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Chapter Seventy-Four
After dinner that night, Dad the Frog found one of his sons sitting by himself, staring out at the pond.
In itself, that wasn’t an unusual thing for Noah. He was known for being the quietest of the the Frog siblings—the exact opposite of his talkative, incredibly active wife in almost every way. Even when he was tending to his daughter’s extensive needs and wants, Noah was notably stationary and quiet. But the dark, brooding look on his face was not a usual feature of his quietness, and that was why Dad the Frog came and sat beside his son at the edge of the pond.
“What are you thinking about, son?” Dad asked softly.
“Mom.”
No surprise there. Dad knew that his children hardly ever saw their parents cry, and they had seen their mother cry twice now in a short twenty-four hours. “She’ll be alright,” Dad said. “It’s a hard time for all of us.”
Noah stared at the ripples in the pond. He picked up a small stone and turned it over in his fingers—a rare show of restlessness. When he spoke, his voice was even quieter than usual. “I’d been thinking about enlisting.”
Dad nearly jumped right out of his own skin. He gripped his walking stick tight and stared at his son. “…You mean, in the military?” he whispered.
Noah nodded, his eyes still trained on the quiet pond ripples.
“Why?” Dad asked.
The stone flipped over in Noah’s palm. “Draft goes by birthday,” he said quietly. “Kermit was drafted. One of us should have gone, too.”
Dad shook his head. “Only one person is drafted per family,” he said.
“One per household,” Noah corrected. “One of us should have gone, too.”
Dad rubbed his head. “Noah…”
“I know.” Noah dropped the stone into his other hand and inspected it. “…Mom.”
“Not just Mom,” Dad said. “What about your wife, and your daughter? What would Ida and Roseanna do without you?”
Noah flipped the stone in his hand. “They’d have you.”
Dad sighed and shook his head. “Don’t do this, son,” he said, his knuckles white on his cane. “Have you talked to Ida about this?”
Noah tossed his stone, listened to the plop it made as it landed in the pond, and watched the ripples. “Not precisely, yet. But a little.” His hands settled on the ground. “I probably won’t go. But I thought… Our family is bigger than most. Seems like we could give more.”
Dad shook his head and wrapped his arm around his son’s shoulders. “It isn’t that simple,” he said, his voice worn and weary. “You know Kermit wouldn’t want you to go there.”
“I know.” Noah stared down at his hands. “Just doesn’t seem right.”
Dad gave him a sympathetic squeeze. “Right now, son… Nothing seems right.”
Kermit was quieter than usual for a few days after the suicide bomber incident. During those few days, The Eyes never reached their full intensity… but they were always watching him.
He didn’t know how his families would react to what he’d done. He wasn’t afraid of how they would react, nor was he exactly nervous… but waiting for the next mail call wasn’t going to be easy.
He claimed it was for the viewer’s sake, but it was really to distract himself from his own anxiety that he led Holt and the camera to the medical tent and started chatting with some of the doctors and nurses there.
The Corporal in charge of the medical unit nodded to a shell-shocked man with a bandage around his head. “Careful around that one,” he said quietly. “He's... edgy.”
Kermit glanced at the man in the hospital bed. “...From the head injury, sir?” he asked.
“Head injury's the least of his troubles, Frog,” the Corporal said.
Kermit took a second look at the face of the man in question. “...Child's Corps?” he said quietly.
The Corporal nodded grimly.
Kermit gulped softly. He glanced at his cameraman. “Holt—” He tilted his head towards the shell-shocked man and stepped towards the bed. He glanced at the chart to double-check the name, and then stepped closer. “Lester?” No response. “Private First Class Lester?”
Pfc. Lester slowly blinked. “Sir?” his voice shook.
Kermit took a deep breath, assessing the look on the man's face. “...First kill?” he said quietly.
Pfc. Lester turned and looked at him. “He was kid,” he said. “I— ...I've got a brother that age.”
Kermit sighed and sat on the edge of the bed. “Would your brother hold a gun to your head?” he asked quietly.
Lester shook his head. “But if these kids had a choice—”
“If they had a choice, sure,” Kermit said sullenly. “But is that before or after they were drafted in?”
Lester frowned down at the blanket. “What's the difference, sir?” he said darkly, shakily. “They're kids...”
“They're kids... before they're drafted,” Kermit said sadly. “Afterwards... they're trained to kill without thinking twice. You're in an American uniform, and that means you're the enemy. Before they're drafted, you might be a nice guy, but... not after.” He shook his head. “They're not really kids anymore. They don't know childhood. And as terrible as that is, sometimes we have to get through them to stop the people who do it to them. We've just gotta remember that.”
Lester looked at him darkly. “Is that how we're supposed to make ourselves feel good, sir?” he said thickly.
Kermit winced. “I don't know what it's supposed to do, Lester,” he said huskily. “There is no feeling good about any of this. It's guilt beyond guilt, and that's why they use it.”
Lester sank back against the bed. “...Sir?” he said after a bit. “We any better than them if we kill the kids they send out?”
Kermit sighed. “I don't know,” he said quietly. “Probably not, but... Is it any better of us to let them win, knowing what they do to the people here?”
The Marine looked at him sickly. “...Rock and a hard spot, sir.”
Kermit nodded. “...When did it happen?” he said softly. “Pretty recent?”
“This morning,” Lester whispered.
Kermit winced and nodded. “...You wanna talk about it?” he said softly. “Try to get it out of you?”
Lester shook his head. “I'd rather just forget about it,” he said, his voice soft and shaky.
Kermit bit his lip. Gee, but that sounded familiar. “Lester,” he said quietly. “There is no forgetting it.”
Fear struck the Marine’s eyes, and he looked at Kermit.
Kermit winced and looked at his cameraman. “Turn the camera off, Holt,” he said quietly.
Holt quickly clicked the camera off and let it hang by his side.
Kermit let out a heavy sigh. “There,” he said softly, and he turned to Pfc. Lester. “Let's talk.”
Lester nodded. “Thanks, sir,” he said quietly.
When the next mail call finally came, Kermit received his stack of envelopes, sat down among his fellow soldiers without saying a word to any of them, and carefully read through each and every letter.
The men around him were celebrating. Pine had gotten a new picture of his now eighteen-month-old daughter, and Emerson was showing off his sister’s straight-A report card. Plank had good news, too: after over eighteen years of hard labor and barely making ends meet, his mother had found a less strenuous job with better pay, which gave him such a tangible sense of relief that he stretched out on the ground with his hands behind his head and grinned up at the sun as if he were on a tropical beach somewhere.
The camera observed all of this while Kermit quietly read his letters.
Geraldson put a hand on the frog’s back. “Well?” he said simply.
Kermit smiled up at his friend. “It’s soothing,” he said. “Comforting. Just to hear from them.”
Geraldson nodded and held up his own letter. “My mom says hello, by the way.”
“Aw, hi-ho, Ms. Geraldson.”
Geraldson chuckled. “I’ll pass it along,” he said.
Kermit returned to his own letters and traced the gold locket that hid under his uniform as he read them. In every single letter, his loved ones sent a renewed pledge of their support for him. None of them mentioned what he had done in that episode, but he knew they had seen it. He knew that was the reason they were reminding him that they loved him.
It was exactly what he needed.
But as he read the last letter, the calm feeling vanished. Towards the end of it, he jumped to his flippers in alarm, still staring at the note in his hands, reading and re-reading.
“Frog?” Larsen stepped closer. “Something wrong?”
“What is it?”
“Bad news?”
“Are you okay, Frog?”
Kermit didn’t answer right away, but his face looked drained as he carefully folded the letter and tucked it away. He glanced at the camera. “I… can’t really discuss the details, in front of the camera…”
Holt immediately pulled away from the viewfinder. “Should I turn it off, sir?”
“…No,” Kermit decided. “And don’t call me sir.” He looked around at his unit and carefully sat back down. “Guys… I wanna talk to you about something,” he said. “How would you feel… I mean…” He cleared his throat. “We all agree that what we’re doing here… it needs to be done. Right?”
“Yes,” Geraldson said firmly.
“Absolutely,” Larsen agreed. Many of the other men nodded.
“Right,” Kermit said quietly. “But would any of you want… any of your loved ones, to come here and do what we’re doing?”
“No.” Larsen’s answer was immediate, and he shook his head. “That’s the whole reason I enlisted. Scott and I… Well, you know how we grew up. We know a lot of languages. And the ones we don’t know, we pick up pretty quickly. The military wanted both of us, but…” Larsen rubbed the back of his neck. “We couldn’t do that to Mom and Pop. We agreed only one of us would enlist.”
“And Scott was going to, and you beat him to it,” Kermit said, remembering the story.
“I’d do it again in a heartbeat,” Larsen said fervently. “Besides, they need him at home. He teaches ESL and sign language. He’s teaching the teachers sign language.”
“What about the rest of your siblings?” Casper asked.
Larsen sat back and scowled as he thought about it. “…Julio might be able to take it, I guess,” he said. “But again—he’s doing important things on the home front. He’s a cop, and he works with kids a lot—” His voice suddenly caught and his chin trembled. He clenched his fists and squeezed his eyes shut to get ahold of himself. Someone patted his shoulder. “No,” he said firmly. “I wouldn’t want anyone in my family to be here.”
Emerson shook his head and rubbed his fist against his cheek as if he were trying to rub his freckles off. “The only one in my family who’s anywhere near the right age is my sister, and she’s still too young,” he said. “She’s in high school still… But even if she was old enough, I wouldn’t want her to come here. She’s got her own life she’s leading, going into science… This isn’t a part of where she’s going.”
“But if this was part of what she wanted to do,” Kermit pressed. “If it seemed even remotely reasonable for her to enlist… Would you want that?”
Emerson scowled.
Plank rubbed his thumb against his palm. “It’s really just me and Mama back home,” he said. “The only person in the right age range I can think of is my goody-two-shoes neighbor, and I just can’t see him in a uniform.”
“What about those guys you used to hang out with?” Larsen asked.
Plank shook his head. “They’re still in jail. And no. It wouldn’t do them no good to be here.”
“It’s just me and my mom, too,” Geraldson said, and he shook his head. “I can’t think of anyone I would want to come here.”
“Me neither,” Pine said, and he looked at the amphibian lance corporal. “What is it, Frog? Why are we talking about this?”
Kermit traced the locket under his uniform. “It’s interesting,” he said thoughtfully. “We all agree it has to be done… but we don’t want any of our loved ones to do it.”
“We don’t want any of our loved ones to be garbage collectors, either,” Emerson said. “But someone needs to pick up the trash.”
Kermit shook his head. “I don’t know if it’s as simple as that,” he said, and he looked at Geraldson. “Bob, you and I both needed to come back here.”
Geraldson ran his fingers through his hair. “We wouldn’t have felt that need if we hadn’t already been here before,” he said. “But I get what you’re saying, Frog. What if someone we loved realized they needed to come here and do something.”
Kermit nodded grimly. “Exactly,” he said, and he put his hand on the pocket his newest letters were in.
Larsen sighed and put his hands on his hips. “I wouldn’t be happy about it,” he said, and he scowled at the ground. “But I guess I could understand,” he said quietly. “I would be supportive.”
“Well, of course, any of us would be supportive,” Emerson said quickly.
“Of course,” Kermit said, and although his voice was firm, the rest of him was wistful and reluctant.
After dinner that night, Dad the Frog found one of his sons sitting by himself, staring out at the pond.
In itself, that wasn’t an unusual thing for Noah. He was known for being the quietest of the the Frog siblings—the exact opposite of his talkative, incredibly active wife in almost every way. Even when he was tending to his daughter’s extensive needs and wants, Noah was notably stationary and quiet. But the dark, brooding look on his face was not a usual feature of his quietness, and that was why Dad the Frog came and sat beside his son at the edge of the pond.
“What are you thinking about, son?” Dad asked softly.
“Mom.”
No surprise there. Dad knew that his children hardly ever saw their parents cry, and they had seen their mother cry twice now in a short twenty-four hours. “She’ll be alright,” Dad said. “It’s a hard time for all of us.”
Noah stared at the ripples in the pond. He picked up a small stone and turned it over in his fingers—a rare show of restlessness. When he spoke, his voice was even quieter than usual. “I’d been thinking about enlisting.”
Dad nearly jumped right out of his own skin. He gripped his walking stick tight and stared at his son. “…You mean, in the military?” he whispered.
Noah nodded, his eyes still trained on the quiet pond ripples.
“Why?” Dad asked.
The stone flipped over in Noah’s palm. “Draft goes by birthday,” he said quietly. “Kermit was drafted. One of us should have gone, too.”
Dad shook his head. “Only one person is drafted per family,” he said.
“One per household,” Noah corrected. “One of us should have gone, too.”
Dad rubbed his head. “Noah…”
“I know.” Noah dropped the stone into his other hand and inspected it. “…Mom.”
“Not just Mom,” Dad said. “What about your wife, and your daughter? What would Ida and Roseanna do without you?”
Noah flipped the stone in his hand. “They’d have you.”
Dad sighed and shook his head. “Don’t do this, son,” he said, his knuckles white on his cane. “Have you talked to Ida about this?”
Noah tossed his stone, listened to the plop it made as it landed in the pond, and watched the ripples. “Not precisely, yet. But a little.” His hands settled on the ground. “I probably won’t go. But I thought… Our family is bigger than most. Seems like we could give more.”
Dad shook his head and wrapped his arm around his son’s shoulders. “It isn’t that simple,” he said, his voice worn and weary. “You know Kermit wouldn’t want you to go there.”
“I know.” Noah stared down at his hands. “Just doesn’t seem right.”
Dad gave him a sympathetic squeeze. “Right now, son… Nothing seems right.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Kermit was quieter than usual for a few days after the suicide bomber incident. During those few days, The Eyes never reached their full intensity… but they were always watching him.
He didn’t know how his families would react to what he’d done. He wasn’t afraid of how they would react, nor was he exactly nervous… but waiting for the next mail call wasn’t going to be easy.
He claimed it was for the viewer’s sake, but it was really to distract himself from his own anxiety that he led Holt and the camera to the medical tent and started chatting with some of the doctors and nurses there.
The Corporal in charge of the medical unit nodded to a shell-shocked man with a bandage around his head. “Careful around that one,” he said quietly. “He's... edgy.”
Kermit glanced at the man in the hospital bed. “...From the head injury, sir?” he asked.
“Head injury's the least of his troubles, Frog,” the Corporal said.
Kermit took a second look at the face of the man in question. “...Child's Corps?” he said quietly.
The Corporal nodded grimly.
Kermit gulped softly. He glanced at his cameraman. “Holt—” He tilted his head towards the shell-shocked man and stepped towards the bed. He glanced at the chart to double-check the name, and then stepped closer. “Lester?” No response. “Private First Class Lester?”
Pfc. Lester slowly blinked. “Sir?” his voice shook.
Kermit took a deep breath, assessing the look on the man's face. “...First kill?” he said quietly.
Pfc. Lester turned and looked at him. “He was kid,” he said. “I— ...I've got a brother that age.”
Kermit sighed and sat on the edge of the bed. “Would your brother hold a gun to your head?” he asked quietly.
Lester shook his head. “But if these kids had a choice—”
“If they had a choice, sure,” Kermit said sullenly. “But is that before or after they were drafted in?”
Lester frowned down at the blanket. “What's the difference, sir?” he said darkly, shakily. “They're kids...”
“They're kids... before they're drafted,” Kermit said sadly. “Afterwards... they're trained to kill without thinking twice. You're in an American uniform, and that means you're the enemy. Before they're drafted, you might be a nice guy, but... not after.” He shook his head. “They're not really kids anymore. They don't know childhood. And as terrible as that is, sometimes we have to get through them to stop the people who do it to them. We've just gotta remember that.”
Lester looked at him darkly. “Is that how we're supposed to make ourselves feel good, sir?” he said thickly.
Kermit winced. “I don't know what it's supposed to do, Lester,” he said huskily. “There is no feeling good about any of this. It's guilt beyond guilt, and that's why they use it.”
Lester sank back against the bed. “...Sir?” he said after a bit. “We any better than them if we kill the kids they send out?”
Kermit sighed. “I don't know,” he said quietly. “Probably not, but... Is it any better of us to let them win, knowing what they do to the people here?”
The Marine looked at him sickly. “...Rock and a hard spot, sir.”
Kermit nodded. “...When did it happen?” he said softly. “Pretty recent?”
“This morning,” Lester whispered.
Kermit winced and nodded. “...You wanna talk about it?” he said softly. “Try to get it out of you?”
Lester shook his head. “I'd rather just forget about it,” he said, his voice soft and shaky.
Kermit bit his lip. Gee, but that sounded familiar. “Lester,” he said quietly. “There is no forgetting it.”
Fear struck the Marine’s eyes, and he looked at Kermit.
Kermit winced and looked at his cameraman. “Turn the camera off, Holt,” he said quietly.
Holt quickly clicked the camera off and let it hang by his side.
Kermit let out a heavy sigh. “There,” he said softly, and he turned to Pfc. Lester. “Let's talk.”
Lester nodded. “Thanks, sir,” he said quietly.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
When the next mail call finally came, Kermit received his stack of envelopes, sat down among his fellow soldiers without saying a word to any of them, and carefully read through each and every letter.
The men around him were celebrating. Pine had gotten a new picture of his now eighteen-month-old daughter, and Emerson was showing off his sister’s straight-A report card. Plank had good news, too: after over eighteen years of hard labor and barely making ends meet, his mother had found a less strenuous job with better pay, which gave him such a tangible sense of relief that he stretched out on the ground with his hands behind his head and grinned up at the sun as if he were on a tropical beach somewhere.
The camera observed all of this while Kermit quietly read his letters.
Geraldson put a hand on the frog’s back. “Well?” he said simply.
Kermit smiled up at his friend. “It’s soothing,” he said. “Comforting. Just to hear from them.”
Geraldson nodded and held up his own letter. “My mom says hello, by the way.”
“Aw, hi-ho, Ms. Geraldson.”
Geraldson chuckled. “I’ll pass it along,” he said.
Kermit returned to his own letters and traced the gold locket that hid under his uniform as he read them. In every single letter, his loved ones sent a renewed pledge of their support for him. None of them mentioned what he had done in that episode, but he knew they had seen it. He knew that was the reason they were reminding him that they loved him.
It was exactly what he needed.
But as he read the last letter, the calm feeling vanished. Towards the end of it, he jumped to his flippers in alarm, still staring at the note in his hands, reading and re-reading.
“Frog?” Larsen stepped closer. “Something wrong?”
“What is it?”
“Bad news?”
“Are you okay, Frog?”
Kermit didn’t answer right away, but his face looked drained as he carefully folded the letter and tucked it away. He glanced at the camera. “I… can’t really discuss the details, in front of the camera…”
Holt immediately pulled away from the viewfinder. “Should I turn it off, sir?”
“…No,” Kermit decided. “And don’t call me sir.” He looked around at his unit and carefully sat back down. “Guys… I wanna talk to you about something,” he said. “How would you feel… I mean…” He cleared his throat. “We all agree that what we’re doing here… it needs to be done. Right?”
“Yes,” Geraldson said firmly.
“Absolutely,” Larsen agreed. Many of the other men nodded.
“Right,” Kermit said quietly. “But would any of you want… any of your loved ones, to come here and do what we’re doing?”
“No.” Larsen’s answer was immediate, and he shook his head. “That’s the whole reason I enlisted. Scott and I… Well, you know how we grew up. We know a lot of languages. And the ones we don’t know, we pick up pretty quickly. The military wanted both of us, but…” Larsen rubbed the back of his neck. “We couldn’t do that to Mom and Pop. We agreed only one of us would enlist.”
“And Scott was going to, and you beat him to it,” Kermit said, remembering the story.
“I’d do it again in a heartbeat,” Larsen said fervently. “Besides, they need him at home. He teaches ESL and sign language. He’s teaching the teachers sign language.”
“What about the rest of your siblings?” Casper asked.
Larsen sat back and scowled as he thought about it. “…Julio might be able to take it, I guess,” he said. “But again—he’s doing important things on the home front. He’s a cop, and he works with kids a lot—” His voice suddenly caught and his chin trembled. He clenched his fists and squeezed his eyes shut to get ahold of himself. Someone patted his shoulder. “No,” he said firmly. “I wouldn’t want anyone in my family to be here.”
Emerson shook his head and rubbed his fist against his cheek as if he were trying to rub his freckles off. “The only one in my family who’s anywhere near the right age is my sister, and she’s still too young,” he said. “She’s in high school still… But even if she was old enough, I wouldn’t want her to come here. She’s got her own life she’s leading, going into science… This isn’t a part of where she’s going.”
“But if this was part of what she wanted to do,” Kermit pressed. “If it seemed even remotely reasonable for her to enlist… Would you want that?”
Emerson scowled.
Plank rubbed his thumb against his palm. “It’s really just me and Mama back home,” he said. “The only person in the right age range I can think of is my goody-two-shoes neighbor, and I just can’t see him in a uniform.”
“What about those guys you used to hang out with?” Larsen asked.
Plank shook his head. “They’re still in jail. And no. It wouldn’t do them no good to be here.”
“It’s just me and my mom, too,” Geraldson said, and he shook his head. “I can’t think of anyone I would want to come here.”
“Me neither,” Pine said, and he looked at the amphibian lance corporal. “What is it, Frog? Why are we talking about this?”
Kermit traced the locket under his uniform. “It’s interesting,” he said thoughtfully. “We all agree it has to be done… but we don’t want any of our loved ones to do it.”
“We don’t want any of our loved ones to be garbage collectors, either,” Emerson said. “But someone needs to pick up the trash.”
Kermit shook his head. “I don’t know if it’s as simple as that,” he said, and he looked at Geraldson. “Bob, you and I both needed to come back here.”
Geraldson ran his fingers through his hair. “We wouldn’t have felt that need if we hadn’t already been here before,” he said. “But I get what you’re saying, Frog. What if someone we loved realized they needed to come here and do something.”
Kermit nodded grimly. “Exactly,” he said, and he put his hand on the pocket his newest letters were in.
Larsen sighed and put his hands on his hips. “I wouldn’t be happy about it,” he said, and he scowled at the ground. “But I guess I could understand,” he said quietly. “I would be supportive.”
“Well, of course, any of us would be supportive,” Emerson said quickly.
“Of course,” Kermit said, and although his voice was firm, the rest of him was wistful and reluctant.
... A cliffhanger? From Lisa? We needs to know who wrote that letter that has Kermit spooked and talking about reasons for having come back to the warfront.
>obliviously pretends that did any good<
Hope you had a good trip! And I know the feeling of new friends and the Muppets. I'm taking two newbies out to see it this weekend. I'm going to have to bite my lip real hard not to be like "Loo,k look! That's Wayne and Wanda! And Nigel! And that whatnot who sang the opening song in episode 14 of season 3!!" But actually, I had a very smiley moment yesterday at class when a 12 year old kid (who must have known I was a Muppet freak somehow 