Saint Bullfrog

Grandpop carves saints out of driftwood. He lives on a dirt road surrounded by mountain laurel and beech trees. In the summer their leaves flicker green to silver in the sun. Twisted sculptures made of old pine stumps and rusted metal parts line the road, alongside cairns he’s placed on boulders. 

I ride my bike, hooting and hollering in hopes that some coyotes or a night owl will hoot back. Grandpop tells me to quit it. His windchimes made of sticks and spoons and pieces of old machinery clink with the breeze.

“Who’s this Saint?” I ask, as he lacquers a lady holding a pair of eyes. Ferns grow out of her dress, out of her hair, engulfing her in fronds.

“Saint Fern,” he says, applying another stroke of varnish.

“I could have guessed that,” I shrug.

Grandpop’s saints aren’t like regular saints, they’re made up. Sometimes he creates stories for them, sometimes people have their own stories and a saint they want him to carve. The stories aren’t so far-fetched from actual saint stories, which tend to disregard natural laws.

Usually Grandpop’s saints are associated with plants, animals, and fungi. Saint Milkweed, Saint Waxycap, Saint Possum.

Every saint has a strange story, and usually involves some kind of selfless act, how they saved a grove of flowering dogwood trees or rescued the river from being poisoned by chemical run-off. Our neighbor Mr. Jebsen is the Saint of Box Turtles. He swims with them and photographs them underwater so you can see the sun and the underside of lily pads. He documents their habitat so developers can’t clear cut their homes.

He regularly brings us strawberries and vegetables from his garden. He sits in a beach chair at the edge of Grandpop’s shop and they chat and listen to the radio. 

Grandpop works in the garage attached to his house, under incandescent bulbs surrounded by sawdust and cedar shavings. He only makes saints out of downed logs, and makes them so they’ll eventually decompose.

“It’s part of the art,” he says.

Pretty much everyone in town has one of his saints. He takes commissions on a sliding scale, and I like to watch him carve out snail shells and cosmo petals.

Grandpop says that if I find a log and do something noble, he’ll make me a saint. So I do all my chores and behave extra good waiting for the opportunity to do something altruistic, which mom says in an unselfish act of kindness. I hang the laundry on the clothesline and watch daisy sheets billow in the breeze. I wash the breakfast dishes, sweep the back porch, and take out the compost.

I walk the path along the river and watch dragonflies float in and out of the tall grass. I look for fallen trees and think about ways I could become a saint, such as saving a box of kittens or planting a bunch of meadow sage for bees. I take off my sandals and stick my toes into the current. The air swells with the smell of summer rain and wet pine needles.

I wade into the river and hold my noses as I submerge. The woods are loud with cicadas in the July heat. Cold water drips from the ends of my hair as I let my hands float on the surface.

“Everybody can be a saint, if they just do kind things,” I say to the cardinal flowers and forest canopy.

I emerge from the river and walk back to the house as the afternoon ebbs. Storm clouds roll over and start to downpour onto the forest canopy without warning.

Frogs hop from their pools and cover the road. I imagine headlights and hear the pop and crunch of little bodies. I think about how Mr. Jebsen feels every time he sees a smashed turtle shell. Even though no one really drives down our road, I lay my towel over a branch and start picking up frogs, ferrying them across the street one by one.

They feel like wet sacks in my hands and as soon as I put one down to go for another they hop back into harm’s way, so I have to take them a little further into the forest. I lose track of time, carrying them to their new destination, until I’m suddenly in pitch darkness, and Grandpop is standing behind me with a flood light.

“What in heaven’s name are you doing?” He asks, shining the light on me as I hold a rather hefty bullfrog.

“Rescuing frogs so I can be a saint,” I reply.

“Oh for goodness sake,” he says, shaking his head. “You don’t have to save toads to be a saint. You don’t even have to be that good of a person, plenty of arseholes get canonized. Come on, let’s get out of the rain and go home.”

I put the bullfrog down and grab my towel before we walk back to the house.

“Good thing I didn’t say you had to perform a miracle,” he grunts, holding the light so we can see where we’re going.

Beyond the pines, the light to Grandpop’s workshop casts shadows of saints in our front garden and reaches just a little into the darkness.