The Pond

by Robert Murphy

  By the time he reached the house he was fixed on this idea, and was already beginning to plan a campaign to do in the otter. He gave the dog several biscuits, went into the house, and rubbed himself warm with a towel and put on dry clothes. When Mr. Ben came from the outhouse behind the barn he found the pair of them sitting together and Charley taking biscuits from Joey’s hand; Joey’s other arm was around the dog.

  “Gentlemen, sir,” he said, pausing nearby, “it looks as though you finally did it.”

  “Yes, sir,” Joey said. “I rescued him from the otter.”

  “What did he tangle with the otter for?” Mr. Ben asked. “I thought he had better sense.”

  “It tried to drown him,” Joey said, and told Mr. Ben what had happened. “It really tried to drown him,” he ended up, “and it wasn’t fair.”

  The old man had heard him out without interrupting, and then spoke up. “Maybe he got between the otter and the water, and wouldn’t let it pass. If he did, he had it cornered, in a way. Any animal will fight when it’s cornered, Joey.”

  “Yes, sir. But after it wasn’t cornered it kept right on. It schemed against him, Mr. Ben. It’s mean. I reckon it aims to kill him if it can, and I’m not going to let it. I’ll go after it and get it first.”

  This was said with such determination, with such an oddly grown-up air, that Mr. Ben was rather startled by it. It didn’t seem like Joey at all. “What?” he asked. “Are you really serious about this?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’ll have to spend all your time at it. I doubt if there’s an animal in the country harder to catch up with. After all, Joey, the fight might have been as much Charley’s fault as the otter’s. Have you thought of that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So,” the old man said. He saw now what the state of affairs was, and gave up argument. “Delenda est Carthago,” he said, and added, “You’ll have to get up early in the morning to get that one.”

  “Yes, sir, I will. What does Carthago … what was it? … mean, Mr. Ben?”

  “It means ‘Carthage must be destroyed,’” Mr. Ben said. “An old Roman got a bee in his bonnet about Carthage, and ended up all his speeches in the Senate by saying it.”

  His mild irony was lost on Joey. “Yes, sir. I reckon I’ll learn it. Could you say it again, please?”

  Mr. Ben’s expression didn’t change; he repeated the phrase several times until Joey knew it, and when Joey asked him if he knew the Latin word for otter he had to admit that his Latin was too rusty to supply it.

  “I don’t really need it,” Joey said. “I’ll know what I mean when I say it. Delenda est Carthago.” He got up and brought several more biscuits for Charley, and pointed out to Mr. Ben the several cuts that the otter had scored on the dog. When Mr. Ben started to move closer to examine them, Charley got up and moved off a little; his trust in Joey was not going to be extended any farther. It was strictly a private affair between Joey and himself.

  “It’s a good thing for his own sake that he’s not going to love the world from now on,” Mr. Ben said. “So you’re going to concentrate on the otter, are you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Are you going to take Charley along?”

  “I reckon not,” Joey said. “It might catch him when I wasn’t near enough.”

  “I think that’s wise,” the old man said. “But how about the new turkey call? I thought you were going to spend your vacation hunting turkeys.”

  “I reckon I’ll just have to wait until I get the otter, Mr. Ben. If I roost some while I’m looking for him, then maybe we could go.”

  “Good enough. I’m going around to see to my traps in a little while and you can come along if you want to hold off your crusade until the morning.”

  Joey had been thinking of starting his hunt that afternoon, but the afternoon was getting on and he wouldn’t have a great deal of time before darkness came down; besides, now that Mr. Ben had invited him to visit his traps with him he felt that he should go. For some reason Mr. Ben wanted him along, and the old man had been so good to him, and left him so much freedom to do as he wished, that Joey was glad to defer to him. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I reckon I’d like to go.”

  He gave the dog another biscuit, talked to him a little more, and then they went down the hill, started a fire in the boat stove, and pushed off. An overcast was slowly spreading across the sky and the wind had dropped; the water was still, with a faintly oily look, and reflected the gray, wintry trees along the shoreline with a mirrorlike fidelity. The bateau slid silently along at the head of its oily ripple, and they didn’t say very much to one another. The first few traps didn’t yield anything, and, seemingly suspended between the gray water and the gray sky, they both fell into different preoccupations. Joey sat quietly in the bow with his gun on his lap, watching the shoreline and gathering himself in his mind for the morrow and the days that would follow when he would think of nothing but the otter and his pursuit of it; a feeling of melancholy had descended upon Mr. Ben. He had enjoyed Joey’s enthusiasms and the feeling that had grown between them, the hints he could give the boy and the few sticky moments—like that with White and the teacher—that he had been able to smooth over. A good deal of the time his life was a lonely one, without very much in the future any more, and being a sort of mentor had been a pleasant experience. He knew that this was going to be taken away from him, at least for a while and perhaps for a long while; for the boy had suddenly withdrawn and changed, given over his careless and shifting explorations for a vendetta based upon a misconception. This disturbed the old man for it seemed too unboylike, too adult and concentrated, and he wanted Joey the way he had always been. Too many people in his life had suddenly changed, a quirk of personality hitherto unsuspected had taken them away from him, and he was depressed by the thought that it could happen again.

  They were nearing the head of the Pond by that time, and Joey suddenly turned to him and pointed toward the shore. “It was right over there,” he said. “Mr. Ben, will you lend me your alarm clock when we get back?”

  “Yes,” the old man said. “You’re welcome to it.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  It was still dark when the alarm clock shook Joey awake, and the room was very cold; he got shivering into his clothes with the help of his flashlight, went into the kitchen and lit the lamp, and ate a few slices of bread and butter. There was a basket of persimmons on the table, and he ate several of them. They had found the basket at the back door when they got back to the house the previous evening; all of the persimmons had been carefully selected and were perfect, and the basket was a homemade one beautifully plaited out of twigs. It had apparently been left by Sharbee, as an acknowledgment of his Christmas present.

  After a moment of indecision Joey decided to take the shotgun and went out the back door. It was still dark, and there had been a light dusting of snow during the night. It would help him, for if it hadn’t fallen the only procedure open to him would have been to sit somewhere along the shore in the hope that the otter would eventually pass by. Now he could make a circuit of the Pond to see whether he could find its tracks, which might give him an idea of its movements and the places that it liked to land. If it had been moving about after the snow fell he might find something. He went down the hill and started at the dock.

  The evening before, after dinner he had talked with Mr. Ben about the habits of otters, and he knew now that his chances of even seeing it again were very remote. Mr. Ben had told him that it probably had a den somewhere along the shore or on the edge of the swamp with an underwater entrance, that it probably didn’t stay around the Pond all the time but periodically made a circle of possibly twenty miles around the little ponds and streams in the vicinity, and that he wasn’t at all sure that it ever came ashore twice at the same place. If it caught a fish, the old man had said, it would come ashore to eat it, and there might be a few bones or some dung with fish scales or crawfish shells and claws in it, but who knew w
hether it would visit that spot again? When he set traps for an otter he set them in these places, but he only caught an otter about once in five years or so. It was easier to find a small needle in a large haystack, said Mr. Ben, than such an animal.

  On top of this, Joey had no assurance whatever that his enemy was still about; it might have started on its swing around the country right after the fight, in which case it wouldn’t be back until after he had gone home. If the weather grew a little colder and the Pond froze, it would also go away to work the streams that stayed open. Thus briefed, Joey was well aware of what he was up against, but he was not discouraged. Just as he was convinced of the rightness of his crusade, he was convinced that it would be successful. He moved along the shoreline slowly and carefully, foot by foot, often pausing for long periods to sit quietly and watch. It was nearly noon by the time he reached the head of the Pond and the beginning of the swamp, and the overcast that had covered the sky looked as though it might break up and let the sun through to melt the snow. If this happened it would leave him with over half the shoreline unsurveyed for tracks, and he realized he had better put off his still-hunting pauses until some other day.

  He picked up his pace and started on his circuit around the borders of the swamp, and here his difficulties began to multiply. Many small streams ran out of the swamp and meandered all about and he thought he should follow most of them for a way; trees were insecurely rooted in the wet ground and every storm had uprooted some of them. The area was a tangled nightmare of windfall timber; he had to crawl through or over it or make wide detours, and the swamp covered a much greater area than he had expected. He found tracks of foxes and minks, possums, squirrels, rabbits, and raccoons, but nothing that looked like the otter’s. The short winter day began to draw toward an end, earlier than usual because the overcast still covered the sky, and he had to turn back with most of the swamp’s edge unexplored.

  It was dark when he got back to the house, and he was tired to his bones. There was a stew keeping warm on the stove, and as he came into the kitchen Mr. Ben was just coming from the living room pulling on his coat.

  “I was just going out to see where you were,” he said. “It’s pretty cold to sleep in the woods without any supper. You’d better let me know about where you’re going to be after this.”

  “Yes, sir,” Joey said. He pulled a chair close to the stove and sat down wearily to take off his hunting shoes. After he got them off he sat for a moment wiggling his toes and soaking up the stove’s warmth; the smell of the stew made him realize how hungry he was. “Yes, sir.”

  The old man stood looking at him for a moment with his forehead creased, lantern-jawed, stooped a little, with the lamplight laying a silvery sheen over his one day’s growth of gray stubble. “You didn’t have any lunch either, and I doubt much breakfast. You’re going out again tomorrow?”

  “Yes, sir, I reckon I will.”

  Mr. Ben took his coat off, hung it over the other chair, and began to dish up the stew. “No more of that,” he said, coming closer to an order than he ever had before. “If you’re going on with this caper you’ll take time to boil a couple of eggs for breakfast, and we’ll pack a couple of sandwiches before we go to bed. Let’s eat, now.”

  “Yes, sir,” Joey said. He got up stiffly and followed Mr. Ben into the living room. The first mouthful of stew was the best thing he had ever tasted in his life, and as he sat there chewing it he looked at Mr. Ben and realized that the old man had been worried about him. It brought him back momentarily from the concentration that had been enclosing him; he was rather abashed that he had not given a thought to the old man, who had always been thoughtful of him. “I’m sorry, Mr. Ben,” he said. “I’ll write down where I’m going and leave it on the table every day.”

  “A lot of things can happen to anybody alone in the woods,” Mr. Ben said. “What would your father and mother think of me if you were to get into trouble out there and I didn’t know where you were?” Joey didn’t say anything; he wasn’t at all sure that his father—and certainly not his mother—would let him do what he was doing. “A lot of people would think I ought to be locked up for letting you do this at all,” Mr. Ben went on, echoing Joey’s own thought, “but people and even boys have to settle things for themselves, and you’ve had one experience with the fool-killer. You’d best think of it once in a while. And if you get into trouble shoot three times. I’ll listen particularly just as it’s getting dark.”

  “Yes, sir,” Joey said humbly. “I will.” He smiled at the old man and began to eat again. He finished his stew, and as he sat there, with the good warm food inside him and the grateful heat of the stove on his back, he began to nod. Fragmentary recollections of the woods powdered with snow, the windfalls he had crawled through, and the sustaining excitement of expecting to see the otter at any moment drifted through his mind as he fell asleep. Mr. Ben got him to his feet, steered him into the bedroom, covered him up, and wound the clock without waking him.

  The overcast had held through the night and the temperature hadn’t changed; the snow was still there the next morning, and Joey went up the other side of the Pond. The usual tracks were about, a delicate and fascinating record of the comings and goings of many creatures, but the otter’s wasn’t among them. As Joey rounded the last point before the cut-over section, however, he saw well ahead of him, near the water, a dark shape against the snow. It was too far away to identify and the morning was too gray to give it color, but it seemed to be crouched and eating something; being so close to the water Joey thought that it must be eating a fish. Excitement took hold of him and he wondered how he could get near it. His best chance seemed to be to angle back into the cut-over and stalk it, so he took that course after picking out a high tree on the other side of the Pond to give himself a mark of location.

  He moved as fast as he could with quietness, but the cut-over was a tangle of blackberry vines and brush and old tree-tops that were dry and crackly. He was afraid that the animal would finish its meal and vanish before he got in sight of it; the stalk seemed to last forever and he hurried it, and either his impatience or the light breeze (which he had forgotten in his preoccupation) betrayed him. When he came over the last little rise and could see the place, the object of his stalk was gone. He was bitterly disappointed, and when he reached the spot he found the rather doglike but narrower tracks of a fox leading away from it. The creature had been a fox after all, but it had been eating the remains of a fish; there were a few bones and a tail still there. Fox tracks were all about and practically covered the area, but when he got down on one knee and searched about among them he found one different pawmark; five-toed, almost round, and a little over three inches across. It could have been made by nothing but the otter.

  The otter had been there, then; it had brought the fish ashore, left some of it, and the fox had found it. That Joey hadn’t frightened off the otter itself lessened his disappointment, and the fact that it was still there and hadn’t left the Pond as yet was most encouraging to him. He continued to search about among the tracks and finally found, sandwiched between two of the fox’s, another that looked like the otter’s but was smaller. This was a puzzling thing, but finally the answer came to him; there must be a young otter there too.

  “Great day!” he said to himself. “A little one!”

  This would make it better, he thought; it would be easier to find two than one. The little one wouldn’t be as wary, and if he could only get it … A number of wild schemes began to run through his mind, most of them too impractical to be considered for very long, but one remained. If he could only get the little one and hang it up near the water somewhere, it would attract the other, and he could watch the place until the other came.

  This plan was the measure of his delusion; that it was ruthless and cruel didn’t occur to him. He stood up, feeling now that he had a more potent weapon, and continued on his way. He found no more otter tracks along the shore, and came to the swamp again. This side of it w
as like the other, full of blow-downs and detours, and buoyed up by the new plan he grew careless; he hurried too much and finally, in climbing over one very bad tangle of fallen trees, slipped on a snowy branch and fell through the confusion of trunks and branches. It was a bad fall and half stunned him. When his ringing head began to clear he tried to stand up; hot pain shot through his left ankle and he found that it wouldn’t support him.

  He lay still for a time while the pain diminished, and fear built up in him. There was a flutter of wings over his head, and he looked up to see a big red-tailed hawk on a branch above him. The snow it had disturbed in landing drifted down around him; it gripped the branch with sharp talons, and its cold, impersonal eyes assayed him as possible prey. At his movement it jumped from the branch and flapped off, but for a little time its hungry eyes still seemed to be boring into him. He shivered. If he had broken his ankle and couldn’t walk he was in a bad situation; although he had left a note for Mr. Ben, it merely said that he was going up the south side of the Pond and around the swamp, and that was pretty indefinite. There was a great deal of country they would have to look for him in, and it was difficult country. Mr. Ben would have to get other people, and that would take time; he wouldn’t start to do anything until dark or later, and he, Joey, would be alone and cold and uncertain.

  He was afraid, but as he thought of these things his first blind fear began to diminish. He wasn’t in unoccupied country and out of reach; sooner or later they’d find him. His tracks were in the snow, if it held; he could crawl; he could shoot his gun to help them locate him; he would be making a great nuisance of himself. These things were bad, but if he had to give up the search it would be worse. Tears of frustration and anger at his own carelessness came into his eyes, and, grasping two of the branches above his head, he pulled himself up. The ankle hurt, but not as badly, and after putting weight on it gradually and moving it a few times he found that it would work. It wasn’t broken after all, and after he crawled out of the blow-down and hobbled carefully about for a time it stopped troubling him.