Pond Fishing

‘I'm going down there tonight and I'm going fishing. You're bringing the beer and your lantern,’ Judd Hinshaw drawled. His eyes were glassy and red-rimmed. Junkie Judd, as they called him in Virgil Springs, stood a little cockeyed, which might have been because of his bad leg or because he was already drunk at seven in the morning. 

Bud “Tuber” Langford cussed under his breath then agreed. ‘Fine, but I ain't getting Bud,’ said Tuber, ‘I'm just getting a twelver of Natty. If you want more'n that you gotta bring it yaself.’

They parted having sealed their plans with a filthy handshake.

As he walked down George Street, Tuber Langford grumbled under his breath. He knew it was a bad habit. But he couldn't seem to stop. Everyone made fun of him. Everyone bossed him around. Especially Junkie Judd. One day he was gonna find out. Tuber Langford was fifth in line for a big payout from his Uncle John, who was the oldest mayor living in the whole state. Uncle John told him, way back, that Tuber was gonna get some money one day and make something of himself. Tuber nodded emphatically as he walked. He reached into his dirty overalls and pulled out a flask bottle of Black Bird liquor and swigged it. When he got to Pine, he crossed and walked down into the kudzu to where his shack was.

Around six, Tuber woke up and rolled out of his army cot. He looked in the bit of broken mirror hanging on a nail on the wall. He pulled his red cap down over his erratic hair and turned his head to admire his profile. ‘Yessir. I'm a Langford,’ he said to no one.

He stepped outside and had a long and slightly painful pee and then checked for his money. He kept it in a ceramic mushroom by an old stump. A good hiding place, he thought as he stripped three damp and dirty fives out of a big roll of cash and deposited the rest back into the mushroom.

He hobbled back up the hill and trundled down Pine to the wine and spirit store. There he bought another bottle of Black Bird and a twelve pack of Natty. He also bought a few tiparillos to keep the skeeters away. Tuber hated skeeters.

He strolled down Pine to Elmhurst and went along until the houses started to get sparse. He wandered up to the driveway of Rubicon Enterprises and looked around the well manicured grounds for cops. It was dead. So he wandered along the fence to the treeline and disappeared under the eaves. 

It took his eyes a minute to adjust and when they did he took out a tiparillo and lit it and puffed at skeeters that were starting to swarm. 

‘Where ya been?’

Tuber yelled out and dropped the twelver and the cigar.

‘Jeezzuss Aytch Jumpin’ Cheerist!’ Tuber puffed and bent double gasping.

Junkie Judd giggled and clapped Tuber on the back repeatedly until he stopped coughing. Tuber stooped and picked up the beer carton and his cigar, which he relit.

‘You eejit. Where's her damn lantern?’ Junkie Judd scowled at Tuber.

‘Sheeeyit. Well, I brung the beer!’ he bellowed.

‘Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh’ Junkie Judd said, drawing out the shushing. ‘I got us a good place at the pond. And I got us a lantern coz you'd fergit her ass if it wasn't taped on yer forehead.’

The men shuffled through the trees, toward a cool glint of water ahead.

‘How you know this is legal?’ Tuber asked again.

‘I told ya, eejit. Rubicon Enterprises (he said it Ruby Cong) done pulled up stakes and went running. They got sued and they're gone. I sat up here last week and watched em go. Nothing and nobody.’

Soon enough they came to a chain link fence that was at least ten feet tall, but a big section had been torn out of it. It looked to Tuber like something big, maybe a truck, had burst through it.

‘How far we got to go, Juddy, huh?’

‘Shut yer damn whining. We's almost there.’

They stepped through the fence and headed down toward the water.

Junkie Judd had come down here before, it seemed to Tuber Langford, future heir apparent of the Langford millions. There was an old card table with three legs and a broken branch where the fourth leg would have been and two aluminum folding chairs and a lantern and a foam cooler. Two rods lay against a tree and a small tackle box was set down there.

‘You did it up, right,’ said Tuber.

‘Damn straight I did,’ replied Junkie Judd, not taking the compliment.

The two men moved down to the water and Tuber started putting the beers into the cooler.

Although he didn't know the details as well as he professed, Junkie Judd was right. Rubicon Enterprises had been sued and had pulled up stakes, but it wasn't quite that cut and dried. No one knew what the business did. It was zoned for industrial use and it did its work quietly and without much disturbance, except it donated a lot of money to the Virgil Springs chamber of commerce and rotary club. James Foster, the president of Rubicon, often showed up at official events and paid for drinks. He wasn't the CEO or even on the Board. He had an unofficial capacity as a public agent who could speak knowledgeably without actually saying anything about the business plan. He had an excellent sense of revenue streams and employment numbers, but he did nothing and said nothing. People were content to think he was the boss and he was content to allow them. Driving the Mercedes E-450 4Matic helped to cement this idea.

In the Fall of last year, things had started to go sideways with Rubicon. James Foster had to field a lot of odd questions at dinners and community fundraisers. The questions always centered around the ponds on the expansive fenced and guarded grounds on Elmhurst Street. The ponds had always been there, but when the company bought the property, it closed off the area to the public with tall fences and, in some cases, high walls and roving, armed security.

Then, one day, no one saw James Foster anymore. Money stopped coming in from Rubicon Enterprises. Someone said they saw his 4Matic on the street out by the Virgil Springs High School, and it looked like he was ushering out his teenage daughter, at ten o'clock in the morning.

For a few weeks before that, people who lived on Elmhurst or on the Buttonwood extension that ran along the west side of the property, said they heard strange noises and saw lights and several calls to the Virgil Springs P.D. were made claiming there had been lightning in a clear sky and automatic gunfire.

Junkie Judd Hinshaw and Bud “Tuber” Langford stopped wondering why the fence was busted out around their second beer. Junkie Judd had gone to some A.A. meetings and he knew that it was the first drink that got you drunk, but he couldn't remember when he had had that first drink. 

Tuber was likewise toasted and they sat there, reeking of alcohol and dirt and unclean armpits and dank, filthy clothes. Tuber was puffing at skeeters and Judd was starting to doze. His head lolled to one side and then he would snap it back up. Their bobbers both floated placidly on the smooth water. 

Both of them had slipped into alcohol induced stupor when their bobbers started to jounce and make tiny ripples. Had either of them been awake, they would have seen something large and fast-moving surge beneath the water.

The first thing that Tuber noticed when he fell awake was the stench. It smelled for all the world like Juddy had shit his pants. It wouldn't have been the first time. The stench was thick and pungent. 

‘Jeeezuss, Juddie, ya shit yerself,’ he said, though it was muzzy and muffled by his cottonmouth. He instinctively reached for his flask bottle of Black Bird to wet his tongue, when he heard muffled sounds to his left. 

Maybe, he thought placidly, Judd was having a seizure. It had happened before. Too much drinking—or not enough—could cause that.

Then he turned his head. Something—Tuber couldn't have said just exactly what—was crawling up Judd's body. It was large and shiny black, and it stretched away into the water. The thing was actively forcing itself over Junkie Judd's head and Judd was flailing as his folding chair flounced over. The stench was unbearable, and after several seconds, Tuber stood and backed away. He was sure that he could hear Juddie screaming, but then, suddenly it was cut short and his body went limp.

Tuber had a moment to think that at least he wouldn't have to be bossed around anymore when Judd and the thing sailed into the water with a significant impact. Tuber looked around at his surroundings and decided he had to try to run. He wasn't sure he had everything he needed, and he wasn't sure what he was going to tell the police, but that was someone else's problem. A thought came into his mind with stark clarity: he wasn't going to say anything to anyone. He hadn't seen Judd. Junkie Judd was an asshole of the first water.

He high stepped back up toward the fence, leaving the card table, the folding chairs and most painfully, the foam cooler of Natty.

As he sloshed unevenly up the hill, he heard something behind him.

The tendril caught him by the buttock and hamstring and flipped him around, like a child winding a string top. He was wrapped in the black, dripping mass of a muscular tentacle in seconds. He fell over and as he was being dragged to the water, he saw something that made his mind (what was left of it) rock on its pedestal of sanity. A head, like a man's but huge and with burning black eyes rose out of the pond, dripping ichor and slime.

The tentacle drew Tuber off the ground and he felt himself considered by another consciousness, and he understood how a fly must feel right before a little boy tears off its wings.

Then, there was a gaping maw, filled with shiny silver teeth, like knives and he was being slung toward that opening. 

He had a brief thought that filled him with a delightful sense of hope. When this was over, his Uncle John would be sending him some money. This was gonna get him in the newspapers, and he would finally be rich and then Juddie would see. Then he remembered what had happened to Judd as he disappeared into that nightmare gullet.

Ripples receded. Mosquitoes hummed. A can of Natty, freshly opened, had foamed over into the fine dust at the pond edge. As the sun went down on the scene, anyone stupid enough to approach would have seen two rods, a couple of overturned folding chairs and a bent up old card table with one leg missing.