Days of the Frog

A Novel for NaNoWriMo



Prologue: Ass in a Swingset


It was a dark and stormy night. No, strike that. It was a bright and
sunny day. I'd say birds were chirping but that would be a cliche.
Still, birds were indeed chirping. Squirrels were scampering around
busily collecting nuts and acorns to squirrel away, so to speak, as it
was the middle of Autumn when a blast of cool air here and there
was a hint of the Winter to come.

At the end of Wombat Lane, there was a playground. A sign, stating the
obvious, noted that it was the Wombat Lane Park. The Green Acres
insignia adorned the weathered and nearly completely rusted sign. It was
a program started three centuries ago to purchase and preserve open
space around the State of New Jersey. That was back before the world
went to hell, but that's another novel. Maybe it will be this novel too
if we have a slow day.

A steel chain-link fence delineated the quarter of an acre rectangle of
the playground. At one end, where the sign was, the fence gave way to an
opening with a swing gate that could be latched if necessary. A concrete
walkway went in starting from the sidewalk, across the grassy ground of
the playground and ending at a large pit of sand.

A dark green dinosaur stood in one corner of the playground. No, it
wasn't a fossil come back to life. It was made of hardened plastic, a
child's ride that bounced back and forth in an attempt to simulate
riding a dinosaur. Or maybe that wasn't in the manufacturer's specs but
we can imagine, can't we?

A colorful yellow, red, blue and green slide set occupied the strategic
center of the playground. A steel ladder painted yellow with about a
dozen rungs went right up to the top of the slide. A kid could climb up
on the ladder, sit himself down on the top of the slide and barrel down
the chute through several twists and turns before landing in a pit of
sand at the bottom.

Next to the slide formation, there was a cheesy large size tic tac toe
game with enormous wooden blocks bearing an X on one side, an O on the
opposite side, and blanks on the remaining two sides. The blocks were
squares on a game board and so they could be spun around to play a game
of tic tac toe. Not that any kid in the neighborhood ever used that
giant sized game board for its intended purpose. It just seemed silly
when you could play the game in the sand pit with a pair of sticks.

In another corner of the playground, there sat the see-saw. Ah, who
could forget this old fashioned favorite? It was little more than a mere
plank of wood resting on a steel fulcrum in the center. To match the
other objects in the playground, the wood had been painted a bright
cheery yellow. Of course, where a kid would sit at each end of the plank
of wood, there was a little steel handle to hold on to. Many a
neighborhood kid had fun going up and down on the see-saw, balancing and
counterbalancing each other. Sometimes, you would need to have two kids
on one end of the see-saw to counterbalance a fat kid on the other end.
Sooner or later they found out that the same balance could be achieved
if the fat kid sat closer to the center of the see-saw. And so they
learned a law of Physics, even if they did not know that at the time.

And last but not least, there was the swingset. It was a large steel
frame with four legs like the outline of a classic tent. Not the newer
kinds of tents that look like mushrooms or pumpkins or mobile homes.
Hmm... maybe that last tent that looked like a mobile home was indeed a
mobile home. It is hard to tell these days. You know what I mean though,
do you? It's the kind of tent with triangles at both ends and a long
center part connecting the two triangles. Oh boy, that analogy took
longer than if I had described the swingset in the first place.

The seats of the swingset were two short planks of wood. No splinters.
We wouldn't want a kid getting a splinter in his behind, although if he
rode that swingset out in broad daylight with no shorts on, maybe he has
bigger issues than most other kids. And yes, these planks too have been
painted a bright cheery yellow, although the paint had been chipped off
here and there so the deep brown of the wood shows through in spots and
cracks.

Each seat hung freely from the top of the swingset by steel chains
connecting the plank of wood to steel loops at the top. The chains were
just long enough such that a kid of about three years of age could sit
on the seat with his feet about half a foot off the ground. Older
children would have no trouble getting on the swing seat. Really old
children would no doubt complain that being so low to the ground, their
knees would be almost to their faces. Really, really old children,
however, would cease to have that problem. But we'll be getting into
walker or motorized wheelchair range at that point.

And so, as the story goes, Frankie sat on the swing seat, pushing back
and forth with the ease and carefree nature of someone who didn't care
about English homework. At the time, he was content to swing gently back
and forth gliding through the autumn breeze. He took a look at the swing
to his right. There sat Freda, his sister. She was a few years younger,
although she looked much smaller than he did. Most likely she was at the
onset of a growth spurt before entering puberty. Or she could be
taking from the midget... umm well, short, that is... side of the
family.

Freda too was swinging back and forth, revealing not a care in the
world. A slight creak sounded from the top of the swing indicating that
it needed a bit of oil but otherwise things were find as the
gentle autumn winds stirred up some leaves from the trees. Chipmunks
scampered across the grassy ground of the play area. Squirrels played
tag with each other, jumping from branch to branch of the
ancient spreading chestnut tree. Woolly bears crawled in a cute fashion
across the concrete walkway. All was right with the world. Was that a
hint of rain clouds in the sky? No, not at all. The birds were still
chirping, albeit a little more hoarsely as they'd been doing that for up
to an hour then.

Satisfied that all was well with this part of the world, Frankie put his
little master plan into action. For quite some time now, he had been
pushing the envelope, trying to see how high he could swing. He'd
managed a 30 degree angle from vertical but that was child's play, so to
speak. After all, he was a child so calling something child's play would
not be a very descriptive phrase to use. Aww, once again, you are not
getting the subtle word play of the narrator. Oh well. Anyway, Frankie
was sure he could do 30 degrees any time. With a bit more of a push and
a little buildup, he was able to do 45 degrees and later 60 degrees. 90
degrees could be done too although at that point, it was getting just a
bit dangerous so he had to be careful to hold on tight to the chains of
the swing. Right at the 90 degree point, there was just a touch of
freefall. That in itself was exhilarating and it fueled the drive for
greater and greater angles beyond 90 degrees. After all, being
weightless was exciting and weightlessness typically brought on a rush
of adrenaline, a hormone so addictive to some that it drives otherwise
perfectly sane individuals to serious acts of daredevilry. Getting
beyond 90 degrees, however, also took serious effort. It took a very
long buildup and lots and lots of pushing back on the backswing arc and
forward at the bottom arc of the swing cycle. However he had greater
ambitions than that. He always wanted to go the 180 degrees all the way
to the top of the circle, and then back down the other way. He wanted to
make a full circle on the swing.

Anyway, like a few strange and slightly dangerous kids of his age,
Frankie was into model rocketry. And like a few more dangerous kids of
his age, he started thinking of other ways to use rocket fuel than to
send a small rocket-shaped tube up in the air, where it would eventually
reach the apex of its trajectory, tip over and fall back to the ground.
Unless the ancient spreading chestnut tree caught it and in that case,
the better part of the hour would be spent climbing the tree to retrieve
the rocket.

What he figured he would do is he'd attach one rocket to each side of
the seat of the swing, fill both rockets up with rocket fuel and at the
precise moment when he needed that extra push, he'd activate the
detonator and go over the top. Of course, pretty much everything was a
guess as he'd not been bothering with the Physics calculations of this
endeavor.

This was a project taking up the better part of the morning. After
making sure that all the other kids were not around for various
reasons, including day camp, soccer practice, football practice or
ballet -- and on that last activity there, he was thankful his father
did not put him in a pair of tights and send him off to the school of
Swan Lake -- he brought his two rockets to the playground and used
plastic cement to affix them, one on each side of the plank of wood.

He was accompanied by Freda, an ally who was content to silently watch
her brother's mischievious antics without telling on him. He'd known she
wasn't the type who would tattle since they were both little tykes. Back
when he was about nine, and knee high to a duck, he somehow managed to
put Mibbles, the family cat, in the dryer. He didn't turn the dryer on,
which was a good thing for the cat, although the cat didn't quite see it
that way. Indeed, when Frankie's Mom went down to the laundry room in
the basement to dry a freshly washed hamper of clothing in the dryer and
when she opened the door of the dryer, Mibbles sprang out in a whirling
pinwheel of claws and fury. It was comedy gold and would have been
featured in America's Funniest Home Videos, accompanied by some lame
one-liners from a perennially dorky host. Featured, heck, it would have
won. Of course, the video camera is usually never running when the good
stuff happens. And so it goes. Freda, who was six at the time, witnessed
the whole incident from the placing of the cat in the dryer to its
subsequent emergence in a storm of fury and yes, claws. And yet, she did
not say anything. Of course, that meant both Frankie and Freda were
grounded for at least a month.

Anyway, Frankie made sure the plastic cement was dry and the rockets
were firmly attached to the swing's seat. Then he filled them up with
rocket fuel. The detonator was already wired to both rockets with a
button that completed the circuit connecting the 12 volt battery to the
rocket and ignited the fuel. The important addition he made was a velcro
pad to the bottom of the button switch. He planned on placing the switch
on his shirt so he had both hands free to hold on to the chains and only
needed to swing one hand over and push the button when the time came.

Once the work was done, he hopped on the swing seat. He fastened the
ignition button to another velcro patch that he'd clipped on his shirt.
It was his favorite shirt, a Mighty Moomins shirt. There'd been a long
line of Saturday morning cartoon superheroes, most of them cheesy. And
most of them had the unstated purpose of selling character merchandise
to children. However, the Moomins, Frankie felt, had some substance.
They were a team of four superhero costumed capybaras, each with a
different skill or power. One could change shape at will. The other
could temporary alter the fundamental laws of Physics in a localized
fashion. The third could produce vomit in any color of the rainbow he
desired. And the forth capybara could make really good spaghetti and
meatballs. A capybara, in case you were wondering, is the largest rodent
in the world. They live mainly in South America, as a bunch of normally
docile herbivores on the grassy plains. Anyway, these Mighty Moomins
would travel through time and space correcting any violations of the
Laws of Thermodynamics. The most recent episode up until then had been
one where they tackled the most difficult problem of a fried egg that
became a whole egg again and hatched into a chick. They practically had
to make the chick go back into an egg and then fry it, with amusing
results.

After making sure that the ignition button was securely fastened onto
his shirt and that all the wiring was in place, Frankie started on a
gentle back and forth on the swing. He glanced over to the other swing
at his sister, making sure all of her was in place although how he would
know about the 'all of her' is another thing altogether. Satisfied that
all was well, he went into a bit more of a swing, pushing harder on each
swing cycle. He worked his way up to 30 degrees. Then 40 degrees. Then
50. Then 60 degrees. After what seemed like an eternity, he arrived at
90 degrees once again. All he was seeing was the ground rushing by and
then a quick blip of the street followed by a good deal of sky as he was
facing directly upwards at the 90 degree point of the swing cycle.

He knew, of course, that the angle still wasn't sufficient that the
rockets would send him all the way over. He hadn't done the
calculations, of course, but in his long experience with the swing, he
had a gut feel for what would be sufficient thrust and what would be
insufficient. So with a lot more effort, he got the swing angle up to
120 degrees and then 135 degrees. Beyond 90 degrees, the nature of the
swing changed slightly. While the centrifugal force was still dominant,
there was a slight downward drop at the peaks of the swing. So he would
swing up one side and drop a bit, only to be caught by the chain on the
downward motion. Then he'd go up the other side, drop a bit again and be
caught by the chain.

When he was satisfied that he had a sufficient angle, he made a silent
prayer that all was good with his setup. That the wires hadn't become
disconnected in the swinging. That the rockets had been attached
securely. That the rocket fuel hadn't leaked out. And last of all, that
the button ignition hadn't slipped off from his shirt. He couldn't check
all that in midswing, of course, as he'd been holding on to the chains
on the swing seat. The funny thing about his silent prayer was he wasn't
particularly religious. Like most conservative God fearing suburban
households, his parents took him to church and Sunday School. He
pretended his way through services every time, pulling on loose threads
from his shorts while everyone else had their heads bowed down in
prayer.

There wasn't much time to ruminate as he could tell his swing was
deteoriating. 135 degrees really was the limit of what he could do under
his own power. So he braced himself for the moment of truth on the final
upswing. The swing went through 30 degrees. Through 45 degrees. Through
60 degrees. Through 90 degrees. Then it went to 120 degrees. At that
point, Frankie let one hand go off the chain, brought it to the ignition
button. His hand hovered over the button and at the point where the
swing angle hit 135 degrees, he gave the button a light tap.

Immediately, it seemed like the world had exploded as the rockets
ignited. There was a sudden jerk in the motion of the swing and he,
swing seat, chain and all, was sent straight across over the top of the
swing. Then the horizontal motion stopped and he swung down the other
side of the swing. Of course, it didn't end there. The kinetic energy
was so great then that he went all the way up the other side, over again
and down again. This went on for maybe half a dozen more circles and
then he ran out of gas, so to speak. Unfortunately, he was right at the
top of the circle at the time. It was akin to a scene from a Wile E
Coyote movie where the coyote would walk off a cliff, but he didn't
actually fall down until he looked down and saw that he was standing in
mid-air with nothing supporting him and the floor of the canyon way, way
down below.

And so it was with Frankie's over the top swinging. He stopped right at
the top for a split-second. If a camera had captured that instant, it
would have taken an apparently paradoxical picture with a kid on a swing
seat high up in the air and apparently supported by a chain that had
miraculously acquired a strong and rigid nature. Reality wasn't that way
and after stopping at the top of the swing circle, he came plummeting
down together with the swing seat and the chain. He was very lucky that
at no point in the fall did the chain wrap around his neck, or his life
could have ended there and then, cut short in a tragic way by a day's
mischief. As he was falling, he was still on the seat, more or less, and
holding on to the chain for dear life. Actually, he was falling
fractionally more slowly than the seat because of air resistance. So he
had that much travel at the moment things hit bottom. And when things
did hit bottom, he traveled the inch or two and slammed onto the seat.
That put stress on the steel chain, which under that stress demonstrated
a bit of spring. So the chain snapped up a bit and Frankie was sent
flying off the swing seat. He landed in a jumble of limbs on the grassy
ground a few feet from the swing. He tried to get up in a daze but
realized that he had left his tummy up in mid-air. So he collapsed again
in a stupor.

After a minute, he recovered enough to prop himself up into a sitting
position. His mind was elsewhere for a moment or two but then he took a
look at the other swing, where his sister had been swinging. Except this
time, there was no one on the swing. It was still swinging back and
forth in a lazy arc. A feeling of panic started working its way up from
the bottom of his abdomen. As he looked around, trying to figure out
what had happened, he noticed a black van with dark tinted windows
with tires screeching. The van teared out on Wombat Lane heading away
from the playground.