The Body

That summer in 1970, the one I turned eleven, was the summer we found the body. The three of us, my cousins and I, have never talked of it since, as we swore we never would. When we’re together the secret we’d sworn to keep, lay there between us, pulled tight, ready to burst at any moment.

I remember it all like yesterday, even though most days I can’t remember where I put my keys. Back then, on my Grandparent’s farm in the middle of nowhere Michigan, we were free to roam. Mostly. The only place off-limits - the Frank’s pond. The summer started the same as all the others before, but nothing was ever the same after that.

The day after school let out, Mom, Dad, and I piled into our station wagon. We drove down the freeway with the windows open, me in the back, the backs of my legs stuck to the red vinyl of the seats because Dad said turning on the AC ruined the engine. My heart quickened as we glided off the freeway onto exit 56A. When the paved streets became gravel roads, and the houses gave way to alfalfa and wheat fields, up went the windows. I leaned between the seats, and counted the cows, until we turned to the road lined with the crab apple trees, their tiny green apples dangling from the branches like sour candy. We were almost there, only one more turn up the driveway.

I knew my cousins, Bentley, named after the car, and Addison, named after nothing in particular, would be waiting on the porch swing. Both names made me wish my name was more spectacular. Meg was a nothing-name, boring and bland – like me. Mom said it was the name of someone in charge. I didn’t want to be in charge, I wanted to be mysterious. Gran and Gramps would be waiting too. Gramps with his thumbs hooked into his suspenders and Gran with cookies or a treat of some kind. It was just as I pictured, everyone was there, waiting. Mom, without shutting the car door behind her, hurried over and gave Gran a hug, my cousins swarmed me, and Dad and Gramp’s patted each other on the back. They left a few days later, leaving my cousins and me alone with our Grandparents. Finally free we made plans.

It was a few weeks later, the day we found the body. When I woke, and it was already hot, the blistering sizzling kind of hot. The fan on my bedstand whirred but offered no comfort. Before waking my cousins, who slept on bunk beds in our shared room, I peered out the window for Gramp’s faded blue truck. It was gone, which meant Gramps was gone too, and Gran had a stack of hotcakes or biscuits waiting for us down in the kitchen.

 I shook Bentley and Addison awake. Both stretched and yawned. Their matching curls flattened to the sides of their heads. I urged them to hurry, and we gathered what we needed for the day before Gran could see. We were going to the pond even though it was off-limits. Forbidden. Gran said the Franks didn’t need us wandering around their farm, they had enough trouble right now. Gramps told us the pond was full of reeds and grass that would tangle around us, trapping us, and there were the leeches. At first, we listened. We’d heard the rumors around town, about the trouble. Mrs. Franks killed Mr. Franks’ dog, Eustis. Gran said it was an accident with the car, but people were saying in hushed voices that Mrs. Franks always hated Eustis and she killed the poor animal when it chased after one of her prize chickens. But the past few days, it was hot enough to cook an egg on the sidewalk, we didn’t care about the warnings or whatever happened with the dog, if it was even true. We felt for sure that the pond was fair game when it was one hundred degrees out.

After devouring breakfast and making quick work of our few chores, we grabbed the two bikes from where they leaned against the shady side of the house. Addison rode on the handlebars of my bike since I was the oldest, and she was the youngest. The sun beat down. My wet bangs were plastered against my forehead and sweat dripped down my back by the time we got to the crab apple trees. The heat seemed to hang from the branches, sticking to everything. I could barely wait to get to the pond. I urged Bentley to go faster. We didn’t have much time. It was Thursday, the day we found out through our careful surveillance, the day the Franks went to the Farmers Market in town to sell vegetables, eggs, and honey. No one would be working on the farm, not until later anyway, and by then, we’d be long gone.

A red car approached us, a cloud of road dust in its wake. We jumped from our bikes, flattening ourselves into the ditch along the side of the road, peering out only after we heard the crunch of gravel fade away.

“Who was that?” Addison coughed.

“Don’t know. Never seen a car like that around here,” I shrugged.

“It was sure a pretty red, like cherries,” Bentley said, and we all agreed.

We wiped the dust from our knees, pulled leaves from our hair, and started again, pedaling faster, the need to get off the road greater than the heat. We rounded the last bend, the Frank’s red barn loomed up on the small hill. I stopped, and Addison jumped down. I led the way as we walked with our bikes along the narrow path that followed the barbed wire fence, black and white cows on one side, and the tall yellow grass, that scratched at my bare legs, on the other. The cicadas hummed and grasshoppers jumped out of our path, making Addison scream. She hated bugs. Under the shade of a lone tree, the cows swatted away the flies with their tails in the pasture. We giggled and laughed as we walked up the hill and then down toward the pond.

“How much farther?” Addison whined, her cheeks pink.

“Not much,” I promised. “It’s just there.” I pointed to a cluster of trees.

We ran as fast as we could with our bikes, to the waters of the dark pond. I dropped my bike and my pack at my feet and slipped off my shoes, my throat dry, my skin itching to get in the cold water. Bentley beat us in, running past, and jumping off the end of the warped wooden dock. I followed, grabbing my knees to my chest and screaming, “Cannonball!”

Bentley and I splashed each other, the water cold like ice against our sunburned skin. I turned toward the dock, where Addison stood, her eyes as big as saucers. I followed her gaze to the trees on the other side of the pond. There was nothing there but Mr. Frank’s rowboat floating untethered at the edge of the pond where the reeds grew tall, and a layer of green algae covered the surface of the pond.

“What? You worried about the boat?” I splashed her feet.

“I’ll go get it, and you can tie it up again,” Bentley offered. He started to swim and then stopped. He turned back toward me, his curls dripping and his eyes wide like Addison’s. At first, I thought he was tangled in the pond grass, or leeches had stuck to his body like Gramps warned. But as I looked closer toward the boat, where Addison’s finger still pointed, I saw a spot of blue floating in the tangle of the grass and reeds. I squinted. The blue blob had arms and legs, puffed and swollen. I screamed. Bentley screamed, and we both struggled to get out of the pond, the muddy bottom sucking us back in.

Bentley and I stood shivering next to Addison.

           “We should call the police,” I said. They shook their heads and inched away.

“We’re not supposed to be here. Gran and Gramps will kill us.” Bentley said. Addison whimpered.

“Our parents will never let us come here again,” I said.

The cicadas seemed to grow louder, and in the distance, I heard the moo of a cow as the murky pond water lapped at the muddy shore. The rowboat floated aimlessly as if it were lost. The body on the other side of the pond was less than thirty feet away. How had we not seen it before jumping?

“I think that’s Mrs. Franks,” Addison whispered down to her feet.

My stomach rolled up into my chest. My hands shook. “We need to call the police. Really,” I said and turned away. I grabbed their hands and pulled them away.

“What if Mr. Franks did it,” Bentley said.

“Because of Eustis,” Addison finished.

I stopped in my tracks. If he did that to Mrs. Franks, what will he do to us? Gran and Gramps had warned us not to come down here, I thought. I wrapped my arms around my chest. Everything spun in my head. My heart told me to call the police. We had to. My mind told me to run away as fast as we could. An idea sprung to life.

“We can call anonymously. No one has to know it was us,” I said around the burn in my chest.

“How do you expect to do that. Gran will hear us on the phone,” Bentley said.

“Ya, the phone is in the kitchen,” Addison said, on the verge of tears.

“And what about the red car? They may have seen us.”

“The red car didn’t see us. We can call from Mr. Franks’s house,” I said.

The color drained from Bentley’s face. Addison shook her head and said, “I’m’ not going in there. What if there’s…you know…blood and stuff?”

I moved them forward, away from the pond, to where we’d tossed our shoes and dropped our bikes. I hadn’t had a good look at Mrs. Franks,’ but what I did see, I didn’t think there’d be a blood-splattered crime scene.

“I’ll go in, through the back door into the kitchen. You two can wait behind the barn,” I said and wondered how I’d become the leader. It was as if Mom had a premonition.

We scrambled away from the pond, just as fast as we’d gotten there, maybe even faster. Leaving our bikes hidden in the grass, we slipped through the barbed wire and across the pasture, a few curious cows watched us, but mostly they were hot too, and they stayed in the shade. From here, we could see the road, and there wasn’t a vehicle in sight. While Addison and Bentley waited behind the barn, I crept toward the bright blue kitchen door of the Frank’s house. Before opening it, I peered in, my hands cupped to the glass. I didn’t see any blood, so I turned the knob, my shirt over my hand, so I didn’t leave any prints as Bentley had suggested.

The house was eerily quiet, except for the tic-tock from the clock over the sink. The kitchen was spotless, its bright yellow and white wallpaper overpowering. Two plates and two coffee cups lay upside down in the sink. My stomach soured, threatening to come up. I spun around looking for the phone. A cookie jar shaped like a rooster sat in the middle of the kitchen table, its shiny black eyes on me. The phone was on the far side, almost into the living room. I crept across yellow linoleum, the same color as the walls, and with a shaky finger I dialed 9-1-1. I turned from the eyes of the rooster and faced the window, where I could see the barn. I didn’t need anyone sneaking up on me. The phone rang and rang. Finally, someone picked up. I started to talk; the words caught in my throat.

“What is your emergency?” The woman asked.

“Body…pond,” I stumbled, my heart pounding. I shouldn’t be doing this.

“Where are you miss? Do you need an ambulance?”

I cleared my throat and tried again, this time changing the pitch of my voice so they wouldn’t know it was a kid who called. “There’s a body in the Frank’s pond. Someone is dead,” I blurted out, forgetting to say something about the red car before slamming the phone down. I flung open the back door, jumped down the steps, and ran to where my cousins waited. Without stopping, I ran past them, ignoring their calls for me to wait. Addison rode on Bentley’s bike this time. We said nothing all the way home, even the cicadas were quiet.

At the end of the drive, I skidded to a stop. Bentley pulled up next to me. Addison peered down the road as she jumped down.

“I thought we’d hear sirens by now,” Bentley said. He glanced toward the Frank’s farm and toed the ground with his worn Converse.

           “Maybe the 9-1-1 operator thought I was joking.” I wiped the sweat from my hands on my wet cut-off jean shorts. My heart pounded. Gran would notice my wet clothes and Bentley’s curls tight from being wet.

           “We have to act normal. No matter what, no one can know it was us that found…you know,” I said out of the corner of my mouth. I didn’t bother to tell them I’d forgotten to mention the red car. What if Mr. Franks didn’t do anything at all? My head spun again. I didn’t want to be in charge.

“I think we need to swear on it. We have to keep this a secret.” Bentley leaned on his bike, peering up at me, squinting from the sun.

“Swear.” I held out my hand. They placed theirs on top, and we all swore an oath never to tell or talk about it again. From that moment on, our secret was buried. It never happened. We never saw the body. We were never at the pond. Mr. Franks would never know we turned him in.

I sucked in a deep breath of the hot summer air, and the three of us dragged ourselves up the driveway. The summer suddenly became something we’d have to endure. I pushed Addison with her dry clothes and hair in front as Gran greeted us at the kitchen door with ice-cold lemonade.

“I thought you kids would be gone all day, but guess it’s too hot,” she smiled down at us. “Let’s sit on the porch. It’s much cooler out here.”

“Thanks, Gran,” I said as I took a glass.

Gran eyeballed my wet and dirty clothes and Bentley’s hair. Before she could say anything, a police car barreled down the dirt road toward the Franks’ farm.

“Goodness me, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a police car on our road, not driving like that anyway. I wonder if something happened down there at the Franks? Better call,” She rubbed at her neck, my wet clothes forgotten.

The three of us sat in the porch swing, the only sounds from the creak of the wood beam above, and Gran on the phone in the kitchen.

“What about that red car?” Addison whispered.

 Bentley pinched her on the thigh. “Did you forget our oath, already?”

 Addison shook her head, teary-eyed.

“What do you guys want to do tomorrow?” I asked as another police car went by, this one with a siren. My stomach jumbled up into knots, twisting and turning.

“Maybe we can get Gran to take us to see a movie,” Bentley said, and we agreed. A movie would be nice.

The rest of that summer, the mystery surrounding Mrs. Franks’ death haunted the town and neighboring farms. Mr. Franks was blamed. They’d said it was because of Eustis. No one ever mentioned a cherry red car. For years afterward, the murder of Mrs. Franks would come up in conversations. My cousins and I always remained silent. We kept our oath. No one knows what happened; all we know is we found a body in the pond that day.