A tiny, sane little person frozen deep within Carolyn's acid-drenched mind was stomping and swearing in righteous fury at the way she had been dumped. Dumped! Left sitting over a watered tequila in a nothing little teeny bop dance hall, left to somehow find here own way the thirty miles to home, in the cold, in the dark, in the we, silent snow. The sane little person was melting the walls of its icy compartment with its rage while Carolyn stood at the edge of the pool of light from the bar's doorway, staring into the dark night blindly and silently as the wet snow clumped and stuck to her coat, her face, her thin dark hair.

The bouncer stuck his wide face out into the cold. "Lady, you okay?"

"Oh, yeah, fine," she said, "I love getting stranded in places like this."

"I saw that guy leave," the bouncer said. "What a crummy thing to do to a pretty lady like you."

"Gee thanks," she said. "What's your name?"

"Leo."

"Well, Leo, I'm really not in the mood to dance with you right now, so cool it, okay?"

"Hey, no problem," he said, shrugging, "can't blame a guy for trying." He looked closely at her eyes and shook his head. "Well, we are closing, so if you want to call somebody..."

"No money for the phone," Carolyn said. "My purse is in Ronald's car."

Leo smiled and beckoned her into the foyer. "It's on me." He loaded the pay phone with change from his pocket, and as the phone rang through he said, "If nobody comes to get you, I'll take you home myself."

"Thirty miles?" she asked.

"Anywhere in the state of Ohio," he said, gesturing widely.

She smiled a grimacing flash of teeth that made him take a step back. "He'll come," she said fiercely.

"Well, we're closing; but if you need me, I'll be here till three. Knock shave-and-a-haircut if you want in."

The phone rang a long time before Ronald picked it up. "What?" he said angrily.

"Ronald, you son of a bitch, get your ass out of my bed and come get me." The words were evenly spaced, gritted from between her teeth.

"Come get you? Where are you?" he asked, and she could picture him rubbing his eyes and reaching for the clock as he grunted into the phone.

"It's two a.m. and I'm right where you left me."

"Shit. I thought you were supposed to meet your brother or your friends or something," Ronald said.

"You lying sack of shit!" Carolyn said. "You asked me to go with you to this great new place you found. You didn't even know I grew up around here or knew anybody here until I told you what a joke we all thought this bar was."

"Well, shit, baby, what can I say," he said, 'You know how I get on acid. Can't you get somebody you know down there to put you up for the night?"

"Yeah, I know all about you and acid. I know all about your jailbait chippie, too."

"Come on, baby, get a grip. Mary's not jailbait. Are you jealous?"

"It's Mavis, knot head. Did I tell you I know her last name? Did I tell you she told me with her own mouth that she's fifteen? DId I tell you that I looked and her dad is listed, and I will call him in a flat minute?"

"Okay, okay, so what do you want from me?" Ronald asked.

"What I want is a ride home. Right now."

"Shit. You got me by the short hairs, Carolyn. I'll come, but it'll take a while to get there."

"The bars closed, so I'll be across the street at the laundromat. Oh, and you might as well bring the baby slut along. If she's tripping, you'd better not leave her alone in a strange place."

Carolyn cossed the dark, slick street to the laundry. It was overheated, and the fake grain of the plastic paneling looked creepy to her altered sight. Frog green, she thought. Her stoned mind sucked into the thought, and she was drawn into a series of images and memories. She remembered a cartoon her brother had drawn back in high school; what a scream the kids on the bus had thought it was, a huge frog eating a farmer's barn. The Frog That Devoured Hardscrabble, it was called. Then after a military truck overturned on the Hardscrabble Bridge and the bus riders got a view of the white-coated men knee-deep in Hardscrabble Creek, the joke grew. Every time the bus crossed the bridge in tiny Hardscrabble, somebody yelled "Giant Frog!" After three or four years the origin of the joke was forgotten, and ridiculous giant frog rumors and tall tales spread among the other spook stories told by midnight road hunters.

She thought about the frog-jumping contest in Valley City every year. A teammate on her girls' softball team had been crazy for frog jumping. Her folks made it a family project each year. They loved frog jumping so much that they went to the Calaveras County Frog Jump in California annually, and after their first trip they had a huge cement frog put in their front yard. It was big as a backhoe, garish green just like the laundromat walls.

Carolyn sat in the steamy green laundromat with frog thoughts tumbling in her head while someone's abandoned laundry tumbled in a dryer. The fake wood grain melted and reshaped into cartoon vignettes of grinning frogs devouring barns, sliming bridges, hopping through the early snow in squelchy plops, seeking shelter, seeking warmth, seeking food.

Ronald arrived in his big black Olds stonemobile. The blonde, Mavis, was snuggled in his right armpit. Carolyn got in next to her, and Ronald said, "Where the hell are we? I drove around forever before I found this place again."

"Don't worry, I know all the shortcuts around here,' Carolyn said. "Go that way, up to town."

She directed him west on Route 18, north on 252. As they passed the Shangri-La Nursing Home, she began to mutter.

"Shit. Shit. I messed up. I shouldn't have brought us this way."

"What's wrong? Did you turn us the wrong direction?" Mavis asked.

"No, this is the fastest way, but this takes us too close to Hardscrabble."

"So?" Ronald asked. "What's the big deal with Hardscrabble?"

"Don't you keep up with the news?" Carolyn asked. "You're always stoned. Man, something ate the whole town of Hardscrabble. And they think it was a frog."

"Bullshit!" Ronald snapped.

"No, really, man, for real! At least, that's what I heard. They found this slimy stuff all over where they town used to be. The official version is that a tornado went through, but a lot of people swear it was a giant frog.

"And you know what? Frogs lay a lot of eggs."

"Shit," Mavis mumbles, looking uneasily at Carolyn and pressing closer to Ronald. "Frog shit."

"Turn here!" Carolyn yelled. Abbeyville Road veered sharply right off the highway, but Ronald made the turn with just a slight skid. "Slow...slow now, you'll miss it..." she said.

"Miss what?" Ronald asked.

"I got a friend here; you can leave me off and get on with entertaining the jailbait."

"Now hold on..." Ronald began.

"Here. Turn in here,'� she cut in.

He turned into the drive and cut the engine. The headlights illuminated a green frog in front of them, a frog the size of a backhoe, a huge frog open-mouthed and grinning.

Mavis began to gasp, a wheezing retching sound. Ronald stared stupidly, jaw sagging. Carolyn laughed. "A giant frog! A giant frog!" she squeaked, snorting and chortling. "A giant frog!"

Ronald started to tremble. His eyes were bulging, jaws champing on adrenaline and LSD. "You bitch!" he screamed. "You cold goddamn bitch! Do you want us to have heart attacks?"

A wet splat, like something soft plopping in the snow, began to sound in the dark outside the headlights. Carolyn looked out at the frog statue and for the first time noticed that the house behind the statue had been demolished, as if a tornado had ripped through it. The statue itself looked as if something heavy had been dropped on or dragged over it. Its edges were crumbled, and pieces lay scattered in the new snow.

Carolyn's acid-weird eyes flashed, and a disbelieving grin spread across her face. "Hey, babe," she crooned, "I told you 'bout that giant frog!" She got out of the car and slammed the door, humming cheerily. She trudged through the snow to the road unafraid, in the dark, the wet snow falling like a curtain between her and the car.

Behind her, in the dark, was the sound of frantic engine cranking and shouting combined with a wet splat, the sound of something soft, plopping in the snow and across the remains of the house, and then the sound of a car overturning, and screams.

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