I FOUND CHIEF LEOPARD FROG on the porch swing, feeding Cheetos to a squirrel.
"You're making his face orange," I observed.
"War paint," Chief Leopard Frog replied. "A great tradition."
"Okee-dokee," I said. "But it seems to me that it's not that much different from stirring up bees."
"It's completely different," Chief Leopard Frog replied.
Hmmm, I thought. He seems to be somewhat miffed with me. Have I been neglecting him lately?
Even when dealing with imaginary friends, it's important to be sensitive to their idiosyncrasies. So I started over, this time using a different approach, one based on the principles of salesmanship—flattery and lying—that, unknowingly, I'd begun to pick up from my contact with Milton Swartzman.
"Hey, guess what?" I said. "That publisher loved your poems."
"Really?" Chief Leopard Frog replied. His voice, his posture, and his demeanor suddenly brightened. "Which one did he like best?"
"He liked them all equally well," I fibbed. "He said there was no way to choose a favorite. He wants to see more."
"No kidding," Chief Leopard Frog said. "This is wonderful news."
"I hope you don't mind," I added, digging the hole deeper, "but I also let him see the talisman you made for me. He said you are truly a gifted artist capable of profound expression in many media."
"Wow," Chief Leopard Frog responded. "He said that?"
"Mmm-hmm," I replied.
"So what happens next?" Chief Leopard Frog inquired earnestly, dumping the entire bag of Cheetos at the feet of the squirrel, which was now covered in salty, cheese-flavored, iridescent orange dust.
Timing is everything. In photography. In fishing. In manipulating imaginary friends. You have to know when to set the hook.
"What do you mean, 'next'?" I asked disingenuously.
Chief Leopard Frog was always one for tradition. He spoke of tradition as if something that had happened in the past was more important—even sacred—just because it happened a long time ago. So I was simply following Chief Leopard Frog's ideas about tradition when I proceeded to deceive him for my own personal gain.
White men have been deceiving Native Americans for personal gain since the first greedy European set foot on this vast continent. The practice continues to this very day, as seen with all the gambling casinos in such unlikely places as Oklahoma and South Dakota. To my convenient way of thinking, there is no more long-standing tradition in the relationship between Indians and whites than relentless mutual exploitation.
Thus, my conscience shuddered only slightly when I said, "He wants to publish a book of your poems in conjunction with an exhibit of your art. He needs about sixty talismans and an equal number of poems. Can you do it?"
"It may take a while," Chief Leopard Frog replied. "But yes, of course I can."
"Way to go," I said encouragingly. "Let's get started right away, shall we?"
"I'll need some fresh notebooks," he said.
"Why don't we do the talismans first," I suggested. "We can always do a rush job later on the poems. How hard is it to write a poem?"
"Then I'll have to find another bee tree," Chief Leopard Frog explained. "That last one is about petered out."
"I'll help you," I replied. "Just follow the bees, right?"
One Sunday morning, back when there had been a First United Methodist Church of Paisley, the Reverend Dr. F. Foster Frost preached these words:
"Someday," he declared to his tiny congregation, a well-intentioned group that included my mother and myself, "God will demand that you pay for your sins."
In my experience, Dr. Frost was dead wrong. There's no "someday" about it. It's more like "within forty-five minutes. If you're really lucky, half a day."
Three hours after Chief Leopard Frog and I struck out in search of a new bee tree, I lay swollen and writhing in pain in my nest of quilts.
"Didn't I tell you that you're allergic to bee stings?" my mother shouted. "I'm beginning to wonder if you can be homeschooled. You're such a slow leaner."
"Ohhhh," I replied.
God's punishment is swift.
Meanwhile, however, Chief Leopard Frog sat outside on the front porch, whistling a happy tune as he whittled away like a happy-go-lucky dwarf in a Disney cartoon.