Snapper (18 page)

Behind the Volvo was a trailer. August was towing something, but she couldn’t see what. Whatever it was, it was under a tarp.

Deena waved and called through the screened window, but the car rolled past without stopping. Apparently, August hadn’t heard her.

Deena couldn’t repress her immediate desire to see him. She put the lid back on the gallon of primer she’d just opened and stirred. She was glad she hadn’t dipped her brush in yet. She went to the bathroom, gave herself a quick glance in the mirror then walked the short distance between her bungalow and August’s cabin.

August had just started untying the tarp that covered the trailer.

“Hi, stranger,” Deena called.

August spun around, dropping the corner of the tarp that he’d just lifted.

“Hey, hi!” he said, surprised to see Deena in painter’s pants and hat. “What are you doing here on a Saturday morning?”

“Oh, I just came by to see if I could borrow a cup of sugar.”

August looked perplexed.

“A cup of sugar?” he repeated.

“Isn’t that what neighbors do?” said Deena. “Borrow cups of sugar.”

Andersen raised an eyebrow.

“Neighbors?” he repeated.

“I just closed on the Burt bungalow,” she told him. “It happened while you were away.”

“Well, that’s news.” said August. “Congratulations. Were you serious about a cup of sugar?”

“No, I was just kidding. But I wouldn’t say no to a cup of coffee.”

“Sure,” said August. “Come on in. I’ll make some.”

While August set up the coffee maker, Deena went to the window where she had spent countless hours writing. It was funny. She had come to Turtleback Lake to get away from men and she had failed miserably. Yet she couldn’t have been happier.

Then she looked out at the lake – first at the white rock out in the middle and then at the wooden dock that floated forty or fifty yards from shore. She thought back on the many times she had swum out to it. She’d been lucky.
She
could’ve been one of the snapper’s victims.

But now she felt certain that nothing was going to get her. Somebody was going to get the beast out of the lake and she had a feeling that it was going to be August –
her
August. He didn’t know it yet, but he was going to be hers. Just as he was going to catch that snapper, she was going to catch him.

“How do you like it?” said August.

Deena was still looking out the window with her back to him.

“It’s beautiful,” answered Deena.

“I meant your coffee,” said August. “How do you take it?”

“A little milk, no sugar. Thanks.”

She was waiting for August to say, “Sugar? You’re sweet enough without it.”

But August wasn’t a dispenser of clichés. He simply opened the refrigerator and took out a carton of milk. He put his nose to it.

“P-U!”
he said. “I’m sorry, but the milk’s gone bad. Would black be okay?”

“As long as it’s hot and strong,” she said.

August handed the coffee to Deena. She wrapped her fingers around the mug and inhaled the steam rising off it.

“So – what are you towing?” she asked, nodding through the window at the trailer outside. “It looks so long and tubular. It’s not a submarine, is it?”

“Actually, I was hoping to keep it secret,” said August.

Deena waited, hoping August would share his secret with her.

“It’s an SV,” he said finally.

“Excuse me?” said Deena.

“Sorry,” said August. “It’s an SV – a submersible vessel. It’s really just a small two-man sub.”

“You’re not thinking about taking it out on the lake?”

“Of course I am,” said August.

“What if this giant snapper attacks you?”

“That’s what I’m counting on,” said August. “I’m hoping I can lure him close enough to capture.”

“Anyone else in on this plan? It sounds dangerous.”

“Nope,” said August. “This is a solo mission.”

“Don’t you think Chief Rudolph should know?” said Deena. “ So he can provide some kind of backup?”

August shook his head.

“Chief Rudolph and I see things differently,” said August. “He wants the turtle dead. I want it captured – so it can be studied.”

“Well, I can see the advantage of your position,” said Deena. “But I don’t know about the rest of the town. There’s a real blood lust in the air.”

“Well, you know what the Chinese say,” said August. “When you set out for revenge, dig two graves.”

“I don’t think I understand,” said Deena.

“One grave for the person you’re seeking revenge against,” explained August. “And another one for yourself.”

“Well, I just think you should be careful,” said Deena. “And anyway, don’t you think Chief Rudolph will eventually find out what you’re up to?”

“I don’t think so,” said August. “Where I’m going, no one – including Chief Rudolph – will see me.”

* * * *

It was late October. Halloween was drawing near.

For years, snapping turtle costumes had been a big hit in Turtleback Lake. Tons of kids wore them. But this year – in light of the recent tragic events – many people thought they’d be in poor taste.

Parents especially were opposed to them. But kids wanted to wear them as much as ever. This year they’d really be scary! And for younger children whose older siblings had worn them in the past, it seemed unfair. This year was their turn.

On Halloween night, more than a few parents gave in.

“Okay, you can be a snapping turtle,” many said. “But whatever you do, don’t go trick-or-treating at The Copelands’ house wearing that costume.”

Nobody had to worry about trick-or-treating at The Sully house.

After Jack Sully’s death, little Joanne had been picked up and whisked away to live with an aunt from somewhere down in South Jersey. The Sully house stood vacant – dark and deserted. On Halloween night, it looked like the closest thing to a real haunted house that Turtleback Lake had ever seen. Loose shutters banged in the wind, dead leaves skittered across the front porch, branches scratched against blackened windows. Kids crossed to the other side of the street just to avoid it.

Up in the Skytop section, trick-or-treaters were scarce. Because of multi-acre zoning, homes were few and far between. Unless you lived in the neighborhood, it wasn’t worth the trek. The Claytons’ doorbell had hardly rung all evening.

Still, JJ sat in a chair in the front hall, just in case anyone did show up. The plastic pumpkin head on the little table next to him was still brimming with Butterfingers and fun-size bags of peanut M&Ms. JJ and his dad would be eating them for weeks to come.

JJ looked at his watch. It was 9:30. He closed the book he was reading. Maybe it was time to close shop.

Then, as he reached for the switch to turn off the front door light, a loud hard knock startled him. JJ jumped. He looked through one of the two windows that flanked the door. Someone was out there: a tall kid dressed as a pirate. The kid had a patch over one eye, a black bandanna patterned with skulls and crossbones, and a stuffed parrot perched on his shoulder. JJ swung open the door.

“Aaargh, matey!”
hailed the pirate in a deep throaty voice. “Any booty for a buccaneer with a peg leg?”

JJ almost knocked the pirate over with a bear hug.

“Ian! It’s so good to see you! Come on in!”

Ian Copeland stumped into the entry hall. It was the first time JJ had seen Ian in weeks. He tried not to look down at the prosthetic device that was Ian’s new right foot.

“So how’s it going?” asked Ian. “And how’s the team?”

Ian had been away for more than three weeks at a physical rehabilitation center.

“Forget about me and the team,” said JJ. “How are you?”

“Believe it or not, I’m fine,” said Ian. “I saw stuff while I was away that kind of put things in perspective.”

“What do you mean?” asked JJ.

“This place I was at,” said Ian. “There were people there – old people, young people, even little kids. And the things they’d been through you wouldn’t want to know. Some had no legs, let alone one foot. And yet none of them complained. So how could I?”

Then Ian walked back and forth across the entry hall.

“What do you think about my new gait?” asked Ian.

“You can hardly tell you’re limping,” said JJ.

“Well, that’s not true,” said Ian. “But enough about me. Tell me about the team!”

“Well, we’re still undefeated,” said JJ. “But we’ve had a couple of real squeakers. We’ve missed you, Ian.”

“Who’s been doing the kicking?” asked Ian.

JJ knew the question was going to come. The answer to it had been eating away at him for weeks.

“Well,” said JJ. “For the last two games, I have.”

Ian didn’t even flinch.

“That’s great!” he said. “I didn’t know you could.”

“Neither did I,” said JJ. “But one day, as I was running out onto the practice field, a soccer ball rolled in front of me. I kicked it. I was surprised at how far it went. Lupo saw me and made me kick it again. Then he made me try a few place kicks. I wasn’t bad. It’s probably from watching you do it so many times.”

“It’s probably from all those bike races we had coming home from practice,” said Ian. “You’ve got legs of steel.”

Ian reached down and tapped the ankle of his new prosthetic foot. It clinked.

“Then again,” he laughed, “so do I!”

* * * *

Dr. Goode had been wrong about who had defaced Turtleback Rock. It wasn’t a student – or students – at Turtleback High.

It was an alumnus, class of ’80.

There were no eyewitnesses, but the circumstantial evidence was as damning as any testimony could possibly be. First there were the dried splatters and drippings of paint found on the side of Jack Sully’s canoe: yellow, black, red and white – the same four colors used to paint the cartoon snapper on Turtleback Rock.

Then there were the empty paint cans found in Jack’s garage. The empty cans included the same four colors. But the nails in Jack’s coffin had been the crude sketches Chief Rudolph found on a table inside Jack’s house: sketches of a stick figure person holding a paintbrush while standing on the dome of a turtle’s back.

“I didn’t know Jack had so much talent,” Chief Rudolph said to deputy Rhodes flipping through the sketches. “Some of these aren’t half-bad.”

Of course there would be no day in court for Jack. He was already incarcerated in a custom-made half-size pinewood coffin buried six-feet deep in Turtleback Rock Cemetery. The grave marker was cheap and simple: a large boulder that had been painted white.

Deena knew she had been wrong in accusing her students of a crime that none of them had committed. The November issue of The Mosaic, the high school’s monthly newspaper, gave her a chance to make amends.

The person responsible for the defacement of Turtleback Rock has been found. The perpetrator was a local house painter, the same unfortunate man who died in the most recent snapping turtle attack. While his crime was offensive, his passing is a tragedy as it has made an orphan of his innocent daughter. The silver lining in this dark cloud is that all suspicions leveled against the students of this school – including my own – have been proved baseless.

Marc Bozian seized on the same topic for a short piece on the opinion page of The Turtleback Gazette. Marc wrote:

Though the perpetrator is dead, his crime lives on. Daily we are faced with the garish spectacle of Mr. Sully’s last paint job, a sight that is all the more offensive given that it is such a vivid reminder of the even greater menace that still lurks in the waters beneath. Perhaps if our community could find a way to expunge this surface blight, we might be inspired to eliminate its objective correlative.

Marc wondered if he was using too many big words. But Marc liked big words. People could always look them up. That’s why there were dictionaries.

He handed the finished piece to Michael Schneiderman to review.

Bozian watched Schneiderman’s eyes tracking back and forth across the page. Then Michael looked up perplexed.

“What the heck does
‘objective correlative’
mean?”

“It’s when one thing stands for something else,” explained Marc.

“So what’s the objective correlative in your piece?”

“The snapping turtle is the objective correlative of the painted rock,” explained Marc. Then he paused. Could he possibly have that backwards? Marc wasn’t completely sure. But what did it matter? If
a
equals
b
then
b
equals
a
. The order didn’t matter. It was the commutative property. Or maybe it was the associative property.

“Don’t you think it’s just a bit over our readers’ heads?” asked Michael.

Bozian shrugged his shoulders. Schneiderman handed the article back to him.