had learned to hunt and track when we were head high to a squirrel dog’s balls, so we could read sign. Animal sign, or human sign. A paw print or a tire track, it was all the same to us.
We got up and went across the grass and the mowed hay field. Another couple days and the hay stubs and the grass would spring back up completely, and there wouldn’t be any trail to see. Not unless you knew to look for it.
It didn’t take an expert in nanotechnology to figure where the ruts were leading. They played out at the lip of the pond, and there were deeper tracks in the bank where the vehicle had gone over. There were a couple of hardback books in the mud by the water, and the moon rode on the pond’s brown surface like a bright saucer. I could smell the pond, and it smelled of mud and fish and recent rain. A night bird called from a tree in the distance and something splashed in the water and rippled it, turned the floating moon wavy.
Leonard eased down the bank and got hold of one of the books and came back up with it.
“Don’t tell me,” I said. “ The Old Man and the Sea.”
“No. How to Repair Your Fireplace.”
“Bound to have been a big run on that one,” I said.
I looked at the pond, then looked at Leonard. He said, “I’d go in, but I got a problem with my leg.”
“I thought it was well.”
“Sometimes it gives me trouble.”
“Like now?”
“Right.”
“That figures. Look, we know it’s there.”
“For all we know, he run an old tractor off in there, or some drunk came through the cattle guard and run out here in the pond thinking it was a parking lot.”
“Sure,” I said.
I unbuttoned my shirt and tossed it to Leonard, stood on one foot and took off a shoe and sock, switched feet, and repeated the process. I pulled off my pants and underwear. I folded the underwear and pants together and tossed them to Leonard and put the socks in the shoes.
“Aren’t you embarrassed undressing in front of a queer?” Leonard said. “All you know, I might be sizing up your butthole.”
“Just call me a tease.”
I slipped down the bank and started to go in the water.
Leonard said: “Hap, be careful, man. We haven’t finished that flooring yet.”
The water was warm on top, but three feet below it was cold. The bank sloped out and was slick. I went in feet first and slid down and under. The water flowed over me, and I looked up and could see the moonlight shining through the murk.
Going down the bank like that I had stupidly stirred up the mud, and a cloud of it, like ink from a squid, caught up with me, surged over me and frightened me. For a moment I was in complete darkness, then the mud thinned and I went down deeper, feeling for the van I knew was there.
The water, though less muddy down deep, was darker. I wondered what ever had possessed me to do this. We should have called the cops, let them look. I should never have promised Leonard I’d help him out in this matter. I should have finished college and gotten a real job. I wondered how long Florida would remember me if I drowned.
The pond was not deep, and soon I could reach down and touch bottom with my hands and feet. I crawled along like that a little ways, stirring mud, raised up and swam forward, felt myself starting to need air.
I rose up swiftly in the blackness and hit my head sharply on something solid and nearly let go of what breath I still had; it was as if the water above me had turned to stone. I swam left and hit a wall and something from the wall leapt out and touched me and I kicked out with my feet and pushed backward into another wall, and things jumped off it and touched me too. I clutched at them and they came apart in my hands.
My lungs were starting to burn, and I couldn’t go up, and I couldn’t go left or right. I pivoted and swam forward and hit a low barrier and reached above it and touched something soft. I grabbed at it, held with one hand, and my other hand touched something else.
Suddenly I realized where I was and what I was touching.
The back doors of the bookmobile must have been loose and popped open when the van went over. That would explain the books on the bank; they had bounced out when the vehicle went into the water, and due to the way the bank was sloped, the van had landed at a slant with its rear end up, and I had accidentally swum inside. The walls I had hit were the sides of the bookmobile, and the things that had jumped off the walls were books.
What my right hand was touching now was a steering wheel. That’s what had cued me. Tactile memory reaction. Common sense, something I seemed short on these days, told me what my left hand was most likely touching. A water-ballooned corpse. I made myself reach around and feel along what I thought to be the face. I couldn’t tell much about features, nose, jawbone, the like. The flesh was too swollen. After a few seconds, I’d had enough. I jerked my hand away from the corpse but held to the steering wheel with the other.
I was beginning to pass out from need of air. Black spots swirled inside my head. It was hard to remember not to try and breathe.
I pulled myself over the seat and reached between the corpse and the steering wheel to where the driver’s window ought to be. It was open. I yanked myself through and shot up, surfacing like a dolphin at a marine show. The moonlight jumped on me. The air was sharp, and I took in deep breaths that seared my lungs.
I swam to the bank where Leonard stood watching. He leaned out and gave me a hand and pulled me up. I coughed and shivered, said, “Next time, you go in.”
“The van down there?”
“Yeah,” I said. “And I believe Illium Moon is too.”
21.
“I think we should go to the police,” I said. “Talk to Hanson.”
“Not yet,” Leonard said. “Let me think on it.”
My shirt was still damp from dressing while wet, but it felt comfortable in the close heat. I smelled faintly of pond water. We were back over on the East Side, at a little, smoky black juke joint called the Congo Bongo Club, having a beer. Well, Leonard was having a beer. I was having a nonalcoholic beer. The place served them, but they seemed embarrassed about it. The bartender, who was also the waiter, kinda slunk over and put it on the table like a patient giving a pretty nurse a urine specimen.
The lights in the joint were not too good. Most of what light there was came from red-and-blue neon beer signs at the bar and the blue-white glow from the jukebox. In fact, it was so dark in the back of the place you could have pulled your dick out and put on a rubber and no one would have known it. It wasn’t the kind of place had a no-smoking section either. The cigarette and cigar smoke was thick enough to set a beer glass on.
The joint smacked of fire hazard. If there was a rear exit, you probably had to go through a back office to get to it. A fire started here, the office was locked, and the front door got blocked, you could kiss your charred ass good-bye. The music on the juke was great, however. John Lee Hooker.
We were trying to figure our next move. Or Leonard was figuring our next move. I was wondering what the cops did to you if they found out you had discovered a body in a pond and went away and didn’t tell them. I was certain dire consequences hovered above the question. I had already spent some time in prison, and I didn’t want another stretch. I wasn’t even crazy about a small fine.
“There’s things here don’t jive right,” Leonard said, “but I can’t put my finger on the problem.”
In the glow of the jukebox, I saw a big black man eye-balling us from a table across the way, throwing back beer like water. Actually, he was eyeballing me, as carefully as a birdwatcher might a rare yellow-throated two- peckered brush warbler. I suddenly realized just how white my skin was. Maybe we’d have done better to have picked up a six-pack at a convenience store.
I didn’t say anything to Leonard, as the faintest hint of intimidation made his dick hard, but I kept my eye on
