The Frog Man

Luis felt around his right hip and allowed his fingers to trace along the square patch of rubber that he had cut from a discarded tire and had used to repair the hole in his makeshift wetsuit. He hoped the epoxy glue his neighbor had been kind enough for him to borrow would work to effectively prevent water from seeping in to the patched hole. It made for a laborious swim yesterday afternoon to be lugging along excess fluids during his scavenging after the wetsuit had gotten caught in some old chicken wire creating the hole. Things appeared intact, so he paid the patch-up job no additional heed.
         He adjusted the strap on his swimming goggles—which was truly not the best tool to use in these dives, but he had to make do—and signaled his daughter, Eileen, to turn on the oxygen. When the essential compound made its way through the long rubber tube and into his mouthpiece, he flashed a thumbs up sign to Eileen. Luis marveled at how quickly she had grown since becoming his new assistant in this venture after his son died last year. The only dress his five-year-old daughter had on was beginning to show signs of wear. He worried about when he may be able to replace it what with the little income he was able to rake in.
         He brushed the thought aside as there was nothing he could do about it at the moment, and, with as graceful a dismount as one could muster from the boardwalk’s eroding balustrade, Luis—the village’s remaining ‘frog man’— vanished into the murky waters of Manila Bay.

“’Tay (shortened form of tatay, which means ‘father’ in Filipino), what is that?” Eileen asked, and Luis looked in the direction to which she had pointed. He picked up the metal object, and handed it to his daughter, who examined it delicately with tiny fingers.
         “It’s called a flange,” he said. “It’s part of a sink. I could probably get fifty, maybe sixty pesos for it.”
         “What’s a sink?”
         Luis struggled for the words to describe something which his daughter had never had the pleasure of using. He, himself, only first used sinks during his brief time in elementary school, many, many years ago.
         “A sink is—”
         “Is that it today?” a familiar voice fortunately interrupted him from behind. He turned around to see his wife, Melly, lugging in a few plastic bags of groceries (mostly vegetables and hopefully some chicken bouillons) into their modest home— a ten by twenty space, subdivided into a living/dining room and a bedroom, that he managed to finagle twenty years ago from this squatter village’s unofficial mayor, Mr. Sevilla. Luis’s other daughter, Marisa, followed her mother inside. The twelve-year-old dropped her school bag by the bedroom door, and sat next to Eileen.
         His wife had referred to the paltry collection of objects Luis was able to scavenge from Manila Bay. Including the flange, he managed to find several PVC pipes, which he could sell for probably twenty pesos each; a metal blade from an electric fan, which would probably fetch at least seventy-five pesos; and a canvas rice bag that could potentially be exchanged for at least thirty pesos. “It was slim pickings.”
         “You heard that Benji’s son is diving, too, right?” Melly asked while transferring a head of bokchoy and several carrots into a small plastic basin. She would take these later to one of the few pump wells in the village to wash, and would be part of tonight’s supper.
         Luis shifted on the plywood floor to face his wife. “No, I hadn’t. When—?”
         “Yes,” Melly continued. “Got himself an oxygen tank about a week ago, I think. Didn’t I tell you? Anyway, he could be beating you to the better haul.”
         “Maybe I should set out earlier,” Luis said, worry creeping in his voice. In the last ten years, he had watched as the scavenger divers in his village dwindle in number due to the high costs associated with the job. His own oxygen tank, which he has managed to not have had to refill for the past three years—and, in fact, could be traded for a few hundred pesos— had become such a commodity that it lay between him and the bedroom wall while they slept. “Or maybe I should go out further—“
         “No,” his wife interrupted him again. She knew her husband would suggest venturing out beyond the barrier. “Absolutely not.”
         Luis, of course, knew fully well the reason behind his wife’s fervent refusal of the thought of going beyond the barrier. It was all about their son Celso, who had been just as convinced as his father about the potential loot that lay waiting for them there. While Luis was recuperating from the flu, Celso had decided to test the theory one morning, as his close friend manned the oxygen tank on the boardwalk. A shark snagged the eighteen-year-old as soon as he crossed the barrier, and he was never seen again.
         Melly walked toward the door with the basin in hand, and stopped. Without looking at her husband, she said, “Promise me that you will never go beyond the barrier. I’ll work a hundred times as hard so you will never feel the need.”
         Luis smiled, in spite of himself, “I promise, dear.” With that, he watched as his wife disappeared into the labyrinthine walkways outside their dwelling, and he longed for the vegetable soup he would enjoy for supper that night.

The morning air was still as Luis eyed the sun peeking in the horizon. He savored the last sips of coffee a neighbor had offered. A sleepy Eileen stood by him, a small hand absent-mindedly touching the oxygen tank, which stood on its own.
         They were at the bay an hour earlier than usual, and the water looked darker than Luis knew he was comfortable diving into. He wondered if he could even see anything down there.
         But, he had to try.


Winner of "The Writer's Cramp"  prompt for 2017-02-18/19
Prompt: Your title must be: The Frog Man. This can be a sci/fi or adventure tale. It can be...well, whatever you want, as long as the piece applies to the title. Story or poem!
Word Count: 998