Katherine Rawson

Prompt: Three boys decide to go have some fun at the local swimming hole. Shortly after they arrive, something terrible happens.

Submission: “Gone Fishin’”

The pavement felt like it would melt his shoes and he ran across the driveway to the shade of a willow tree. Luke watched Brian squint behind his glasses that were always falling off his nose. He’d been wearing them for a year but he still couldn’t get used to the look of them. The trio had been best friends for as long as Luke could remember. Brian lived across the street from Billy, who lived next door to Luke and they spent their summer mowing lawns like most kids their age did.

Life seemed sublime as they ate the ice cream old lady Potter gave them along with ten dollars to mow the lawn around her house. She was a scary woman that wore two curlers above each ear and usually didn’t take them out except for church on Sunday. She wore elastic pants with matching pastel t-shirts with birds or some other nature scenes on them and her lipstick never fully covered her lips. Luke thought she smelled like powder but not the kind that his mom used on his baby sister. It smelled more like dead flowers people put in bathrooms.

Billy forced the last bit of his ice cream sandwich in his mouth and suggested they go down to the creek for a swim. He pronounced it ‘crick’ in the Pennsylvania dialect common in the rolling hills of Buck’s County that made Luke smile. He decided the dip would be a nice break so they left the mowers in old lady Potter’s barn then skirted around the stable. It was more of a storage shed actually, and Billy never missed an opportunity to recite his theory that Mrs. Potter killed her husband and stuffed his dead body in there. Luke’s hair stuck to the sweat on his forehead as he gave his opinion that Billy was crazy. After all, nothing like that ever happened in Doylestown. Brian advised them of a story he’d read about some woman in Quakertown who killed her husband last year and the arc of freckles on his cheeks lined up when he grinned.

They hadn’t seen Mr. Potter in months. The rumor was he’d left to go fishing but never returned. It didn’t make much sense to Luke why old lady Potter would kill her husband when time would’ve probably taken him soon anyway. He also didn’t know how an old man could just disappear but it really didn’t matter. If Mrs. Potter kept hiring them for odd jobs, he figured he might be able get the blue super sport mountain bike he’d been begging for. His dad pledged to pay half if Luke could come up with the remainder and he was almost there. He couldn’t wait for the 27-speed drive train, dual density grips and linear pull brakes.

He shrugged away the anticipation and led the rest of the way to the woods that marked the edge of Potter’s land. The creek babbled at the base of the steep hill that was blanketed with branches, dried leaves and moss. Billy lost his footing and slid most of the way down. Brian laughed. Luke figured Billy took the easy route and by the time Brian and Luke reached the bottom, Billy already had his shoes and shirt off. They raced to see who could get into the water first. Luke jumped in followed closely by the others in a chorus of laughter and splashing.

A gnarled branch had fallen in a lightning storm a couple weeks back and disturbed the normal flow of the creek. It brought the water to the top of their shoulders and the woods on either side shaded them from the afternoon sun making them feel ten degrees cooler almost immediately. Floating on his back, Brian zoned out while Billy and Brian spurted water from their fists.

Then something caught Billy’s eye ten feet away. He pointed and Luke grabbed Brian’s foot to gain his attention. None of them wanted to approach it and Luke thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. He felt cold, like when he had the flu last Winter. The water turned slimy against his skin.

Luke lost the draw, grabbed a long stick and inched closer. The other two watched him poke a few times until the floating log rolled over. A tackle box, clutched in the grasp of a waxy hand, bobbed to the surface. It brought a whole new meaning to the saying Gone Fishin’.

Copyright © 2009 Katherine Rawson. All rights reserved.