Lang Samstag

Milo was six years old when he attended his first fair. At the time, he was living in Osterholz-Scharmbeck in Lower Saxony, Germany. His father was a captain in the U.S. Infantry, serving along with a few thousand 2^nd Armored Division soldiers. His mother taught aerobics to officers’ wives.

Even at six, the boy sensed the peculiarity of where he lived—his being an American in Europe—so he took in as much as he could: the mountains, the castles, the food, and the snow, which the boy imagined fell out of celestial dump trucks.

Milo loved walking to school in darkness and watching the sun go down long after bed time. He loved the massive snowman his father built; the thing took months to melt. He also loved Becker’s baked chicken and square dancing. He loved having both American and German friends. He loved British cartoons and Angelica, the girl who he frequently picked flowers for. He loved cobblestones.

Milo picked his nose as his mother took him in town by bike. They passed a produce seller, who commanded the attention of at least 50 people. The seller was a portly fellow with a guttural, hyper voice. He bagged fruits and vegetables for money as he bellowed in red-faced abandon.

The cadence and intonations of the produce seller’s voice faded as Milo and his mother rode by. But the voice stayed in the back of the boy’s mind, winding like a fish in a bowl.

“Mum, when we will be go to Bremen?” the boy inquired. “I want to be a musician there, yeah?”

“Mum” laughed.

In town, Milo’s mother picnicked with other wives. She gave her son two American dollars to exchange for tickets at a fair happening within walking distance. The boy matter-of-factly took his mother’s money and headed for the ticket booth.

But Milo got distracted as he ambled along, by a puppet performance of Kermit the Frog. Milo had vague memories of Kermit, from when he lived in America. The name rose in the boy’s mind like bread, as he watched the puppet frog dance forth and back, arms and mouth flailing. There was something sweeping in the music and the frog’s dancing. Milo found himself standing between the stage and a small radio. He marched gallantly, as if performing in a musical for the audience. Then Milo left to buy the tickets.

He returned some hours later, his pockets emptied of tickets and re-stuffed with a ball, some jacks, and a miniature deck of playing cards. Milo held a half-eaten bag of popcorn the way he would hold large beers later in his life. The seating area was empty now, save for a group who used a few chairs to visit together. Some seats were overturned and facing away from the stage. Milo stared, noting how, earlier, the throngs of fair-goers walked around the performance site as though repelled by it. Now there were fewer visitors, but they walked through the area as if it were a minor inconvenience. The scene was peculiar and quiet, save for the endless loop of the produce seller’s voice in the back of Milo’s brain.

He could not take his eyes away from the “stage” where he had previously seen Kermit singing and dancing. Where was the frog? Milo knew that if he had walked about the fairgrounds, that he would have heard about it. No such news.

As the boy parted the curtains behind the puppet theater to see where he thought Kermit was, the produce seller’s voice grew louder in his head. As the curtains closed behind him, Milo found himself alone with the frog of yore and the ambiance of the fair and fair-goers was further subdued.

Kermit lay deflated and still, his eyes seemed to bulge with sorrow. His legs were crumpled beneath his eggplant torso and his arms spread in a limp, ineffectual “Ta-da!” The boy felt a surge of embarrassment he was sure he was sharing with the frog. He realized that perhaps they weren’t supposed to encounter this way, but there was no going back now.

Milo grimaced as he reached his hand toward the plush frog. Kermit’s stomach gave way to the boy’s fingers, which prompted Milo to pull his hand away. He heard the produce seller screaming as if being tortured and squatted, putting his face between his knees.

Then he felt a surge of wind around his body forcing his wet face to go cold. He opened his eyes to find that the curtain had been pulled open and the scene was now broadcast to the entire fair. He ran away, bumping into a man standing near the stage. Popcorn was everywhere.

Two years later, the man who originally voiced Kermit—who wasn’t at the fair that day—died. Milo saw the news on TV and several years passed before the boy realized that no one can die twice.