The Bottom Feeders and Other Stories

10: Bottom Feeders

We rode our bikes to Potter’s Pond on lazy Saturday afternoons in the spring, before school let out for the summer and the heat grew too oppressive. I struggled on my brother’s ten-speed while Joel raced his red Huffy. We traveled with our fishing poles balanced on handlebars, jutting out in front of us like antenna. Potter’s Pond was a forbidden place tucked behind Greenwillow Cemetery, a secluded spot to fill Saturday afternoons. Joel’s dad had lectured him about trespassing and how much trouble we could find — but we laughed at his warnings, and Elroy Jantz, the old owner of the bait shop, told stories that drew us like moths.

“Hope you’re not planning on heading up to Potter’s Pond,” he told us as he scooped baitworms into a brown paper sack. “It’s a pauper’s grave, full of folks who couldn’t feed their families or buy a small hunk of land of their own.”

We snickered at first.

“Dressed ‘em in old throwaway suits and dresses from the DAV for a quick service, then tossed the bodies straightway in the water, just as soon as the dead man’s folks left.” The old man leaned forward, examining us with his black gaze, and then laughed in a thick tone that killed our smiles but roused curiosity. “They died hungry, and they’re still hungry.”

The sky was clear, and the bright sunshine chased away any shivers spawned by Elroy’s story as we wound through the gravel paths of that immense cemetery. Generations of Spring County residents lay under the rolling grass with plenty of hills and trees blocking the view, so we couldn’t take in the whole place from any one vantage point. I struggled on the gravel roads because of the narrow ten-speed tires; Joel rode ahead and would mock me over his shoulder with lines from B-movies we watched on late night TV.

“They’re coming to get you, Denny,” he said that day.

We left our bikes at the back of the cemetery as usual, laying them down just outside a barbed-wire fence hiding in the tree line. That fence marked the border between Potter’s Pond and Greenwillow. Erected years ago out of crooked tree limbs and poorly strung, the fence wouldn’t hold our weight, so we took turns squeezing between the sharp wires while the other pried them open, crossing the threshold one at a time.

Through a path between trees — tall oaks perfect for climbing with low, untrimmed branches, dying brown pines, and knobby arthritic redbuds — we saw the green of the pond. The odors of dirt, moss, and decay floated in the air. Stout Kansas wind rarely broke the water’s surface because of the trees that encroached on its lip; only two small bare patches of packed dirt remained open for fishing. The pond wrapped around at the eastern end, bending out of sight. I’m sure it would be a sort of gourd shape if seen from above, with curved stem hidden from view by branches and aggressive undergrowth. The land around the pond was so green and alive, yet somehow twisted, crooked, and diseased. Sometimes old man Jantz’s stories were easy to believe.

Joel sat and busied himself with knots and fishing line. I worked a writhing earthworm onto a single barbed hook. We never used treble hooks in that pond anymore; the bullhead, these runty catfish, had small mouths, and we lost many hooks before learning our lesson. A worm threaded on a thin hook worked well enough on those eager bottom feeders.

“How many you shooting for today?” Joel asked as he tied the nearly invisible knot with his adept hands.

“At least a dozen.” I chuckled, casting my line into the slime, studying my orange cork bobber, waiting for the inevitable action.

After a few moments of silence, Joel stood and tossed his line in, angling away from mine. “I’m going for something big today.” He sat on the packed earth, staring into the water. “Something big has to live in there.”

We waited. Joel’s bobber was the first to dip below the still surface. “First blood,” he said. As he yanked the pole to set his hook, the line held.

“First snag,” I replied. Potter’s Pond may have been full of hungry bullhead, but it also contained more than its share of snags — bits of log, vines, and roots of trees that undoubtedly created a thick underwater labyrinth. This made a perfect home for bottom feeders, scavengers lying in wait, and a perfect spot for snags.

Joel tugged hard, walking his pole up the bank. “Whatever it is, I’m pulling it out.”

I glanced into the stinking water. “Are you sure you want to?”

“I don’t want to tie another damn knot and lose a hook if I can yank this out.”

I watched the spot where his line broke the surface. Slowly, steadily, the water split open and something green-black under the afternoon sun grew out of the pond. At first I thought it was a log, a mossy bit of fallen tree until the heavy vulture’s head of a massive snapping turtle rose from the surface.

“Cut the line.” I scrambled up the bank toward Joel.

“What?”

“Cut the line!” When I felt a safe distance from the water, I turned and watched the monster sink below the surface. Joel sat behind me with his pocket knife still clutched in his hand, and I joined him on the ground.

“Damn.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I wonder what else is in there.”

I turned to look at Joel, his eyes wide and curious.

If he hadn’t pulled out that behemoth snapper, we would have never searched the uncharted end of Potter’s Pond for a new spot to cast our lines. As we walked through the underbrush, any lingering sign of a path disappeared. Our pant legs caught on thistles and sandburs, swishing and snagging through the calf-high grass. The high branches began to hoard sunlight, and despite the clear sky beyond, swollen shadows darkened around us. The far end of the pond always rested in the shadows.

Below the sound of our tramping feet and whisper of the grass, another sound grew and spread. This sound reminded me of camping trips: the buzzing of a thousand flies around a trash bin after Dad cleaned the day’s catch.

“Do you hear that?” I asked Joel.

“What?”

“The buzz,” I whispered to him. I don’t know why I whispered, other than the feeling of being swallowed by the shadows and trees. He stopped ahead of me and balanced his pole on the ground.

“Denny.” He slowly turned his head to look over his left shoulder all goggle-eyed. “Come here.” Maybe his quavering voice, seeing too much white around his eyes, or the claustrophobic trees spurred my fear because I wanted to leave, climb on the bike and go. But I obeyed him against the growing storm in my stomach.

He said nothing more; he didn’t need to say anything else. Lying on the ground, jutting out from behind a low, scratchy bush, I saw two legs. Pants really, and shoes, but they had form and shape unlike they would if they were empty. The pants were black, dirty with mud, and torn in places. I thought of Grandpa’s funeral, the black suit in which we buried him, and suddenly remembered the legions of dead on the other side of the short barbed wire fence behind us. Old man Jantz’s stories of the poor, unhappy dead swirled in my head.

I can’t exactly explain the feeling, but the body drew me to it like some sort of obscene gravity — like a lure, a worm on a hook for a curious twelve-year-old boy. Joel stayed behind, but I rounded the bush and looked on the rest of this grotesque thing. The torso was still covered by a filthy suit coat that had once been black like the pants. My eyes traced the left arm to a white bloated hand covered thickly by black flies, the source of the buzzing sound. Corrupted by insects, water, and occasional shafts of warm sunlight, what flesh remained seemed shiny and waxen, like melted fat. I stood for a moment and stared. Maybe the motion of the files fooled me, but the hand seemed to twitch and move, curling those awful dead fingers.

Joel poked me in the ribs and shouted, “Gotcha!”

My body burst with terrible fire, all my nerves lit with fright. I screamed, dropped my fishing pole, wheeled, pushed the laughing Joel out of my path, and ran without thinking. It was pure fight or flight. No thought impulses broke through to my higher brain until I had scrambled over the barbed wire fence, tearing my pants and carving a long red scratch on my right leg. Behind me, someone — surely Joel — crashed through the brush. I thought I heard his voice, but I already pushed furiously against my bike pedals, racing for the stone pillars at the exit of Greenwillow.

By the time I rode the five blocks home, my terror had cooled to the point that I even questioned whether I saw a body at all, almost laughing at myself for fleeing. The pond, those trees, and the midday darkness became so surreal, so far away. Mom knelt in her flower garden, and she watched as I coasted down our hill and into the driveway.

“You and Joel have fun dear?”

“Yeah,” I answered. In the post flight hangover, I didn’t feel like talking, and I certainly didn’t want to try and explain anything about the forbidden pond. When I stretched out in bed that night, trying to sleep, I kept seeing that white flesh and the buzzing flies floating in the shadows of my room. Once sleep came, I dreamed of that snapping turtle and the hideous white hand. I woke in the morning like I had swallowed a heavy stone; I’d left my fishing pole at the pond.

Blaming Joel for the lost pole, I ignored him at school on Monday. He had a different home room teacher, and I took band, so our class schedules were thankfully unaligned. He approached me in the hallway twice, maybe with a well-planned apology, but I turned the other way each time I spotted him. That night he called the house. Mom answered I had her lie and say I was out. She should have suspected a falling out between Joel and me, but she played ignorant well.

But Joel cornered me after school on Tuesday. “Look Denny, let’s talk,” he said.

“I’ve got nothing to say.”

“Look, I’m sorry.”

“Great.” I looked at him, anger boiling behind my blue eyes.

“Okay.” His voice sounded unconvinced, skeptical, but he continued. “I think we should go to the police.”

“Police?”

“The body, remember.”

“I remember you scaring the shit out of me.” I really wasn’t ready to play nice, and I’d spent the last two days trying to convince myself that I didn’t see a rotting corpse — just some old, discarded clothing. His witness to the thing brought it to life again, the white hand moving, twitching.

“Look.” He shifted his weight between legs. “I said I’m sorry.”

“I left my pole. I want it back…” I didn’t think before adding, “asshole.”

He looked at me in silence. The blood sucked out of his face, and his mouth hung open slightly. “Fine,” he eventually said. “Fine. And I’ll make sure that dead guy is still there before I call the cops. No problem.” His voice trembled at that boundary between anger and tears, that special emotional cocktail unique to adolescents. He turned and walked away, lost in the mass of students laughing and slamming their lockers in the hallway.

The phone rang after dinner that night, and Mom answered. Five minutes later she stood in the doorway of my bedroom with arms crossed. I paused the game and met her grey gaze, and I squirmed in the gravity of that moment.

“Dennis, that was Joel’s mom.” She uncrossed her arms and sat down on the corner of my bed. “Joel didn’t come home after school today.”

I thought about the argument in the hallway. In my mind’s eye, I saw the pond, the body lying in wait just at the edge of the dark water, and the rotting hand opening as I crept closer. My stomach deflated, cast aside like an old balloon. I knew where Joel went, but the rational, logical part of me still wanted to forget about the dead pond and pretend he was safe at home.

“His parents want to know if you have any idea where he is.”

“No.” I broke her gaze and searched the pile of laundry on the floor across the room. “No, I don’t really have any idea.”

“Where were the two of you on Saturday?”

My neck was hot now, and sweat tingled under my arms.

“Dennis?” She rose from my bed, but felt miles away from me.

“Just riding around,” I lied. “We just rode around.”

Joel wasn’t at school the next day, but the rumors flowed freely. I walked in the fog, struggling to pay attention to anything the teachers said, breaking two reeds in band, and dropping my tray at lunch. After lunch the pressure building in my chest became too much. I told my English teacher that I needed to see the principal before fifth period. He called the police.

Mom and I rode together, following the squad cars through the winding gravel pathways in Greenwillow Cemetery. A red Huffy rested against an old junk pine. The police, a few city cops and three or four sheriff’s deputies, waded into the grass and ruined trees around Potter’s Pond. Aside from his bike and my fishing pole, they didn’t find any sign of Joel. I shook at Mom’s side, broken in my chest because I had sent him back to that place, alone, in the late afternoon. Elroy Jantz’s words, “…they’re still hungry…” rattled in my skull.

I begged her to bring me back the next day, let me skip school. She consented — Joel and I were close, and she heard the fear on my quivering voice. The sheriff’s department brought a small boat and the hooks they use when dragging a river. I knew what that meant, but tried to avoid the thoughts.

They found his body that afternoon. Mom and I were held on the other side of the yellow tape, but cries and shouts made the announcement for us. I squirmed from Mom’s grasp, darted under the tape and through the gap that the police had opened in the fence. The officers stood around, one of them kneeling on the ground, examining two bodies. Between the officers’ legs I caught a snatch of Joel’s face and his arm. His swollen, too-pale flesh was covered with pink marks — torn patches from cuts or scrapes, places where his skin had broken open. The other body was covered, but one arm hung out from underneath the plastic — a horrible arm ending in a slick, rotting hand — just like the body we’d found a few days before.

One of the police officers saw me and pushed me back towards the fence, but as I backpedaled, squirming against the push toward the cemetery, I overheard the deputies as they discussed how a body would usually float for a few days after it fills with air, but something held Joel’s body under. When they pulled it from the murk, the other corpse came too — the corrupted body of a man wearing the strips and tatters of an old, black suit. A cheap suit like something you’d pick up at the DAV. The decaying hands of that body had been wrapped around Joel’s ankles, locked tight; it had lured Joel closer, just as I felt drawn on Saturday, hooked him, and pulled him under for the hungry bottom feeders.