Quicksand Pond

by Janet Taylor Lisle

  “Oh, I won’t!” Jonathan whispered. “Thanks so much, Terri. I’ll be really, really careful!”

  Terri never went inside their house either. Even the one time Jessie invited her in when no one was home, Terri shook her head.

  “I’ve got muddy feet,” she said. “I don’t want to mess anything up. I’ll see you tomorrow.” She jogged off and was gone, back to the other end of the pond.

  Mornings were when they got the most done. Jessie began to feel a real happiness working beside Terri. She was so smart and good with her hands. And determined, no matter what. Even if she smashed her finger with the crowbar, which happened a lot, she never got mad. She’d jump around, whistling and blowing on it, laugh at herself, and get back to work.

  “You don’t give up, do you?” Jessie said once, so admiringly that Terri turned away and pretended not to hear. But a minute later she offered Jessie half of a peanut butter sandwich she had in her pocket. It looked a little squashed. Jessie said, “No thanks.”

  “I always carry food. Just in case,” Terri said, tucking the sandwich away.

  “In case of what?”

  “Oh, you know, of what might happen. Like I might get caught somewhere and have to be there for a while. It probably doesn’t happen that much to you.”

  Jessie agreed that it didn’t.

  When it was time to quit, they’d walk down the shore in opposite directions and wave from a distance.

  “You don’t have to come all the way to my house tomorrow,” Jessie would sometimes call. “I can meet you here.”

  But the next morning, when Jessie glanced out, Terri would be sitting on the grass in the Kettels’ front yard. She’d be wearing her brother’s too-big flip-flops and her same cutoff jeans and a blue plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up. She looked so much the same that sometimes Jessie wondered if she’d slept there.

  One morning Jessie’s father got up earlier than usual.

  “I brought a croissant out to Terri,” he said when Jessie came into the kitchen. “We had a nice conversation. She told me she lives down at the end of the pond.”

  “I guess she does,” Jessie said quickly. She was so afraid her father would go out and talk to Terri again, and find out who her family was, that she grabbed a croissant and ran to meet her before anything else could happen.

  “You’re getting here so early. Nobody’s even awake when you come!” she said when they’d walked clear of the yard.

  “Is that a problem?”

  Jessie didn’t want to say it was.

  “Your dad came out and talked to me. We had a great conversation,” Terri said. “I really like him.”

  “I know. He told me.”

  “He kept inviting me in. He seemed pretty cool about everything.”

  “Well, he isn’t always. He can be a real pain,” Jessie said sharply.

  Terri glanced at her. She stopped walking and made Jessie stop so they could be face-to-face.

  “What’s the matter? Is something wrong?”

  Jessie said there wasn’t.

  “Can’t your dad talk to me if he wants to? Did somebody say something against me?”

  Jessie was embarrassed. “No, of course not! Come whenever you want. It’s fine, really!”

  Terri looked relieved.

  “Well, good. I like to come,” she said. “I like sitting and watching the sun rise over your house. I like how everyone gets up for breakfast and everything starts, real quiet and easy.”

  “That’s because we’re on vacation,” Jessie said. “You should see us back home when we have school. My mom is trying to get Jonathan dressed, and my dad is making breakfast and burning the toast, and we’re all yelling that we’re going to be late. It’s a madhouse.”

  Terri started walking again. “See, to me, that doesn’t sound that bad,” she said over her shoulder.

  * * *

  They arrived at the raft site that day to find a whirl of activity going on up at the Cutting house. Cars were pulling into the driveway. People were rushing around. A woman in a white coat emerged on the wide porch overlooking the pond and walked from one end to the other. Jessie and Terri crouched down behind the bushes in the field.

  Terri whispered, “That’s the live-in. She’s the main one that takes care of the old lady. Looks like she’s on the warpath.”

  Jessie flattened herself on the ground. The woman’s head was turning left and right, spying into corners of the yard.

  “Maybe something happened to her,” Terri whispered.

  “Who?”

  “Miss Cutting. Sometimes she gets loose and wanders around here. She’s kind of mental now.”

  “Mental how? Does she have Alzheimer’s?”

  “Whatever. They keep her locked up most of the time. She could get lost or fall in the pond. She was never quite right in the head since she was a kid. You know, after everything that happened. Now it’s gotten worse. At least, that’s what I heard.”

  “So tell me again—”

  “Not now!” Terri hissed. “Look. There she is!”

  Jessie looked up. A shadowy figure was moving toward them through the bushes. Long and thin, it disappeared for a minute behind a mass of green leaves. In the next moment a very old woman appeared several yards away, walking with a halting step.

  “Hello?” she called in a trembling voice. She staggered and fell.

  Jessie and Terri watched her go down in silence. They watched her struggle to get back up. She grasped a nearby bush with both hands and pulled herself to her feet with a groan. Her glasses had slid sideways. She reached up to hook one dangling side back behind an ear. With Jessie and Terri once again in view, she smiled.

  “There you are! So silly of me. What you must think! An old woman in her dotage. But here I am, nevertheless! Free for a moment. I wanted to come down and speak to you girls. I’ve been watching you. I know what you’re doing.”

  “We haven’t stolen anything—” Terri began.

  “Of course not!” Miss Cutting interrupted. “That’s what I’ve come to say. It’s all yours. I haven’t been out on it since I was a girl, of course. It’s in bad shape, I can see. But you must feel free to use it. Yours. I’m delighted. I give my raft to you. There!”

  She stretched her hands out toward Terri, who lurched back out of reach. Jessie stepped forward. She clasped hands with Miss Cutting and smiled at her.

  “Thank you so much! It’s so nice of you to come down and tell us.” The old lady’s fingers felt like a bundle of dry sticks.

  “Not at all. Not at all. I’m only too pleased. I would invite you both up to the house, but . . .”

  They turned to look up there. The hustle and bustle was continuing. People were congregated on the porch, walking down the porch steps, fanning out across the lawn in several directions.

  “They’ll have the dogs out soon!” the old lady said gaily.

  “Dogs!” Terri looked truly alarmed.

  Henrietta Cutting glanced at her with special interest.

  “You live at the end of the pond, don’t you? I’ve seen you from the window. I thought you were one of the Coopers at first, but you don’t look like them. That family was red-haired.”

  Terri took another nervous step back.

  “You needn’t worry, there aren’t any dogs,” Miss Cutting assured her. “I only meant that I don’t have much time. They’ll be looking for me down here if I don’t go back. And we can’t have that, can we?”

  Terri said faintly, “No.”

  “It’s up to you girls to keep our secret down here. And up to me to keep it up there.” Miss Cutting leaned forward and lowered her voice. “I’m counting on you both, you know.”

  “For what?” Jessie asked.

  At this moment the chattering on the porch rose to a more frantic pitch and from its midst a single voice shrieked through the air.

  “Henrietta! Where are you? I’ve had enough of this. Come back here at once!”

  “That is the bark of m
y private nurse,” Henrietta told the girls. “Stay away from her, whatever you do. She would ruin everything. I will be in touch again soon!”

  She turned and stumbled uphill through the bushes. Jessie and Terri lay back down on the ground and watched her go. In a little while they heard the sounds of her arrival at the house. “Goodness, where have you been?” and “We were so worried! You must never go off that way again!”

  They saw the old woman being handed up the steps of the porch and taken indoors. The people on the porch went inside after her. A little while later the cars in the driveway began to leave.

  “That’s so strange, her coming down here,” Jessie whispered. “Was this really her raft?”

  Terri laughed. “Get real. If she ever had one, it would’ve rotted years ago. I wouldn’t believe anything that lady says. She’s crazy as a loon, doesn’t hardly know what century she’s in.”

  “Who are the Coopers?”

  “That’s what I mean. That family was here years ago, before I was even born. They lived where the old chimney is now. A hurricane took out their house and they never came back.”

  “Well, she seems not to mind us fixing up the raft,” Jessie said. “She seems to want us here.”

  “I wouldn’t bet on it,” Terri said grimly. “People say things like that all the time. Then they change their minds and call the police.”

  “I don’t think she’d do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “She just seemed really nice.”

  Terri stared at her. “You don’t know,” she said. “You don’t know how things work. Anyway, I’m not sticking around. Let’s give the raft a rest. I’ve got stuff to do at home.”

  Jessie nodded. “Sure. What about tomorrow?”

  “I don’t know yet. Maybe. I’ll see how it goes.”

  Terri jogged off in the direction of her house.

  But the next morning she was not waiting outside the Kettels’ cottage. She was not at the raft when Jessie tramped over to the Cuttings’ field after breakfast. That day, she never came. Jessie hung around for an hour, wondering if Miss Cutting’s strange appearance had scared her off for good. She didn’t dare go on to the Carrs’ house to find out.

  She walked slowly home, turning once to glance up at the closed face of the grand house above. If Miss Cutting was watching, there was no way to tell. The doors were shut tight. The windows showed only a pale reflection of the sky. You’d never know that anyone was living inside.

  Unless you’d met her, Jessie thought. And what was it that poor, crazy Henrietta Cutting was counting on them to do?

  NINE

  What happened to the Silent Lamb?” Jessie shouted up to Julia.

  They were walking along the weedy border of the road, on their way to the beach. Every vehicle that went by sent a hard buffet of wind into their faces.

  “What?” shouted Julia, without breaking stride.

  “Your preppy boyfriend with the car. What’s his name, Aaron something? Where is he?”

  “He was not ever my boyfriend!” Julia yelled back. A line of five or six cars passed, making conversation impossible. It was after eleven. Extreme heat was forecast. The sun blazed from a sapphire sky. Without Terri, Jessie was at loose ends. Julia had said she could tag along with her to the beach, if she didn’t mind walking.

  “So you dumped him already?” Jessie asked during a lull.

  Julia didn’t answer. She strode ahead under the scrutiny of passing traffic, dark brown hair streaming back in the breeze. Jessie, who disliked being observed by strangers in public places, trailed behind. When her bangs blew up in a gust of wind, she pushed them flat with her hand and held them there.

  They had on backpacks stocked with towels, sandwiches, sunblock, and other supplies for the day. Their suits were under their clothes—in Julia’s case, a man-size chamois shirt that ended just above her knees, leaving her long, slim legs charmingly on view. She was walking barefoot and gave a little leap from time to time to avoid a rock or piece of roadside glass. At intervals she paused to check her cell phone, which occasionally connected, though never long enough to hold a conversation.

  “This is such a nuisance !” she said after each stop.

  Jessie wore the rubber flip-flops Terri had given her and, embarrassed by the bathing suit her mother had made her buy (big ruffles in front), an army-green waterproof poncho that dropped to midcalf.

  “I see treacherous weather on the horizon,” her father had teased as she left the house. “A typhoon blowing up from the West Indies.”

  “Dad, that is so totally rude!”

  They reached the beach and chose a place to spread their towels among the crowd of umbrellas. People were lying or sitting everywhere on the sand. The water was packed with swimmers. Out on the rocks children were jumping off diving boards cemented at different levels into the stone. The high dive was especially popular. With every launch, delirious screams of terror echoed inshore.

  “I may not be staying here, depending on who I run into,” Julia announced. She took off her chamois shirt and stretched out on her towel in a sinuous, catlike way that, to Jessie, was completely insufferable.

  “What is that book you’re reading?” Julia asked.

  “Invisible Man,” Jessie said. She pulled off her poncho and sat down. “It’s about racism. How some people are so blinded by prejudice they can’t see the real person right in front of them,” she explained, though her sister’s eyes had closed and it was obvious she wasn’t really listening. “To them, the real person is completely invisible.”

  “I can never read on beaches,” murmured Julia. This was surprising, since to Jessie’s knowledge, she’d never been on a real ocean beach before this trip. It didn’t seem safe to challenge her, though. Jessie hunched cross-legged on her towel, squinting down at a page whose print was blanked by the dazzling sun.

  “Beaches are such healthful places,” Julia continued in an irritating tone. “All human beings, given a choice, feel happiest near large bodies of water. There’s something about looking out over water that brings peace to the soul.”

  Jessie glanced out to sea. Her soul did not feel at peace. What was going on with Terri?

  “It’s a chemical thing,” Julia said, lying perfectly still on her towel while an active beauty blazed forth from her skin. “Our cells respond somehow. We came from the sea, you know. It’s like looking at our mother.”

  “Get real,” Jessie said, quoting Terri. “There’s someone coming,” she added. A male figure in red swim trunks was making his way toward them with decisive steps.

  Julia sat up to look and quickly lay back down. She shut her eyes. “Aaron Bostwick. Don’t talk to him.”

  He arrived and stood over them, blocking their sun.

  “I thought I was picking you up,” he burst out to Julia. “You could have told me, you know.”

  “Told you what?” Julia asked, breaking her own vow of silence but keeping her eyes closed.

  “That you were walking!” Aaron Bostwick’s voice rose to a plaintive tenor. “I wasn’t even planning to be at the beach today. If I’d known you didn’t need a ride, I wouldn’t’ve even bothered to come. There’s plenty of other things I could do, you know.”

  “So go and do them,” Julia said. “What’s stopping you?”

  Aaron’s shadow shifted away with a jerk, allowing the sun to blaze down on them. He made a strange noise that sounded like a clogged drain. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “I have no idea,” Julia said. “You tell me.”

  A long silence opened up. Jessie lowered her head and glued her eyes to the invisible print of Invisible Man.

  “Well, do you want me to pick you up anymore or not?” Aaron said finally, shadowing them again. His voice had come down a notch. “At least you should tell me that.”

  Julia nodded slowly, as if she’d lost track of the conversation, or perhaps was even falling asleep.

  “Well, what?” Aaron said. “What
do you want?”

  Julia shook her head no.

  “You know, you could at least look at me,” Aaron said. “You could at least say something! I can’t believe this!”

  Julia sighed and sat up. She put on her sunglasses and looked at him. “Is that better?”

  This comment caused an eruption that could only be described as volcanic. “You are so bad!” he shouted at her. “You ask me to drive you, and then you don’t even wait for me to come. You just kind of forget, or I don’t know, as if it’s not even important.”

  “Is it important?” Julia asked, adjusting her sunglasses.

  “You’re going to be sorry you said that,” Aaron Bostwick announced darkly. “You can’t just be that way with people. You’ll see. You can’t!”

  He rushed off toward the clubhouse, returning Jessie and Julia to the sun’s blaze. Julia lay back on her towel.

  “Well, you certainly got him worked up,” Jessie said. “The Silent Lamb can speak when he wants to.”

  “He’s an idiot. Everybody thinks so.”

  “He’s pretty mad now, that’s for sure.”

  “He’ll get over it.”

  Julia rolled onto her stomach and put a hat over her head. In this position she apparently really did go to sleep, because for an hour or more no sound came from her. Eventually she stirred again and yawned and said: “I’m expecting to meet someone around now, I think.”

  But then, since no one came, she sat up and ate her sandwich and began to talk about something that actually interested Jessie.

  “You know that big house we can see on the pond? It’s famous around here because a terrible murder happened there once. Some kids were talking about it. Some maniacs went into the house to rob it and got the owners out of bed. They took them downstairs and shot them. Then they went upstairs to look for their little daughter. She’d seen them commit the murders, I guess. So they hunted and hunted, but in the end they couldn’t find her. Then they robbed the house, took jewelry and a lot of other stuff. Afterward the police caught the main killer, but the daughter was too upset to be at the trial. She had to be sent away. Years later she came back and started accusing people around town of being murderers. Like people she ran into, all of a sudden she’d point at them and say ‘Murderer!’ in a terrible voice. Actually, she’s still there in that house. They keep her inside most of the time.”