Amphibians

I guessed that Ernesto, who I know clearly is head over heels for Claudia has, as a pre-trip measure cracked and asked her to marry him so that she can be occupied with whatever that means and that he has something to return to. I would have thought both these avenues were well covered already but perhaps things in their relationship are at a higher pitch than I appreciate. Claudia spoke a little more of the wedding and her family and then returned upstairs to prod Ernesto. I wanted us to finally get going, this stalled start and never ending ranch house summer had gone on too long.

Later that day the tyres arrived and after a struggle we fitted them and using a small tractor compressor got them fully inflated. The car looked fine and now sounded a bit better thanks to the repaired exhaust. I drove around the yard a few times and then as it was a hot afternoon sat back in the drivers seat with a beer and fell asleep. I awoke to a hammering sound, on the roof, on the bonnet, across the windscreen. Great plops of rain were battering the car, the sky was as dark as spilled pint of Guinness and was pouring down from horizon to horizon. The yard had turned to a mud slide and I could make just out hazy figures on the porch like me observing the passing storm. The frogs loved it, I could see two hopping between the pelting raindrops on the car bonnet, it was as if they slept in some damp corner and then the rain, when it came summoned them out to dance, hop and frolic in the wet. They wee a bright green, no match for the brown land and in the dry an easy meal for birds and rats, in the wet they owned the place. Everything has its time and place to rule however short or long, everything has its time. Every so often it does rain fish, toads, frogs or some other range of slimy creature and that can be interpreted in a variety of ways, mainly as cosmic coincidence. Today I just have two displaced frogs and a lot of rain.

I thought about the frogs, the rain and the car. The rain pounded down but I got out of the car at normal speed, not bending, shielding or covering my head, just getting wet. Then I walked slowly back to the ranch, it felt good.