Slowly, Slowly in the Wind Read online

Before 5 P.M., Elinor rang the rental agent. She asked if it would be all right with the house-owner if she had the pond drained. Price wasn’t of much concern to her, but she didn’t tell Mr. Adams that.

  “It might seep up again,” said Mr. Adams. “The land’s pretty low. Especially when it rains and—”

  “I really don’t mind trying it. It might help,” Elinor said. “You know how it is with a small child. I have the feeling it isn’t quite safe.”

  Mr. Adams said he would telephone a company tomorrow morning. “Even this afternoon, if I can reach them.”

  Mr. Adams telephoned back in ten minutes and told Elinor that the workmen would arrive the next morning, probably quite early.

  The workmen came at 8 A.M. After speaking with the two men, Elinor took Chris with her in the car to the library in Hartford. She deposited Chris in the children’s book section, and told the woman in charge there that she would be back in an hour for Chris, and in case he got restless, she would be in the newspaper archives.

  When she and Chris got back home, the pond was empty but muddy. If anything, it looked worse, uglier. It was a crater of wet mud laced with green vines, some as thick as a cigarette. The depression in the garden was hardly four feet deep. But how deep was the mud?

  “I’m sorry,” said Chris, gazing down.

  Elinor laughed. “Sorry?—The pond’s not the only thing to play with. Look at the trees we’ve got! What about the seeds we bought? What do you say we clear a patch and plant some carrots and radishes—now.”

  Elinor changed into blue jeans. The clearing of weeds and the planting took longer than she had thought it would, nearly two hours. She worked with a fork and a trowel, both a bit rusty, which she’d found in the toolshed behind the house. Chris drew a bucket of water from the outside faucet and lugged it over, but while she and Chris were putting the seeds carefully in, one inch deep, a roll of thunder crossed the heavens. The sun had vanished. Within seconds, rain was pelting down, big drops that made them run for the house.

  “Isn’t that wonderful? Look!” Elinor held Chris up so he could see out of a kitchen window. “We don’t need to water our seeds. Nature’s doing it for us.”

  “Who’s nature?”

  Elinor smiled, tired now. “Nature rules everything. Nature knows best. The garden’s going to look fresh and new tomorrow.”

  The following morning, the garden did look rejuvenated, the grass greener, the scraggly rose bushes more erect. The sun was shining again. And Elinor had her first letter. It was from Cliff’s mother in Evanston. It said:

  Dearest Elinor,

  We both hope you are feeling more cheerful in your Connecticut house. Do drop us a line or telephone us when you find the time, but we know you are busy getting settled, not to mention getting back to your own work. We send you all good wishes for success with your next articles, and you must keep us posted.

  The Polaroid shots of Chris in his bath are a joy to us! You mustn’t say he looks more like Cliff than you. He looks like both of you . . .

  The letter lifted Elinor’s spirits. She went out to see if the carrot and radish seeds had been beaten to the surface by the rain—in which case she meant to push them down again if she could see them—but the first thing that caught her eye was Chris, stooped again by the pond and poking at something with a stick. And the second thing she noticed was that the pond was full again. Almost as high as ever! Well, naturally, because of the hard rain. Or was it natural? It had to be. Maybe there was a spring below. Anyway, she thought, why should she pay for the draining if it didn’t stay drained? She’d have to ring the company today. Miller Brothers, it was called.

  “Chris? What’re you up to?”

  “Frog!” he yelled back. “I think I saw a frog.”

  “Well, don’t try to catch it!” Damn the weeds! They were back in full force, as if the brief draining had done them good. Elinor went to the toolshed. She thought she remembered seeing a pair of hedge clippers on the cement floor there.

  Elinor found the clippers, rusted, and though she was eager to attack the vines, she forced herself to go to the kitchen first and put a couple of drops of salad oil on the center screw of the clippers. Then she went out and started on the long, grapevine-like stems. The clippers were dull, but better than nothing, faster than scissors.

  “What’re you doing that for?” Chris asked.

  “They’re nasty things,” Elinor said. “Clogging the pond. We don’t want a messy pond, do we?” Whack-whack! Elinor’s espadrilles sank into the wet bank. What on earth did the owners, or the former tenants, use the pond for? Goldfish? Ducks?

  A carp, Elinor thought suddenly. If the pond was going to stay a pond, then a carp was the thing to clean it, nibble at some of the vegetation. She’d buy one.

  “If you ever fall in, Chris—”

  “What?” Chris, still stooped, on the other side of the pond now, flung his stick away.

  “For goodness’ sake, don’t fall in, but if you do—” Elinor forced herself to go on “—grab hold of these vines. You see? They’re strong and growing from the edges. Pull yourself out by them.” Actually, the vines seemed to be growing from underwater as well, and pulling at those might send Chris into the pond.

  Chris grinned, sideways. “That’s not deep. Not even deep as I am.”

  Elinor said nothing.

  The rest of that morning she worked on her law article, then telephoned Miller Brothers.

  “Well, the ground’s a little low there, ma’am. Not to mention the old cesspool’s nearby and it still gets the drain from the kitchen sink, even though the toilets’ve been put on the mains. We know that house. Pond’ll get it too if you’ve got a washing machine in the kitchen.”

  Elinor hadn’t. “You mean, draining it is hopeless.”

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  Elinor tried to force her anger down. “Then I don’t know why you agreed to do it.”

  “Because you seemed set on it, ma’am.”

  They hung up a few seconds later. What was she going to do about the bill when they presented it? She’d perhaps make them knock it down a bit. But she felt the situation was inconclusive. Elinor hated that.

  While Chris was taking his nap, Elinor made a quick trip to Hartford, found a fish shop, and brought back a carp in a red plastic bucket which she had taken with her in the car. The fish flopped about in a vigorous way, and Elinor drove slowly, so the bucket wouldn’t tip over. She went at once to the pond, and poured the fish in.

  It was a fat, silvery carp. Its tail flicked the surface as it dove, then it rose and dove again, apparently happy in wider seas. Elinor smiled. The carp would surely eat some of the vines, the algae. She’d give it bread too. Carps could eat anything. Cliff had used to say there was nothing like carp to keep a pond or a lake clean. Above all, Elinor liked the idea that there was something alive in the pond besides vines. She started to walk back to the house, and found that a vine had encircled her left ankle. When she tried to kick her foot free, the vine tightened. She stooped and unwound it. That was one she hadn’t whacked this morning. Or had it grown ten inches since this morning? Impossible. But now as she looked down at the pond and at its border, she couldn’t see that she had accomplished much, even though she’d fished out quite a heap. The heap was a few feet away on the grass, in case she doubted it. Elinor blinked. She had the feeling that if she watched the pond closely, she’d be able to see the tentacles growing. She didn’t like that idea.

  Should she tell Chris about the carp? Elinor didn’t want him trying to find it, poking into the water. On the other hand, if she didn’t mention it, maybe he’d see it and have some crazy idea of catching it. Better to tell him, she decided.

  So when Chris woke up, Elinor told him about the fish.

  “You can toss some bread to him,” Elinor said.
“But don’t try to catch him, because he likes the pond. He’s going to help us keep it clean.”

  “You don’t want ever to catch him?” Chris asked, with milk all over his upper lip.

  He was thinking of Cliff, Elinor knew. Cliff had loved fishing. “We don’t catch this one, Chris. He’s our friend.”

  Elinor worked. She had set up her typewriter in a front corner room upstairs which had light from two windows. The article was coming along nicely. She had a lot of original material from newspaper clippings. The theme was alerting the public to free legal advice from small claims offices which most people didn’t know existed. Lots of people let sums like $250 go by the board, because they thought it wasn’t worth the trouble of a court fight. Elinor worked until 6:30. Dinner was simple tonight, macaroni and cheese with bacon, one of Chris’s favorite dishes. With the dinner in the oven, Elinor took a quick bath and put on blue slacks and a fresh blouse. She paused to look at the photograph of Cliff on the dressing table—a photograph in a silver frame which had been a present from Cliff’s parents one Christmas. It was an ordinary black and white enlargement, Cliff sitting on the bank of a stream, propped against a tree, an old straw hat tipped back on his head. That had been taken somewhere outside Evanston, on one of their summer trips to visit his parents. Cliff held a straw or a blade of grass lazily between his lips. His denim shirt was open at the neck. No one, looking at the hillbilly image, would imagine that Cliff had had to dress up in white tie a couple of times a month in Paris, Rome, London or Ankara. Cliff had been in the diplomatic service, assistant or deputy to American statesmen, gifted in languages, gifted in tact. He’d known how to use a pistol also, and once a month in New York he’d gone to a certain armory for practice. What had he done exactly? Elinor knew only sketchy anecdotes that Cliff had told her. He had done enough, however, to be paid a good salary, to be paid to keep silent, even to her. It had crossed her mind that his plane was wrecked to kill him, but she was sure that was absurd. Cliff hadn’t been that important. His death had been an accident, not due to the weather but to a mechanical failure in the plane.

  What would Cliff think of the pond? Elinor smiled wryly. Would he have it filled in with stones, turn it into a rock garden? Would he fill it in with earth? Would he pay no attention at all to the pond? Just call it “nature?”

  Two days later, when Elinor was typing a final draft of her article, she stopped at noon and went out into the garden for some fresh air. She’d brought the kitchen scissors, and she cut two red roses and one white rose to put on the table at lunch. Then the pond caught her eye, a blaze of chartreuse in the sunlight.

  “Good Lord!” she whispered.

  The vines! The weeds! They were all over the surface. And they were again climbing onto the land. Well, this was one thing she could and would see about: she’d find an exterminator. She didn’t care what poison they put down in the pond, if they could clear it. And of course she’d rescue the carp first, keep him in a bucket till the pond was safe again.

  An exterminator was something Jane Caldwell might know about.

  Elinor telephoned Jane before she started lunch. “This pond,” Elinor began and stopped, because she had so much to say about it. “I had it drained a few days ago, and now it’s filled up again. . . No, that’s not really the problem. I’ve given up the draining, it’s the unbelievable vines. The way they grow! I wonder if you know a weed-killing company? I think it’ll take professional—I mean, I don’t think I can just toss some liquid poison in and get anywhere. You’ll have to see this pond to believe it. It’s like a jungle!”

  “I know just the right people,” Jane said. “They’re called ‘Weed-Killer,’ so it’s easy to remember. You’ve got a phone book there?”

  Elinor had. Jane said Weed-Killer was very obliging and wouldn’t make her wait a week before they turned up.

  “How about you and Chris coming over for tea this afternoon?” Jane asked. “I just made a coconut cake.”

  “Love to. Thank you.” Elinor felt cheered.

  She made lunch for herself and Chris, and told him they were invited to tea at the house of their neighbor Jane, and that he’d meet a boy called Bill. After lunch, Elinor looked up Weed-Killer in the telephone book and rang them.

  “It’s a lot of weeds in a pond,” Elinor said. “Can you deal with that?”

  The man assured her they were experts at weeds in ponds, and promised to come the following morning. Elinor wanted to work for an hour or so until it was time to go to Jane’s, but she felt compelled to catch the carp now, or to try to. If she failed, she’d tell the men about it tomorrow, and probably they’d have a net on a long handle and could catch it. Elinor took her vegetable sieve which had a handle some ten inches long, and also some pieces of bread.

  Not seeing the carp, Elinor tossed the bread onto the surface. Some pieces floated, others sank and were trapped among the vines. Elinor circled the pond, her sieve ready. She had half filled the plastic bucket and it sat on the bank.

  Suddenly she saw the fish. It was horizontal and motionless, a couple of inches under the surface. It was dead, she realized, and kept from the surface only by the vines that held it under. Dead from what? The water didn’t look dirty, in fact was rather clear. What could kill a carp? Cliff had always said—

  Elinor’s eyes were full of tears. Tears for the carp? Nonsense. Tears of frustration, maybe. She stooped and tried to reach the carp with the sieve. The sieve was a foot short, and she wasn’t going to muddy her tennis shoes by wading in. Not now. Best to work a bit this afternoon, and let the workmen lift it out tomorrow.

  “What’re you doing, Mommy?” Chris came trotting towards her.

  “Nothing. I’m going to work a little now. I thought you were watching TV.”

  “It’s no good. Where’s the fish?”

  Elinor took his wrist, swung him around. “The fish is fine. Now come back and we’ll try the TV again.” Elinor tried to think of something else that might amuse him. It wasn’t one of his napping days, obviously. “Tell you what, Chris, you choose one of your toys to take to Bill. Make him a present. All right?”

  “One of my toys?”

  Elinor smiled. Chris was generous by nature and she meant to nurture this trait. “Yes, one of yours. Even one you like—like your paratrooper. Or one of your books. You choose it. Bill’s going to be your friend, and you want to start out right, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” And Chris seemed to be pondering already, going over his store of goodies in his room upstairs.

  Elinor locked the back door with its bolt, which was on a level with her eyes. She didn’t want Chris going into the garden, maybe seeing the carp. “I’ll be in my room, and I’ll see you at four. You might put on a clean pair of jeans at four—if you remember to.”

  Elinor worked, and quite well. It was pleasant to have a tea date to look forward to. Soon, she thought, she’d ask Jane and her husband for drinks. She didn’t want people to think she was a melancholy widow. It had been three months since Cliff’s death. Elinor thought she’d got over the worst of her grief in those first two weeks, the weeks of shock. Had she really? For the past six weeks she’d been able to work. That was something. Cliff’s insurance plus his pension made her financially comfortable, but she needed to work to be happy.

  When she glanced at her watch, it was ten to four. “Chrissy!” Elinor called to her half-open door. “Changed your jeans?”

  She pushed open Chris’s door across the hall. He was not in his room, and there were more toys and books on the floor than usual, indicating that Chris had been trying to select something to give Bill. Elinor went downstairs where the TV was still murmuring, but Chris wasn’t in the living room. Nor was he in the kitchen. She saw that the back door was still bolted. Chris wasn’t on the front lawn either. Of course he could have gone to the garden via the front door. Elinor unbolted the kitchen
door and went out.

  “Chris?” She glanced everywhere, then focused on the pond. She had seen a light-colored patch in its center. “Chris!” She ran.

  He was face down, feet out of sight, blond head nearly submerged. Elinor plunged in, up to her knees, her thighs, seized Chris’s legs and pulled him out, slipped, sat down in the water and got soaked as high as her breasts. She struggled to her feet, holding Chris by the waist. Shouldn’t she try to let the water run out of his mouth? Elinor was panting.

  She turned Chris onto his stomach, gently lifted his small body by the waist, hoping water would run from his nose and mouth, but she was too frantic to look. He was limp, soft in a way that frightened her. She pressed his rib cage, released it, raised him a little again. One had to do artificial respiration methodically, counting, she remembered. She did this. Fifteen . . . sixteen . . . Someone should be telephoning for a doctor. She couldn’t do two things at once.

  “Help!” she yelled. “Help me, please!” Could the people next door hear? The house was twenty yards away, and was anybody home?

  She turned Chris over and pressed her mouth to his cool lips. She blew in, then released his ribs, trying to catch a gasp from him, a cough that would mean life again. He remained limp. She turned him on his stomach and resumed the artificial respiration. It was now or never, she knew. Senseless to waste time carrying him into the house for warmth. He could’ve been lying in the pond for an hour—in which case, she knew it was hopeless.

  Elinor picked her son up and carried him towards the house. She went into the kitchen. There was a sagging sofa against the wall, and she put him there.

  Then she telephoned Jane Caldwell, whose number was on the card by the telephone where Elinor had left it days ago. Since Elinor didn’t know a doctor in the vicinity, it made as much sense to call Jane as to search for a doctor’s name.

  “Hello, Jane!” Elinor said, her voice rising wildly. “I think Chris’s drowned!—Yes! Yes! Can you get a doctor? Right away?” Suddenly the line was dead. Elinor hung up and went at once to Chris, started the rib-pressing again, Chris prone on the sofa with his face turned to one side. The activity soothed her a little.