Dead Man's Pond

Tim is helping Grandma Hattie wash the dishes. The water is cooling and greasy and he’s so close to her that he can smell her hairspray. Which is a chemical nightmare mixed with her talcum powder and the smell of stale cigarette smoke that clings to her clothes. Her house.

He doesn’t want to be here, but Dad is traveling for work and Mom is still in the hospital and he has nowhere else to go. He sits in the evenings staring at the old console TV that somehow still works, though it only has stations on it he doesn’t recognize.

“You read, boy?” she asks. “Your Daddy would read. In the evenings. There was no TV to stare at. There’s lots of books in your room.”

“Yes, Gramma,” Tim says, not really knowing which statement he is acknowledging.

He can hear Gramma as she digs around in her giant purse, lipstick-blotted tissues falling into her lap. “Dammit,” she hisses under her breath.

“I need you to walk down to the grocer’s and get me a couple packs of cigarettes.”

“Now? It’s dark out. I’m not sure if I remember where it is.”

“You go out that front door and you take a right. At the corner you take another. Then go two blocks. You’ll see it.

“Yes, Gramma.” 

“Thank you. Now go. Get yourself a treat, too.” She pressed some bills into his hand.

The trip becomes more interesting. Candy and pop. It isn’t far. It’s nice out.

***

The crickets are talking as he makes his way down the dark sidewalk. It’s an older part of the little town. Not a lot of streetlights, but enough. There’s a mist forming along the ground as the day’s heat flees, and it flows into the few empty lots he passes. Some have big, spreading trees. A few have only crumbling foundations and cellar holes left over from the houses that used to stand so stately along the way. He imagines it was very pretty, long ago. He passes windows flashing with varying degrees of light from TVs. Can hear people talking in dim back yards and smell a cigar or two. The murmurs of other old people on porches enjoying the night air.

He turns the first corner, humming to himself, when someone steps out of the shadows down the block. The way he has to go. His feet stutter to a stop. He waits to see what will happen. Nothing does. He looks around. There’s no one on the street. No one driving by. It’s going on 8pm. The store closes at 9. He looks around and notices a narrow trail of pressed-down grass along the side of a boarded-up old house. It cuts back into the dark of the trees and bushes next to the tiny park. He wonders if he should just turn and run back to Gramma’s, but he knows she’ll be mad. She thinks this is a safe place. And that woman loves her cigarettes. She lights new ones off the butts of the old. Sometimes she forgets to stub them out, so he does it when he sees them smoking, idle, and she’s not looking. He sees that when he’s with her she makes an effort to go out on the porch to smoke. If she remembers. Which is silly, because he figures he already reeks and his clothes are probably stained yellow from the nicotine he absorbs by sitting on her furniture. But she tries and he tries and that is all there is to do when you are a kid and an old lady stuck together. Awkward. Practically strangers.

The figure at the far corner of the street takes two steps toward him, then stops again. There’s something long in his hand, and Tim feels himself tensing like a spring, ready to sprint away. The guy looks big. And he can’t make out any of the guy’s features. It’s like he is a flat, fathomless cutout blocking the way. Sweat breaks out on Tim’s forehead. Tim turns to his right and plunges into the yard and along the trail into the dark. He figures he can skirt the little park he was about to pass and run the rest of the way to the store. He can see lights far across the way. He hopes that’s what he is seeing. If he can get there. If this isn’t some sort of trap. If there isn’t someone else waiting for him, unseen.

He can hear frogs and splashes. Yes, this is a park now and the pond has a proper name, but everyone says it’s Dead Man’s Pond. Always will be, though the town changed it for the tourists. Tim thinks they’d probably get more if people knew. He remembered his Dad telling him about it. How some bootlegger had been killed there by rivals. How he was selling in their territory, so they cut him up and stuffed him into an old tree stump next to the pond as a warning to others. How the body had disappeared, never identified. His bones are long gone, now, so he should be gone, too, right? Tim hopes. The mist keeps swirling and some condensation from the trees drips down hitting the back of his neck, warm as tears, which somehow makes it worse. He worries about ticks and spiders as he walks through the tall weeds, his pantlegs dampening and his shoes sinking into the slick clay. Mostly he worries about the shadow as he tries to keep the frog sound to his left. Tries to keep walking toward those safe-looking lights which never seem to get any closer. He can smell some flower, sweet in the air, and it calms him a bit. He stops moving off and on to listen. He doesn’t hear anyone.

Tim is walking into a bit of a clearing when he notices the smell of cigarette smoke. He stops in his tracks, looking around as the clouds skiff past the moon, letting some light trickle down. A few yards away he can see the outline of a man, glow-tipped cigarette in his hand as he leans against a tree. Trousers. Suspenders. An old-fashioned hat pulled slightly to the side. Rakish would be the word Mama would use. The man smiles as he takes a long drag, blowing the smoke out his nose like a fairytale dragon. Tim looks around, frantically wondering where to go, what to do. The man clears his throat, “Calm yourself, boy.” He speaks in a quiet, low voice.

“I’m just trying to get to the store for my Gramma. There’s a guy." Tim looks back and swears that dark shadow is back in the trees, moving steadily, soundlessly, his way.

“I see him. You go on your way. He and I are going to have a talk. He just don’t know it yet. You don’t worry ‘bout him.” Tim realizes he is seeing the moonlight strike the tree behind the man. Through him.

“Yessir.” Tim bolts, crashing down the path as fast as he can, through a hedge and out to the street. He gets to the store just in time. The cashier sells him the cigarettes. Doesn’t pay any mind to his wet clothes or pale, scratched face. He gets a candy bar and a pop. He goes back to Gramma’s the long way, sprinting along each dark spot of sidewalk to the pools of light under the posts. He relaxes only when he reaches the top step of Gramma’s porch. She opens the door for him and he shoves the bag into her hands.

“Why are your pants all wet? You got a scratch on your face. You okay?”

“Yeah, Gramma, I took a short cut,” he stammers. “It was just darker than I thought it would be.”

“Go change into some dry clothes. Stay by the road next time. No telling what’s back in those trees. You could have fallen in that pond back in there. Throw those muddy shoes out on the porch.”

“Yes, Gramma.”

Tim toes off his shoes on Gramma’s clean porch, looking nervously up and down the block. He ignores her watching him as he climbs the stairs to his Dad’s old room, past all the family photos hung in bulky frames on the wall. He stops most of the way up, like he is forgetting something. Steps back down a couple of stairs. His feet feel clammy in his wet socks. There is a photo of his Dad, looking around Tim’s age, with Grampa, a man Tim has never known. They are standing in front of a big black car. Back in the day there were rumors. He’d disappeared when Dad was a boy. Town people said he’d run off, though Gramma said she never believed that. It made life pretty hard for them. Tim took note of the hat. The same smiling eyes. The cigarette dangling from his fingers.

Tim reaches the hot upper room, peeling off his wet socks as he walks. Skims off his damp jeans and underwear, his sweaty shirt, and throws them in the hamper. Puts on a t-shirt and some shorts. He goes to the tiny bathroom and cleans the scratches on his face. Then he goes back downstairs to watch TV with Gramma.  

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There’s likely more than one Dead Man’s Pond in the Ozarks. The vague details about this bootlegger are true.

Thanks for stopping by,

Lyndsey Resnick