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An Adventurous Boy

And A Grumpy Old Man

By L. Lane BaileyPublished 3 years ago Updated 3 years ago 10 min read
13
An Adventurous Boy
Photo by Sara Codair on Unsplash

Tommy slung his backpack over his shoulder as he rose from the cramped desk. He briefly envied the city kids that would walk out of their schools and step into heated school busses. Even though they only lived a mile or two from school, they would ride in chauffeured comfort almost the entire way.

His walk would be three miles. Two if he cut across Bradberry’s field. The ground was still frozen, but in a couple of weeks it wouldn’t even be an option. The mud would be knee deep and thick as concrete.

As he trudged out of the back of the school, the sun low in the sky and the wind whipping up a few errant snowflakes, he decided that the city kids were the ones missing out. This was glorious.

He tightened the straps on his pack and started a slow but steady jog across the atheletic field toward home. If he kept up his pace, he could make it in thirty minutes… using the shortcuts. That meant he could catch a Speed Racer rerun on channel forty. He picked up the pace a little.

“When last we left the intrepid Racer family, Spritle and Chim-Chim had gotten themselves in trouble while locked in the trunk of the Mach 5’” he said, using his best Movietone voice. “What will Speed and Trixie do to save them, and will Speed’s long lost brother, Rex Racer… now the mysterious Racer X… step in to help them all.” Yeah, I need to hurry.

Tommy kept up his jog along the side of Eight Mile Road, crossing Wilson Creek on the bridge. Then he turned into Mr. Bradberry’s field. The ground was uneven, but hard as a rock. He slowed down a little so that he didn’t step wrong and turn his ankle. He’d done that a few weeks ago, and almost been caught. Old Man Bradberry had come running out of his house, his blunderbuss in his hand, yelling at the top of his lungs. Tommy was limping away as fast as he could, hoping the old man didn’t take a shot at him.

Snow started falling as he crossed the large field. Off in the distance he could barely see Mr. Bradberry’s house through the thickening snow. A warm light burned in the kitchen, though, and as the visibility lessened, the white house disappeared… all but the glowing window.

Tommy had stopped jogging, his legs now burning from the exertion. But he kept walking. He did this every day, at least once. Sometimes his dad drove him to school, and if the weather was really bad, his mom might pick him up. But that was pretty rare. He’d walked home in more than his fair share of downpours and snowstorms. Life on the farm didn’t stop and didn’t revolve around him. He did envy the city kids and their bus rides for that.

“Decision time,” he said out loud, glancing at his watch again. He could save a few more minutes if he crossed the frozen pond behind Bradberry’s barn, or skirt around the retention pond and miss the beginning of his show.

Undeterred by the warm temperatures a few days back and thinking only of how cold it was right now, Tommy gingerly stepped out onto the ice. He started shuffling slowly across the pond, his boots making two long lines in the snow that had piled up over the last few minutes.

***

“Damn kids,” Jason Bradberry said as he watched out the kitchen window. “Fool is gonna drown himself if that ice breaks.” He picked up his coffee and took another sip. He’d been out in the barn all day welding up his broken plow rig, and he was cold, tired and sore.

As the hot liquid burned down his throat and warmed his soul, he saw the boy drop into the pond up to his waist. His arms were out, spread across the ice, keeping the top half of his body above the ice.

Jason dropped his cup and sprinted through the house and fast as his seventy-year-old joints would carry him. He stopped at the other end of the kitchen and picked up the phone.

“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”

“Cathy, it’s Jason Bradberry. Boy just fell through the ice on my pond. Get someone out here,” he shouted. He slammed the phone down, not waiting for a response. Down the back stairs and out the door, he ran toward the barn.

“Help,” he heard the kid yell in the distance.

He ran into the old barn and looked around in a panic. He knew what he needed to grab, but he wasn’t sure where it was. He tore around the workshop area until he saw it.

“Shinola,” he shouted, tearing away the stuff piled in front of the old wooden extension ladder. He tore through the stack of sawhorses, random pieces of plywood and yard tools leaned against it. “Stupid kids,” he muttered as the Jenga tower of discards heaped behind him.

“Gotcha.”

He picked up the ladder for the first time in years. It was heavier than he remembered it, or he was older than he remembered. Regardless, he hefted it over his head and started picking his way around all the crap he’d thrown around the barn and toward the door.

With the ladder still over his head, he rounded the barn, the pond in full view. There was no kid. Only a lump of something dark sitting on the ice next to the ragged hole. He kept running, closing the hundred yards between the barn and the edge of the pond.

The whole was right in the middle. Jason knew that was a good hundred feet from shore. The ladder was about twenty-five feet long at best. One step on the ice, and he knew he couldn’t walk even part of the way… and now he had a boot full of water. He quickly stepped back, then softly as he could, laid the ladder across the ice.

“Boy,” he yelled at the top of his lungs, “can you hear me? Did you get out of the hole?”

As hard as he peered, he couldn’t tell what the dark lump on the ice next to the ragged hole was… but snow was starting to gather on it. And it wasn’t moving.

Jason extended the ladder, sliding the extension all the way out as far as he could reach. He crawled out, pushing the extension in front of him until it separated. He knelt on the piece he’d just pushed out and grabbed the one he’d started on, pushing it along the ice next to him as he kept crawling toward the hole.

Under him he could hear the occasional crack form and freeze in the ice, sounding like the ricochet of a bullet beneath him. Each time, he’d freeze for a second and stare and the ice, praying it didn’t give way.

Was that a hand that just popped up? He thought. Something broke the surface, then disappeared quickly. Jason tried to speed up a little more. Seven minutes since he called 9-1-1 and maybe four minutes since he’d heard the cry for help, he thought, but he knew that his sense of time was not reliable.

He needed to hurry.

***

Tommy skated on the Mashburn’s home-made rink all the time. They had a shallow pond they’d cut into the back yard. Each winter they flooded it and turned it into an ice rink. Every kid around skated on that rink all winter. Cracking sounds were nothing new, but these sounded different. Like a shot whizzing by your head, he thought to himself.

He pulled his backpack off and set it down on the ice net to him. As he kept shuffling, he slid the heavy pack along the ice next to him. Suddenly, his left foot broke through the ice. He tried to transfer his weight to the other foot. Falling back slightly, his arms pinwheeled and he pushed the school bag away. Arms still flailing, his sunk into the ice up to his armpits. He tried to reach his bag, but he couldn’t. As he kicked, trying to float and pull himself toward the bag, the ice gave way under his chest, plunging him into the icy water.

The cold rushed in through his sleeves and the neck of his coat, freezing him to his core. Then, as he gasped from the cold, he took a bunch of murky water into his lungs. He tried to cough, but he was now fully under the water. Sinking. Panicking.

Color and light shot through his vision, even though his eyes were tightly closed. His chest burned with the pain of trying to breathe the heavy, thick water. The tears in response to the pain, lost in the watery expanse.

He felt his numbing legs hit the bottom of the pond, and he had the briefest clear thought. Jump. Push. A second later, his gloved hand cleared the water, but he slid back into the dark hole once again.

Tommy found himself floating aimlessly in bright, warm light. He didn’t know why he was there, or where there even was. He knew there had been pain. Something bad had happened, but that didn’t seem part of him anymore. Maybe it was something that happened to another Tommy.

***

Jason reached the hole and ripped off his coat. He plunged his arm into the cold water up to his shoulder, feeling for something… anything that could be the kid. He could see now that the lump on the ice was a backpack, like the kids carried to school. And he also had noted that there were no tracks going away from the hole.

He touched nothing.

He swung the other ladder piece around in front of him, so it crossed the hole perpendicular to the ladder part he was on, making a giant T straddling the hole. He muttered a few cuss words under his breath, then stuck his face into the murky water.

Opening his eyes, he was stung both by the water and the freezing cold. It was all he could do not to gasp from the shock. He quickly pulled his face back.

Was that a light?

As his head came back out of the water, he could hear a siren in the distance. Too far away in the distance. He knew that if that kid was going to live, it would be because of what happened before the fire department or police arrived.

He stuck his head into the water, looking, again and again.

The last time, when his head slipped into the water, the rest of Jason Bradberry followed. He let his foot hook onto the edge of the ladder across the hole, but the rest of him was under the water, searching for whomever had slipped through the hole in the frozen pond.

He saw the light again and reached for it. His lungs were burning, but he felt a hand. A cold, lifeless hand. It didn’t grip back as he clenched it. And pulled.

A moment later, he broke the surface, he sucked in all the air his lungs could hold. He pulled on the arm he was holding, trying to get the other person’s head above water.

Hands reached out and grabbed the boy from him. He watched as a paramedic cradled him and ran across the rungs of the ladder as easily as a child running across a playground. Then, as more hands hauled him out of the water, Jason could see the others frantically working on the boy, giving him CPR and stripping him to shock life back into him.

The boy let out a gasp and then a stream of water shot from his mouth.

Jason collapsed on the old ladder; his strength gone.

“You ok, Mr. Bradberry?” the firefighter on the ice sled asked.

“I am now, Chet.”

“Good job.”

“Thanks.”

This was Summer Fiction Series challenge #7. Check out #8 below.

If you liked this story, check out my Amazon Author page for my novels.

Short Story
13

About the Creator

L. Lane Bailey

Dad, Husband, Author, Jeeper, former Pro Photographer. I have 15 novels on Amazon. I write action/thrillers with a side of romance. You can also find me on my blog. I offer a free ebook to blog subscribers.

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