Page 92 of Not a Word

“Explain that,” she said. “And don’t get all why-you-messing-with-my-stuff. The box nearly fell on my head.”

“You kind of already know,” he said, but there was still a story to tell.

Holden and Reece had loved that pond in their backyard. Donning tall rubber boots, they’d try to catch tadpoles with little nets. When they got to be frogs, it was even more challenging. Those dudes could jump. One time, their dad bought them two remote control boats so they could have races. That fun ended when the boats crashed into each other and sank to the mucky bottom.

Brent did them better with the real thing. A small, wooden rowboat and two paddles. They’d pretend to be pirates, and when they reached land, otherwise known as their backyard, they’d imagine it to be an island where buried treasure might be found. Brent later bought them fishing poles, but the novelty of dropping a line in the water wore off soon because the pond had no fish.

Brent tried to rectify that. A couple of weeks after the incident (as Holden had come to think of it) he went on a four-day fishing trip with some Wiffel-Smith colleagues. It was designed as a bonding exercise, and Brent was happy to take part. More and more, he accepted opportunities that put distance between himself and Catherine. He returned with several perch that he’d kept alive in a covered bucket. He dumped them into the pond, hoping the boys might later catch them. The perch didn’t survive their relocation, unfortunately, and floated to the surface in no time.

Holden, however, had faith.

A few days later, when Holden was home alone—Reece was at an after-school soccer practice, Brent at work, Catherine in downtown Toronto checking out the shops in high-end Yorkville—he took the boat out on his own. That was against the rules. A parent was always supposed to be home when the boys played in the boat.

Holden didn’t care.

He was already channeling his mother’s threat into antisocial behavior. Downing the last few drops of his parents’ drinks when they weren’t looking. Sniffing glue he used for his model kits. Pitching a rock through the odd window.

This particular day, he decided to give the pond one last chance to offer up a real, live fish. He attached part of a Kraft cheese slice to the hook of his fishing pole. Did fish like cheese? Who knew? But mice supposedly did, so why not give it a go?

He reached the center of the pond and brought in the paddle. (There was only one by this time.) The boat might drift, but there was no wind that day, and there certainly weren’t currents. Holden picked up the pole and cast out, slowly reeling the line back in, then casting out again. He did this over and over again. Frequently, the hook would catch something in the mucky bottom. A twig or branch that had fallen from an overhanging tree. A long weed that hung on to the hook like a strand of spaghetti.

“Shit,” Holden said aloud, because when you were all alone on the pond you could say whatever you pleased.

He’d long since lost that piece of cheese on the hook and had no more. He’d eaten the rest of the slice. Anyway, it didn’t seem to be working. Fish, if there were any in this small body of water, clearly didn’t care for cheese.

He decided to cast out one last time with an unbaited hook, and damned if he didn’t land something. Reeling in, he thought, if this was a fish, it was a heavy one. But it wasn’t putting up much of a fight. It was like dead weight. He brought his catch in close to the boat, gripped the line and lifted it out of the water.

“Fuck,” he said, once again demonstrating that out on the pond you could say anything and get away with it.

The hook, miraculously, had snagged the trigger guard of a gun. And not just any gun, Holden knew immediately.

Still dangling the gun, he lowered it gently to the bottom of the boat. Gently worked the hook from the trigger guard, careful not to touch the trigger itself. Delicately, he wrapped his hand around the grip.

Was it still loaded? He wasn’t about to stare down the barrel for a look-see. Nor was he going to fire it to find out. He was smart enough to know there might be bullets in it, so he would have to be very careful.

He considered what to do with his find.

The sensible course of action would be to present it to his parents. They’d want to dispose of it, and they would know how to do it. He could recall, in the days after the incident, his father out in the boat, trying to see to the bottom of the pond, poking about with a paddle.

Holden and Reece had been inside, having breakfast, and a curious Reece went outside to the pond’s edge and asked his father what he was looking for. Back in the kitchen, Catherine had given Holden a sharp look. He was not to say a word.

Brent told Reece that he had lost a credit card. Thought it had slipped out of his wallet the last time he’d been out there. Reece found that answer puzzling, given that their father never took the boat out. It was just for the boys.

“Go finish your breakfast,” Brent had said.

And then his father, in frustration, swung one of the two paddles down onto the side of the boat, snapping it in two, the broad end falling into the water. He tossed the splintered end still in his hand into the bottom of the boat.

So yeah, Holden’s parents would want to know what he’d found. But Holden wasn’t sure he wanted to tell them.

He had to move quickly, before anyone got home. He paddled back to the pond’s edge, pulled the boat a few feet up onto the yard, gingerly took the gun into the house and up to his room, placing it on his bed. In the hall linen closet he found an old hand towel, one his mother would never notice was missing. After rinsing the gun off and taking a hair dryer to it, he wrapped it up. He emptied a shoebox filled with Toronto Blue Jays and Toronto Maple Leafs trading cards and put the gun in it. He dumped the cards back on top, covering any trace of the towel, and put the box on the top shelf of his closet.

And there it stayed.

For years.

Occasionally, when no one was home, he would take down the box, bring out the gun, hold it, feel it in his hand, still not knowing whether it was loaded, whether it would even work. When he got older and it was time for him to live on his own, the box was the first thing he packed. Eventually, he took it to a friend who knew a lot about guns.

“Where’d you find this?” his friend asked.