"Frog Pond" by Casey Jones
Photo Credit: Donald Giannatti, obtained and licensed through Unsplash
Frog Pond
Newton didn’t totally hate this place. He traipsed through the brome field with his fishing pole and tackle box. The grass stalks tickled his arms as the humid yellow haze lifted and the edges of the Kansas sky turned purple. Dallas, his older brother, whistled alongside him, with his fishing gear in hand.
Ever since their parents divorced six years ago, when Newt was four and Dallas was seven, they spent every Memorial Day weekend here, at their father Marshall’s farm. Only a hundred acres remained—Marshall had been slowly selling off the land since his parents left it to him—but that was still plenty of land for two boys to roam.
Gravel crunched underfoot on the road to the farmhouse. Birds flitted and squirrels chittered through the branches while the leaves rustled like radio static. Shortly, they descended into a small ravine, to the west of which was Frog Pond, a stagnant freckle of water about twenty feet across. Frog Pond was blanketed with a coat of moss and green algae. Other than the trail to the shoreline Marshall maintained (he was fond of roasted bullfrog and would occasionally bully through the muck in his waders), trees, grass and weeds dominated the banks.
“Man, this has to be the loudest I’ve ever heard this place.” Newt stopped and soaked in the bullfrog’s baritone groans. There was nothing like this on the high-desert plains of southwest Kansas, where they lived the rest of the year with their mother. Other than the crickets and coyotes, the constant din of the wind, it was a dry, lonesome place. “Dallas, look!” Newt pointed at four box turtles posed like lawn ornaments on an elm branch jutting from the sludge.
Newt picked up a hunk of flint and hummed it toward Frog Pond. The rock splashed in near the turtles, who slid into the murk. The moss bobbed up and down with the rippling rings. Newt stood there, staring at the hypnotic movement of the water.
“Give you a hundred bucks to jump in and swim to the other side,” Dallas said, casting a long shadow over Newt with his stocky frame.
“Like hell.” Newt said. “I bet it’s full of snappers and cottonmouths.”
“It’s not them I’d be afraid of,” Dallas said.
“What’s that mean?” Newt lifted his ball cap and wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.
“Nothing,” Dallas said.
“Goddamnit, just tell me.” Newt said.
“Maybe when you’re older,” Dallas said.
“Go to hell,” Newt said. After sharing a rare day of peace and joy with his brother, Dallas was a prick again.
Dallas cocked his fist back. Newt flinched, and Dallas chuckled up the lane.
Newt picked up a hunk of flint and hummed it toward Frog Pond. The rock splashed in near the turtles, who slid into the murk. The moss bobbed up and down with the rippling rings. Newt stood there, staring at the hypnotic movement of the water. His vision went fuzzy as he recalled a mysterious encounter at his father’s farmhouse three years ago.
Marshall had detonated bug bombs in the bedroom before their arrival. Newt’s eyes stung, and he coughed and wheezed, when he dropped his bags off in the upstairs bedroom. Daddy long legs, wolf spiders, crunchy roly-polys, and roaches littered the floor. Some still clung to life, half-paralyzed, legs wriggling and wings vibrating. Despite his father’s amateur fumigation, Newt extracted dozens of spiders, fleas, and ticks from his body each night as he slept on a mattress topper on the floor. The conditions were so awful that, after the first night, Dallas set up a tent in the front lawn and slept on his own.
On the final night of his stay, a tight pinching sensation formed near his belly button as he attempted to fall asleep. Another insect bite. The millionth one of the last few days. As he ran his hand over his abdomen in search of the culprit, an oak branch scraped against the side of the house and a sharp, cool breeze whooshed through the window. Newt rocketed upright as a frenzied smattering of green and milky white light particles poured into the room. The specks vibrated, and as a buzzing hum grew in his ears, the light turned green and swirled and writhed around itself, before melting into one large shimmering orb.
Newt gasped and clutched his sleeping bag. A pale green glow illuminated the room. Several appendages snaked out of the grand ball of light, squiggling into arms and then legs and a head. Ultimately, the contours of light took on the shape of a thin woman’s body. Newt tried to scream but his throat felt like it was clogged with a golf ball. He could only grip the sleeping bag tighter.
The woman’s features sharpened. Black and wavy hair, pulled back tightly, with stray wisps straggling down her emaciated face. Narrow lips and sunken, hollow eyes. A long black dress hung loosely from her body. She looked down at a lump of dark light and seemed to be cradling it. Over the next few shuddering seconds, it became clear the woman was cradling a swaddled baby in her arms, its eyes and lips crimped as if in distress. The baby bleated like a sick kitten. The woman extended a shimmering finger toward its mouth, and the infant suckled on it. The woman rocked and bounced the baby until it began to coo.
Newt finally mustered a hoarse scream. Marshall!
The woman looked at Newt, and her eye sockets blazed a fiery green. She put an index finger to her lips before they quickly disbanded into millions of specks of light, which rushed out through the window just before Newt’s father burst into the bedroom, pointing a pistol out in front of him.
Newt never told anybody else about that night. Over time, he convinced himself it was all a dream, perhaps a hallucination from the bug poison.
“What is it?” Marshall said.
“There was a woman in here. With a baby.” Newt’s skin tingled, swimming in sweat.
“What? Where?”
“Not a real woman. A ghost. She just … disappeared.”
“Nonsense,” Marshall said. “You’re imagining things.”
“I saw it with my own two eyes.”
“That’s impossible. Marshall said.
“But she was right here in front of me. And a baby, too.”
“It’s all that fucking TV you watch at your mother’s,” Marshall said. “Go back to sleep.”
His father left. Newt closed his eyes and pulled the covers taut over his face. He didn’t peel the sheets back until the morning sun poured into the bedroom.
Newt never told anybody else about that night. Over time, he convinced himself it was all a dream, perhaps a hallucination from the bug poison.
As he stared into the rippling rings of Frog Pond three years later, he promised to never lie to himself again. He hadn’t wanted to believe what he saw with his own eyes because of what people might think of him. Those assholes could believe what they wanted.
Marshall took a pack of Winstons out of his flannel shirt’s front pocket and slid a cigarette out. He sniffed it and held it in his mouth. There was barely a sliver of daylight left, glancing off the fledgling corn stalks in the fields to the west.
*
When Newt walked up onto the front porch of the farmhouse, Marshall and Dallas stopped plucking their guitars and set them down in their cases next to their rocking chairs.
“What took you so long?” Marshall asked. He pulled a rubber band around his hand and swept his hair back into a ponytail.
“Nothing. Dallas ran off ahead of me.” Newt said.
“Heard you had a good haul down there today,” Marshall said.
“Yeah, got about eight channel cats, and a couple bullheads. Newt said.”
“That corn must have done the trick.” Each spring Marshall threw a sack of feed corn into the creek to attract fish from the nearby reservoir the creek poured into.
“Definitely did the trick,” Dallas said.
“Well, let’s see them?” Marshall said.
“They’re still down at the creek,” Newt said. “On a stringer.”
“Really? But that’s our supper,” Marshall said.
“You said we were doing pizza tonight.” Newt’s stomach growled. He hadn’t eaten since earlier that afternoon, a moldy tortilla wrapped around a hunk of government cheese.
“I know I said that,” Marshall said. “But I looked at my checkbook, and pizza is not in the cards. Had to send your mom a check for gas money to get you up here.”
“You could get a job?” Newt said.
“You sound just like your mother.” Marshall said.
“I told him we should have brought the fish up, Dad,” Dallas said, all too eager to recenter the conversation.
“You did not, butthead,” Newt said.
“Hey, now.” Marshall took a pack of Winstons out of his flannel shirt’s front pocket and slid a cigarette out. He sniffed it and held it in his mouth. There was barely a sliver of daylight left, glancing off the fledgling corn stalks in the fields to the west. “Newt, I think you should go fetch the fish,” he said. “Dallas will build us a fire.”
“What?” Newt said. “It’s dark now. I’m not going out there all alone. Can’t someone come with me?”
“I’m pretty comfy here,” Marshall said. “Your brother can if he wants to.”
“I’d rather not,” Dallas said.
“Son of a bitch,” Newt said. “I hate it here.”
“Tell you what. Take my truck,” Marshall said.
“I’m not old enough to drive,” Newt said.
“You’ve been on the tractor since you were born,” Marshall said. “The truck’s even easier. Keys are in the ignition. Go on, now.”
“But I don’t want to go alone,” Newt pleaded, near tears. “It’s scary.”
“Try spending the night strapped to a riverbank while Charlie lights up the sky. Jesus fucking Christ, Newt,” Marshall said, and the mean gray cloud rolled into his eyes.
“Did I mention I hate this fucking place,” Newt said.
“One more night,” Marshall said. “That’s it. And then it’s back to our regularly scheduled programming.” Then he looked over at Dallas. “What’s his fucking deal?”
“He’s always so sensitive,” Dallas said.
The only thing he had learned from his father was how to fish. And at ten years old, he’d rather play Nintendo, draw comics, ride a bike, or watch movies. Eat a goddamned pizza instead of fried bottom feeders.
Newt trudged down the steps, by farmhouse, to the dirt driveway, where the red GMC was parked. At least it wasn’t a total piece of shit, like Marshall’s previous truck, the one you had to wiggle a screwdriver jammed into the steering column to start. Newt stomped on the stiff clutch and turned the key. The engine whirred. He put the truck in what he thought was reverse, but when he let off the clutch the truck smashed against the wooden fence in front of him.
“Goddamnit,” Newt said. With that, Marshall darted around the house and hollered that reverse is back and to the right and that Newt just pulled fence-painting duty tomorrow morning.
The truck puttered slowly through the dark, until Newt’s fumbling fingers located the knob for the headlights. He switched on the high beams and cranked the driver's side window down. It was still hot and muggy, but the moving air soothed his damp skin. He didn’t remember the last time he drank any water. The well-water at the farm smelled like rotten eggs and tasted worse. His Mom said you could cut it with a knife.
The steering wheel convulsed under Newt’s tight grip. Once a year, if he could convince the tractor to start, Marshall would grade the lane himself, but it was always a game of catch-up. Washboards riddled the lane. Newt recalled the time he got stuck with his mother in a small little two-door Honda they called the Silver Bullet during a heavy spring rainstorm. They eventually stranded the car on the side of the road outside of Kit Carson, Colorado, near a stray elm tree and a curious herd of antelope.
Newt parked at the edge of the brome field. Marshall relied on the grass to feed the dwindling herd of cattle he owned; Newt knew better than to drive over it. He searched for a flashlight in the consoles and glove box, but no luck. His father rarely used one, and Newt wasn’t about to drive back to ask for one. Newt was exasperated by feeling like a failure around his father. He would never be like Dallas, so eager to jump into whatever low-grade bullshit Marshall had cooking and never even voice the slightest fucking disappointment with Marshall.
Newt was always the odd man out with them. The only thing he had learned from his father was how to fish. And at ten years old, he’d rather play Nintendo, draw comics, ride a bike, or watch movies. Eat a goddamned pizza instead of fried bottom feeders.
The chasm between Newt and Marshall only widened over the years. Newt hadn’t spoken to his father in nearly two years when he learned Marshall hanged himself out in the woods.
The bromegrass emitted a sugary steam while lightning bugs looped in neon arcs. Newt’s pulse quickened with each gust of wind. The waning moon perched low in the sky, barely slipping above the treetops lining the edges of the field. Not much light to go by, but he knew where he was.
A sludgy stank intensified as he approached their fishing spot, a wide bend in the creek where the water slowed to a turbid creep and exposed cottonwood roots snaked through the banks and provided refuge to box turtles and beavers. Several thunks and splashes emanated from down below. Newt heard a low, catlike hiss and froze for a moment. Another hiss, followed by another. He picked up a rock, threw it below, and barked into the shadows. Two large raccoons chittered and fled away.
“Who’s the scaredy-cat now, Marshall?” Newt yelled.
A cool gust of wind rustled and rattled the birch leaves. His skin stretched tight on his bones as he reached to pop the hood. Before he could find the latch, the headlights switched off and a silent calm fell over the night woods.
He slanted his feet sideways and slid down the muddy walls to the waterside. The raccoons had strewn pieces of catfish across the soft, rocky earth, their carcasses picked on and ravaged. He unwedged the stringer and blasted back up the banks and through the brome field to the truck. He threw what remained of their day’s catch in the back and headed back up the lane.
About the time his heart rate settled, the truck popped out of a deep rut and the passenger-side tire rammed into a rock. Newt’s head slammed into the roof as the truck engine cut out. The truck rolled down into the depression, near Frog Pond, and rocked to a stop. Newt tried to start the engine again, but it only spat out speedy clicking noises.
He pulled the lever to release the hood and stepped outside, the headlights boring through the warm soupy night. The bullfrog’s baritone croaks, and cries feverishly.
A cool gust of wind rustled and rattled the birch leaves. His skin stretched tight on his bones as he reached to pop the hood. Before he could find the latch, the headlights switched off and a silent calm fell over the night woods.
“Goddamnit,” Newt said, the level of frustration and anger coiling up through his empty stomach and burning the back of his throat.
Another cool push of wind rushed down from Frog Pond and with it a million dots of white light splashed through the trees in waves.
“Not again,” Newt said.
The light particles gathered into a green ball and pulsed white. The dark-dressed woman he encountered three years ago took shape in front of him.
Fear paralyzed Newt. He stood and watched as her features became clear. She was different than he remembered. Lily pads dangled from her dress and a clump of moss lay piled on her head, its tendrils coiling down to her shoulders. Her cheeks and eye sockets bulged, her face and neck puffy and swollen. A black viscous liquid like motor oil oozed from her mouth. She cradled the same baby in her arms, but it appeared lifeless, swollen, with a thick black mucus crusted beneath its nostrils and mouth. The woman kissed the baby’s forehead. She turned her shiny green eyes, like a bobcat, toward Newt.
She convulsed, her chest spasming. Two small appendages wriggled between her pursed lips. She gagged and opened her mouth. A bullfrog crawled out and plopped onto the gravel between them.
Newt wanted to die. Everything that ever terrified, angered, or saddened him hung like sandbags hitched to his body.
“What do you want?” Newt asked her with his mind.
She clutched the baby tighter and sobbed. “Please tell them I’m sorry.”
“Who are you? What’s your name?”
“Pearl,” she said, and her green eyes became deep pockets of pale blue. Her frame quavered and grew fuzzy around the edges.
“I am so sorry,” she said again. And then she and her baby dissolved into a cloud of white light and whooshed away toward the pond. The light particles swirled, like a miniature galaxy hovering above the water’s surface and then shot like a lightning bolt into the pond’s murk.
The crickets and frogs chirped and bellowed again. The truck’s engine spat back to life and the headlights switched on again. Newt collapsed in a trembling heap. He lay there in the warm white light for several minutes, until the hoot of an owl stirred him.
*
Flames crackled in an oil drum on the lawn outside the farmhouse. Sparks shot up into the domed night sky toward the stars. Dallas and Marshall sat in lawn chairs a few feet from the barrel. Marshall was telling Dallas about the jungle cats of Vietnam again. Newt walked over and placed the mangled fish on the stump they used for cleaning fish.
“What the hell happened?” Dallas said, while sharpening a filet knife.
“Raccoons.” Newt said.
“I figured,” Marshall said. He was standing, shirtless now, wearing some jean shorts and hiking boots, smoking a Winston. Tube socks mismatched. He flicked his cigarette butt into the oil barrel and took another glimpse at Newt, who clenched his hands together.
“Are you okay, bud?” Marshall said.
“No, I’m not. I … I saw something out there.” Newt said.
“The dark can play funny tricks on you,” Marshall said.
“It was that woman again. That woman and a baby.” Newt said.
“Goddamnit, Newt, not this again,” Marshall said. “I’m going to talk with your mother about the shit she’s letting fill your head. Fuck.”
“Who’s Pearl?” Newt said.
Marshall grabbed his hatchet from the nearby woodpile and shook at Newt. “I don’t ever want to hear you say that name ever again,” he yelled and stomped off into the woods. “Dallas, holler when supper’s ready.”
Dallas shot Newt a sympathetic glance, and then he chopped the head off a bullhead and started stripping its skin.
“Dallas, I swear to god. The truck died right by the pond. The headlights stopped working, and then this lady appeared. I talked to her” Newt said.
“Just drop it, would you,” Dallas said.
“I wouldn’t make this up,” Newt said.
“I know,” Dallas said and threw a filet on the cooking grate. “I believe you. “You see how Dad is tonight. And we barely see him as it is. Don’t ruin our last night here. We’ll talk about it later, OK?”
Marshall didn’t say a word to Newt for the rest of the stay. After he packed his duffel bag the following morning, Newt spit in the paint bucket Marshall left by the fence and sat beside it until his mom showed up to drive them home.
*
A week later, on a hot blustery Saturday in Southwest Kansas, Newt and Dallas biked three miles south of town to fish the Arkansas River. Dallas couldn’t keep bait on his pole that day. He reeled in catfish left and right while Newt got skunked.
Newt crossed his arms and exhaled a steamy breath into the pale sky. Dallas spit a splotch of chew through his front teeth. A brown glob caught on the mustache he’d grown since school let out for the summer.
“Hey, Newt,” Dallas said out of nowhere, while casting again. “Remember how the last night at Dad’s I said I believed you, about what you saw?”
“Yeah. But you didn’t back me up.”
“I didn’t want to spend the few minutes we have with him getting him all worked up.”
“But that was the scariest goddamn thing that ever happened to me. Haven’t even told Mom yet, because I’m sure she’ll just tell me I’m crazy too. And then he just fucking ignores me the rest of the time? Why are you always on his side?”
“He’s been through a lot.”
"You think I hadn't just been through some shit myself?"
“You’re right,” Dallas said. “You deserve better from your big brother. But calm down a bit and listen please, would you?”
Newt crossed his arms and exhaled a steamy breath into the pale sky. Dallas spit a splotch of chew through his front teeth. A brown glob caught on the mustache he’d grown since school let out for the summer. “The reason I told you I’d never jump in Frog Pond,” Dallas continued, “Is because Dad’s aunt and her baby drowned in there. I heard Mom talking about it once, to Grandmother. Pretty sure one’s name was Pearl.”
“Motherfucker,” Newt said, and kicked the dirt. “Why wouldn’t dad just tell me about her? He must’ve known I was telling the truth.”
“We all got a long way to go in this family,” Dallas said.
*
That evening, Newt helped his mother with dinner while Dallas was out shooting rifles with some friends. Doris couldn’t stand for long stretches anymore. Nine months earlier she slipped at the grocery store and broke her back in several places. She’d get on social security and disability, but not until she lost her job and the house.
“Mom, you ever see any ghosts out at the farm?” Newt dredged a raw steak strip through the egg wash and dipped it in a mix of flour and crumbled saltines.
Doris stepped back, away from the pan of spitting oil. “No, but I’m surprised I never did.”
“Why do you say that?”
“It’s just a feeling I always had, like I was being watched. And some nights I’d wake up in a different room, not knowing how I got there. And I am not a sleepwalker.”
“What if I told you I saw ghosts out there? Twice now. Would you believe me?”
“Of course I would, honey.” Doris lit a menthol while the steak strips fried. She rubbed her hands on her tie-dyed t-shirt and patted Newt’s shoulder. Newt was taken aback by her cool acceptance of Newt’s experience. He was ashamed for not sharing his first experience with his mother sooner. But before her fall she was always so stressed out by work and single parenting. He felt like an added burden. “Where did you see them?” she asked.
Newt shook his head and studied the green, mossy patterns of the linoleum on the kitchen floor. His mother’s question, rippled through his mind like the mossy rings at Frog Pond after throwing in a stone.
“In the upstairs bedroom a few years back. And just this last time, on the lane, right by Frog Pond. It was a thin woman, a dark dress, and a little baby.”
“Your Dad’s Aunt Pearl and his cousin, Maria,” Doris said, and shook her head.
“But I’ve never heard anyone mention it before, at all.”
“It’s hard for people to talk about,” Doris said. “Pearl drowned herself, and Maria with her.”
Newt shivered, thinking about the frog writhing out of Pearl’s mouth as Doris blew a long string of smoke out of hers.
“Your dad wouldn’t ever talk about it to me,” Doris said. “He’s a bit stunted emotionally, which I am sure you are finding out in your own time.”
“Were they close?”
“It was his favorite aunt. Pearl’s family lived out there too for a long time, before their family moved off to Texas after they died.”
“But why would she do a thing like that?” Newt said.
“Maria was born with a heart defect. The doctors gave her a couple years to live. She was always crying in pain. Couldn’t be consoled. Besides, Newt, why does anybody ever do anything?”
Newt shook his head and studied the green, mossy patterns of the linoleum on the kitchen floor. His mother’s question, rippled through his mind like the mossy rings at Frog Pond after throwing in a stone.
Over the years, Newt found that if he repeated that question to himself enough times, it became its answer, somehow. Why does anybody ever do anything?
Casey DW Jones grew up on the high-desert plains of Southwest Kansas. He studied literature at the University of Kansas and holds an MFA from Hamline University, where he served as an associate fiction editor for the Water~Stone Review. Casey was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize in fiction, and his short stories have appeared in Stoneboat Literary Journal, New Limestone Review, Peatsmoke Literary Journal, Sundog Lit, and Roanoke Review. A creative copywriter by trade, he resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota.