Toad
Toad was suffocating in the August air. It felt thick and dry in his lungs as he breathed, still warm even without the sun. Toad sat in the unkempt field cross-legged, pulling chunks of long grass out of the ground with both hands until he had little crescents of green stuck under his fingernails. His bare knees were stained green too after a day in the fields. He had tailed Will and his friends for hours, watching from a distance. He looked over at him now, standing silhouetted against the failing sunlight. A delicate cloud of smoke curled up around his Roman nose and into the cloudless sky. He threw his head back and laughed at something one of his friends had said, and then bent back down to spit on the ground. Davy, you crack me up, you son of a bitch, he said, then threw an empty beer bottle at him. Toad wished Will would give him a beer to try.
He decided he would go over and ask for one. If you don’t ask you don’t get, he thought. Picking himself up off the ground and rubbing the blades of grass from his sticky hands, he walked over to where the boys were standing. He stood with his hands balled into fists at his sides, and looked up at his brother. I’d like a beer please, Will. Will’s friends began sniggering. You couldn’t handle it, Toad, one of them said, it’ll go to your tiny toady head and knock you out.
Will wasn’t laughing. He tilted his head to the side and frowned, then turned and picked up a bottle from a cluster in the grass. He held it up so that the last strands of sunlight crept inside the bottle and gave it an olive glow, and then brought it to his crooked teeth and popped the cap off. Go for it, he said, and handed it to Toad. The glass was warm in his hands after sitting in the sun. He peered down the neck at the bubbles and the glossy, amber liquid, and pursed his lips. It must taste nice, right? Otherwise they wouldn’t all drink it so much. He brought it to his lips and tipped his head back.
The beer slammed into his throat faster than he was expecting, and a gush streamed down his chin and onto his t-shirt. He managed to swallow half the mouthful, but somehow the other half had made it into his nose, the bubbles pricking at his skin. He spluttered, bending forward so that the liquid ran out of his nose and onto the grass. As beer and snot dripped over his lips he was vaguely aware of the other boys twisting with laughter, crouching on the floor holding their guts. Toad wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, and Will took the bottle from him. Pathetic. Try again when you’ve grown up a bit. He sneered, and gestured for his friends to follow him. Toad watched them go, pushing each other in jest as they walked towards the woods.
***
It was now completely dark in the fields except for the warm glow of the struggling bonfire. Flames were trying to clutch onto the kindling the older boys had collected from the woods, but the wind had picked up. It lifted up dust from the dry ground and blew it into the eyes of the boys. It blew over the tepee of little sticks Will and his friends had built, and knocked the fire out of it. When they built it back up, the wind snaked around and knocked it over again. Toad was sitting a little away from them, watching as they got more and more frustrated at their failings. He thought if they would just shield the flames a little more it might survive. He could go and suggest that but they would probably think of something better in a minute anyway. He began ripping grass up again, blindly this time, and placed each handful on his bare crossed legs until he had a dark coat of fur on his lower body, hiding the faint suggestion of his pale legs until he was a part of the field. And then a warm gust of wind came, and the blades shuffled off his skin.
Without warning, Will let out a bellowing, chesty roar, his mouth open to the sky and his knees bent, his arms up and fisted like a warrior. The fire had caught. Toad watched as they slowly fed it until it was not a gathering of flames but a bonfire, fierce and hot. The boys jumped around it, eyes wide, teeth bared in the yellow glow like some kind of ritual. The fire cracked, spitting sparks into the sky, and they reacted with more shouts. They whooped and whistled, throwing dry leaves into the flames and up into the air.
Toad got to his feet. He could feel the indents of grass in his ankles, numbed after sitting for too long. It felt like the fire was pressing against his face, and the heat hit his eyes as he walked closer to it. There was a quivering in his chest, and his hands were clammy. The excitement was physical. Ah there you are, Toad. Couldn’t see you over all that grass. Toad looked down. The grass came up to his shins, no more. He swallowed, and straightened his back. He picked up a thin stick from the ground and dropped it onto the fire. It spat out an orange thank you in return. He looked at Will, who was lighting a cigarette on the embers. Their dad smoked, too. How did they do it? When Toad breathed in smoke from the bonfire, he felt as though the skin at the back of his throat would peel off. Maybe he just needed to wait until he was Will’s age. He was too young and too small. Yes, that was usually it.
Just then, one of the boys, Davy maybe, came barrelling towards the fire. Having given himself a run up, he charged at Will and, using his friend’s crouched over back as a springboard, propelled himself over the fire. Clearing the flames, he fell into a landing, rolled on his side for a few feet, then stood up, brushed himself off and said, That’s how it’s done, ladies. The other boys were cheering, rubbing Davy on the head in congratulation, but Toad stood silent. He was stunned. What made him do that? He could have not jumped far enough or high enough, or Will could have stood up and he would have dragged them both into the fire and then who knows what would have happened. He took a step backwards. Someone threw another log into the fire. Will cracked open another beer. Davy looked at his friends and said You impressed I could do that, huh? You know I was born in September, right? And that was the difference, Toad realised. Davy could jump over a bonfire because he was a man.
The other boys all took offence at Davy’s suggestion that they weren’t in fact real men, and one by one hurled their drunken bodies over the burning wood. Toad, as usual, sat and watched, his stomach dropping every time someone’s feet left the ground. He kept imagining a body twisting amongst the firewood, locked in a blistering tussle. And the fire was still growing, too. It was now three, four feet tall, and it was unbearable to be as close to it as they had been earlier. So instead he stood up and walked away from the scene, seeing phantom, blurry fires as his eyes accustomed to the darkness of the open field. The raucous hoots of the boys faded slightly behind him, and he kept walking.
The warm breeze that he earlier thought was suffocating was merciful now. He lifted his arms out from his sides and the wind blew around him, shaking his hair and cooling his skin. Toad was about fifty metres away from them now, but he could still hear their chants. Jump, jump, jump, jump, men, men, men, men. The wind draped around him like plastic wrap. He could feel it on every inch of his exposed skin. Jump, jump, jump. He turned around. Men, men, men. He filled his lungs with clean air, and started running towards the fire.
It was a small orange smudge in a huge canvas of black, and it was growing, getting closer to him. The wind had changed direction and the smoke came towards him as his legs pumped beneath him, sticking to his hair and filling his throat. He couldn’t see his brother or the other boys anymore. They were lost in the grey haze, shadows behind a shadow. He knew they’d be watching him, though. Little Toad, he imagined them saying, let’s see if the toad can jump. He was twenty strides away. Jump. He was breathing in smoke. Jump. He was striding, desperate, wishing, and then he was in the air.
He felt the fire bite at him, reaching up its fingers to his bony ankles, promising to pull him down. He heard it crack beneath him, and thought it would open up and eat him whole. It felt like he was floating above it, frozen in its flames. But then he felt his knees buckle beneath him and the grass caught him, staining his knees a little more, and his hands and his forearms and his chin. He had cleared it.
He stood up and looked at the boys’ faces in expectation. They were staring at him, silent. He’d done it. He’d jumped the fire just like they had, just like the men had. He grinned, and a deep well of pride spread through him, from his gut to his sweaty brow. Breathless, he dusted himself off, and waited for a rub on the head from Will, a congratulatory chant from Davy.
But instead his brother sniffed and fumbled for another cigarette. Davy offered a mild hmph, and gobbed on the grass. The other boys set themselves to collecting more firewood. They didn’t care, Toad realised, and with this he felt the tension in his shoulders fade, his straining lungs calm. He felt heavy with sweat, but somehow lighter.
Toad looked at his brother for a moment, and then at the fire. He panted out a smile, and turned and walked away from the group once more. Sitting in the long grass, he faced the open field this time. He ignored the rippling blades that brushed around him, and instead began picking the green from under his nails, rubbing his knees until there was little trace of the field left on him. A thin crescent still hung on under his left thumb, but that was okay, he decided. He was not quite a man yet, he thought, but that was fine too.