Chapter Fourteen
Six Months Later
June 27, 1969
Kermit slowed his bicycle to a stop, looked around, and frowned. “Oh, boy,” he sighed. “I must’ve taken a wrong turn back there. I know this isn’t the place.” He looked around. “Well… There’s a pay phone over there. I guess I can call.” He walked his bicycle over to a pay phone by a flower shop on the corner, dug some change out of his basket, put it into the phone, and dialed.
He didn’t have to wait long. “
Hello?” a man’s voice answered. There was a piano in the background.
“Hi, Jim?”
“
No, this is Joe.”
“Joe?”
“
Raposo.”
“Oh! Well then we haven’t met yet. This is Kermit the Frog.”
“
Oh hi!” Joe said. “
Well Jim just stepped out. Did you want to leave a message?”
“No, it’s just- I’m on my way over, and- well, I’m kinda lost.”
“
Oh. Haven’t you been here before?”
“Well, yeah, but only once, and Jim was driving.”
“
I see.”
“So uh, can you tell me how to get-“ A motorcycle whizzed by, and Kermit coughed on the exhaust. “Sorry- how to get to Sesame Street?”
“
Sure. Do you know where you are?”
Kermit glanced at a street sign. “Uh, I’m at the corner of Oak Street and Pine Road,” he said. Then he mumbled, “And the only trees I see are maples.”
“
Oh. Well you know, from there, it’ll be easier if I just come and get you. Do you mind staying there for a few minutes?”
“Sure!” Kermit said.
“
Okay, I’ll be right down.”
“All right, I’ll see you soon,” Kermit said, and he hung up. He looked at the flower shop, and its display of all sorts of flowers, decoratively arranged in glass vases. He watched as some women carried vase after vase outside and set them down on the sidewalk for someone else to pick up. In a few short moments, Kermit realized he was suddenly in front of a small meadow of fresh cut flowers and their vases. He nodded. “Looks nice,” he said to himself. “And it smells nice, too.”
He heard a car coming, and turned to look. “Is that Joe?” he wondered aloud. The car passed. “I guess not.” He looked at the flowers again. They were all different kinds and colors but, as their clear vases showed, they all had green stems.
Kermit looked up as a car went by. “Well that’s funny,” he said. “That’s the same car that just passed the other way.” He watched as the car made a U-turn and pulled to a stop beside him.
The driver opened the door and stepped out, looking slightly embarrassed. “Kermit the Frog?” he said.
“That’s me,” Kermit said. “Are you Joe Raposo?” The man nodded. “Oh, well, it’s nice to meet you, Joe,” Kermit said as they shook hands. “You don’t mind if I call you ‘Joe,’ do you?”
“Not at all,” Joe said. “Sorry I passed you a couple times, I guess I didn’t see you.”
“Oh don’t worry, I’m used to it,” Kermit said. He waved over to the flowers and their stems. “When you’re green, you just blend in with everything.”
Joe nodded. “Must not be easy being green sometimes,” he said as he put Kermit’s bicycle in the backseat.
Kermit shrugged. “Sometimes,” he said. “But green’s a lot of nice things, too.”
“Oh, sure, it’s the color of spring,” Joe said. They got into the car and drove off.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
After a chaotic arrival at Sesame Street, an even more chaotic lunch, a long but strangely comedic meeting, a debate that was more humorous than heated, and several awkward encounters with such creatures as a huge yellow bird and a furry thing in a trash can, Kermit the Frog and Jim Henson departed for the second part of a long day.
“Boy,” Kermit said as they pulled away from the street. “That place is going to take some getting used to.”
“I knew you’d like it,” Jim said.
“Sure are a lot of kids there,” Kermit said thoughtfully.
Jim glanced at him. “That’s a good thing,” he said.
Kermit nodded. “Yeah. We’re gonna shoot the pilot soon, right?”
“Oh let’s not rush that, he might crash the plane if he’s dead.”
Kermit chuckled. “I’ll take that as a ‘yes’.”
A long while later, they reached Jim’s house, and visited briefly with his kids before enlisting them to help load the trunk and back seat of Jim’s car with several carefully sealed and labeled boxes. Then Jim and Kermit were off again, this time just a few miles away. They parked in front of an apartment complex and started to carry the boxes inside.
“Hey thanks for helping out, Jim,” Kermit said as they finished up.
“No problem,” Jim said.
“Any boxes left?” Kermit asked.
“Just this one,” Jim said. “I’ve got it. Could you grab the door?”
“Sure!”
“Thanks.”
“Yup.”
They entered the second-floor apartment, where a dozen boxes were now lined up on the floor. They were in the living room, with a kitchen to the left, a bedroom and bathroom to the right, and a few large windows straight ahead.
“Well,” Kermit said as he looked around, “I guess this is it- my new home.”
Jim nodded. “It’s a nice place.”
“Yeah,” Kermit said. “It’s a good location. Close to you, and the office, right by the park… and not
too far from Sesame Street.”
Jim looked at the white box in his arms, and cleared his throat. “Where do you want me to put this?” he asked softly.
Kermit turned, checked the label, and frowned. The box was simply marked,
Melinda & Ray. He held his arms out to it. “Here,” he whispered.
Jim eased the weight of the box into Kermit’s arms as gently as he could. But he knew that Kermit was already carrying it, all of its weight, contents, and meaning, deep within his heart.
Kermit frowned at the box for a long, quiet moment. “I still own that land,” he whispered. “I thought about building our house, and living there, like we planned, but…” He shook his head. “I just couldn’t.”
They sat down on the floor. “And you won’t sell it,” Jim said softly.
“I can’t sell it,” Kermit said. “It’s where They’re buried. It would be like… like, I was selling
Them.”
Jim nodded and put his hand on his friend’s back.
Kermit sighed and stood up. “When I don’t think about it, it doesn’t hurt,” he said. “As much.” He carried the box into a closet and tucked it into the back corner. When he re-emerged, the frown was gone. “Do you know what tomorrow is?” is asked brightly.
Jim shook his head. “What’s tomorrow?”
Kermit started opening one of the boxes. “Tomorrow, Jimmy’s tadpoles will be six months old,” he said.
Jim opened another box. “They’re not really tadpoles anymore,” he said.
“Well, no,” Kermit said. “But we still call them tadpoles. I mean, sometimes Mom and Dad still call my brothers and sisters and I ‘their tadpoles.’ I guess it never really goes away.” He took a few books out of the box and chuckled to himself. “Did I tell you about the last time I was at the swamp? My little nephew Robin- he’s the youngest- he was up in this tree, and-“
Jim interrupted. “And he fell down and said, ‘Uncle Kermit, did anyone see that?’ and you said, ‘If they did, we’ll tell them it was a hop.’ And he said, ‘That’s the biggest hop of my life!’”
Kermit hesitated. “I guess I told you.”
“Repeatedly,” Jim said.
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