his first day of school, Henry pours the water out of his thermos when his father isn’t looking and slips a toad inside. He leaves the lid loose so it can breathe and finds a cricket in the yard so it has lunch. Everyone has told him that he will like school, but they told him he’d like church and baseball. They told him he’d like fishing. The world seems to be built on being lied to and then pretending the lies were true in the end, so he decides that the toad is here just in case school is as bad as church.
He decides during lunch that it is not as bad as church, but he doesn’t like that it’s longer. He likes being able to raise his hand and talk. He likes his teacher, Ms. Price, but he’s glad he brought a toad, and after he eats, he finds a cool spot of grass near where a pipe is leaking and making a puddle. He names his toad Angelo and lets him go, in this perfect place for toads in the school. When the bell rings, he says, “Stay here. I’ll come back every day with crickets.”
The next day at lunch, it takes a little while, but he finds his friend in the puddle of the pipe that still leaks, and he tells him about his day. He tells him about his parents and Ms. Price, the first grade teacher. He tells him about Larry Morgenstern who hit him in the face before class. He tells him about his mother who had to take a vacation for a few weeks because she was getting really nervous but that she’ll be back soon. She was supposed to be gone for two weeks, and now it’s been three weeks, but she’ll be back soon.
Angelo seems to like the little puddle so much that he has friends who live there, too, which isn’t a surprise, and over the first weeks of school before it gets too cold for toads, Henry comes every day, sometimes with another boy, but mostly not. Larry Morgenstern comes one day but only to tell Henry that he heard that Henry’s mother left him. Henry says, “Fuck you” and then punches Larry Morgenstern in the balls and the principal calls his father down, who laughs when he hears the whole story, but Principal Johnson doesn’t laugh, and in the end Henry has to apologize, and he doesn’t want to, but his father tells him to lie his way through it because it will be easier.
His father says, “Let Larry know you lied later. It’ll be the last time he picks on you.”
But the next day at lunch, Henry tells Angelo the truth. He always tells his toads the truth, and the truth is that maybe Larry Morgenstern is right. Maybe his mother is not coming back at all. His father talks to her on the phone and writes her letters, but she never talks to Henry. He tells Angelo that he likes punching Larry Morgenstern in the balls, and he hopes Larry picks on him again because then he’ll punch him again.
In early October, Henry tells Angelo he knows that toads need to sleep in the winter and he’ll miss their conversation, but he’ll wait for him. By the time he comes back, Henry probably will be able to read. He tells Angelo that he’ll read him a story.
In November, Henry has no one whom he can tell the truth to. Ms. Price asks him if he enjoys school, and he says yes. Principal Johnson asks him if he’s making friends at school, and he says that he’s made a lot of them. His father asks him if he is worried about his mother, and he says no.
The only one he doesn’t lie to, who doesn’t need him to lie, has dug himself down three feet or so in the loose dirt near the puddle that never dries. That’s where Ms. Price says toads go in the winter, down into the earth. She says that some creatures just disappear to us, but we shouldn’t worry about them. She says that’s what they need to be safe and happy. She says this to Henry because he raised his hand in class. Later, when he comes in from lunch, she asks about Angelo, and she listens when he tells her, and she hugs him firm and long.