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The Hockey Pond

A short story

By Russell CordnerPublished 3 years ago Updated 3 years ago 10 min read
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I learned about loss through my best friend Jared in the winter of early 1981. We were born three weeks apart twelve summers earlier. Arriving in the world so close together and living next door to each other meant the choice to be friends wasn’t really ours. Our mothers made that decision before we drew our first breaths. So it was a good thing we liked each other as much as we liked hockey. Living where it starts snowing while you’re trick or treating and stops a month before the school year ends, it helps to be good on skates.

We lived in a small city on the edge of a bigger city that still wasn’t big by national standards. Properties were spacious (it took an hour to mow the back lawn) and the roads were wide and slow. School was six blocks away, while church was around the corner and up the hill. Our idyllic cul-de-sac contained thirteen homes, with the Drummond’s split-level ranch style home smack dab in the middle. Their pie-shaped half-acre anchored the street like a keystone supporting an arch. It may have been the envy of the neighborhood, but I wasn’t aware of such things back then. The only thing I envied was that seeing as their backyard was much deeper than ours, Jared got to use a riding mower.

The Drummond’s wasn’t just the middle of the street, and it wasn’t just the biggest property on the street. It was also the primary hub of activity. At the edge of their front lawn sat a large residential power transformer, or a green box as they were more commonly known. And to every kid in the neighborhood, the green box on Merrywood Place was known as home base. And with a staggering twenty-one kids living on the street, on any given night during summer vacation, at least a dozen could be found congregating at the edge of the Drummond’s front lawn. Every game of hide-and-seek started and ended at that green steel box.

The other notable geographic anomaly on the Drummond’s property was in the backyard. It became the central meeting point once hide-and-seek season came to an end and it was cold enough to freeze over. The anomaly was a pond. And by mid-November, its ice was usually thick enough to skate on. I always felt it was most suitable for games of three-on-three, but with so many skaters in the neighborhood, it was usually four-on-four. Even five-on-five, depending on who was pressing to play. Thankfully, Jared didn’t have any siblings. Another hockey player wouldn’t have been so bad, but a figure skater really would have thrown a wrench into things. So, for seven months out of the year, Jared and I practically lived on that pond.

When we were first learning to skate—half a year past our second birthdays—our dads were there to guide us, but it was our moms who braved the cold on a regular basis once we got the hang of things. Until we were five and they could keep an eye on us from the living room window, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee with Bailey’s or amaretto. They were closer than our dads, probably because our dads were working so much. Our dads were both in sales—oil and computers—and traveled a lot. But we’d take off in the Drummond’s metallic bronze van for at least one father/son fishing trip every summer. Just the men, they’d say with a wink. It was an opportunity for Jared and me to “build character”, and an opportunity for our dads to drink cold beers from the Coleman cooler wedged between the driver and passenger seats. Jared and I sat on the velour sofa way at the back of the van, which was fine with us.

The fishing trip in August of 1980 was to be our last. Not that we knew at the time. We’d just turned twelve and there was no reason to believe the custom wouldn’t continue forever. Even though, almost from the start, that trip felt different than the others. Mr. Drummond was drinking more, smoking more, and swearing more. During a moment to ourselves, my dad told me he was just blowing off some steam. It had to do with work—something about the federal government stealing their oil—but I heard the name Lorna a hundred times so I knew it was about Jared’s mom. And obviously so did Jared.

It was late afternoon and fishing was done for the day, so we left our dads at camp and went for a walk through the woods. We came upon a clearing of tall grass full of white clover with an old wooden outhouse at the far end.

“Check it out,” Jared said, nodding to the pitiful structure in the distance. “Watch this.”

I followed close behind wondering what he had planned. Along the way, Jared bent down to pick up a fallen branch. (It was more like a log.) Holding the branch back over his shoulder like a javelin, he ran toward the ramshackle outhouse and launched it through the air. Sailing like a wobbly rocket, it ripped through one of the boards then stopped halfway through. Jared grabbed the free end and, yanking it left and right, ripped apart the abutting boards. He pulled the branch free and raised it over his head, committed to further destruction. He paused to look at me.

“Why are you just standing there? Grab a stick, or boulder, or something.”

Without giving it much thought, I complied. By the time we were finished, the outhouse had been reduced to a pile of sticks and stones. Covered in sweat and dust, I turned back to camp, suddenly guilt-ridden and nervous about getting caught.

“Where are you going?” Jared said.

“Back to camp. What if somebody comes?”

“There’s nobody out here. Even if there was, who’s going to care about some old shithouse? They won’t even notice. It just looks like a bonfire that someone forgot to—.”

Jared’s eyes widened and the look on his face worried me. Like he was another person. He reached into the front pocket of his jeans and pulled out a pack of matches. A wicked smile stretched across his face.

“Are you crazy?” I said. “We’re in the middle of a forest.”

“We’re in a field.”

“At the edge of a field. Surrounded by a forest. Grass burns, dummy.”

“We’ll put it out before it gets too big.”

“How?”

Before he could answer, a high-pitched whistle pierced through the wilderness. My dad’s signature call to get the hell back.

“Saved by the whistle,” Jared said, forcing a grin.

“You or me?” I smiled and gave him a friendly shot in the arm.

His grin faded as he looked at me and I thought he might cry. “My mom’s having an affair.”

It sounded like something from one of my mom’s TV shows—the ones airing after nine p.m. I didn’t know what to say, so I told him he was crazy and tried to laugh it off. He mumbled something and we left it at that.

The rest of the weekend was quieter and uneventful, especially with Mr. Drummond’s hangover on Sunday, and two weeks later Jared and I entered junior high. It was our first time having a different teacher for each subject and Jared didn’t get along with some of them. Most of them, in fact. He started getting in trouble and, due to guilt by association, so did I. If I wasn’t twelve myself, I may have understood what was going on. But I was twelve, so I decided to ignore him.

We didn’t talk until a week before Halloween. And that was only because my parents dragged me next door as they planned the Merrywood Place Halloween Bash—held every year at the Drummond’s, of course. It was going to be our first Halloween without trick or treating, but we still got to wear costumes thanks to the party. Jared and I had always themed our costumes. One year was Star Wars (him Han, me Luke). The previous year would have been Batman and Robin but both of us refused to be Robin, so we went as The Dukes of Hazzard instead (in obvious last-minute costumes).

Pretending like nothing was wrong between us, Jared and I decided to dress up as punkers—after he explained to me what punkers were. My mom wasn’t too fond of the idea, but Mrs. Drummond loved it. She liked it so much that when we arrived at their house a week later for the party, she was dressed like a punker herself. Or at least that’s what she claimed her costume to be. She wasn’t wearing much: high heels, black fishnets, skin-tight denim short shorts, and a black bra. With hair teased high, bright red lipstick, and black eyeshadow, she attracted a lot of attention.

With Jared’s parents both drinking heavily, the party came to an early end when Mr. Drummond started asking Mrs. Drummond (loudly) why she didn’t wear a costume. He then started yelling whore at the top of his lungs. She screamed back enough insults to make the entire street uncomfortable.

The next day Jared told me his mom left. For good. She’d abandoned him to run off with her lover.

He had that look again, like when he wanted to burn down the outhouse, so I decided to let bygones be bygones and stick around for my friend. We started hanging out again every day after school, and the cold snap that consumed the first half of November froze the pond and brightened the mood at the Drummond household. Even Christmas was cheery, all things considered. Jared hit the jackpot with new hockey equipment. He also got an Atari and six games to play on their new giant rear-projection TV. When it was too dark or cold for hockey, the Atari was where you’d find us. Things were getting back to normal on Merrywood Place.

Until the chinook.

The warm, dry winds blow that down from the Rockies bring smiles to everyone but snowmen—and hockey rink owners. And the chinook that came through town on the last Sunday of February in 1981, took us from the Arctic to Hawaii in a matter of hours. We were halfway through a game of four-on-four on the Drummond’s pond when our skates were slowed by the first signs of slush. The hesitant sound of ice cracking echoed through the backyard. Everyone stopped skating because everyone heard it. After exchanging frightened glances, eight of us shot in separate directions, aiming for the nearest snowbank.

But I was either too far, too late, or too slow, and the pond opened beneath me. The freezing water seized my heart and muscles as I plunged through the ice. I screamed. Jared skated around the edge, shouting my name as I frantically grabbed at the surface of the rink. Shaking off my hockey gloves, I dug my fingers into the ice, but I kept slipping further away, sinking under the weight of my skates and pads. And then Jared was there, flat on his stomach, sprawled out from the edge. He grabbed one of my hands and then the other. Two of our friends had hold of his feet, using his skates as handles. Digging their heels into the snow, they pulled him and he pulled me.

By the time I was safely off the rink, panting and shivering, Mr. Drummond was standing at the far edge of the pond. He must have heard the commotion. I’d never seen him look so terrified. But it took only a moment for me to realize it wasn’t me he was worried about. He was staring at the pond. And when I looked back into that hole in the ice, I saw the pale flesh wrapped in black fishnet stocking.

Short Story
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About the Creator

Russell Cordner

Japan-based multi-genre writer for adults and YA, mainly crime and speculative fiction.

My debut novel, Inherit Guilt, was published in June 2021.

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