A Brief Return To Arizona

 

 

            “It’s all my story you know,” said the Golden Frog to himself. “In fact, I am the golden thread running through the whole tale.”
            He had had a lot of time to think things through sitting on Emmy’s dresser in his little green house. Ten of each season of the year had grown and flourished and waned away.
            One day when she was a big almost grown girl she had a talk with him.
            “Golden Frog,” said Emmy, “how did you come to be here?  I was very small when you came. It seems like a dream. I remember my father giving you to me to play with like a heavy golden toy, but I don’t know how you came to be in his pocket that day.”
            “Jessie thought the bull knocked me out of the wall of the mine willynilly. But really I jumped out.”
            “What bull?” said Emmy.
            “Didn’t they tell you the legend of the ensorcelled spotted bull, or anything?” said the Frog.
            “Maybe they did, and maybe I wasn’t really listening,” said Emmy. “I was just a little kid with nothing in my mind but how pretty you were.”
            “Well,” said the Frog, “it’s really a pretty sad story. There was this guy who had a girl he loved and wanted to marry. But Coyote wanted her too. The couple gave old Coyote the slip and got married anyhow. But Coyote was so angry that he turned the man into a bull and cursed him to look for a way to get back to her, if he could just find the gate. Of course, he didn’t, and she grew old in time and died. And the spotted bull continued to roam the deserts looking for her.”
            “That’s sad. But how does it have anything to do with you?” asked Emmy.
            “Well, one day your father found the bull in that gold mine of old John Chee’s up the hill.  The bull was stuck because his horns were too wide to get through the mine. Jessie helped the bull get loose, and when I saw that he was looking I jumped down out of the rocks,” said the Golden Frog. “He thought that he had freed me. But in the end he did as fate intended.”
            “Now, what do you mean by that?”
            “I was always meant to be yours,” said the Frog.
            “I don’t understand,” said Emmy. “And what happened to the bull?”
            “Beth and Jessie and Julia broke the spell by praying for him. He died and went to be with his people.”
            “That’s kind of sad too,” said Emmy, “but it’s good that it happened.”
            “My point is that the bull was sort of a distraction. I was there waiting for a long long time. You see gold is made in the earth long ago in deep time when the mountains are made. I was made before the people walked here, or even that big old Cat came watching and protecting you.
            “I’m not very important, but I was made for you,” he said.
            “Why?”
            “I’m a sign of a message. You are supposed to learn the message.”
            “That might take me the rest of my life,” said Emmy.
            Beth stuck her head in Emmy’s bedroom just then. She was dressed like she was going to town.
            “It’s time to go Emmy,” she said. “Grab your coat and come on.”
            Emmy stood up, tall and dark like Jessie, got her coat off the hook on the wall and pushed her arms through the sleeves.
            Before leaving the room, she looked back at the Golden Frog. He gleamed silently.
            “Daddy’s waiting honey,” called Beth, going out of the door.
            “I’m coming,” said Emmy.
            It was fall in the desert. The sun was low in the sky. Most of the leaves were down. The garden was over for the year except for a few things hanging on.
            Honda hopped into the back of the old blue pickup. It was getting harder for  him, but he could still do it. Jessie shut the tailgate with a thump and hopped into the driver’s seat.
            A sweet mysterious little wind wandered here and there, a little nosy, just checking things out.

All of it right here.