By Bob Johnson

Ferris stood in his sunroom, looking across the pond to where his neighbor Robert O’Connor mowed his backyard. A half dozen houses surrounded the gleaming two acres of water, all lawns but one impeccably maintained. The O’Connor yard alone was littered with dandelions and toys, its shoreline thick with cattails.

O’Connor’s son Jack played on the deck above his father, pounding on the railing with something—a claw hammer, Ferris decided.

He glanced at his wife. “That Jack O’Connor has the devil in him.”

Louise was home from work and reading a magazine on the sunroom couch. “He’s six years old,” she said, not looking up.

“Exactly. A boy that age needs a firm hand.”

Jack was distant enough that the sounds of his hammering came an instant after impact, yet even so Ferris made out fresh gouges in the wood.

“Ferris”—Louise set her magazine aside—“don’t stand there watching the neighbors like that. It’s creepy.” She stood and smoothed her slacks. “I’m going to fix you a scotch.”

Ferris lowered himself onto the couch. Since retiring from the post office, he walked eighteen holes of golf twice a week, and his varicose veins were killing him.

He loved his wife, though he didn’t like how she’d said his name just now: FER-ris. The word sounded foolish, tame, like the sparkly ride at the county fair everyone exclaims over from a distance, but only children and old people board once they arrive.

His given name was Paul, though he’d gone by his surname all his life, and everyone—his letter carriers at the post office, his golf partners, even the clerks at the grocery store—said it with affection and respect.

 Louise reappeared with a scotch in a tumbler. She sat and leaned against him.

“I got salt for the water softener,” Ferris said. “We were low.”

She drew back in mock amazement. “I don’t even know this man.”

Ferris sighed. At work he’d managed a million-dollar budget and a fleet of delivery trucks, all while suffering incursions—UPS, email—that would bring lesser men to their knees.

But let him vacuum a rug, and it was like he’d conquered Everest.

“How was golf?” Louise said.

“O’Connor came and everybody made a fuss.”

“Well, he’s certainly charming. An excellent golfer too, right?”

“I’ve been a member there for thirty years, and he shows up on a guest pass,” Ferris said. “I’m standing over my shot, and he says…” He sipped his scotch, then held the glass to his forehead.

“What did he say?”                        

Ferris’s voice took on an Irish brogue. “Hit the motherfucker, Ferry. We’re gettin’ old here, waitin’ on ya.”

Louise put a hand to her mouth. “Did people laugh?”

“Oh god, did they.” Ferris stretched to look toward the pond again. O’Connor had left off mowing and stood with his son on a strip of stones at the water’s edge, tossing bread to a fussy group of mallards. “Look at that. They’re on our side now because the boy wants to feed the ducks. They could do it from their own backyard, but that would require spraying the cattails, wouldn’t it?”

“He calls you Ferry?”

“I’m Ferry, Richard Marks is Dicky, Tom Strickland is Tommy. It’s an Irish thing, I guess.” A pair of red-winged blackbirds hovered over father and son. The creatures were so belligerent Ferris sometimes wore a pith helmet when he worked outside, though the O’Connors ignored them. “Peck ‘em,” he whispered.

“Sweetheart, let a boy feed the ducks.”

Ferris groaned and rested his fiery legs on the ottoman.

“Goodness, look at you,” Louise said. She bent to massage a swollen calf. “Rent a cart, for heaven’s sake.”

***

After dinner, Ferris washed the dishes while Louise changed for bed. Later Ferris returned to the sunroom and stood again at the screen.

This was his favorite hour—the gloaming, his father had called it—when the sun had slipped beneath the trees and his pond neighbors were settling in for the night. The air was dry and cool. A flock of geese passed overhead, crisp in silhouette.

He heard voices and looked to see the dark shapes of Robert and Jack O’Connor on the shoreline below. “That’s it, hold it flat-like in your fingers,” Robert was saying. The boy threw something side-armed across the water. Ferris followed the object by the splashes it made, fleeting blossoms against the blue-black surface.

O’Connor clapped. “There’s the lad. That was brilliant.”

“I’ll be goddamned,” Ferris muttered. He opened the sliding door to the deck. “Robert,” he called. “Here now, just a moment.” He limped down the stairs and onto the yard. The grass was wet on his bare feet. His legs throbbed.

O’Connor’s face was a balloon in the half-light, but Ferris made out his puckish grin. “The great white hunter, is it?” O’Connor said. “Where’s your helmet, Ferry?”

Ferris was huffing with pain and outrage. “I’ve asked Jack a dozen times not to throw my landscaping stones into the water. They cost three hundred dollars, not to mention the labor putting them down.”

“These stones we’re standing on?” O’Connor said. “There must be a million of ‘em.” Jack stood at his elbow, not looking Ferris in the eye.

“I don’t know the number,” Ferris said. “They’re delivered by the ton.” He spread his arms to take in the swath of river rock that, but for the O’Connor shore, bordered the pond. “If you’d come to our meetings, you’d know the trouble and expense your neighbors went through improving this area.”

“Jesus, it’s a retention pond.”

“And not a playground.” Ferris bent and peered into Jack’s face. “It’s boggy and unsafe.”

O’Connor snorted. “You don’t know shite about bogs, Ferry. We’ve got ‘em in Sligo that’d swallow ya whole.”

Ferris straightened. “I know you mean no harm, but please don’t call me Ferry. I’m old enough to be your father.”

The man’s smile disappeared. “Done,” he said. He put his hands on his son’s shoulders and steered him away. “Come, Jack. Let’s leave the lord to his manor.” As the two melted into the darkness Ferris heard him say, “Only in America would there be a rule against skipping stones.”

“It’s not a rule,” Ferris called after him. “It’s common courtesy.” He paused, then shouted, “Something you’d do well to learn.” He thought he heard laughter, though it may have been nightbirds in the cattails.

***

In the morning Ferris stayed in bed while Louise left for work. He normally got up and read the paper while she bustled about, but now he lay quietly until he heard the garage door shut, then rose and sat on the deck in the sun.

The pond gleamed below. Ducks were out in abundance.

He was a good neighbor. When he and Louise had moved to the woodsy subdivision three years before, he’d immediately used his connections to lobby for new streetlights, pothole repair, increased police patrols. And when the association treasurer reported a year-end surplus, he’d suggested the money be used to improve the retention ditch in the center of the neighborhood.

When Ferris had arrived, the area had been little more than a hollow, filling and emptying with the seasons. Soon he was studying the well system, researching how to feed the pond from the aquifer. He proposed dredging the marly bottom, spraying the cattails, installing a fountain to agitate the water and keep mosquitos away.

When other homeowners complained that only six houses surrounded the ditch, while there were fifty families in the development, Ferris replied that a lovely blue dot in its center would attract buyers, lift property values for all.

In the end the board agreed, allocating half the money for the project, three thousand dollars, the rest to be matched by the houses bordering the pond.

All signed on except the O’Connors—Robert the manager of a software company with a branch in the States, Maeve a stay-at-home mother.

“It’s a silly expense,” Robert said. “Buy a can of bug spray and be done with it.”

The matching dollars were divided by five instead of six, and the O’Connors’ shore was left to reeds and muck.

Yet you stand in my yard, Ferris thought, as his legs baked in the morning sun, and teach your son to throw my stones into the water. Who’s the silly one?

“Relax,” Louise had said when he came in the night before. “The last thing we need is a feud between households.”

“I don’t want that, of course,” Ferris had answered.

“I mean, you combine a stone and a pond and a boy….”

Ferris remembered fishing with his father a lifetime ago—youth and water and hot summer days—and he had to agree.

Now he rose and drove to Wal-Mart for algaecide but instead found himself searching for a gift for young Jack O’Connor. He had no use for Robert, but the fact that he equally disliked the boy confounded and dismayed him. He had a soft spot for youngsters, though he and Louise had been unable to have children of their own. He’d kept a bowl of hard candy at the post office, and he’d genuinely welcomed the smiling faces peeking at him above the counter.

You’re blaming the son for the sins of the father, he told himself, and that’s just wrong. Yes, Jack didn’t answer when Ferris spoke to him, drew away from his touch, didn’t return his smiles, but a wise adult rose above such insolence.

 He wandered the aisles, looking at baseball gloves (he and his father had played catch often) and fishing rods (he’d recently paid to have the pond stocked with bluegills), but decided finally on a soccer ball. Wherever he drove he saw children playing the game. He even parked sometimes and watched from the sidelines with the cheering families.

For all anyone knew, he was a proud grandfather himself.

He made the purchase and walked to his car, bouncing the ball merrily.

***

That afternoon Ferris sat on the deck and waited for the O’Connors to appear. Louise came home and suggested he eat something, but he waved her away. The sun was setting when father and son emerged from the house, and Ferris climbed down the stairs.

“Hello, men,” he called as he circled the pond. Robert held a golf club and Jack held a sawed-off club of his own, and until Ferris had hailed them, they’d been chipping balls into an inflatable pool.

“First of all,” Ferris said as he neared. “I apologize for last night. Yes, there are a million stones on my side of the pond, and you, Jack”—he smiled at the boy—“are welcome to skip them anytime.”

Jack peered at him beneath heavy brows. He was built like his father, short-legged and thick in the chest like a bull terrier.

“But it occurred to me”—Ferris produced the ball from behind his back—“you might prefer soccer instead. I saw you yesterday banging on your deck with a hammer, but I’ve never seen you play…you call it football, don’t you?”

“What do you say to Mr. Ferris?” O’Connor said.

“Thank you,” Jack said. He dropped his club and caught the ball when Ferris tossed it to him.

“And second”—Ferris gripped O’Connor’s hand—“I can be a stuffed shirt if I’m not careful. I don’t mind you calling me Ferry.”

O’Connor pressed his hand in return. “No bother, though I’ll be calling you Ferris going forward.”

“As you wish.” Ferris turned to the boy. “Whaddya say, Jack? Are you a soccer fan?”

When the child didn’t answer, his father spoke. “He’s mad for rugby these days, though we have a proper football inside somewhere.” He took the ball from his son and squeezed it, examining its seams.

Ferris’s mouth ached from smiling. “This isn’t a proper football?”

“It’s more a toy, in fairness, though we appreciate the trouble.”

“It’s no trouble!” Ferris snatched the ball away. “I played a little soccer myself in college,” he said to Jack. “I was a center forward. Do you know what that is?”

“Yes,” the boy said.

“I wonder if I still have the old moves.” Ferris dropped the ball between his feet. “Come on, try and take it from me.”

Jack eyed the ball and then his father. O’Connor rubbed his chin. “Go ahead, Jack. Take it from him.”

Ferris rested a foot on the ball and nodded toward the inflatable pool. “Here’s the plan. I’ll try to kick the ball into that pool, and you—”

The boy launched himself feet first across the ground. One sneaker sent the ball flying, and the other collided with Ferris’s swollen calf. He shouted and fell. His breath seethed in his jaws, he glimpsed blackbirds wheeling overhead. His calf was wet where he gripped it, and he twisted to see a smear of blood on his palm. 

“That little…he kicked me,” he gasped.

O’Connor was chuckling as he helped Ferris to his feet. “We’re still working on the proper slide tackle. It’s meant to get the ball clean, though he caught a bit of leg as well, didn’t he?” He looked at Ferris’s calf. “It’s scraped, is all. I’ll get Maeve to bring out a washrag and some—”

“I’m fine,” Ferris said furiously. He turned to hobble home.

“Jesus,” came O’Connor’s voice behind him. “The boy meant no harm.”

***

Ferris was sitting in the living room later when the doorbell rang. He’d taken three Advil and now held a bag of frozen peas to his calf. He was lightheaded and wiped cool sweat again and again from his face.

Louise answered the bell, and Ferris saw the O’Connors in the foyer, Maeve holding a pie plate wrapped in foil. The women went to the kitchen, and father and son came to the living room.

Robert sat and put a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “The boy has something to say.”

Jack stared at the floor. “I’m sorry I kicked you, Mr. Ferris,” he said, each word lilting upward like a question mark.

A clock on the mantle announced the hour. As the last stroke faded O’Connor said, “Sure now, Ferris. You know it was an accident.”

“I’d like Jack to tell me what happened,” Ferris said.

“We all know what happened.”

“Jack,” Ferris said to the boy, “I’ve been in the people business all my life. I’ve worked with all kinds—good, bad, and indifferent. You meant to kick me today, and I’d like to know why. Is it because I scolded your dad about the stones? Is it because—”

“Enough,” O’Connor said. “There’s no need to grill the child over nothing.”

Ferris leaned forward. “Jack, look me in the eye like a gentleman.”

O’Connor stood. “This is bollocks. I knew it was a fool’s errand.” The women appeared from the kitchen. O’Connor took pie plates from his wife’s hands and set them roughly down. “Let’s go, Maeve, before the mayor evicts us.”

Ferris tried to rise but cried out and grabbed his leg. “I’m the injured party here, not you,” he said loudly. “I have a right to know why the boy hurt me.”

O’Connor turned as he herded his family toward the door. “My son’s intentions are none of your business, are they?” His eyes were black, his lips shiny with spittle. “You heard me call you the mayor just now. Would it surprise you to know that’s what the whole neighborhood calls you?”

“Robert,” Maeve whispered.

“The whole lot of us,” O’Connor said. He covered his son’s ears. “Here comes the mayor, with his feckin’ stones and bluegills and know-it-all shite.”

***

The next evening Ferris sat alone in the sunroom, his leg in a medical stocking and propped on the ottoman. He’d awakened the previous night to a knot like a baseball on his calf. It was hot to the touch, and he trembled when he stood, and Louise finally drove him to the ER where the doctor said he was bleeding beneath the skin.

“These usually subside on their own,” the doctor had said, “though there’s always the risk of bursting and ulceration.” He prescribed painkillers and a compression stocking and suggested Ferris rent a cart when he returned to golf.

Now Ferris watched the sun slip below the trees and thought about Louise’s words over dinner: “I’m sure not everyone calls you the mayor. People appreciate all you do. They’ve told me so.”

She’d added other remarks in a similar vein, though when Ferris responded sourly she accused him of stewing in his own juices and left the house to run errands.

He looked at the houses circling the pond. Lights were coming on, golden fingers on the water’s surface. Windows at night had always swelled Ferris’s heart with affection. His neighbors—his pond people, he called them—were safe and happy, reading to their children, putting them to bed.

Knowing that those same people were mocking him—“the whole lot of us,” O’Connor had said—induced in him feelings of vertigo, as though his house was built on sand.

A sound interrupted his gloom. He gripped the armrests and pushed up from his seat but saw nothing in neighboring yards. The sound was coming from directly below. He cursed and limped to the screen and there was Jack O’Connor juggling the new soccer ball from toe to knee and back again across Ferris’ uncluttered lawn.

Isn’t that just a toy? Ferris thought. Don’t you have a proper one inside?

He looked toward the O’Connor house. A light shone from the kitchen, and an upstairs window had the bluish flutter of a television show.

He sighed and turned to his chair, stopping when the ball bounced off the boy’s knee and into the water.

What now, Jack? Ferris thought. The pond was just four feet at its deepest, though its bottom was a mix of marl and sand. After he’d sprayed the cattails on his shoreline and waded in days later to yank up the dead stems, Ferris was shocked at how fiercely the muck pulled him down.

The ball danced on the surface, pushed to and fro by the fountain. It was close enough to land that an adult with a rake might have been able to reach it, but Ferris could hardly walk. Besides, Jack’s troubles weren’t his troubles, were they?

The boy paced the water’s edge, then sat and propped his elbows on his knees. Pouting, Ferris decided. Waiting for someone to rescue him.

“You’re on your own, young man,” he said softly. 

As if in answer, Jack unlaced his sneakers, then stood and pulled off his shorts and t-shirt. His young body was ghostly in the twilight.

“No,” Ferris said. He slid open the door and hobbled onto the deck. “Ja—” he started to call, but swallowed the sound before it left his mouth. He watched silently as Jack stepped carefully from the stones into the water. In an instant he was up to his knees.

The boy would retrieve the ball and make his way back to shore, Ferris told himself. He’d be a foul mess, and his parents would rightfully punish him when he got home.

On the other hand, if he got stuck, if he got into trouble—

Again, Ferris made to call the boy’s name, and again he stopped himself.

If he got into trouble, he’d have his own self to blame, wouldn’t he? He knew better than to wade in the pond—Ferris had warned him of the danger many times—but some boys had to learn the hard way.

Ferris imagined a later conversation with Robert O’Connor: “Let a child do exactly what he wants—no guidance, no discipline—and this is what happens, isn’t it?”

The boy was waist deep now, the ball spinning beyond his fingertips. He stumbled, then slapped the water in frustration. A door opened and shut and Ferris looked across the pond, expecting to see Robert or Maeve coming out to call the boy, but the O’Connor yard was empty, the house unchanged.

He peered again toward the water, and where there’d been two objects breaking the black surface—the soccer ball and Jack’s pale body—there was now only one. The ball twirled alone in the fountain’s spray, farther than ever from shore.

Ferris gaped. Surely his eyes were playing tricks on him. Surely Jack had given up and returned to land. He must be standing at the water’s edge, pulling on his shorts, tying his shoes. Surely his white skin was mingling with the stones. Surely he—

“Jack!” Ferris shouted. “Jack!” He held his breath and listened. Frogs jeered in the cattails, geese honked overhead, the fountain pulsed and whispered.

He gripped the railing and bellowed. “Help! Help!”

No answering shout came. No neighbor rushed from a back door or clambered down wooden stairs.

He shouted once more—“Robert! Maeve!”—then stumbled from the deck to the lawn. His injured leg barely obeyed, he all but dragged it across the grass. He reached the stones and plunged into the water, the cold taking his breath away. The muck seized him and sucked him down, but he labored through it, searching for the soccer ball. The boy had been nearly upon it when he vanished. He’d be near it still, wouldn’t he?

“Oh lord, lord,” Ferris cried when he spied the ball halfway across the pond.

He spun this way and that, sweeping his arms before him like scythe blades. The boy had disappeared only yards from the shore. There was no undertow to speak of. Where he’d gone down was where he was now. It was only a matter of—

His hands found an arm, a fistful of hair, a face. He gripped the child by the ears and heaved. The mud resisted, but Ferris’ will was stronger. In a moment Jack’s head emerged, lolling sideways like a bag of sand.

Ferris lurched to shore, threw the boy onto the grass, and fell on top of him. He had required CPR training of his carriers and had himself been a volunteer fireman, and he pumped Jack’s chest and breathed into his lungs until the boy coughed and vomited. His eyes opened and he began to wail, and Ferris flung him over his shoulder and staggered to the O’Connor house.

There he pounded on the door until Robert opened it, and Ferris dropped the squalling child into his arms.

***

An hour later Ferris sat on the deck and stared silently forward. He hadn’t changed clothes, and his shorts and the medical stocking were rank with muck and algae.

Maeve O’Connor had been there a half hour before and wept in his arms. He’d been at the window, he told her, and by the grace of God had seen the boy wade into the pond. He’d rushed onto the deck and shouted. Jack had looked his way—he’d clearly heard Ferris’ warning—but as always paid him no heed.

“If you raised that boy with a firmer…” he’d begun, but the lie he’d just told stopped in his throat like a chunk of gristle. “I’m grateful I was able to get to Jack in time,” he’d finally said. “I did what any good neighbor would do.”

After the woman left, Louise came out and begged Ferris to come inside, to take a hot shower, to go to bed. “What are you so gloomy about?” she said. “You did a wonderful thing.”

In another ten minutes she came out again and stood over him. “I talked with the doctor just now. He said we have no idea what’s in that water. He said you’ll pay dearly if you get an infection.”

The windows around the pond were dark. Night creatures sang from the reeds.

“Leave me alone,” Ferris said, breathing deeply of his own stink. “I want to pay.”

~~~

Bob Johnson’s short story collection The Continental Divide was published in February by Cornerstone Press, and subsequently received a glowing review in the New York Times by Stuart Dybek. Bob’s stories have appeared in The Common, The Hudson Review, Vol.1 Brooklyn, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Bob lives and writes in South Bend, Indiana.