Curtis Pace woke up Monday morning with something akin to sadness growing in the pit of his stomach. The thirteen-year-old knew this would be the last day he’d get to sleep in for a while. School started back tomorrow, and his parents had given him permission to while the day away however he wanted. To that end, Curtis had decided it was a fine day for fishing, swimming, and whatever else he could come up with.
He dragged himself out of bed and ambled downstairs to find that his mother had anticipated his activities. She’d packed a small cooler full of goodies and left a note propped against it, telling him he would find some sandwiches in the fridge.
His mom didn’t do that sort of thing very often these days now that he was old enough to fend for himself in the kitchen. The loving gesture made him smile since no one else was around to see how touched he was. He was thirteen after all, no longer a little boy.
After scarfing down one of the sandwiches, he stuffed the rest in the cooler and headed out to the barn to get his bike.
“Hey, Curt.” His dad greeted him with a wave. Seeing the cooler, Joe Pace smiled. “You heading to the pond?”
“Yeah, unless you need me.”
Joe grinned at his son as he walked over and ruffled his hair. “What if I said I do?”
Curtis tried to hide his disappointment. He shrugged. “Then I guess I’ll stick around.”
Joe laughed and pulled him in for a tight hug. “Baby boy, you have more than earned a day off. Go have fun.” He released Curtis with quick kiss to his hair. “Just be careful.”
“I will.” Embarrassed but pleased, he ducked away and grabbed his bike, taking great pains to hide his own grin, then he was off.
It didn’t take him long to reach his favorite spot, a shady, flat area beneath a weeping willow by the pond. He decided to set the cooler aside and take a swim first, then come back to eat. The pond next to the tree wasn’t large by most standards, but it was plenty big enough for Curtis’s needs. He splashed around for a while, then turned onto his back and floated, watching as miles above, a jet streaked across the sky.
That would be a cool job, to be able to get off the ground and go anywhere in the world, he thought. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do when he grew up, but he knew it was time to start thinking about it. He figured he might see if his dad would take him to the library later to look for some books about piloting.
Or maybe not. School started tomorrow, and he’d have plenty of reading to do then. He let his mind drift along with his body. That was when he noticed the buzzards.
Using his hands and feet to steer through the water, he changed positions to get a better look. When he saw the birds circling something in the vicinity of the highway, he grimaced. He thought he knew what they might have found.
The Paces’ neighbors, the Andersons, had come by early last evening. Their daughter Melody’s dog had disappeared, and they were searching for him. Melody was Curtis’s age, and the two had grown up together. He hadn’t noticed her as a girl until school registration a couple of weeks ago. Since then, he’d thought of little else. Now, seeing the buzzards, Curtis hoped he was wrong about what the birds were circling.
Reluctantly, he climbed out of the water to pull his shoes back on. With dread in his stomach, he headed down the grassy dirt track toward the highway. He hoped it was just a deer and not old Grover. He certainly didn’t want to have to break the news to Melody that her dog was dead.
The closer he got to whatever it was, the more his heart pounded. When he was about ten feet away, the wind shifted toward him, bringing with it the sickly sweet smell of death. Curtis swallowed against the nausea that rose up in his throat and trudged on. He knew from having found dead calves with his father that the carcass, whatever it was, was bound to be unpleasant.
Soon he was close enough to hear the loud drone of the buzzing flies. The tall grass and weeds blocked the dead thing from sight, but Curtis guessed it had to be larger than Grover. The buzzing was too loud.
He finally reached the old lane where the grass had been cut, and his eyes were instantly drawn to the rotting heap on the other side of the small clearing. Dimly he noted the trampled grass, the tire tracks. Most of his focus, however, was on the corpse sprawled on the ground. It was covered in a solid black mass of writhing, buzzing flies.
Curtis wasn’t sure how long he stood there, his hand covering his mouth to protect it from the flies and the smell. He wasn’t sure how he managed to not throw up. All he was sure of was that his wet shorts hid the shame of him peeing his pants and that somehow he managed to make it home to the barn before he fell apart, secure in his father’s arms.
He was also sure that he would never forget the horrific scene in the lane on the bright, sunny, and otherwise perfect summer day. He would never look at that pond the same way, never swim in its waters without thinking of what he had found. All thoughts of Melody and Grover had fled because the carcass had not been her dog. It hadn’t been a deer or a cow. It had been a human being.