The Pond

by Robert Murphy

  “I never had better company,” the old man said. “It brought back a little of my long-departed youth to have you around. Come again when you can.”

  “Yes, sir. Maybe I can come Christmas. Don’t kill too many squirrel nests, Mr. Ben.”

  “I’ll go easy on them,” Mr. Ben said. “Good-by.”

  “I’ll be down for a couple of days next week,” Joe Moncrief said. “I’ll see you then.”

  He cranked the Model T, they all waved, and drove out of the yard. They turned through the gate, coasted down the hill, and crossed the spillway with the headlights making an illuminated tunnel through the trees. As they made the short turn to start up the next hill the lights picked up an animal crossing the road, and Joe Moncrief braked the car. It was a bobcat, stumpy-tailed, big-footed. It turned its head toward them, its eyes glowed fiery and green in the lights, and then with a lithe bound it was gone. With its pale fur and swift, fluid movement it had almost seemed like a ghost. The Model T had stopped; Joe Moncrief reversed and swung the lights into the woods, but they didn’t see it again.

  “Dad!” Joey exclaimed. “Dad, it was a wildcat!”

  “It sure was.”

  “I didn’t know there were any real wildcats here.”

  “There are probably several of them,” Joe Moncrief said, “but I doubt you’ll ever see one again.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The turkey was eaten with exclamations of pleasure over its inimitable flavor. If Joey’s mother entertained doubts as to who had shot it she contented herself with a small and secret smile; and Joey went back to school. His teachers wondered occasionally, when they had time, what he was daydreaming about and gave him a little leeway, for they all liked the boy. He gave Bud the Kalamazoo frog and the pair of them hung it on the wall in Bud’s bedroom, and they were in and out of one another’s houses again. They played desperate and argumentative sandlot football and made forays in the evenings after dinner with other members of their gang to round out their collection of barrels for the Christmas bonfire, for there wasn’t much time left; the holidays were approaching with disconcerting speed.

  In the midst of these comings and goings Joey was at first as often absent-minded at home as he was at school; he was back in the somber pine thicket with the rabbits popping up in front of him or paddling silently as a shadow over the dark swamp water among the cypresses. He was watching the weasels in the rockpile again, or the swift dash of the Cooper’s hawk, hearing the barred owl as the stars brightened in the night sky, or standing in the sunny quiet of the winter-bare woods watching and listening for something that as yet he couldn’t define or imagine but that was in reality a realization of his place and purpose in the world around him. As he felt isolated from the grown-up world and the reasons for grown-up actions, he felt more an observer than a participant in this world and its mysterious life and wanted to be more a part of it.

  Anyone who could have looked in on these reveries would have been struck by the fact that he didn’t shoot anything in them. He didn’t realize this himself; possibly he would have sooner or later if the approach of Christmas hadn’t engaged him more as the days followed one another. His parents were a little put off by his desire to get back to the Pond; it apparently interested him more than Christmas did and this didn’t seem altogether normal to them. He had talked several times to his father and mother about going to the Pond during vacation, but so far they hadn’t given him an answer; they had put him off by asking whether it wouldn’t be too cold, or implying rather than saying outright that they thought he was turning into a sort of hermit and should stay home and play with his friends for a change or that they would like him home with them this time.

  “Why, for gosh sake?” he asked. “After Christmas vacation I’ll be home with you all the time. There aren’t any more vacations, and I can’t get to go. Please, Mom.”

  “We’ll have to see,” was all his mother would say.

  “Mom! I’d rather go than hang around and play a lot of dumb football and stuff. I’ve got to go, Mom.”

  “We’ll have to see, Joey. I’m sorry I can’t be more definite, Joey.”

  “But, Mom, I promised to bring Horace some books, and everything.” He had told her about Horace.

  “You could mail him a few today, and take him some more if you go down. It’s nice of you to think of him.”

  “Yes, ma’am. He can’t go anywhere. And, Mom?”

  “Yes, Joey?”

  “Mom, there’s a man there named Sharbee. I’d like to take him a present, Mom.”

  “Who is he, Joey? I don’t recall you’ve mentioned him before.”

  “He has a pet coon,” Joey said impenetrably. “Mr. Ben took me to see him.”

  She looked at him, realizing that there was more than was apparent to her, but he avoided her eye and she knew she would get little more out of him. “Is he nice?” she asked.

  “He’s a black man, Mom. He lives in the woods, and he’s real nice. He’s good, Mom, and awful poor.”

  “I’m sure he’s good, honey, if you say so,” she said, and wanted to put her arms around him. He seemed so young and vulnerable and out of reach; she longed to help him over all the rough spots she could but knew that, barring accidents that would enable her to look into his life, she wouldn’t be able to. “Did he help you in some way?”

  “Yes’m,” Joey said. “Mom, I …”

  His voice died away; he wasn’t going to talk about it. “Well,” she said brightly, “how about a warm sweater like the one we gave to Mr. Ben?”

  “That would be okay.”

  “I have to go downtown this afternoon, and I’ll try and get it then. How big is he, Joey?”

  “He’s a little bigger than I am. Mom, it would be nice if I could take it to him. I don’t think he’ll get any Christmas presents, and if I could take it to his house—”

  “Please, not now, Joey. You’d better go find the books you want to send Horace and we’ll wrap them up so that I can mail them when I go out.”

  “Yes’m,” he said. He stood looking at her for a moment beseechingly, and then turned and went upstairs.

  She went into the kitchen, where Mary had the three Christmas fruit cakes on the table and was pouring a little whisky over them.

  “I get them out and they seem a little dry,” she said and looked up. “Why you look sad? Ain’t nothin’ happened, has it?”

  “I was thinking about Joey,” Mrs. Moncrief said. “He wants to go back to the Pond, and I feel he’s so far away down there, and a lot of the time there’s no one to watch out for him.”

  “Mens is always far ’way, one way or ’nother.”

  “He wants to get a present for a black man who lives in a little house in the woods. Something must have happened that he’s grateful for, and I wish I knew what it was.”

  “That Mr. Ben, he know that man, I reckon.”

  “Yes, Mr. Ben took him there.”

  “That man be all right then, Mr. Ben take him there. Yes, ma’am. Maybe Mr. Joey get in a tight, and that man help him get out. He got to find out things, Miz Moncrief, but he be all right. He be all right with Mr. Ben and that man. Yes, ma’am, he lucky. Last place I work, the butler take the boy to a camp meetin’, and they was all rollin’ around on the floor and callin’ on Jesus. Scared that boy good, if it didn’t do nothin’ else. Lawd, Lawd!” She shook her head and then began to laugh.

  Mrs. Moncrief had to smile, and began to feel better.

  Christmas came, with presents for everybody; the house was decorated with holly, ground pine, and mistletoe that Mr. Ben had sent up in a big box, and the tree in the living room glowed with fragile ornaments. There was a good deal of coming and going among the adults, eggnog and fruit cake, candy and cookies; Joey got ten dollars in cash, a .22-caliber repeating rifle, an assortment of clothing and outdoor gear, several books, and other miscellaneous objects. The hand of his father was apparent in the outdoor gear and the rifle, and he showed Joey how to opera
te it.

  “Seemed about time to start in with a rifle to shoot squirrels,” he said. “A shotgun’s too easy. Now that you’re a quail hunter, maybe you’d begun to feel that yourself.”

  “Yes, sir,” Joey said. He was, as a matter of fact, working around in his own way to the same conclusion. “It sure is a swell gun, Dad.” He aimed it at a stag in a picture on the wall, said “Pow!” under his breath, and put the rifle down and caressed it. “You reckon it’s good for turkeys, too?”

  “It has a lot more range than a shotgun, that’s for sure. There are a couple boxes of hollow-point long rifle shells that ought to be just the ticket if you get within reach of a roosted turkey. You’d have to be awful fast to get one out of a blind or running on the ground with it.”

  “Yes, sir. If I could only go down to the Pond in a couple of days I could try it out.”

  Joe Moncrief gave him a lopsided grin. “I know what you mean,” he said, “but we have a small problem. Not so long ago you were pretty little, and your mother and I had to watch out for you all the time. To me, you’re growing up; you’ve got to learn how to take care of yourself, but your mother is still afraid you’ll get in trouble and she won’t be there to help you. Mothers are that way, Joey. They have a harder time turning loose.”

  “Yes, sir,” Joey said, and his spirits sank. He felt the gun again, running his hand down the smooth barrel.

  “We’ve talked about it,” his father said, “and I’m on your side as much as I can be. I can’t promise anything, but maybe something will turn up that will help. Don’t give up yet.”

  “No, sir, I won’t,” Joey said, and his spirits rose a little. All wasn’t lost yet, and hope buoyed him up. “I’d sure like to go. Can I go out to the fire for a while?”

  “Sure,” his father said. “Give my greetings to the chivalry of Hanover Avenue.”

  “Yes, sir,” Joey said, and went upstairs to get his firecrackers. They were an integral part of Christmas, just as they were a part of the Fourth of July in the North. He got them out of his bureau drawer and went down to the corner where two of the stolen barrels were flaming nicely and five or six boys sat around on boxes, talked about their Christmas presents, and fired off an occasional firecracker. Bud showed up in the course of an hour or so, and Joey took him home to show him the rifle. They went to Bud’s house to see his presents, returned to the fire, and so the day went by. Nothing to forward the cause of getting to the Pond appeared, but Joey was still hopeful when he crawled into bed; after his mother kissed him good night and turned out the light he was back at the Pond again with his new rifle, stealing silently through the woods or sitting quietly in the bateau waiting for turkeys to roost as the sun set golden behind the intricate tracery of the bare trees.

  He awoke next morning acutely aware that there were ten dollars to be spent. He wasn’t due to watch the fire until four o’clock the next morning; he had the whole day to spend waiting for the miracle that would open the way to the Pond, and decided to go downtown. He got permission and around ten o’clock visited the fire for a while and then caught a jitney at the corner. The jitneys were a fairly recent phenomenon, mostly Model-T Fords that men drove over a route to the middle of town and back; they took people downtown or brought them home for a nickel, and were closer than either of the two streetcar lines that served Joey’s part of Richmond.

  Joey rode to the corner of Ninth and Broad Streets, which was in the shopping district; he had a milkshake in a drugstore and strolled west on Broad Street, looking into shop windows and several times going into stores. The streets and stores were full of people; there were all sorts of bargains now that Christmas was over, and although the two five-dollar bills were burning a hole in his pocket he could find nothing that he wanted to buy. The trouble was that his mind wasn’t really on buying anything. He was just marking time; he stood about, staring at this and that, going off into periods of absent-minded immobility and getting into everyone’s way. People stumbled into him and went off mumbling to themselves, and presently he grew as wearied with them as they did with him and decided to go home. He crossed to the north side of Broad Street, which held the cheaper stores where the black people did their buying, to catch an outbound jitney, and as he stood on the curb waiting for one to come by he suddenly thought he heard a turkey calling. This brought him back to his surroundings as though a bucketful of cold water had been thrown over him. He started and looked around.

  The clear, plaintive yelping went on; it had not been inside his head, and every note was perfect. His eyes searched swiftly among the dungaree-clad men moving past him for someone with a call like Mr. Ben’s, but he couldn’t find anyone; in another moment he had more or less located the sound, and saw an old man leaning against a store front with one hand in his pocket. He had been told many times not to talk to strangers, especially downtown and more especially on the wrong side of Broad Street, but this was an emergency. He went up to the old man, and another yelp or two confirmed the location; the sounds were certainly coming from the pocket.

  “Have you a turkey call?” he asked. “Is it yours?”

  The black man looked at him. “Yassuh,” he said politely, and taking his hand out of his pocket opened it and revealed a small wooden cylinder about four inches long and two inches in diameter with a pencil-sized stick protruding from one end of it. As Joey stared at it, fascinated, the old man pushed the stick down and as he let it come up again a beautiful note fell on the air.

  “Great day!” Joey said. “No matter how cold you get, it wouldn’t make any difference.”

  The man suddenly smiled. “Tha’s right, tha’s right,” he said. “You talks like a real turkey hunter.” A sudden and wonderful rapport appeared between them. “It ain’t like them box calls that don’t work when you’s a-shiverin’ and a-shakin’. Nossuh! It ain’t and tha’s a fac’.”

  Joey began to tremble; he had to have it. “Do you want to sell it?” he asked, and held his breath for the answer.

  The man looked down at the call and back at Joey again. “Well, suh,” he said. “Well, suh.” He frowned in thought while Joey almost danced about with longing and impa­tience. “I have to make me another one, and maybe I don’t get it right. I like right well to ’commodate you, but …” He shook his head. “I ain’t sure.”

  Joey saw the call getting away from him; it was unbearable, and suddenly he grew quite calm and crafty. He recalled what Sharbee had said about cash money. He reached into his pocket and brought out one of the five-dollar bills and stretched it out between his fingers.

  The man looked at it and his eyes opened wider. “Fi’ dollars,” he breathed. “Fi’ dollars.” Several other men, seeing Joey holding the bill, stopped and stared. The old man looked around at them and made an abrupt gesture. “Git along!” he said. “Leave me and this gennelman be.” The others drifted off, and the old man muttered to himself; Joey, on pins and needles lest the interruption interfere with the impression that the five-dollar bill had obviously made, extended his arm and put the bill into the old man’s free hand. His fingers curled around it, and he slowly held out the call. Joey took it; the world was his. He pushed the plunger down gently several times, and the notes came out fine and clear.

  “I sure thank you,” he said.

  “Yassuh,” the man said, and fingered the five-dollar bill. “If you didn’t talk like a turkey hunter, I reckon I wouldn’t done it. You push it easy, and it’ll be all right. Not too often, now. Turkeys get scared when it’s done too often.”

  “Yes, sir,” Joey said, forgetting himself a little in his euphoria. He thought that he’d better get away from there in case the man changed his mind. “Good-by.”

  “Yes, suh. Thank you.”

  They grinned at one another, and Joey quickly turned away. He walked to the next corner and caught a jitney there. Halfway home he couldn’t refrain any longer, and pushed the plunger four times in rapid succession; the jitney driver gave a great start and almost ran onto the
sidewalk. He righted his Model T with a mighty wrench.

  “Great God, boy,” he said. “You got a turkey in your pocket? You keep that thing quiet, or we’ll be up a tree.”

  “Yes, sir,” Joey said, beamed at him, and kept his hand wrapped lovingly around the call the rest of the way home.

  Joe Moncrief was genuinely impressed with the call; he said it was the best one he’d ever seen, and was a little put out that Joey hadn’t possessed sufficient presence of mind to get the old man’s address so that he could get several more of them.

  “I reckon I didn’t think of it,” Joey said. “I was so scared I wouldn’t get this one that I forgot. Maybe we could find him again tomorrow.”

  “I doubt it,” Joe Moncrief said. “It sounds to me like he’s from the country somewhere; he didn’t know what to do and just stood there working his call and wishing he was home. No city man’s going to stand on a corner and do that.”

  “Yes, sir. Dad, now I’ve got the call I ought to go down and try it. Maybe we could have another turkey for New Year’s Day. Dad?”

  “The situation is still obscure,” Joe Moncrief said. “Let’s hear it again now.”

  Joey pushed the plunger; the yelping call echoed through the house. Joey’s mother had long since given up and gone somewhere else, and Joey and his father hunched over the call, grinning delightedly at one another in pure admiration, like two violinists listening to a Stradivarius. Around nine o’clock Joe Moncrief sat back. “I hope we can get down there together before the season’s over,” he said. “I think you’d better go to bed now. Four o’clock will be here pretty soon.”

  “Yes, sir,” Joey said. “I sure hope something happens tomorrow.”

  “I hope so too. Good night.”

  “Good night, Dad.”

  He went upstairs, put the call on his bureau where he could see it first thing in the morning, and finally got himself undressed and into bed. He thought about the call as he grew drowsy; visions of turkeys regaled him, and presently he fell asleep.