The Ballad of Tubs Marshfield

by Cara Hoffman

  Dedication

  For My Parents

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Part One: Songs for a Vanishing Swamp

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Part Two: Magic Melodies for Everyday Life

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books by Cara Hoffman

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Part One

  Songs for a Vanishing Swamp

  1

  Tubs was the brightest, the greenest; a frog among frogs ready to burst into song. He sported a gold-and-crimson vest and smiled like he had just heard a joke. Tubs could be counted on. His eyes were the color of the sun setting over the water, and he could swim from day to night and back again.

  Tubs made his home in the roots of an old mangrove tree. Cattails grew wild in the shallow water by the porch where his boat was moored. On windy days he would watch them dancing, their long slender bodies bowing over the marsh, all of them humming the same tune. Spider lily and trumpet vines climbed the walls of his house, the scent of their flowers drifting through the swamp like a distant melody.

  The swamp was so serene, few ever ventured into the wider world. Even the birds, who could fly great distances, stayed put. Everything they needed was right there.

  The roof of Tubs’s house was open to let in the wind, sun, and stars. Inside, the walls were lined with jars of dried bluebottle flies and bright red rose-mallow wine, which he served on special occasions. Tubs’s trombone, washboard, jaw harp, and clarinet lay out in the living room, ready to use. His piano—which was missing quite a few keys—grinned out from beneath a pile of papers, pots and pans, and fishing poles. Above his kitchen sink, Tubs had hung a portrait of his aunt Elodie, rest her soul, who had traveled as far as New Orleans and was known for having the most beautiful voice in all the swamp.

  Life was a song for Tubs. During the day, he hopped among the reeds and saw grass, or put on high rubber boots and went fishing, sitting on the bank with the dragonflies and snapping turtles. Sometimes he cooled in the dark water, sheltered by tall cypresses and the lush leaves of the mangrove trees. At midday, you could find him drifting, just beneath the surface of the swamp, his gold eyes gazing toward the hot blue heaven of the Louisiana sky.

  But nothing compared to life when the sun went down and the music of the night rose up all around. The song of the water and the stones, the song of the cicadas and the leaves, the song of the ground and the paws, the howl of the fox and the wind. The near silence of the moths and the rabbits; a symphony of rustling and pauses of fluttering and digging. The birds singing their warbled questions to the night, the fish’s bright splash like a faint cymbal crash. And down in the hollows of the mangroves—in the houses of the frogs—a night of reeling and song that would last until dawn. Frogs in their boats, frogs on their porches, frogs in the mud, and in the branches of trees—and Tubs at the center of it all—his house open to the world.

  Tubs loved the swamp at night. Especially the summer he still had a tail and Aunt Elodie wore her crown of lightning bugs and the mud and reeds smelled wonderful and little fires blazed over the water in the distance.

  Elodie had a daughter named Lila, who was Tubs’s favorite cousin—and the two did everything together. When they were small, they would jump off the dock, pretending they could fly. They swam in the cool water and trekked through the forest of cattails. They fished near the garden of lily pads and talked to the water rats and ducks. While Tubs made up songs and dances and learned how to play just about any instrument, Lila read books. She liked to tell people things they didn’t know and fix things that were broken.

  In the evening they would talk to the swallows who came out to play as the last rays of sun shimmered over the surface of the swamp. At night they would lie in the red-and-white boat together looking up at the stars, eating mayflies and falling asleep to the high sweet sound and to the low bass drawl of their aunts and uncles, cousins and great-uncles, parents, stepparents, and godparents, nieces and nephews, brothers and sisters. Dozens of generations of frogs all living in the same place, spotted and speckled, green and yellow and mottled brown, large and small.

  “Just look at that moon!” said Tubs one evening in early June. “How can anyone keep quiet when it’s shining so silver?”

  “The song they’re singing now,” Lila told him, “is two hundred and sixty-five MILLION years old.” She poked him and he grinned. “Did you hear me? It’s the first song our ancestors made up.”

  Tubs listened for a minute. Two hundred and sixty-five million years was a long time to be singing the same song. It made him want to go get his clarinet and make up something new.

  “You can’t make up something new,” Lila said. “Every bit of water on Earth is the same water that was here to begin with. And we’re all made of the creatures who came before us, and microscopic beings inhabit every inch of us.”

  “Huh?” said Tubs.

  Lila said, “It’s hard to improve on ‘Kiss Me, I’m the Fattest.’ If there was a better song, someone would have written it by now. Anyway,” Lila said, “look at this.” She pulled a letter from her pocket and handed it to Tubs. “I haven’t shown anyone yet.” It was postmarked with a fancy blue-and-yellow seal—an image of a hand reaching out of the sky, holding a book.

  Tubs unfolded the letter and read. It made his skin feel dry. It was from a place called the Sorbonne, which as far as he could tell was not in Louisiana. He looked up at Lila. “Where is this place?”

  “In Paris,” she said. “It’s a school.”

  “Where’s Paris?”

  “It’s across a big salt pond.”

  At first Tubs thought he might cry—thinking about Lila leaving was awful. But then he looked at the letter again and his heart soared for his cousin’s good news. “Lila!” Tubs shouted, jumping to his feet. “Lila! This is amazing! Elodie,” he called from the boat, waving the letter above his head. “Elodie, break out the rose-mallow wine; break out the bluebottles! Lila is going to school! Everyone, everyone, Lila is going to school!”

  Tubs remembered Lila’s face that night, how happy she was, and how proud Aunt Elodie was. And how long the party lasted. And how they changed the words of that old song to “kiss me, I’m the smartest.” And how Lila explained to them that it didn’t technically make it a new song if you changed one word. And how he ate too many bluebottles. And how the turtles came over to offer their congratulations and an owl flew down and stood on the bank of the marshy expanse and talked seriously to Lila. And how the bullfrogs puffed out their necks when she walked by. But the thing he remembered the most was how she smiled. He had never seen Lila smile the way she had that night—when she was about to leave the place he loved the most.

  2

  That was a long time ago now and many things had changed. Tubs and Lila were grown and Elodie was
gone. While Tubs lived in the same neighborhood, Lila had traveled far and learned things frogs in the swamp could only dream about.

  Tubs let the cool water carry him to the boat dock, where three water rats sat quietly smoking corncob pipes and fishing. One was larger than the rest and had grizzled hair and an unruly beard. Tubs hopped out and felt the warm sun on his skin. He scratched a small itchy bump on the side of his head.

  “Any luck, Virgil?” he asked the rat.

  “Luck’s a funny thing,” said Virgil.

  Tubs thought for a second, and grinned. He had just the song to cheer Virgil up! Tubs slapped his wet foot on the dock for a count of four, took a deep breath, and then burst out in a reedy voice that rang through the swamp as clear and bright as a bell.

  “I know a rat who liked to sail

  In sun and rain and wind and hail

  He built a boat of reeds and mud

  And a torn shower curtain and Persian rug

  He sailed due north all through the night

  A lonely firefly his only light

  He docked in ports along the coast and

  Served a barking seal French toast

  And all the fish and all the whales and all the wind and all the gales

  And all the bats and all the cats and all the crawfish who had laughed

  Came to sing him home again

  Braver than most, my ratty friend!”

  Tubs clapped his hands and skipped about the dock. He hopped and clicked his heels together, then bounded forward in a high pirouette and landed in front of the rats, laughing. “Whaddaya think?”

  “Tubs,” said Virgil. “I ain’t built no boat out of mud.”

  “Nah,” said one of the other rats. “Boat like that would jus’ fall apart.”

  “It’s a song!” said Tubs. “Not instructions for building a boat.”

  “Hey, Tubs,” said one of the rats, shifting the corncob pipe to the other side of his mouth. “Could you hand me that can of worms?”

  “Rats,” Tubs muttered to himself, chuckling as he left Virgil and his friends on the dock. He headed inland through the reeds to the frog hospital at the base of a giant cypress tree. Tubs stopped by the hospital most days to visit Lila and bring her some lunch. She was a doctor now, and very busy.

  The waiting room was filled with frogs and toads and a crawfish and a tired-looking woodpecker who was missing some feathers.

  “Mornin’, Maude,” Tubs said to a small red-eyed tree frog who was holding a monogrammed handkerchief to her nose. Maude must have had quite a cold because she was still wearing her pajamas and slippers, and not her usual hat or string of pearls.

  “Mornin’, Bernadette,” he said to the crawfish, whose antennae were drooping.

  “Mornin’, Tubs,” said Bernadette.

  On his way to Lila’s office, Tubs stopped in to say hello to a swallow named Gloria, who worked in the lab. Gloria had shining black eyes and a look of keen intelligence. Her feathers were glossy and dark blue. She had short legs and slender pointed wings, and always wore a tie and jacket.

  Gloria was the only bird from their part of the swamp who had flown around the world. She knew many languages. Tubs liked the way she turned her head to the side quickly when she was listening, and the almost weightless way she bobbed along when she walked. No one looked more awake than Gloria.

  Tubs leaned in the doorway. Gloria looked up quickly and gave him a wink. He noticed that her feathers looked a little dull and ruffled today, and her tie was loosened around her throat.

  “Tubs!” she called in her beautiful voice. “Have I told you the joke about the roof? Actually, never mind, it would be way over your head.” She chirped out a little laugh and then started coughing.

  Tubs found Lila back in her office. She was wearing her lab coat and was hunched over a microscope. She looked up to greet him and the smile she wore was thin. Her eyes looked tired and worried.

  “Tubs,” she said. “I can’t eat lunch with you today, I have too many patients. The whole swamp is coming down with the same cold. Especially the birds and the fish and the frogs. I spent the morning handing out cough medicine and anti-itch cream.”

  “Well, you gotta eat something,” Tubs said. He reached into his pocket and brought out a red bandanna, which he unfolded and set on her desk. From his other pocket he took out a small jar of spicy mayflies and a little bottle of bog-birch soda, which he set on top of the bandanna.

  “Thanks, Tubs,” Lila said. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  Tubs pulled a harmonica from his vest pocket and played her a song while she ate. As he played, he thought about all the broken things Lila had fixed since they were young. It was a long list—his radio, Elodie’s teapot, Virgil’s fishing pole, Bernadette’s claw, the gate to the water rats’ boathouse. . . .

  Tubs’s song had no words, but the way he played it, you could tell it was about Lila fixing and building things. You could just hear it in the harmonies. And though it was a new song—one he’d just made up—it felt familiar and old. When Tubs was done playing, Lila’s eyes looked brighter and she didn’t seem so tired. He knew she felt better because she began explaining how the microscope worked to him, but Tubs couldn’t really listen because a new song was sailing into his thoughts.

  “That’s amazing!” he said to his cousin, walking closer to the door. “How about that?” he said, turning the knob. “I wonder who thinks of these things,” he called as he skipped down the hallway and back out into the reeds.

  A new song was nothing to ignore. He had to get home and capture it before it got away.

  3

  By the time the moon had risen, shining silver on the dark water, Tubs was still at his piano. He’d lit the lanterns on his porch and a small gathering of moths fluttered around them, listening to him play. The water lapped at his dock, and a breeze blew through the house, rustling the calico curtains.

  He pounded out a melody with one hand, then spun around and grabbed his trombone, tapping his foot on the floorboards and letting the trombone’s smooth low voice slide through the living room. He had just grabbed the washboard and was scraping it hard with a spoon when he heard a thud against his door. The next thud was followed by the sound of voices and laughing.

  Before Tubs could go see what was happening, his front door burst open and a dozen boisterous frogs piled into his house, slapping him on the back. They scattered around the living room, taking up space on his piano bench and at his kitchen table. One of them—a tall skinny frog, wearing a tweed coat—went to the stove and put on a pot of chicory. Another rifled through his cupboards, taking out bags of dried mosquitoes, hot peppers, and catberry jam.

  “Tubs, where you been?” said the tall skinny frog. “We’ve been down by the reeds waiting for you. Decided to bring the party over here.”

  As he was talking, more frogs showed up, along with Virgil, two turtles, and a duck. They brought bottles of rose-mallow wine and candy made from mealworms and willow sap.

  “Hey, how come Lila don’t come to our parties no more?” asked a frog wearing a fancy shirt with pearly snap buttons.

  “I think, Beau, what you mean to ask is why doesn’t Lila come to our parties anymore,” said a yellow tree frog.

  “That’s just the kind of thing Lila would say if she were here,” said the duck.

  “And nah, that’s not what I mean,” said Beau. “What I mean is, why don’t she like our music no more?”

  “She does,” said Tubs. “But she gets up very early now that she’s a doctor.”

  “A doctor! I heard Lila wasn’t really from here,” said Beau.

  “Of course she is.”

  “I heard at the sirbun they don’t eat flies, they eat cheese,” said Beau.

  “That’s disgusting!” said a turtle. “Why would you say that about anyone?”

  “I heard Lila ate a duck when she was at the sirbun,” said a wood thrush.

  “WHAT?” asked the duck, rising up on his toes
and beginning to flap his wings.

  “Relax, Billy,” said Tubs. “Lila didn’t eat a duck.”

  “If she wasn’t born here and she ate a duck,” said Beau, “is she really a frog?”

  Tubs pointed to a picture of Lila that was hanging by the piano.

  “Oh, she looks like a frog,” said Billy. “But that doesn’t prove she’s a frog.”

  “She’s a frog,” said Tubs. “But why does it matter if she’s a frog or not?”

  “I can prove she’s not a frog,” said Beau. “You know any frogs who went to the sirbun? Or who became doctors? You know any frog who can do carpentry?”

  “Yeah,” said Tubs. “Lila.”

  “See?” said Beau. “That proves it.”

  “Huh?” said Tubs.

  “Beau,” said Virgil. “You don’t make no sense.”

  Beau sighed. “All I know is nobody can catch no fish and lots of people been getting sick since Lila came back from the sirbun. You seen Gloria lately?”

  Some of the birds raised their voices in agreement.

  “Gloria is sick?” said Tubs. “But I just saw her. She was telling jokes.”

  “She’s not sick,” said the wood thrush. “She’s just losing some feathers.”

  Tubs felt relief wash over him. And then Beau said, “She’s losing her feathers because she’s sick—just like the woodpeckers. Before we had a doctor, no one here got sick,” Beau went on. “You lost an arm, it grew back. You ate some bad mayflies, you just slept it off in the mud.”

  “I thought this was supposed to be a party,” said Virgil. “I ain’t here to listen to nonsense.”

  “Beau’s right,” said a crawfish with a missing claw. “Before Lila came back, there were hundreds of tadpoles every spring—now sometimes we have five or six.”

  “I bet she used some spell she learned at the sirbun,” said Beau.

  “The Sorbonne is a school,” Tubs said. “They don’t teach spells there.”

  “But she ate a duck!” the duck cried again.

  A hush fell over the room and everyone looked at the door. Lila was standing there—still dressed in her lab coat from work and holding a box of crickets.