Body in the Pond

The rather short first chapter of Body in the Pond, the second volume of the illuminating St. Max mystery series, set in the last outpost of Western civilization

“I saw them.”

Young Mike Chitwood had stayed after the Survey of Western Civilization class, ostensibly to look through the old collection of Will and Ariel Durant’s The Story of Civilization that I keep in the classroom as a secret socialist stash in this school that capitalism built. I was looking out the window, down toward the pond, barely visible through a break in the trees from this room, feeling still unsettled by the morning.

“Saw who, Chitwood?”

“The police, at the pond. When they pulled the body out.”

I turned. When you hear a young student make a confession like this, your first fear is that he or she or they has been traumatized or otherwise damaged. But Chitwood looked quite calm. He had volume 10, Rousseau and Revolution, open in his hands, and he was looking toward the pond, just as I had been.

“What were you doing up so early?”

“The sun was up. I was sailing my models,” he replied.

One of my first encounters with Chitwood had been the previous autumn when I’d come across him as he was sailing a three-foot wooden model of a racing yacht at the edge of the pond. He’d been shivering. It turned out he’d had a fever, and I sent him to the infirmary, where I’d checked on him for several days afterward. We hadn’t exactly become fast friends, but he’d always seemed to feel grateful for my attention and would call hello to me when we passed at a distance on the campus. Chitwood—we almost always address each other by our family names in places like St. Max—was a third former, a ninth grader. He’d been a brand new student when we’d met, and I suppose I was one of the first people to pay much attention to him. He was a slight, pale boy with red cheeks and straight umber hair still cut in bangs over his forehead. He’d made friends by now, but he was one of the quiet students.

I asked, “What exactly did you see?”

“It wasn’t much,” he said, “because they were in the distance. A car had slowed on the road. I guess the people had seen the body and then called the police. In a few minutes a patrol car came and stopped. An officer got out and looked into the water. Then he called others, and an ambulance came and two more cars came, and two officers pulled the body from the water. The ambulance workers put it in the ambulance and drove away. Then a few minutes later I saw you and Ms. Berlin drive up. Then I went up for classes.”

“No breakfast?”

“I’d made some instant oatmeal in my room before going out.”

“I see.”

I looked at him and he looked at me. I felt I should say something innocuous like, “Well, these are sad and unfortunate events,” but I kept myself in check.

“I just thought you’d want to know,” he said, “since they always go to you when something happens.”

“Who?”

“The police. The headmaster.”

I shrugged my shoulders as if preparing to dismiss the idea, but then I looked at him again and saw the sly smile.

I smiled back. “What’s this all about, Chitwood?”

“You seem to get in on all the good stuff,” he said.

“Good stuff? You mean like people dying? Are you a weird, morbid person, Chitwood? Do I need to worry about you?”

He shrugged and smiled endearingly. “I know you like it.”

What was I supposed to say? No? I did manage to insinuate myself into anything that smelled of mystery or idiosyncrasy at St. Max. Chitwood had found me out.

I cocked my head. “And you?”

“I’m just curious,” he answered.

“Curious?” I looked off through the window for a moment. I certainly was curious. Then I began to order my papers on the desk and pack them into my bag, looking, I hoped, like a teacher taking care of business and not prone to nonsense. “Tell me Chitwood, what do you want to be, in addition to a professional curious person, when you grow up?”

“A writer.”

“A writer of what?”

“Novels.”

“Novels? Hasn’t anyone told you that by the time you grow up there will be no more novels? There will be only text messages and whatever comes to us after Tweets. Bleats. By the time you graduate the English language will have been forgotten beyond cu@5 or imo.”

“But it’ll still be a specialty, like fixing plaster walls in historic buildings.”

I laughed. Not because Chitwood was naïve and funny, but because he was in a sense absolutely correct, meaning he thought exactly what I thought. “And are you writing a vintage novel now?” I asked.

“No. I haven’t got a story yet. I’m practicing by writing letters.”

“Do you mean those things written in long-hand on stationery two centuries ago?”

“Yes.”

Could it be possible that Chitwood was better at being me than I was? I’d never received a letter in my life—holiday cards now and then, usually from older relatives, but never an actual letter. I was almost thirty, and letters had become extinct during my lifetime. How nice it would be to receive one, to live in a world where they were sent and received, to unfold the reflections, thoughts, and feelings so carefully considered.

“You actually write letters, Chitwood?”

“Yes. I’m trying to revive the art.”

I wanted to shout how wonderful this was, but I thought that what Chitwood needed was a sober and tweedy but idiosyncratic teacher to whom he could talk about these things, so I bit my tongue. “I’d like to talk about this more, Chitwood, but the afternoon is getting on, and you must have practice to go to. Cross-country?”

“Baseball. Second base.”

“All right. OK. Well get going. And please remember the essay due by the end of the week.”

He replaced the Durants’ book among the other volumes, then picked up his backpack, waved goodbye from the door, and ran down the hallway.

“Don’t run, Chitwood.” It was a St. Max rule.

I heard the sound of him shifting to a kind of shuffling trot, then he turned the corner at the end of the long corridor. I heard the outside doors slam open and swing shut. There went the future, out to play.