The Great Toad Race of Jamaica (a short story, 1983) Flash Fiction
The Great Toad Race of Jamaica
She is a little heavy at sixty-three years old, perhaps sixty-four, brown thinned out hair, laced now with silver, a pale washed-out white color to her skin, who lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, always has lived in St. Paul. We are sitting at a table at the Americana, a beach hotel in the barroom, the Caribbean outside the doorway, an airy elegant bar, more like a large ballroom, looks as if made of a tropical design, and out of expensive wood, it reminds me a bit of¨ the old 1932 movie, “The Grand Hotel,” with Joan Crawford; what I remember of it, the plot anyhow was the film bringing together several unrelated characters into one setting, which is perhaps a hotels formula, unknowingly. She is drinking a Grasshopper, heavy flavored with mint. Myself, just a bottle of cold local beer, it is October 1983.
Ten toads, brownish colored toads run across the shinny wooden dance floor, a section by where the band will play later on in the evening; one of the toads pauses, it’s the one my mother and I, put a bet on, either it’s a lazy one, or its got some heavy substance in its belly, it’s just standing as if it is the Statue of Liberty. She comments, “Toads, such ugly creatures. They look scary. Brown with those dark spots didn’t know they could be trained to race.”
“I’d have never believed it myself, had I not seen it with my own eyes,” I remark.
During the course of this late afternoon event, she had told me how she loved to sit outside in the mornings, on the patio restaurant that had no sides, just a roof and cemented platform, with elegant dinning tables, and all such dinning utensils, she’d loved the breakfast, feeling the warm wind blow from one side to the other, from the Caribbean Sea, inland to the highway beyond the hotel, having a cup of coffee, and a cigarette. She loved it all.
“Yes, of course I believe it now.” She sips on her Grasshopper.
“I think I’ll bet again, I think mine will win this time.” I tell her.
“No, it won’t, but go ahead and try.” She tells me.
So saying, I do and she takes another sip, a longer sip of her Grasshopper, orders another one. The ceiling fans are rotating above her head. A piano is in the corner of the bar, being moved out for the evening band, there will be a show, where the entertainers will eat fire, and then band, and dance. There are about fifteen people around the toad arena, really the wooden dance floor waiting for the ring of the bell for the toads to race.
Eventually the toads are put into a straight line, still near a dozen, most of them jumpy now, greenish and brown, I think they replaced the one I bet on previously, the lazy one. The bell rings, they skitter across the floor, slipping and sliding and falling. They scatter like pigeons all about, and mine just lost again, but this time only by a hair.
Now she waves me over to her table, I’m with the fifteen others, was giving my support to my toad ‘hip hip horary!’ stuff.
“Well, did you win?” she asks. She smiles she knows the answer. She accepts this as part of gambling, a fact, and continues: “Too bad they don’t have this in Las Vegas,” and takes a drink from her Grasshopper martini looking glass, her new one, and smiles at me, as if she was on top of the world.
4-14-2009
She is a little heavy at sixty-three years old, perhaps sixty-four, brown thinned out hair, laced now with silver, a pale washed-out white color to her skin, who lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, always has lived in St. Paul. We are sitting at a table at the Americana, a beach hotel in the barroom, the Caribbean outside the doorway, an airy elegant bar, more like a large ballroom, looks as if made of a tropical design, and out of expensive wood, it reminds me a bit of¨ the old 1932 movie, “The Grand Hotel,” with Joan Crawford; what I remember of it, the plot anyhow was the film bringing together several unrelated characters into one setting, which is perhaps a hotels formula, unknowingly. She is drinking a Grasshopper, heavy flavored with mint. Myself, just a bottle of cold local beer, it is October 1983.
Ten toads, brownish colored toads run across the shinny wooden dance floor, a section by where the band will play later on in the evening; one of the toads pauses, it’s the one my mother and I, put a bet on, either it’s a lazy one, or its got some heavy substance in its belly, it’s just standing as if it is the Statue of Liberty. She comments, “Toads, such ugly creatures. They look scary. Brown with those dark spots didn’t know they could be trained to race.”
“I’d have never believed it myself, had I not seen it with my own eyes,” I remark.
During the course of this late afternoon event, she had told me how she loved to sit outside in the mornings, on the patio restaurant that had no sides, just a roof and cemented platform, with elegant dinning tables, and all such dinning utensils, she’d loved the breakfast, feeling the warm wind blow from one side to the other, from the Caribbean Sea, inland to the highway beyond the hotel, having a cup of coffee, and a cigarette. She loved it all.
“Yes, of course I believe it now.” She sips on her Grasshopper.
“I think I’ll bet again, I think mine will win this time.” I tell her.
“No, it won’t, but go ahead and try.” She tells me.
So saying, I do and she takes another sip, a longer sip of her Grasshopper, orders another one. The ceiling fans are rotating above her head. A piano is in the corner of the bar, being moved out for the evening band, there will be a show, where the entertainers will eat fire, and then band, and dance. There are about fifteen people around the toad arena, really the wooden dance floor waiting for the ring of the bell for the toads to race.
Eventually the toads are put into a straight line, still near a dozen, most of them jumpy now, greenish and brown, I think they replaced the one I bet on previously, the lazy one. The bell rings, they skitter across the floor, slipping and sliding and falling. They scatter like pigeons all about, and mine just lost again, but this time only by a hair.
Now she waves me over to her table, I’m with the fifteen others, was giving my support to my toad ‘hip hip horary!’ stuff.
“Well, did you win?” she asks. She smiles she knows the answer. She accepts this as part of gambling, a fact, and continues: “Too bad they don’t have this in Las Vegas,” and takes a drink from her Grasshopper martini looking glass, her new one, and smiles at me, as if she was on top of the world.
4-14-2009
posted by Dennis and Rosa Siluk at 6:32 PM
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