The Trackers

by Charles Frazier

A TWENTIES PLASTER MANSION WITH vertical streaks of dark mildew dragging in stripes from the eaves down the cream walls. A strip of lawn between sidewalk and front door had been mowed recently, but at the sides the grass had begun reverting to nature, following the early stages of plant succession on the way back to wildness. I knocked at the door and waited and then walked around back past a clay tennis court growing flat plates of plantain and tall ragweed. The net was rotting, and the mildewed headband drooped almost to the ground. A swimming pool, empty except for a foot or two of dull black liquid vibrating with tadpoles. Something larger moved under the surface, and the liquid churned viscous as Karo syrup. Even if the tadpoles lived long enough, they’d never be able to climb out of the pit unless a tree limb fell exactly right and the newly transformed frogs could use it to climb out. But probably that larger thing under the surface would eat its fill of tadpoles and then lie in the black water waiting for the next thing to fall in.