Corey met me on 116th street after riding the train from the Bronx for the hour and a half it takes to get to uptown Manhattan. We greeted, screaming “wassup” almost in unison and pounding fists, bringing them slowly away from the point of collision to have our hands explode as fingers wiggling back and forth.
He said, “How you been, man? How was your day today,” and my response was dejected, upset at the mention of a day I couldn’t finish fast enough.
My day had been question after conversation after question; what felt like a constant, “How does this novel make you feel?” and if I had to “Explain the failures of venture capitalism in an expanding global market” one more time, I would have moved to a communist country that had no idea what personal opinion or preference meant, one that wouldn’t have me running like a hamster for four years not learning anything, but looping back to fail the same tests on the same content over and over again. I just bit my lip, then motioned for him to follow me as I turned to walk down the avenue.
We made our way to 114th street. He was talking about the video games we should play later. Corey was a fan of anything electronic and spent most of his money outfitting the room we shared with plasma screens and video games.
“Yo, Adam, we gotta bring out the old Genesis, I got all the classics from my house. We gotta play Battle Toads!”
I laughed, remembering the last time I played Battle Toads.
My cousin lived in Waxaw, North Carolina where there was enough space outside to throw balls, run around like an idiot, and get winded. We scraped our knees in piles of rocks or broke bicycles our parents paid too much for. My cousins made fun of my new glasses, laughing that the lenses were so big they magnified my pupils.
“You look like a frog!” my cousin Darren screamed when he first saw the four-eyed me. “No wonder you so smart, you can see the answers in other peoples’ heads can’t you?!”
I screamed back, even louder, “Shut up! At least I don’t pee the bed still!”
It was all laughs, though, and before I knew it we were throwing rocks at trees or stepping on toads; big, slimy, nasty toads that I was afraid of the first time I saw. One hopped out of the woods behind my cousin’s house after a tough game of freeze tag with what seemed like every member of my family below the age of seventeen. I noticed its fat, brown-green body flying through the sky and landing, looking angrily around at all the people trespassing on his territory. I stood still, fascinated, and before long my cousin was at my side asking what I was doing.
“Darren, look. Look at it.”
He didn’t notice at first and had to take a step closer before chastising me; “Why you look so scared of a dumb toad?” he asked, taking more steps forward and leaning further down.
He waved an arm back to me and I slowly approached. The toad stood its ground as my cousin came closer than I thought any one should get.
“You really that scared?” he asked.
I realized what my face must look like; all bug-eyed and disgusted. His “don’t be scared” sounded much older than him. The look on his face as he momentarily gave me his attention was enough for me to walk closer and I stood at his side looking down at a bloated beast that was becoming less intimidating.
“You know what I do to toads?” my cousin asked, though it sounded more like a statement, a build up to the “watch” that followed.
Next thing I knew, he was in the air, coming down hard on the toad, spewing guts from beneath his feet all over my pant leg.
“Whoaaa,” I screamed, eager to find more, eager to stomp toads to China.
We turned onto 114th street as I realized that I hadn’t seen a toad, much less a Battle Toad, in over ten years and the last time I had, its gore was all over the bottom of my shoe. At one point, being in the city was all I wanted, to be so far away from rural country life that I could find that ‘r’ people down home always forgot at the end of words like ‘sugah’ and ‘boogah.’ But it’s a familiar story, I guess, about getting what you think you want only to realize that it’s not everything you wanted it to be.
We walked to the middle of the street, to a building with a stoop on the sidewalk that led up to the door. Corey put a foot on the lowest step and leaned against the low wall.
“You callin’ him?” he asked, throwing the plastic butt of his cigar out into the street.
“I got you,” I said then made a call on my phone.
The voice on the line was distant but happy when he answered.
“Hey, wassup,” then, “Yea, come on up.”
I didn’t know the voice on the other end of the call, Corey had gotten his number from an Asian kid in his Physics class. We knew he was the right person to ask because he always came to class with a box of chocolate doughnuts and the word “fluids” made him laugh every time the professor said it.
“You goin up with me?” I asked and Corey nodded, then we went up stairs.
The person we met when we made it to the right door inside the building was a short guy and I was surprised when we first walked in that he barely came to our navels. He had a lit blunt dangling from his lips. Corey pretended to cough in his hand and I wondered if it was only obvious to me because I knew him so well or if the midget college junior had noticed. I spoke first, stepping out to shake the man’s hand and he introduced himself.
“My name is Hercules, but I think it’s kinda awkward to have people calling me that, you know. So people just call me Hulk.”
I laughed on the inside and Corey coughed but Hulk didn’t seem to notice. He led us into the kitchen and when I looked over to the counter, I saw a black duffle bag. He climbed his stool that hugged the cabinets below the counter. It looked like a mini-cherry-picker and Hulk started pulling plastic bags from the duffle bag. The plastic bags were full of greens and browns, dry’s and sticky’s, and God knows what else. He offered us a beer that only Corey accepted and drank in big gulps.
“Just take what you want, man. That shit is my favorite, the Pale Ale.”
He was sweating from the artificial heat in the room and I realized how stuffy I felt in my coat. He went on about his favorite beer, the blunt still dangling from his lips. For some reason I watched it closely and eventually I watched the blunt fall into a deep fold in his shirt. He panicked and fell from his stool onto the ground, rolling around like he was on fire.
“Step on me! Put the shit out!” he screamed.
There on the floor, screaming like he was being burned alive, his face fisted in the middle and his lips flattened. His eyes were round and bulging, and all I saw was green. I took one strong step with my right leg then launched high into the air – Corey behind me screaming “what the hell!” – then I came down solidly on the midget college junior. The muscle memory from stomping on toads in my youth was too powerful to overcome.
PRL Serials 