What Karma Can Do

I wasn't always the nice guy I am today. It took a good many years and a lot of bloodshed to become such a charming son of a bitch. Part of why I've become such a thing, I believe, has to do with some low-level karmic retribution?though it was only recently that I came to recognize it as such. I want to say that I was nine, though, thinking about it, I realize that most all of my childhood memories seem to be clustered?at least in my mind?around the ages of either nine or 13. I know damn well that if I were to go to the trouble of actually researching the dates on these things, I'd find that I was dead wrong. As it stands, however, I'm too slothful for that. Besides, it wouldn't affect the story one way or another.

So anyway, I was nine, and the family had made one of our regular trips to visit our relatives, most of whom were clustered in a few small towns near the Minnesota border in northwestern Wisconsin.

I always looked forward to these trips?I had a few cousins my age, and actually got along with a couple of them. To be honest, I never knew most of my cousins' names and, if called upon, could name only a small percentage of my aunts and uncles (both parents coming from very large families).

We usually stayed with the DeSmiths?they had a son and a daughter around my sister's age, and another son, Mike, who was nine. They also had BB guns and Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots, which made it all the more worthwhile.

It was a Saturday, and while the older guys went golfing, and the women got things set up for a cookout for the extended family, the dozen or so kids would just play half-assed kid's games in the huge backyard. It was all very Norman Rockwell, but in an utterly unironic way. And at nine (or however old I was) I wouldn't have understood it any other way.

When the three cars pulled into the driveway about 2 that afternoon, and my dad, uncles and a few older cousins got out, my dad opened the trunk of the olive-green Galaxy 500 and pulled out a white plastic bucket. I didn't think much of this until he brought it over to where I was standing with Mike and another cousin.

"Here," he said, "we found this hopping around on the seventh green."

I looked in the bucket, and there, along with a little water, a little torn-up grass and a rock, was a huge frog.

Well, huge to me at least.

He went back to the house to get a beer, and left the frog with us kids.

Then the question arose?well, what exactly does one do with a frog, anyway?

I reached in and gently lifted it out. It was slimier than I expected it to be?its white belly had the consistency of half-melted Jell-O. I plopped him (I'm assuming it was a "him" for no apparent reason) onto the grass, and the three of us plopped down next to him and watched him do absolutely nothing.

He just sat there, immobile, perhaps terrified. I nudged his butt with my hand, and he took a few cautious steps. He certainly wasn't hopping around the way they always did on the television, and this was a grave disappointment.

Figuring he might do more if we weren't crowding him the way we were, we moved back a few feet. Around us, a slew of other cousins?most of whom I couldn't name with a gun to my head?were playing kick the can and swirling hula hoops, playing catch and swinging on the rusty swing set.

After we'd been there a while waiting for something to happen, another cousin about our age, Rick, came over to see what was going on. For some reason, Rick and I never really talked. There was some sort of mutual suspicion that I never understood. Naturally, these days I say it was mutual, since that's much nicer than just saying, "I just didn't care much for the looks of him."

Well, Ricky, the way I saw it, came over to the frog?my frog?drew his foot back, and kicked it as hard as he could.

The frog flew four or five feet through the air before crashing to earth again. I must admit that's more than he'd done up to that point.

I remember letting go with a shrill, "My frog!" before running over to scoop him up from the grass and put him back in his bucket. Then I turned and glared at Rick, who was still standing there. His face betrayed no expression. Not cruel joy, not regret, nothing. His eyes stared back at me through his white-blond bangs. Mike and my other cousin stood as well, and we all glared at him. Then he turned and walked back toward the house.

When he did, my other cousins and I began plotting. First, we'd never play with him again (not like we did much of that to begin with). Then, before the weekend was over, we'd beat him up.

It sounded like a good plan. I looked in the bucket to check on the frog, who seemed pretty relaxed about the whole incident.

A few minutes later, my mom came over and pulled me aside. I could tell she was mad. "He kicked my frog?" I started. Without letting go of my arm, she whispered in a stern voice, "Your cousin Ricky is completely blind in one eye, and he can't see too well out of the other, either. It was an accident. He didn't see it. You should apologize."

I couldn't say whether or not I'd been told this about him before. Probably, but as with most personal information about the cousins I didn't see too often, I just let it slide.

She left, and I went and told the other two. We all felt pretty shitty about what happened, and decided against beating him up.

Half an hour later, not looking each other in the eye, we shook hands in that hesitant, uncomfortable way kids will, and got on with things. We'd made our peace, I knew he couldn't see, but I still wasn't going to let him near my frog. Blind or not, I never really did completely forgive him?especially after the next morning, when I got up and went out to the garage to find that the frog had died during the course of the night. Its eyes had turned from shiny black to flat gray.

It was three years later that my Uncle Tom cornered me at my Grandma Myrt's funeral and hinted, quite correctly, that I was going blind, too. It occurs to me now that the entire "RP business" might have more to do with a frog than it does genetics.