West’s Pond

***

In the morning, before the afternoon heat turned our town brown and breathless, we gathered behind the gym to smoke stolen Lucky Strikes and spit in the grass while Joey told us all about his sister’s slumber party and how he could have got some. I don’t think any of us knew what the some was he could’ve got, but we all nodded and laughed at the right moments and said, Yeah, totally. Leaning against the stone wall, still cool from the night, we rocked our shoulders back and forth while Leo explained how to get a hand through the slot on the Coke machine at his dad’s garage, and Bruce kicked rocks at the fence. Deciding it was already too hot to hang out there, I recommended riding bikes down to West’s Pond for a few goes on the tire-rope.

The pond was a small lake surrounded by evergreens and a few reaching willows on Frank West’s property. It was at the bottom of Harlow Street and could be depended upon to be cool on the hottest days. The water was almost clear and the frogs were carefree enough to share the shade, but no one touched their feet to the bottom, except to scramble out in the shallows.

The bottom of the pond was littered with tires and mysterious hunks of metal tossed in over the years. Joey said there were bodies of murdered hookers from Seattle in the pond mud and that they sometimes reached out from the dead and dragged you down. We would grunt and roll our eyes and toss Joey in, screaming, “Fuck the dead hookers, Joe!” And we’d laugh and I’d wonder, for a delicious moment, if there really were dead women down there and it would make me thrill at the darkness of the water that I couldn’t see through.

Such hidden levels of murky possibility, full of white-limbed women and corroding, bent metal, gave me chills in the heat. I savored the image of black twisted forms of tractor wheels and doorframes woven through with the long shimmering arms and legs of women more like girls. Goosebumps rose in long waves against my sunburned neck and back and I would hesitate as my face leaned toward the surface, still in the quiet of the dark wetness, silently chanting, Touch me, touch me just this once, our secret, touch me.

I pictured buoyant breasts held loosely in torn halter-tops in the swirl of moving water, liquid in their own cool-fleshed way. Breaking the surface into the bellows and whistles of my friends I’d allow my hands to skid along the colder depths one last time in farewell, shuddering and kicking hard.

Bruce was the tallest of all of us and had the first go on the tire-rope, leaving the Luckies at the base of the tree. He swung out far over the still water, came back in toward the tree and pushed off again, feet slapping hard momentarily against the trunk. His legs, half tan and half white where his shorts began, thrashed in the mosquito-heavy air as he propelled his body out over the pond. That rush of first flying and falling, the water rising up to meet you with its promise of weeds and cold, and the sting in your hands from the rope still strong was the greatest moment of a new day. We elbowed and shoved at one another as we vied for the next go, but whoever managed to catch the bobbing tire as it swung back had his turn.

By noon the heat was coming down in rust-orange spikes through the trees around us, heating even the middle of the pond and awakening the mosquitoes. We lay scattered about like pick-up sticks in the high weeds of the slope and Leo whistled soft and slow, accompanied by hands slapping limply at flying insects. Bruce sighed that he’d give anything for a cold Coke and a tuna sandwich and my stomach shifted, hollow and bulbous with hunger. Joey said he should head home for the day to see if his dad was back from Pendleton with the new mare for 4H. Leo yawned and rolled to a sitting position and scratched his head; he figured it was about that time to be getting where one’s gots to go, as his dad liked to say.

There was no great hurry as we pulled on sneakers and shirts that still stuck to ribs and shoulders and lifted bikes from the grass. Indentations from our thin limbs and torsos held the grass against the earth and I stopped, considered shuffling through the spots where we had lazed, erasing and negating proof of our play, but Leo bumped my front tire with his leg and I followed my friends.

As we straddled our bikes and waddled up the bumpy hill, I looked back to the shaded place we’d left and thought that maybe we could come back tomorrow and lie down in those same indentations. We could come back each day of the summer and press those stamped body outlines into the grass and dirt beneath until the grass ceased to grow and even the earth had taken on our shapes like clay. And we would each know, always, where our spot was and return only to that one place, seeing, over the summers, how we had grown taller and broader, knowing our place and how it would stay the same, even as we changed.

We rode up the hill of Harlow Street, Joey trying to pop wheelies and giving up because of the heat coming off the road tar. The ride home was always slower than the ride to the pond or to the gym and quiet, too. About halfway to the breaking-off point, Bruce yelled, Shit, and moaned that he’d left the Luckies at the pond. He used his unlaced sneakers to slow to a stuttered stop and told us all to go on ahead, that it was his own damned fault for forgetting and he’d see us in the morning, yelling after Leo to bring him one of his goddamn free Cokes.

The sun was slumping to eye level and radiant in waves off the houses we rode past. Leo split off at his own street, whistling still, and waved over his head at our calls of farewell. Joey and I lived farther from the school and on the same street, so we rode in and out together on summer and school days. He’d swivel his front wheel along the pavement, making a chirping-squealing noise, and I’d tell him to goddamn stop it, he was givin’ me a twitch, and that day he stopped. I looked at him to see what had made him give up on annoying me and he was frowning and staring straight ahead.

Joe, I said. He didn’t seem to hear me so I swung a leg out from my pedal and kicked at him. Joey turned to look at me for a second and then asked if I’d ever noticed Frank West while we were swimming and swinging on the tire-rope. No, I hadn’t and besides it was his pond we were swimming in but he’d never said anything about preferring we didn’t. Joe said he’d seen Frank off in the trees, once in a while, just standing there. Just watching.

Frank West, according to my dad, did his time in ’Nam and came back to take care of his parents’ house after they passed and before I was born. He was just real quiet, my dad would say, and we should mind our own business and not bother him. All of us boys knew we didn’t actually have permission to swim in West’s Pond, but the tire-rope was always in good condition and the grass along the edge looked like it had been cut about once a month. We figured it was there for the using and a waste if it wasn’t.

Joey shrugged and said he just got the creeps on him whenever he saw Frank West in the trees, like he was waiting for something. He shrugged and started swiveling that goddamn front tire and I kicked at him again, yelling that I was going to pound him if he didn’t stop, and standing up on the pedals to speed ahead of him. We raced to our street, Joey winning, and then coasted to my house where we split with tired good-byes, our minds on lemonade and Wonder Bread sandwiches.

That night, at about eleven, knocking on the front door awakened me. I could hear my dad grumbling about the middle of the night and better be a goddamn emergency in the middle of Carson. There were sounds of men talking and then my dad’s head came through my bedroom door, asking if I knew where Bruce might have got himself off to. I was sitting up in bed by then and I said I hadn’t seen him since that afternoon. He came farther into my room and lowered his voice, asking if us boys had been up to no good or anything he should be told about. No, I swear, I said back, fear making my throat tight and dry like rubber.

I told myself there was no way they knew about the Lucky Strikes. There was no way because Bruce swiped them from his dad’s toolshed, where there was a whole carton under the seed spreader. One pack every few weeks or so wasn’t worth missing and, besides, his dad was always hiding them from Bruce’s mom because he’d promised her he’d quit a year before.

My dad nodded and moved toward my bed, looking over his shoulder at the wedge of yellow light coming in from the hall. He told me we weren’t in any trouble, but Bruce hadn’t come home this evening and Joey and Leo had been visited and his mom was worried out of her mind. Was there a girl he liked? Was he in some kind of trouble? Did he say anything about being mad or upset or anything? They knew Bruce liked to venture off, now and again, but he was always home by dark. I was shaking my head and saying no, no, no to all of my dad’s questions, praying he wouldn’t ask if I was sure there wasn’t something I wasn’t telling him because I knew I’d break and spill it about the Luckies.

My dad dropped a hand to my shoulder and told me to go on back to sleep, that he’d tell Bruce’s dad I had no idea where his son could be. Besides, he said, Bruce was probably home by now, anyway. Boys will be boys. I pulled the sheet that was twisted and damp in my hands back over my shoulders and hunched to the edge of my pillow, where the little fan on my bedside table could just barely swirl cooler air at me. I put my lips to the cage in front of the blades and whispered, Goddamn it, Bruce, letting the blades slice through the words.

I ate my fruit-hops and chugged my orange juice in the morning, telling my mom I had stuff to do with the guys and I’d be back for lunch. Joey met me at the end of our driveway and asked about Bruce’s dad knocking last night and I said he had, but that I didn’t tell anything about the smokes. Joey nodded and sighed, promising to pound Bruce when we got behind the gym. Leo met us on the road and the same questions and answers sped between us, our tempers rising as we neared the school. We swore when Bruce wasn’t there. We waited for a few minutes more, getting madder by the second, and then agreed to check the usual spots for Bruce. He was older, he’d said, so sometimes he might have shit to take care of and he’d catch up to us.

Bruce’s sister, Anita, answered the door before my hand had hit the wood, demanding to know where the hell her little brother was, because we were all together, always, and one couldn’t fart without the others knowing about it. He hadn’t come home and it wasn’t funny anymore and her mom was up all night, driving around and yelling out the car window. The police had been called and some of the uncles had been called to go looking around the outskirts, in case he’d wrecked his bike or something. I told her, too, that we hadn’t seen him since the last afternoon, but we’d help find him and make sure he got himself home.

Leo decided we should check behind the gym one more time, behind the school, then maybe the old lumberyards where we’d jump our bikes. Joey said we should also ride over to the drive-in theater and down to West’s Pond, just to be sure he wasn’t where the adults couldn’t find him. I imagined Bruce asleep in the shade somewhere, sleeping off a stolen beer or two and an almost-full pack of Luckies. He would think this was a grand prank and he’d laugh about how worried everyone was, as if he did it all the time. He’d say we were all still little boys for being so upset about something so stupid as not coming home one night and then he’d jut his chin out and say he was closer to being a man than all of us and maybe that was a whisker he felt. He’d say he should probably start shaving.

Bruce wasn’t behind the school gym or down at the lumberyards or out at the drive-in, so we pedaled down Harlow Street, not saying anything to each other, but riding faster than normal. From the road to the pond was about five minutes worth of navigating between trees and stumps, through undergrowth that had been slightly beaten back by our regular rides. As we grew closer to West’s Pond we slowed to allow for the downward slope to the water’s edge. Leo, Joey and I all stopped, drawing up side-by-side, and looked down at the pond. The grass along the edge closest to the tire-rope was clear and silent, the air full of the early hum of mosquitoes and jabbering of blue jays. I said I’d ride down first and we each pushed off toward the pond, keeping our feet against the grass as brakes.

Joey came up next to me first and looked down at the earth under his front wheel. Been mowed since yesterday, he said. And Leo and I looked down, too, and then each of us looked at the other. All of the flat spots from our bikes and our bodies sprawled in the heat were gone and the pond was heavy and still. Leo raised his arm and pointed at the base of the tire-rope tree. The pack of Lucky Strikes was still sitting at the base, where Bruce had tossed them the day before, but they were covered with a layer of grass clippings with only one white corner jutting free. No one made a move to go get the pack or to climb off a bike. We each sat there, hands on the handlebars, staring at the white corner. I lifted my eyes to look across and around the pond, hoping I’d see a sign of Bruce, and caught the movement of someone on the other side, standing in the trees.

Joey followed the direction of my eyes and said, Let’s get outta here. Leo jumped, startled at the sound of Joey’s voice in the silence, and made a move to climb off of his bike, but I told him to just leave the Luckies, that Bruce would get a fresh pack in a week or so. Let’s just go, I said, and we pedaled hard up the embankment and through the trees. We didn’t stop or slow to catch our breath until we were at Leo’s house, where we threw ourselves on the dry, prickly lawn, chests heaving as we sucked in air.

The grass was uneven and scorched, no trace of the morning’s faint moisture. Joey was looking at me hard, like he was thinking something right at me, right through his eyes. Leo was skimming his hands over the blades of grass as he lay on his back, saying he was supposed to mow the lawn before his dad got home from work that night and how he thought it a waste of time because all it did was just grow right back again, all dry and brown anyway, covering up all his hard work. A goddamn waste of time. He said he should have gone with Bruce and had a good old time doing whatever it was Bruce was doing. Leo sighed through his nose and said, Lucky damned Bruce.

We spent an hour or so speculating on where Bruce had got himself off to, this time. One time, the summer before, he’d hitched a ride with a trucker hauling sheep and rode all the way to Portland, a good thirty miles, and called his mom to let her know he was hitching home. His dad, who worked the farms and ranches around our valley, had driven to the city, bawled him out as he backhanded him, and driven him home. Bruce had laughed, his purple-yellow eye wrinkling in fat creases, and said he’d see if he could get to Seattle next time. I’ll bet, I said, that sonofabitch made it to Seattle this time — sonofabitch has balls that clank.

Joey stood up and said he was going to ride over to Bruce’s house to see if he could do anything useful while they waited for Bruce to show up. Leo groaned that he might as well mow before it got too hot to do anything. I stood and walked to my bike and said that I was going home to wait, for what I wasn’t sure. Joey looked hard at me again and I had to look away first. Wait up, Leo yelled. He said he could mow later on and maybe it would be better to let the heat dry up the moisture, anyway. He said it was easier to clean up if you waited until it was dry, later in the day. And I nodded as I got on my bike. Yeah, sure, I said, as I watched Joey riding toward Bruce’s house, standing on the pedals to get where he was going faster than usual.

We spent that summer making up stories about where Bruce had got himself off to. Maybe he’d joined a gang of bikers and was roaring around the country on a hog, getting tattoos. Joey figured he’d most likely just set off on his own and would come back when he’d done what he needed to do, but he always sounded like he was trying to convince himself, nodding as he said it. Leo agreed with whatever story we made up. Bruce’s mom sent Anita into town for groceries and even let her drive the old Ford when it rained, even though she didn’t have a license. If Anita ran into me or Leo or Joey on her errands she would nod and pause, like she forgot what she was about to say, her lips tightening to white.

Mr. West was questioned and even helped the uncles, Bruce’s dad, and the cops dredge the pond and scour the woods around it, offering to find some dogs, just in case. A few people thought maybe they’d seen Bruce riding his bike on a road outside of town in the weeks after. A trucker remembered a kid who might have been Bruce, he wasn’t real sure, hitching south to San Francisco. Bruce’s parents split after that winter and his mom moved in with her sister in Bend. His dad took a job with Yellow Freight on the long-haul route and left Anita, who dropped out her senior year, to watch the house and wait until someone came home. He’d park the box-shaped tractor outside their house when he was home and I would think that, if Bruce were around, I’d ask him if his dad would take us for a ride. I imagined one could see farther down the road sitting up that high.

We never went back to West’s Pond after that summer – it just didn’t seem right, what with Bruce not there. We never agreed outright not to go back, it was more like Bruce took those hot, slow days away with him. Summers became long hours of forgettable jobs shoving boxes around the delivery dock of the PennyPincher Market or washing cars at the local lot. We grew up, each finding some kind of distraction to devote time to and fell to simply nodding at each other in passing.

Joey became a cop in Portland and married a teacher. Last I heard they had twin girls. Leo joined the Coast Guard and settled in Astoria, close to the water and away from the heat of our small town. I left for college and took an editing job in Boston and started smoking Luckies. My mom calls every weekend to fill me in on the new Wal-Mart being built and the price of gas, saying she’d like to move to Arizona but my father thinks the driving would wreak havoc with his lumbago. She asks how I am, if I’ve talked to anyone, and how work is. But there’s always something in her tone when she says she ran into Anita at the market and tells me she said to say hi.

I can still close my eyes and see him swinging out over that dark water, long arms twisted in the rope, head thrown back, and I can still hear the silence between his voice cracking on a loud holler and his body plunging into the still, cool pond. It is always darker in my memories, that water, and his limbs are white, like tusks, when they puncture the surface and slide deep and disappear completely into that darkness. The sun is neon-white and the buzz of the mosquitoes louder when I remember that last summer. There are moments, just every once in a while, when I wonder about Bruce and the way he just stopped coming back, once and for all.

I tell myself that he’s a grown man, maybe married, maybe working on cars or laying pipe, a Lucky smoldering, swiveling blue smoke in a ring about his head. Maybe he found something worth staying away for; maybe he thought it was time to try something new, alone. And I think maybe, when the phone rings late at night, that his voice will crack over the line, laughing and taunting, and he’ll say, Meet me at the pond, buddy, it’s gonna be hotter than hell out there today.

***

About the Author

Sarah Lundin is a Native Oregonian with a gypsy spirit. She is a graduate of Pacific University’s Master of Fine Arts degree in Writing and is currently putting the finishing touches on a collection of short stories. A novel is also in the works between writing web copy, chasing a hyperactive dog, and ingesting too much coffee.