Pike's
Pond by Hal Simpkin
"... and that is final!"
The unpleasant voice of Gladys wafted through the hall from the living room, out the open front door, and penetrated Pike's reverie. Pike rolled his eyes in the direction of heaven and shook his head once, slowly. He activated that portion of his memory that made it possible for him to replay at least the last portion of his wife's homily. He had been developing this memory technique over the years, but since retirement, he had been given much more opportunity to sharpen his ability.
This one was easy—he had heard it so often before. "And if you are sitting there, daydreaming about a farm with a pond, forget it, it's not going to happen ... and that is final!"
And she was right again. He was giving free course to “that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude." A place to go and be alone, just him and some trees and some grass and some fish in a nice-size pond had been the vision of retirement that kept him going through the working years. As retirement grew nearer he finally confided in Gladys what he would like to do in the golden years and that's when it began. She was not going to move to a farm, they could not afford to keep their house and buy a retirement place, nor was he about to rent a place of his dreams just to leave her alone with nothing to do. Not that she ever did anything more than household chores and listen to radio serials. She told him frequently that she felt trapped.
Pike took care of his household responsibilities, and he did not like radio shows much, other than baseball or the news. He liked to read a little but there was no real opportunity for that. If she caught him reading she plucked a new item from her endless list of chores for him to accomplish. Thus went the first year or two of his "freedom."
When he thought about it he realized it was nothing personal. She didn't dislike him. She just didn't care about him. It was that she never wanted to be married—to anyone. She just wanted to get married—to anyone. And he was there. He was young and dumb, that was enough.
And she damn-sure didn’t want any kids—including his.
He did not dwell on it much, but when he did, he did realize that he did not care much for Gladys. He never discussed this subject with his retired buddies, but when once, one old friend allowed as how he had noticed that Pike and Gladys never seemed too close, Pike thought a bit and then admitted; "She is a difficult woman."
You'd think she'd be happier if I was off doing something else like fishing; but then a good part of her fun comes from deviling me. Pike felt trapped.
Once, a few days before his birthday, out of a clear blue sky, Gladys told him he'd be really pleased with what she had in mind for his birthday present. At first he thought little about it, considering her indifference to him. Then one evening his imagination popped open and ran wild—something’s different. I wonder if she is going to surprise me with a rod and reel and an okay to find a place to fish.
Then rationality returned. On his birthday she presented him with a paper sack containing a lightweight jacket made of some kind of oil skin or whatever. “You’ll ruin your clothes, running outside in the rain.” The years went by.
Occasionally he felt the pain of guilt when he would face up to the fact that he did not miss her—not then, not now, not ever. He thought of it this morning—when the sun had not yet risen and the air was chilly and clear. He shifted his position on the bank, poured himself another cup of coffee and began to get his tackle ready and to make plans for the day. He went mentally over his schedule—fish until they slowed up, then pack up and begin the repair job on the front porch.
As a part of the agreement he and the landlady had made when he leased his part of the farm—the part that contained the pond—he would be responsible for necessary maintenance on whatever needed it. Right now a couple of loose boards on the front porch of the farmhouse needed nailing. He enjoyed that kind of work and looked forward to taking care of it.
Then Pike remembered another looming repair job—one that would not be so pleasant—but one that was ever so much more essential: there was a leak in the dam that formed the pond. This problem went right to the soul of his existence—to his fishing spot.
I guess I’ve been lucky ‘till now.
The doggone critters were bound to show up sooner or later.
Actually, Pike had never left the muskrat threat to luck. He planned ahead, years earlier, when he leased the property. Cattails, rushes and arrowhead make a pond pleasant to look at and provide great cover for a variety of good fish—but: they are a supply of food for muskrats. Muskrats, if ample food is available, will move into a pond and will burrow a home into an earthen dam. Occasionally, the burrow is continued through the other side, causing a leak. Pike had always confined the growth of aquatic plants to the far, shallow side of the pond and he limited their growth to a point where the muskrats would look elsewhere for more plentiful food supplies. But perhaps, he had become complacent, or the critters more aggressive. But undoubtedly, he had a muskrat hole in the dam.
Pike examined the outside of the entire dam. To his dismay, the leak was easy enough to find, with water trickling steadily, rather than seeping, through the wall. And much the worst of it was the fact that the leak was several feet from the top of the dam while the normal level of the pond was about 18 inches below the top. He realized that, although muskrat holes were typically made less than a foot below water level, their lodges inside the dam rarely slope significantly downward. Therefore, the location of the exit would not be much of a guide to the finding of the entrance.
Paddling and probing slowly from his johnboat, he had surveyed—as best he could—the surface of the dam just below the water level. He had not found the entrance hole. At times, for reasons not shared by the animals, the critters began their digging much farther below water level. Nevertheless, he needed to find and plug that entrance hole to stop the leak.
Pike studied the problem and pondered the solution. This pond was a typical generations-old
Pike's dam restricted a creek that had crossed the farm for centuries before it was a farm. The dam was about 60 feet wide in order to block the valley of the creek. A cross-section of the dam would show sloping sides—each rising at about 60° angles from the stream bed—creating a flat area about five feet wide at the top. The walls were high enough that the dam formed a pond at its upstream side of about nine feet. Because of the lay of the land, water at the far side of the pond was backed up to . . . say . . . 18 inches.
Pike was an intelligent man and a good planner. Although he had examined the dam on its downstream side and had made note of the location of
the exit hole, he also knew enough about the nature of muskrats to believe that he would be highly unlikely to find the entrance to the tunnel
deeper than four or five feet below the surface. Still, the water in the pond was constantly murky, due to the typical muddiness of
He needed a flexible, tough, watertight material big enough to cover a six inch diameter hole in the underwater surface of the dam. Pike looked around his own home first. In the kitchen he fingered the oilcloth table cover—maybe so, maybe no. The stuff was waterproof but not nearly flexible enough. It would have to conform tightly to the underwater surface of the dam wall around the muskrat hole.
His 1941 Chevy—he had bought it new, just two years ago, right before Gladys died—was parked in the barn. He needed to take it out and drive a little anyway—get some air in the tires. He drove into town, searched through hardware and dry goods stores without success. He got a blue plate special at the restaurant, aired up the tires, and drove home to think about it.
Car safely returned to the barn, he strolled around the little hen yard, walked down to the pond and saw that the water level had dropped noticeably since this morning's fishing. Time’s wasting. I’ve got to get this thing plugged. He shook his head, lowered it, thought, shook it again, walked up the porch stair, past the still-loose floorboards and into the house. He put his hat on the closet shelf. Then he saw it.
He had never liked that damn jacket that Gladys gave him for his birthday. It would do the job! It was late in the day but he was eager to get the job done. He grabbed the jacket and made a beeline for the pond.
He had rehearsed, in his mind, the rest of the plan. Wearing his waders, he draped the collar of the opened jacket over his head, letting it hang down his back. Then holding to the roots and plants that grew abundantly above the water line, he let his boots slide down into the water until he was able to hang his full height plus the reach of his upraised arms. He began to work his way around the wall of the dam, feeling for the opening of the muskrat hole with his boot toes.
The search came to a sudden, terrible and final end. Within one second after his boot toe slipped, the weight of his body and his water-soaked clothes tore loose his grip on the roots above the water line. He felt himself slipping deeper into the water, involuntarily opened his mouth, and sucked in a deep breath. By this time his head was under the water and he inhaled much of it. The downward slide continued. Face slipping along the muddy wall of the dam, his forehead struck a projecting rock. He was immediately, mercifully unconscious. He never knew any of the rest.
The landlady's daughter and her husband came to a decision on the repair of the dam. It had begun to leak, albeit slowly, after all these years. They decided to cut a temporary spillway and gradually increase its depth until they had lowered the water level sufficiently to uncover the source of the leak.
They suspected the culprit to be a muskrat but recognized that—given the age of this dam—it was possibly a large plant root that had rotted away and permitted some leakage in its way. Anyway, this season was one of plentiful rainfall, the creek was flowing well, and the pond would refill shortly after the repair was made and the temporary spillway was closed off.
The first cut of the spillway at a one-foot depth proved to be insufficient. They had the workmen from town return and cut another foot away. That job was finished late one afternoon. After watching the work being done, the young couple strolled back past the site of the old hen yard—now their little vegetable garden—and up to the porch. "Dammit Janet, help me remember to get that fellow to fix those boards. I can never remember to do that."
On the porch, they looked back over the pond. The conversation turned—as it did now and then—to the story Janet’s late mother would tell of the mysterious disappearance of her tenant; “Pike” she said his name was.” He just up and left, one day.”
They shrugged; "Who knows?"
The next morning, they knew. The pair walked down to the pond to check the level after the night with the lowered spillway. There—above the water level—protruded the shoulders, arms, and upper spine of a human skeleton.
What might have been the head of the skeleton was covered by something resembling a piece of plastic sheet. Apparently, the material had been drawn—by the current-flow due to the leak—snugly over the skull—trapping it—tightly against the surrounding bank.
Hal Simpkin's novel, G-Eye, is available through Amazon.com, check the High Hill bookstore page for more information.