Martin's Pond, Page 2

  Most of the next day is gone by the time Martin ventures out. He rides toward the coast not because he wants to, but because it is necessary. The pond is deserted and the sandy dirt is smooth. The grisly scarecrow lists to one side, but still stands. Martin turns back as soon as he arrives. Early the following morning the vultures are gathered around, perched on the diving rock, casting shadows as they glide down the far hillside like sullen hovercraft. The dead half-fawn has been knocked to the ground. The beach is still clear of human footprints; there have only been deer and raccoons. Martin scatters the buzzards with shouts and stones, scavenges a new post when he finds the first one sticky with slow-dripped gore. He lifts the demi-carcass with a pair of laurel branches, dropping it twice before reseating it successfully, a monstrous farce with chopsticks and venison.

  On Wednesday morning the intruder is swimming laps when he arrives. There's no sign of the fawn, but the vultures are wheeling high over the pond. Martin stares blankly from the dirt road, momentarily indifferent to the possibility that he might be seen. She doesn't notice. He creeps around through the reeds, cuts diagonally down the grassy slope after she turns to swim away from him. Something has dragged the carcass behind the smooth black diving rock. There aren't so many flies as there were. Slowly, he climbs the outcropping from behind, careful not to make a sound. She's still swimming laps, rhythmic and oblivious. Martin sees her clothes in a heap on the other side of the pond. She is naked again. He avoids looking down, lets his eyes slip out of focus. She becomes a pale blur in the periphery of his vision.

  A rock comes to Martin's hand then, a smooth, roundish one the size of a grapefruit. He's crouched low, imagining how he'll spook her away: pitching a stone to just beyond her, hiding when she comes up sudden and startled from measured swimstrokes, mute when she calls out to the empty silence. He feels sick, enervated to watch her naked body glistening in his water. She dives down and flips at the end of each length, stirring a cloud in the shallows. He settles on a point past her swimming body, just beyond and behind. The missile arcs out over the pond with an assassin's accuracy. He can see the moment it leaves his hand how its curve will meet the line of her breast stroke. She pulls sleekly through the water, the sluicing rush of it clothing her in current. She arches up to breathe and the stone strikes square on the crown of her head. She goes instantly limp, sinks crumpled and slow. Martin watches, paralyzed, as the white cello shape of her fades. For a few seconds she doesn't come back up, then for a few seconds more. Martin shrinks back, oblivious to the buzzards' lowering circles as the time grows too long to doubt. He scrambles up, gathers himself to dive...but goes clammy at the thought of her body, her naked body lying cold at the bottom of the pond. Martin stands on the rock, mind whirling, time passing, until too long has gone by even for a miracle. He backs down and away in a wide, wide circle, knowing not to touch her clothes even a little bit though the temptation is great.

  * * *

  He shows up for work in a fever. Martin can't get the stone's trajectory out of his mind. Did she see the shadow of it? He can't be certain...she showed no sign. The night wears on. Business is slow. He washes glasses and plates, carries plastic sacks of garbage out to the compactor at the back of the parking lot. There's a new waitress and Amrit is mercifully preoccupied. Mopping up a spill -- a coffee drink, milky brown on the terra-cotta floor -- Martin goes weak in the knees when he overhears a customer telling Claire about a woman found dead in a pond off the Marshall-Petaluma road. Rescue trucks and klieg lights and men with rowboats and poles. "They can't figure it," the customer says, shaking his head. Martin mops and mops at the same scrubbed spot. "The guy owns the place says she was a strong swimmer. The sister-in-law, he said -- visiting for a couple of weeks from up north."

  Sister-in-law. A couple of weeks. He leans on the mop to keep from falling. Martin remembers a man at the far corner of the fenced pasture, a dusty white truck, a mess of lumber and tools. Years ago. The only time he ever saw anyone anyplace near. The way the man looked up. The way he pushed at the brim of his cattleman's hat, his indifferent curiosity conveying his right to be there, and Martin's less certain position.

  The guy owns the place.

  * * *

  Martin slinks out through the back door, and unlocks his bike. He pedals, not knowing at first where he's riding but a while later sees by no-moon and starlight that he's nearly to the pond.

  It's inevitable. It's the place he always goes.

  In the night's quiet, below the smooth chatter of his bicycle's derailleur, he hears a car coming, slowly, from around a bend up ahead. He can see its high-beams. In a panic he dismounts and lifts his bicycle to shoulder height, steps like a hunted giraffe down and across the ditch at the side of the road, flees into tall grasses and scrub. Martin throws himself down behind a profusion of blooming mustard as the car passes near -- it's not just high beams, it's a police cruiser's spotlight undulating over empty husks and milkweed thistles. Martin closes his eyes so they won't shine back, so the men in the car won't see him in the dark.

  ###

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