Super America

by Anne Panning

  The boat, painted camouflage, was small and shallow and smelled like cat pee. “I call front!” Stella said, and clambered her way to the bow, almost toppling us both into the water. I sat in the middle seat, Kenner in the stern. It was just after dusk, and the tight thicket of trees and mossy overhang completely obliterated the weak glow of a half-moon. I was put in charge of the flashlights and held one in either hand, training the beams right at water level as we headed out into the unknown. Instantly, dozens, hundreds, thousands of eyes skimmed the surface. It was a pond full of eyes! Round blinking bubbles of eyes. “Lookit there!” I said. “And there!” My flashlight beams grew erratic as my heart rate rose.

  “Shh!” Stella said. “You’ll scare them. Stay focused.” She was leaning way over the boat, spear poised in the air above the water. Kenner was in charge of operating the oars, which groaned on rusty stirrups. We slid through the water, nocturnal hunters and explorers, traveling through thick bands of gnats. I could feel them on my tongue and told Kenner we could get poisoned. I had read that certain gnats in upstate New York were poisonous. I couldn’t remember where I’d read it.

  “Just keep your mouth closed,” Kenner said.

  “Then they go in my nose!” I was swatting and trying to breath without inhaling gnats when I dropped one of the flashlights in the water. It sunk.

  “Way to go,” Stella said. “I was just zeroing in on one!” She sat back in the boat and made waves with her angry movements. I held on, rocking.

  “This is crazy,” I said. I turned to Kenner. “Didn’t they show you any better tricks of the trade on your frog video?” An owl hooted above us and sounded like it was booing. “I mean, I would think a thousand bucks would get you a whole case of frog legs, not to mention some how-to.”

  “Well, here’s a little known fact,” Kenner said. He sat back, placed the oars inside the boat, and unscrewed the bottle of red. “If you don’t feed frogs right, I mean if they’re really hungry?” He took a sip, passed it to me. I drank and passed it to Stella, but she was busy taking aim at one of the frogs. “So I was saying,” Kenner kept monologuing, “if they’re really hungry, they resort to cannibalism. That’s one thing McCombs says can be a real problem. Cannibalism. It reduces the harvestable population.” Kenner said it as if he were reading out of a brochure.

  “Hey, I got one!” Stella said. She rocked the boat a bit getting it inside, but indeed, there was a big grey-bellied bullfrog impaled through the throat. It lay there, gasping, its eyes roving, a desperate little man. “Amazing how easy it is,” Stella said. “You can almost reach right in and grab them.” She pulled the spear out of it and started going for another.

  “You have to put it out of its misery!” I said. “You can’t just let it suffer like that.” I petted its slimy head, and its eyes met mine, pleading for help. “This is torture.”

  “You do it,” Stella said. “Use your flashlight. Give it a clunk.” Again, she dangled over the side of the boat, spear in hand. “Just make sure to smash it over the head without ruining the legs. Remember, this is about frog legs.”

  I stared at the little guy caught like a common criminal in my flashlight beam.

  “Hey, Faye,” Kenner said. “It’s okay. I’ll do it.” When it came right down to it, Kenner knew me. He knew I could not kill a frog. I turned away but heard the ugly sound of plastic on cartilage. The rest of the frogs in the swamp seemed to croak loudly and mournfully at the loss of one of their own. “It’s okay,” Kenner said. “It’s all right.” He rubbed my sweaty arm and for a second I felt comforted. “Just try to think of it like cows. We kill cows and eat them without a thought. This is the same thing.”

  “Got another one!” Stella said, and slid it off the spear like a cooked kebab. “I think I’m getting the hang of this.” Kenner took the flashlight from me and put this one out of its misery, too. I turned away.

  We slid quietly through the dark, spearing, whacking, killing, frog after frog. I sat in the middle seat, sorry I’d come. I missed the Kenner I’d married twenty years ago, who used to wash up on Friday nights and take me to the movies. Back then, we wanted the same things: a little money saved for a rainy day, a decent car, a small house, and a few trips here and there to America’s landmarks. We still hadn’t made it to the Badlands, not to mention Yellowstone, Disneyworld, or the Jersey shore. Somewhere along the way, Kenner seemed to have drifted into the Harley set, leaving me, I guess you could say, in the dust. All I wanted was what we used to want: to be together, doing nothing much at all, but always seeing the future as a bright place, full of possibility. I didn’t even need to go on the trips as much as I wanted to feel aligned with Kenner again, like uniformed soldiers, fighting for the same cause.

  After work the next day, we kicked back whiskey-Cokes and fired up the grill at Stella’s house. Kenner’s theory was that more people would go for frog legs if they were barbecued like any other meat, whereas Stella argued that a breaded, fried version with lemon and garlic would so mask the shape and taste of frog that people would gobble them up with abandon, then be able to say, “Hey, I ate frog legs.” They both wanted to test their versions on each other before deciding which one the restaurant should serve. I thought people in our town would rather eat a whole plate of ketchup before they’d eat frog legs but decided that if I wanted to be on the same side as Kenner again, I should at least play along with the whole venture—even if I did think it was ridiculous.

  Stella poured about an inch of oil into a deep cast-iron skillet. She stood back, watching it warm up. “My thinking is that if you fry the hell out of it, people will eat almost anything, right? I mean, chicken wings? Give me a break.” She finished her drink fast, the ice cubes knocking against her teeth. “Fix me another?” she asked. Granted, I was just sitting there at her very 1970s breakfast bar leafing through a Ladies Plus catalogue, but still. I scowled at her and stomped to the fridge.

  Growing up, she had always resented me for being tiny and trim, whereas she was tall and husky. Not only that, but she was a tomboy gone to seed. She played basketball and got thrown out of every single game for fouling. She was a regular pot smoker by age twelve. At sixteen she totaled my parents’ Honda and walked away without a scratch. Still, she somehow managed to win their favor. “Stella’s spunk,” my father, a high school shop teacher, would say, “will take her far. You just watch her go.” As for me—their sweet, reliable, goody-goody daughter—my good grades were hastily magneted to the refrigerator, then soon fell down and were replaced by supermarket fliers, court summons for Stella, and photos of our dog, Derek, a blind spaniel Stella had found at the dump and adopted as our family pet.

  I could hear Kenner outside hacking the legs off the frogs. He’d wanted to do it at the sink, but I’d insisted it was not an indoor enterprise. I also told him to skin them out there and only bring in the little legs and drummies when they looked like any other meat. It was all I could stomach. But I was glad for the time alone with Stella, who drank her whiskey-Cokes as if they were water. She’d taken to drinking hard liquor the past few years, and I could see it taking its toll. Spider veins covered her cheeks, and her face had grown swollen and splotchy in a way that read alcoholism. Kenner disagreed with me, though, and told me I was always looking for problems when it came to Stella.

  She persuaded me to mix up a little beer batter with chive since I was obviously idle. She pointed me over to the flour canister with her elbow and told me where everything was.

  “You know, Stella,” I said, and shook some salt into my palm. I threw it into the batter. “I kind of wish you’d leave Kenner out of these things. You know he’s got a heart of gold. He’d do anything for you. For anyone, for that matter.” I snipped up the chive with a scissor. “But he’s a lotto-ticket junkie, just like you! We’re talking about a dreamer here. All he wants is to quit his job and ride his Harley all over hell.”

  Her back was to me. She shrugged.

  “He’s only doing this because he thinks it�
�ll make us all filthy rich,” I said. I waited. Nothing. “He wants to blow all my money on this, and then it’ll all go to pot, and then what? Huh? You know as well as I do that this thing is never going to catch on.”

  She still wouldn’t look at me. I could see the back of her neck muscles flex. I stirred the batter hard, then let it rest.

  “Just because you think you’re going to strike it rich,” I said, “doesn’t mean ... well, can you just leave Kenner alone for once?” There. I’d said it, and was glad I had.

  “He came after me first,” she mumbled, her back to me. “It wasn’t like I was thinking: Hey, Kenner! Let’s do this!” She spun around then, fast, and caught me off guard. I was starting to get confused.

  “That’s not what he told me.” I tried to remember how the whole frog leg fiasco had come up in the first place but couldn’t recall Kenner’s exact words. “All I know is that Kenner didn’t know the first thing about frog legs until you started talking about them. And now—”

  The screen door squeaked open, and Kenner came in with a cookie sheet full of frog legs. Their little calf muscles curled tightly around the bones like sea shells. Long black veins ran down the tendons like embroidery floss. You could see the gray hip joints hacked at the ball. But worst of all, he hadn’t removed the webbed feet. Each little toe stuck together and looked ready to leap.

  “Kenner,” I said, “the feet!”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Try not to look.”

  “The feet!”

  He spread them open between thumb and forefinger.

  “You’re barbarian,” I said. “Both of you.”

  “No,” Stella said. She dipped a couple of legs into my batter, and we all stood there, watching them sizzle. “It’s more or less we’re on the same page, me and Kenner, entrepreneurially.”

  “That’s not a word,” I said. The frog legs smelled like garlic, nothing else. They popped and sputtered grease. I took a step back.

  “Look it up,” she said. “Is too.”

  I was tempted to say, “Is not!” but crossed my arms and stewed. She could be such a bully. Besides, I comforted myself, I was the smart one. Back in high school, I was on the honor roll and salutatorian and voted Most Likely to Succeed, but whenever Stella caught me reminiscing, she’d say, “Faye, let it go. That was over twenty years ago, girlfriend.” I hated when she called me girlfriend. I was not her girlfriend.

  When the frog legs were done, we sat down at the table, the platter steaming in front of us. I still didn’t think I’d quite gotten through to Stella, but I trusted Kenner, if not her. For a while, I wondered if they could possibly be having an affair, but I knew Kenner didn’t have it in him to cheat, simply because he was too lazy. Cheating would require him to spend his free time on something other than his bike. Cheating would mean he’d have to make phone calls (he hated talking on the phone) and prior arrangements (he was a “wing it” kind of guy). Plus, there was very little Stella had to offer someone like Kenner except a bossy, know-it-all kind of idiocy. Kenner wouldn’t stand for it. I decided they were simply in business collaboration both with and against me, all in the name of getting my money behind their frog leg business. But they were not getting another cent.

  “Ladies?” Kenner said. He got three forks from the drawer and set them on the table. “Shall we?”

  “Ken, they’re really a finger food,” Stella said. She pushed aside the forks.

  I wasn’t going to have any, but the two of them were exclaiming and moaning in such delight that I decided to close my eyes and just do it. What disturbed me about them was how lightweight the bones were, as if they weren’t bones at all but airy, birdlike imitations. The fully intact webbed feet didn’t help matters, either.

  I chewed, but the meat seemed to bounce against my molars.

  “Do you think they taste like chicken?” Kenner said. He rubbed some grease off my chin with his thumb.

  “I think they kick ass!” Stella said. She was onto her third one, and I could see the grease had already stained her T-shirt. The T-shirt was tie-dyed and so tight around her bust you could see every seam and lacy bulge of her bra through it.

  “Umm, I think he was asking me, not you,” I said. I kicked her under the table, but she kicked back, harder.

  “So?” Kenner said. “Pretty righteous, huh?” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Tastes like goddamn chicken fingers.”

  “It’s sort of like fat-free chicken,” I said, chewing. I nibbled around the knee joint and shivered. “Or somehow it’s like fish. And it tastes kind of bitter. A little like algae.”

  I needed a big swallow of beer to wash down each bite. What really repulsed me, beyond the milky texture and the webbed feet and thick black veins, was seeing the long, gray discarded bones on the pan. The shape and bend of each leg too clearly suggested frog to me. You could almost imagine them hopping away.

  “So, are you okay with this?” Stella said. “Are you in?” She sat back and balled up her napkin, then sucked at her teeth and eventually scraped between them with her fingernail.

  Kenner looked at me expectantly.

  “Meaning what?” I asked.

  They exchanged glances, and I felt my heart rate rise. “Meaning we need just a little more money,” Stella said. “Please, please, please! If you’ve ever done anything good in your life, do this! You won’t be sorry! I promise.”

  Kenner moved in before I could even say anything. He was obviously on damage control and tried to placate me and at the same time con me into it. “Babe,” he said in his soft I’m-really-sweet-and-understanding voice. “We just need a couple thousand more for the grand opening.” He lifted my hand off the table and held it like a fair maiden’s. “Just some odds and ends. Tables and chairs. A steam table for the buffet. Advertising and promo stuff. You know.”

  I pushed the frog legs away from under my nose. “First of all, you’ve sunk $6,000 of my money into this whole thing already.” I tapped a finger on the table to make my point. “Without asking me.” I glared at Kenner, who nodded, again, in his I-hear-you way. “Second of all, no one is going to want to come and eat freaking frog legs around here! How many times do I have to tell you two that?”

  “Why do you always have to be such a downer?” Stella said. She hoisted herself up to get her cigarettes and stood by the back door, half in, half out, exhaling outside as a courtesy, I knew, to me.

  “Let me have one of those,” Kenner said. The two of them stood with the door cracked open, looking in at me, the lonely nonsmoker, at the table.

  “Ever since we were kids, you always had to bring up the practical side of shit and poo-poo on everything.” Stella blew smoke inside the house now, as if in revenge. “Whenever Mom or Dad would suggest some kind of vacation to Niagara Falls or Cooperstown, you’d always have to go get the atlas and point out all the problems with it. Or whenever Dad suggested we live a little and splurge on something like a new car or a swimming pool, you’d always band together with Mom and worry about the money. You were worrying about money when you were five years old!” She picked a piece of tobacco off her tongue with her finger.

  “It’s easy not to care about money when it’s not yours,” I said. I scraped my chair back and told them I had to go. “And don’t think I’m going to change my mind like I always do. Because I won’t.” I stormed past the two of them—or stormed as best I could with my “disability,” a term I loathed. Outside, I sat in the car a minute, rolled my window down, and tried to calm myself. I had read somewhere that you should never drive or operate machinery when you were upset.

  “Just think about it,” Stella called from the back stairs. “We have to have chairs! Is that asking for so much?”

  I pulled out of the driveway, then pulled back in. I hung my arm out the window and pointed at Kenner, who’d just cracked open a beer. “Kenner, get in,” I said. “You’re coming with me.”

  He shrugged his shoulders, stubbed out his cigarette, and brought his be
er along with him, which I didn’t like, not in the car. I drove us away fast without waving at Stella.

  “This is getting out of control,” I said. I liked driving Kenner around our town and took the long way home. We cruised past the kiddy park, which was clogged with strollers, then down Main Street, past the post office (luckily, we worked the six-to-two shift, great for summer), the movie theater, the comic book shop, and the travel agency with faded cardboard signs in the windows advertising Florida and Hawaii. The signs were ancient, yellowed, and crumbly around the edges. They’d been there as long as I could remember.

  “The thing you need to do,” Kenner said, and tucked his beer between his legs, “is see the big picture.” He mimed a picture frame in front of him and held it up for me to view. “Money down now is an investment for later.” He rested his hands on his scuzzy jeans. “You have to spend money to make money.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’ve heard that somewhere before.”

  “Yeah, it’s a saying,” Kenner said, “but it’s true.”

  I drove him past the duck pond, a little green pool foul with duck shit and fetid water. Stay-at-home moms sat with their kids, chucking old bread to the ducks, who gorged themselves like gluttons. I used to take walks near the pond, but now those days were over due to my gimp foot. I sometimes wondered if Kenner missed the me I used to be before the accident, the me who could run and jump and dance and wear high heels and really kick it; I knew I did. Now I was a person with “special needs,” which I’m sure didn’t do much for my sex appeal.

  “Check this out,” Kenner said. He pointed excitedly to the pond. “There’s probably hundreds of frogs in there, right? In fact, when you walk past at night, you can hear them doing their thing.” He tapped his lip, which he did when he was really scheming. “Another source of legs for us that’s even closer to home! McCombs says on the video that the more free sources you can identify, the better profit you can make. We might not have to farm them at all.”