Haunted by the vagaries of fate

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This article was published 28/05/2025 (444 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

My husband and I kept going back to the scene.

Went back to ensure there was no one struggling in the dark pond, fighting for life, swallowing water while being dragged down, his sodden coat like an anchor.

Screaming into the void.

The pond is lined with black rubber made slick by the water. Anyone who slips in — man or beast — might never emerge if there is no one to hear their cries.

On May 15, when we heard a man’s shouts, at first we could not discern the noise.

I was taking a break from work and we were walking on the rambling former golf course across from our house.

My husband thought the cries might be coming from a nesting pair of Canada geese that have made a home in the big pond on the course.

“That sounds like a man’s voice,” I said.

“Maybe someone calling their dog,” he said.

Then my husband stopped in his tracks. “That sounds like somebody calling, ‘Help!’”

We ran towards the sound and came upon a terrible scene.

A man in distress in the bitterly cold water of a smaller, secondary pond, sinking and then emerging to gasp for breath, his energy nearly spent.

Seeing a person grappling for his life, a mixture of desperation and fatigue on their face, is a difficult thing; a terribly intimate thing, knowing that someone’s existence hangs in the balance of the next few minutes and depends on your intervention.

His dog was also in the water, paddling frantically, dark eyes pleading. Nearby, there was the floating corpse of a dog with a whip-thin tail and soft, greyish-brown fur. The poor creature had been there for some time.

My husband lay on his stomach on the bank of the pond and extended a sizable log he had found in the leaf litter. I held his legs so he wouldn’t slip in himself. Slowly he was able to pull the man to shore so that his head and chest were out of the water. My husband held him as he clung to the spindly growth on the bank. We called 911.

My husband summoned a passerby with a dog and they pulled the man all the way out. Eventually police and a fire crew arrived and got the man’s dog to safety. She shivered violently on the shore as we all stood absorbing the knowledge of what might have been.

The next day the man stopped by our house to say thanks, but we were feeling pretty thankful ourselves. It was sweet relief to see him standing there. I hugged him, still reeling from the adrenalin rush of the day before.

It felt like our lives would be forever intertwined.

Later that day we returned to the pond, and would do so again.

It looks quite benign on a sunny day, the light glinting on the surface like diamonds, the stillest areas reflecting the blue sky. The pond is ringed with trees and shrubs, their budding branches almost ready to burst into leaf.

Used as part of the irrigation system of the former golf course, its black rubber lining keeps the water from seeping into the ground.

Now that the course is no longer in use, the pond is ringed with “Danger: Do Not Enter” signs, a message easily lost on curious dogs and their frantic owners.

One side of the pond has a grassy bank that you might climb if only you could reach it. But not everyone can if they fall in on the opposite side and the cold water saps their strength.

The man told us that when his dog went in, he put one foot on the rubber edge to reach for the animal and slid down it like a chute. He had yelled himself hoarse by the time we found him.

My husband and I kept returning to the scene in a state of hypervigilance, worrying someone else’s cries would go unheard. Unable to bear the thought that someone might die a terrible, lonely death so close to where we live.

And though we are happy with the outcome for that man and his dog, we are haunted by what might have been. What if we had left the house 10 minutes later? What if we had taken a different route? What if we had to tried to save him and failed? What if we had found his body?

The scenarios come to me in the middle of the night, hold on and won’t let go.

I see the man and his dog.

The inescapable pond.

The dead floating animal, its fur like soft brush strokes.

I think of the luck of the draw, and how fragile we all are.

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Pam Frampton lives in St. John’s, N.L.

pamelajframpton@gmail.com

X: @Pam_Frampton | Bluesky: @pamframpton.bsky.social