Todd Mauer’s writing has appeared in magazines and newspapers in America, Britain, France and Australia. A native of Alaska and long-time Seattle resident, he now lives in the Loire Valley with his French wife and two boys, whom he's delighted to say do not harbor a European disdain for peanut butter. 

Mauer says: "I wanted to put the reader in the slightly uncomfortable position of not knowing whether to laugh or be horrified, and to test the limits of the natural sympathy most people have for the homeless--a noble sympathy which can often be mingled with a certain amount of disgust"

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Frog the Jokeman

by Todd Mauer

After Tom left us, my mom gained a lot of weight and started to go to Christian charity meetings.  At first it was just one night a week, but soon it was three nights a week, and to all kinds of charities—shelters for battered women, homeless shelters, and food banks. It meant I ate lots of Spaghetti-O’s for dinner and had babysitters named Kimberly and Trisha and Caitlin.

      Mom met Frog the Jokeman at one of these meetings. I mean, she knew he was the guy from the ferry terminal, but she’d never tried to talk to him before. She said he was polite and seemed nice enough and so on an impulse she invited him to come home with her.  The fact that some of the ladies said she was crazy made her even more determined to do it just to show them what Christian charity meant.

      Frog wasn’t as dirty as most bums, but his clothes were ripped and he had a big beard and he smelled like old banana peels.

      “Knock-knock,” he said to me the first time Mom brought him home, and he gave her a look that said he knew what he was doing.

      She said, “Ira, you’re supposed to say ‘Who’s there?’” But I didn’t say anything.

      Mom tried again. “Say ‘Who’s there?’, Ira.”

      “Who’s there?” I said.

      Frog just looked at me. “Frog,” he said at last.

      “Frog who?”

      He moved toward me. “Frog...gonna kill you!” he said, and he stretched out his arms like Frankenstein.

      Even though I knew he was just kidding I ran up and punched him as hard as I could between the legs. I was kind of kidding too.

      “Ira!” Mom said.

      Frog’s eyes went wide and he grabbed his crotch.  “Oh my God oh my God oh my God...” he said. He dropped to his knees on the floor. He didn’t look like Frankenstein anymore. 

      Mom left him groaning on the kitchen floor and took me upstairs to bed. Her voice was soft as she said good-night and turned off the lights. Soon I heard her opening the door downstairs and saying good-night to Frog. It was a long time before I heard the door close. 

      The day after, Mom told me Frog was going to be my new babysitter. She explained the importance of Christian charity and faith in fellow humans and said we were giving Frog the sense of dignity and self-respect that comes from honest work. Because in an ideal world, she said, everyone would have self-respect, even if they’d been down on their luck like Frog. She said sometimes people just need to be given a second chance to get their self-respect back so they can pick themselves up again and be good people, and that by helping Frog we were making God happy.

      I asked her if Frog would always be so dirty and smelly and she said his beard made him look dirtier than he really was and she would make sure he came early so he could have a shower. She also said she’d give Frog some of Tom’s old clothes to wear. Then she told me what an alcoholic was, and said Frog was an alcoholic who was trying to quit being one but that he’d always be one.  She asked me to let her know if he drank any alcohol when he was babysitting, but she’d already made him promise he wouldn’t.

      She asked if it was all right to make Frog my babysitter. I shook my head. But she said she was going to do it anyway because it made God happy.

     Frog was late to babysit the first night. Mom had made some real spaghetti, but when he finally arrived, she wouldn’t let him sit down to eat it or even go upstairs to take a shower. She spent the time before she left telling Frog where she kept all the fire extinguishers and emergency phone numbers and Pepto-Bismol in case I got diarrhea. I could tell he just wanted to eat, but he nodded at all the right times and in all the right directions so finally Mom was satisfied. When she left, he sat down across from me and started to eat.

      “So,” he said between bites, “you play any sports?”

      “I play hockey,” I said.  “When we lived in Ketchikan I was on a hockey team for two years.”

      “You lived in Alaska?”

      “You have some sauce in your beard,” I said.

      “I’ve been to Juneau,” Frog said. “It’s fuckin’ freezin’ there.”

       I didn’t say anything. Frog picked up his napkin and wiped most of the sauce from his beard.

      While we ate he told me he didn’t have a house or anything and he didn’t work in an office either.  He said his job was to say hi to people and tell them jokes when they got on and off the ferry.

      “That’s all?” I said.

      He shrugged. “That’s my job.”

      “That’s not a job,” I said. “What do you say?”

      “In the morning,” he said, “I say ‘Just nine hours until the 5:25, Mr. Birnbach!’”

      “Who’s Mr. Birnbach?” I said.

     “And on Wednesdays when they’re on their way home, I say ‘Just two more days until Friday! You’re over the hump! Just two more days!’ It depends what day of the week it is, you see. On Fridays I point over the water and say ‘Enjoyable weekends thaaaaaatta way!’”

      “Do you have to get up early?” I asked.

      “Damn straight,” he said. “I gotta be there for the 7:10 ferry or else their days don’t start right.”  He put his big hairy hand over mine and completely covered it. “You see, little boy, I’m part of their morning routine—like their first cup of coffee.”

      I pulled my hand out from under Frog’s.

      Then Frog sat back and said he wasn’t stupid because he had a degree and that he also sold pamphlets full of jokes he’d heard and some jokes he’d made up. But he wouldn’t tell me any of his jokes because he said Mom wouldn’t like it.

      Finally he let me watch TV while he did the dishes and took a shower. After a while the doorbell rang. Frog came downstairs with a towel wrapped around his middle and answered the door. It was the Pointons from across the street.

      “Can we borrow an egg?” asked Mrs. Pointon.

      Frog looked at them, and then back at me. “You know these people?” he shouted across the room.

      “It’s the Pointons,” I said.

      “Oh,” Frog said, then turned back to them. “You the Pointons?”

      Mr. Pointon said, “I’m Bob Pointon and this is my wife, Gretchen.”

      Frog nodded and then looked back at me again. He shouted: “Do you give eggs to these people?”

      “I dunno,” I said.

      “We were baking a cake and we ran out of eggs,” Mrs. Pointon said.

      Frog paused for a moment, then let them in. “I’m Frog the Jokeman,” he said. “I’m the babysitter tonight.”

      “Oh,” said Mrs. Pointon, smiling. “Well, we were wondering.”

      When Frog took Mrs. Pointon into the kitchen Mr. Pointon came over to where I was sitting. “Is everything...okay here?” he said. He tapped the side of his nose with his finger. “I mean, is everything going...all right?” He tapped his nose again. 

      “I'm watching...TV,” I said. I tapped my nose.

      “Good,” he said, and smiled. “Very good.  I’m...glad to hear that.”  He winked at me.

      Frog and Mrs. Pointon came back into the room.  You could see the crack of his butt at the top of the towel. Mrs. Pointon moved quickly in the direction of Mr. Pointon with her egg cupped in her hands and a funny look on her face. She went to the door and was outside in a moment. Mr. Pointon stood on the doormat and glared at Frog, then turned and said “Gretchen!” and rushed after her.

      “Hope that cake comes out all right!” Frog shouted after them.

      He closed the door and sat down on the couch. “Cake my ass,” he said. “And it ain’t my fault if the goddamn towel fell off when I opened the refrigerator.”

      Later, Frog got dressed and we spent the night watching TV. He was wearing some of Tom’s old clothes mom had left out for him. It was weird to see him dressed up like Tom. I decided I missed Caitlin who was my favorite babysitter because she brought me M & M’s and didn’t stink.

      When Mom got home she gave Frog ten dollars. He told her good-night like he was leaving, but then she took him to the empty side of the garage where she’d laid out an old foam mattress and some blankets for him. She said she’d decided that afternoon that if he was good he could have a warm place to sleep. He said it was mighty kind of her. 

      Mom’s brother Larry was a manager in the fruit cocktail factory. When Tom left Mom, Uncle Larry didn’t come over for a while, and Mom said it was his way of saying “I told you so.” She said she’d never forgive him for that. But eventually he started coming over again and helped her around the house.

      Mom hadn’t told Uncle Larry about Frog because she knew he wouldn’t like it. But he found out about it somehow and showed up. They closed the door and argued in the kitchen but I could still hear them.

      Mom was saying that Frog was a nice person who was just down on his luck, that’s all. Uncle Larry said he may be a nice person, but he could just as easily be a homicidal maniac, and how were they to know? For all they knew he could be the Green River Killer, or maybe he molested little kids. Mom told Uncle Larry to grow up, and Uncle Larry told her to get a grip on reality and watch “America’s Most Wanted” before she picked up drunks off the street and left them alone in the house with his nephew.

      After a while, Uncle Larry left. The next night, Frog came over but Mom decided not to go to her food bank meeting. I had Spaghetti O’s and Mom let me eat in front of the TV while she and Frog ate real spaghetti in the kitchen. I heard her laughing like she used to when Tom first moved in.

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