Original Short Story

© 2021, Matthew L. Jones

The smell of cheap, stale coffee always reminded him of toads and of piss and here’s why.

In the early mornings of his childhood summers, his mother would release him running wild-legged into a dew-dusted suburbia—an empty Folger’s coffee can tucked under his arm, the flexible plastic lid ice-picked with air holes. Not the regular-sized can, but the family-sized one.

He’d scamper from lawn to lawn peeking under pavers, turning over rocks, crawling hand-over-knee through mulched garden beds in search of one thing. Bufo houstonensis. The Houston Toad. 

The end of the toad’s breeding season coincided with the end of the school year. A time when warming nights, temperate mornings, and rolling thunderstorms would trigger an amphibian plague that reminded him of stories he’d heard of, but paid little attention to, in Sunday School.

Every puddle. Every ditch. Any place damp, dark, moist, and muddy was of equal attraction to the toads as it was to the army of imaginations that hunted them—great professors and world explorers, adventuring archaeologists and dinosaur hunters—at least in the minds of those who scampered as he did, joy bound, to collect as many toads as their scurrying hands could manage.

Only a decade later the species was endangered. Not from the carefree, catch-and-release pursuit of children, however. It was the encroachment of progress, the smothering blankets of asphalt, and the grinding roll of vulcanized rubber that flattened them to near extinction.

But in the summer days of his youth, they were plentiful and provided hours of harmless distraction. With no school and no obligations, it was about as free as an eight-year-old could feel. As free as he’d ever feel. If only he’d known that then.

His mother encouraged him to stay out until lunch. After which he was rushed out the door again and told to remain gone until his father summoned him for supper. All children operated under similar orders in those days.

There was never really a plan. Not a formal one at least. But the regular kids always seemed to turn up in the regular places. There was the girl with gapped teeth and a shrill voice. There was the naturally athletic boy with feathered blond hair. And there was the only kid anyone knew whose mother had died. Knowing a mother could die was a hard realization at that age. One that caused every child to cling more closely to their own mother’s pantlegs. At least for a time.

But on this day, parental mortality was far from anyone’s mind because the toads were on the move in what appeared to be record numbers. Children were giggling and squealing as toad after toad was loaded into all manner of repurposed receptacles—buckets and pales and pickle jars and more than one family-sized coffee can.

“Over here, there’s a gazillion!” One boy shouted.

“Holy shit!” Yelled the only child confident enough to curse with fluency. “They’re everywhere!”

One kid, the new kid, was so worked up all he could do is point and yell “Bucket! Bucket! Bucket!” to his beach-pail toting sister. He didn’t like touching the toads, but his little sister seemed to pay it no mind. They turned out to be a very effective team. For new kids.

Toad hunting wasn’t easy or intuitive. You had to know how to properly grip a toad. If you scooped them gently into clam-shelled hands as rookies often assumed, you were rewarded with a warm palm-load of acrid toad urine. This usually triggered an immediate release, and that was the whole point. It was the animal’s only defense against bored children and predators alike, as anyone can confirm after seeing their dog run foamed-jawed and flap-eared to the backyard water bowl after a toad encounter.

You had the grab them along their bumpy brown backs with your thumb and forefinger, aiming for the rib cage just below the forelimbs and along both sides of the spine. This technique didn’t stop them from deploying a defensive stream, but it at least kept you dry. Until, that is, some jackass kid aimed one at you. Which almost always happened to someone. If it didn’t happen to you, it’s probably because you were the jackass kid that day.

Each new capture and every snap of the coffee can lid brought with it a dank waft of toad-smell and nose-stinging urine. Beneath that was always an undercurrent of hot tin and stale coffee. That particular combination of smells, in a whole or in part, would remain a powerful sense memory for the rest of his life, an indelible olfactory stain engrained into the deepest folds of his mind.

As the scorch of afternoon cooled into early evening, the neighborhood rabble would begin to thin. Some kids, the ones who tended to make good grades and never miss school, always knew when it was time to head home. They usually disappeared first. The rest stayed until they were summoned by various means. Some by shouted name. Others by the short Morse-code blast of a car horn. His clarion call was his father’s distinct and powerful whistle. Everyone knew it, and many swore it could be heard for miles.  

While he always lingered a little, he never dared make his father call for him twice. On this day, however, there was no delay. He was up and running before the echo of his father’s whistle faded and could barely contain his excitement as he rounded the corner into the final stretch home.

His father was normally sitting at the kitchen table by now, little more than a forehead and glasses above a torso-sized chevron of newsprint. But tonight, his father was on the porch, and he looked quite serious.

Maybe I’m in trouble, he thought. As his sprint slowed to a jog, he took a quick mental inventory and could come up with no punishable offenses, thankfully.

His father’s face was intense, his forehead folded under what appeared to be a great weight. Upon seeing his son spring up the front steps, his father’s expression softened to a smile that never quite reached his eyes.

“Daddy! Daddy!” He said, offering the coffee can to the impossibly tall man. “Help me count?”

“Not now, Chuck.” He always called him Chuck, though that was not his name. “I gotta run out.”

He remembers watching his father’s lean, purposeful strides chew the ground between the front porch and the dusty-grey Buick in the driveway. He remembers watching him gather his lanky-long form into the driver’s seat and scoot behind the wheel. He remembers the grinding chug of the engine belching to life. Even 30 years later, he can still see the red glow of the taillights as his father backed out of the driveway, drove down the crunching graveled street, and never came back.

His father didn’t die in some tragic way, like that one boy’s mother. No.

He just left.

He just left him.

He just left him standing there in the fading light of summer. On chipped paint and scuffed planks. With a warm, swarming can of stale coffee and hot piss hugged to his chest.

It was the last time he’d see his father. Until today. When he sat at this lonely lunch counter and ordered pie and coffee. Black. With a slice of coconut cream, please.

He snapped his newspaper into service and began casually thumbing the pages, until a photo caught his eye and stopped him cold. The resolution was poor, but that face was unmistakable. It was him. His father. On page ten. The obituaries.

If they’d used any other picture from any other moment in the man’s life, he may not have recognized him. But this photo was taken when his father still looked very much like the broken little boy inside him remembered.

The write up was brief. It spoke of surviving children and a wife. Of dedication to family, friends, and community. The obituary never spoke of him nor his mother. Just this phantom family and a life he’d always wondered over, but never knew.

He was still very much distracted by the obituary when his order arrived. He scooted the pie closer and reached mindlessly for the coffee cup, bringing it to his lips and blowing idly across its steaming surface. Before he could take that first sip, a familiar smell pierced the swirl of memories and emotions like a scalpel.

Stale. Fucking. Coffee.

It was unfortunate that his server came back at that particular moment to check on him. Something as simple as, “How’s everything, hon?” shouldn’t have set him off the way it did. But it did. He snapped at her. And unreasonably so.

She was turning to leave when he stopped her, apologizing.

For some reason, “Sugar” (as her name tag suggested she was called), granted him the privilege of explaining. She listened with skepticism at first. It was obvious she just wanted to get on with her shift. He wasn’t her first rude customer and wouldn’t be her last. Unfortunately. But as he went on, her posture shifted from a passing hand-on-hip tolerance to a genuine elbows-on-the-counter interest, her eyes swelling as he spoke.

After finishing his story he shoveled down the last few bites of coconut cream pie, which was delicious, and left his coffee untouched. He paid his bill and quietly left a tip that more than doubled his entire tab. He always tipped big, but he felt “Sug” (as she actually preferred to be called, come to find out) deserved it.

He also felt she deserved an explanation. Because the smell of cheap, stale coffee wouldn’t have normally set him off like that. Usually, it just reminded of toads and of piss. But today, it also reminded him of that beautiful time in life that was soured by the knowledge that mothers could die and fathers might never come back—and that’s why.