Aaron Polson - The Bottom Feeders and Other Stories

“I found this, too.” She held out his pocketknife. “I–I think I know why you did it.” She moved behind Calvin and gently pushed him into a chair. He didn’t resist. “She had such beautiful eyes — such blue eyes. Electric. Intoxicating .”

“Gina …”

Her fingers brushed across his cropped hair. “When I found the jar…it was like they were talking to me , Calvin. Whispering, telling me what to do.”

Calvin’s car was gone when the police arrived. They entered through the open door and found his body slumped against a wall in the kitchen. A dark stain swallowed the front of his shirt, a thick run of blood from his throat. Both eyes were gone, gouged out, leaving two rough wounds in his face. His old pocketknife sat on the table, alone, smeared and sticky with blood. The jar, the eyes, and Gina were nowhere to be found.

On a late Sunday afternoon, Scab Hullinger caught an abomination in the Republican River about forty yards downstream from the old wrought-iron bridge south of Springdale. Glistening wet, heaving, and gray as a dislodged lung, the thing flopped and writhed in a cooler filled with murky river water. Three boys on the fringe of manhood, one thin like a twist of wire, one wide and solid like a bulldog, and Scab somewhere between — slender but athletic — stood on the muddy bank, staring at the thing.

“Damn Scab, that’s big. Nibbled like crazy on my fingers.”

“Did it get any of them?” Joel asked with a chuckle while rubbing his grubby hands across the front of his jeans.

“Naw. Just sandpaper gums like most bottom feeders.” Allen, a skittish rail of a boy with brown-black eyes bulging from his thin face, squatted next to the cooler. “I’ve never seen a channel cat that color.”

“Can’t be a channel cat,” Joel said.

“Like hell.” Allen spat in the mud. “Has to be. It’s got the flat head, whiskers and pretty grim looking spines on the sides.”

“Sure does. Cut myself on one of them.” Scab held the meaty part of his left palm, squeezing just hard enough to produce a thin stream of blood from a jagged gash.

Joel kicked the cooler with one muddy boot. The fish flopped slightly in the cramped enclosure, showing a wide, flat eye of green-gray. “You ever seen a channel with eyes like that?”

The three were silent for a moment.

“I’m gonna call Barry. He’s home this weekend.” Scab said, fumbling in his jeans for a cell phone.

Joel scratched his black hair. “Your brother?”

“Yeah, he’s studying fish and wildlife at college, right?”

Allen paced behind his garage while Joel cleaned the rest of the afternoon’s catch.

“You could help out, you pansy.” Joel wiped the filet knife on a rag. “It’s your house, your freezer, your fish.”

“You’re doing fine all by yourself.” Allen flipped open his cell phone. “Where the hell are they, anyway?”

“Hell if I know.” Joel rubbed his hands under the backyard spigot. He was shaking them off when Scab’s car pulled into the alley.

“Hey Scab,” Joel called. “Hey Barry.”

Barry Hullinger smiled as they climbed out of Scab’s Honda. Scab managed a cursory grin while cradling his wounded hand.

Gavin Hullinger earned the unfortunate nickname “Scab” in middle school when Cori Hamilton, still the prettiest girl in Springdale, caught him chewing on a bit of loose skin from his elbow in seventh grade PE. He grew out of his awkward, boney frame in the five years since and became starting linebacker for the Springdale Saints’ district championship squad. He was even the frontrunner for class valedictorian, but the name held on, as stubborn things will in small towns. His brother, Barry, had been one of the finest scholar-athletes to graduate from Springdale High School.

“Where’s the fish?” Barry asked.

The four young men stood around the stained cooler in Allen’s garage. The grayish fish-thing thrashed about, splashing a little water over the edge each time someone disturbed its temporary home, but otherwise floated motionless in the muck.

Joel picked mud from under his fingernails with a pocketknife. “So, channel cat or not.”

“If it is, it sure isn’t healthy,” Barry said, squatting next to the cooler. “This color…isn’t right. Those eyes…I think it might be dead.”

“Dead?” Allen asked. His voice shot up an extra octave.

“Well, it looks dead. Smell’s dead, too. I don’t know what’s keeping it going.”

“So what do we do? Filet the thing, have a fry up with some beers?” Joel chuckled and then shook his head.

“I’m not eating that shit,” Allen squeaked.

“No,” Barry said as he stood. “We aren’t going to fucking eat it. Are you really as dumb as Gavin says?”

Allen frowned.

“I’m going to call one of my professors.”

“Your professor?” Joel flicked the knife shut on his pant leg. “What the hell for?”

Barry shook his head slowly and scratched his chin. “I don’t know. But something’s not right.” He glanced at his brother who was leaning against the side of the garage. “Look, I better get Gavin home”

“You sure we should be doing this?” Allen asked as Joel steered his truck over the rough gravel roads in Greenwillow Cemetery.

Joel shrugged. “Look, do you want to keep that freak-o-fish at your place this weekend?”

Allen squirmed in his seat. “Hell no. But what if Barry wants to see it again — ”

“I don’t give a shit. The college-boy can fish it out of the pond.” Joel squinted into the gathering twilight ahead of the truck. “’sides, if it is a good sized channel — even a mutant one, it can take out some of the nasty little bullhead up there in Potter’s Pond. Maybe make the fishing worthwhile.”

“Yeah, I ‘spose so. But what if it is sick. Diseased or whatever Barry said?”

Joel smiled. “Well, it’ll clear up Potter’s Pond either way.”

Just beyond the city limit of Springdale, Kansas, in the woods beyond the boundary fence of Greenwillow Cemetery rested an abandoned farm pond. Years of disuse allowed the trees and brush — mostly crooked spruce trees, sickly cottonwoods, and gnarled redbuds — to encroach on the shores of Potter’s Pond. The name spun from the pauper’s graves, Potter’s Fields, of old. The boys understood little of the Potter’s Pond legend, only vague myths about the poor of Springdale being tossed to its green depths when they couldn’t pay for a decent funeral. That’s what the old men at Jenson’s Hardware joked about every time the boys bought a few dozen worms for bait so they could spend a Sunday afternoon catching tiny bullhead when they were younger. The pond teemed with those small members of the catfish family.

Joel brought the truck to a rough stop on the road nearest the barbed-wire fence marking the edge of the cemetery. “Look, you coming? Or do I have to lug that damn cooler all by myself?”

Allen glanced out the window, noting the heavy outline of trees like black fingers lunging toward the darkening sky. The trees around Potter’s Pond always lost their leaves earlier than the rest of town. He closed his eyes for a moment and tried to swallow the deafening thud of his heart. “I’m coming. But let’s hurry up, all right?”

Scab missed school on Monday, and both Allen and Joel were a little concerned.

When he was gone Tuesday, Allen was worried.

“Do you think we should call him?” He asked Joel after PE.

Joel shook extra water from his hair and rubbed his head with a towel. “I did last night.”

“Yeah?”

“His mom said he was pretty bad. Stomach flu, or something like it.”

When Scab missed school on Wednesday, Barry met Allen and Joel in the high school parking lot.