The Back of the Turtle (7 page)

NICHOLAS CRISP TOOK OFF HIS CLOTHES AND SLID INTO THE
last of the pools. Here, the water was bitter cold, threatening, at any moment, to seize up into ice. But after the fury and temper of the town-hall meeting, he welcomed the biting chill.

So that was their game. After all this time, after all the sorrows, here they were again, bent on gnawing the bones and sucking the marrow. Crisp took a deep breath, plunged under the water, and came up spitting.

“Bubbling cheeses!” he shouted, flinging the water from his beard. “But ye wouldn’t want to do that for an eternity!”

Crisp climbed to the top of a rock. From here he could look, over the trees, at the tops of the buildings in the town below. Most of the homes were deserted now, some already fallen into various states of disrepair, but the scene still had a painterly quality to it, something that a Cézanne might have considered.

Or a Moses.

Or a Constable.

Crisp’s eyes sparked as he remembered the moment at the meeting when the Jabberwoks had unveiled their economic charts and their artistic renderings for the proposed oil pipeline and deep-water terminus.

Opportunity, they blithered. Salvation, they blathered.

“Pale promises,” Crisp had howled from his front row seat.

They had spent the better part of an hour with an audiovisual presentation on the benefits that such a project would bring to the area and to every person in the Bay.

Wealth. Prosperity. Economic security.

Cuban vacations.

Sign here.

Carol Miller reminded everyone of what had happened the last time the project had been proposed, and the Jabberwoks had magically pulled a young man out of their hat who thanked Carol for her excellent question, assured everyone that those oversights had been corrected, and insisted that this proposal was a completely new proposition.

“It looks exactly like the old proposal,” Terry Collins had offered.

Whereupon the Jabberwoks made the young man disappear and replaced him with a pleasant young woman, who encouraged everyone to look to the future and not dwell on the past.

CRISP
climbed over the rock and dropped into the next pool. The water was mercifully warmer, and he could feel his blood as it found its way home. He pushed away from the edge, floated on his back with his arms stretched out from his sides, his legs crossed at the ankles.

“When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house,” Crisp whispered to himself, “his possessions are safe.”

He drifted, leisurely enjoying the cedars framed against the
sky. When his head finally nudged the rock wall, he rose up. And with the water shimmering about his body like chain mail, he stepped into the next pool.

For the first time in a very long while, Crisp felt alive. They were all here now. Mara, Soldier, and this Gabriel.

So, it had begun.

At last, it had begun.

THE MORNING TRAFFIC WAS HEAVY, AND THE LIMOUSINE WAS
reduced to drifting along with the schools of cars and lumbering pods of delivery vans and transport trucks, everyone jammed together fin to gill, in a sea of diesel fumes and exhaust.

Dorian used the time to return Benjamin Toshi’s call.

“This is Dorian Asher. I’m a patient of Dr. Toshi.”

“Yes,” said the woman, “do you need to make an appointment?”

“Dr. Toshi called me. I’m returning his call.”

The woman put him on hold, and he was forced to listen to Wayne Newton singing “Danke Schoen.”

“Dr. Toshi would like to see you at your earliest convenience.”

Dorian didn’t like the sound of that. “There were blood tests,” he said. “Is that why Dr. Toshi wants to see me?”

“I’m sure the doctor will discuss that with you when you come in.”

Come in? Surely Toshi understood that Dorian had better things to do. The doctor was a busy man. Dorian was a busy man. There was no need for this archaic physician-patient dance and certainly no need for an appointment, if all Toshi wanted to do was to tell him about the test results in person.

You’re fine.

You’re sick.

You’re dying.

It was pretty simple stuff. Dorian had never liked the way the medical industry tried to mystify the process of living. The human body was quite capable of taking care of itself. Sometimes it needed a little help, and that’s where doctors were useful. But most of the time, it didn’t require their services at all.

“I’d like to speak with Dr. Toshi.”

“Dr. Toshi doesn’t do that.”

Doesn’t do that? Doesn’t talk to his patients? Dorian tried to explain to the woman that he wasn’t really a patient, that his relationship with Dr. Toshi was that of one professional to another.

“I can fit you in later this week.”

It was a most unsatisfying conversation, and he could see that he would have to get this matter straightened out with the good doctor.

WINTER
Lee wasn’t waiting for him when Dorian stepped off the elevator, but his assistant had clearly been at work. There was a selection of muffins and fresh fruit, along with juice and coffee, tastefully arranged on the long table in front of the sofa. Dorian expected Winter would have left him a message with an update on Quinn, but the only new email was from Olivia, who said she was having a good time in Orlando and that she had found a house they might want to consider.

Olivia had attached the listing. A California bungalow. Five bedrooms, six full baths, a screened pool and patio, six
thousand square feet on just under three-quarters of an acre. Golf course, lake, helicopter pad. All in a gated community for $5.2 million.

There was something terribly familiar about the place, and Dorian was about to write back when he saw Dr. Warren Thicke get off the elevator and shuffle his way down the hall in short, jerky steps, as though he had been hobbled for an evening of grazing.

“Mr. Asher,” said Thicke, filling the doorway with his frame. The man had a deep, jolly voice, which he used in a generous way to remind Dorian, once again, that Thicke had a doctorate and Dorian did not.

“Dr. Thicke,” said Dorian. “Please come in.”

“Thank you for seeing me.”

Dorian waved a hand, as though he were shooing a fly. “It’s always good to see you.”

Dr. Thicke squeezed himself into one of the two wingback chairs. “I’m pleased we have the opportunity to talk about biofuels.”

“Actually,” said Dorian, “I want to talk to you about Dr. Quinn.”

“Dr. Quinn? Not biofuels?”

Dorian could feel his patience leaving the room. He glanced at the monitor. The price of the house wasn’t outrageous, and lakefront property was seldom a bad investment. But why did it have to be Orlando? What was wrong with the Guanacaste coast of Costa Rica or Golden Bay on the South Island of New Zealand, or one of the many seaside resorts in the south of France?

“Remind me,” said Dorian. “How many years have you worked for Dr. Quinn?”

“With,” said Thicke, his jolly voice icing up at the edges. “I work
with
Dr. Quinn.”

Thicke was a breakfast buffet. Hash brown hair, egg yolk eyes, soft butter lips, and a short stack of pancakes for a chin.

“Of course, Dr. Quinn is the
official
head of Biological Oversight,” said Thicke, “but we work as a team.”

“Most commendable,” said Dorian. “Teamwork is critical in scientific endeavours.”

“And as you’ll recall,” said Thicke, his attention drifting to the food, “when Dr. Quinn went to India several years back, I was asked to head the division.”

Dorian fabricated a smile. “Where are my manners,” he said. “Please. Help yourself.”

Thicke heaved himself out of the chair and hovered over the tray, before taking one of everything. Dorian was surprised at the dexterity and speed with which the man was able to get to the food and reseat himself, a cup of coffee balanced on one knee, a plate of muffins and fruit on the other.

“I understand the two of you were friends.”

Thicke looked up from his plate. “Friends?”

“Yes.”

“I wouldn’t say that we were friends.”

“No?”

Thicke shifted in the chair. “Dr. Quinn tended to keep to himself.”

“So, you don’t know where he might be?”

“No idea.” Thicke pulled a muffin apart and stuffed the larger piece in his mouth. “And I must say that his absence is creating problems for the division.”

Dorian forced a thin smile past his lips. “I appreciate your concern.”

“I thought you should be aware of that.”

“But what I need to know is if there have been any problems at work. Did he seem upset in the last little while?”

Thicke stuffed the other piece of muffin in his mouth. “There was the folder.”

Dorian waited.

“A few months back, I noticed a folder on Quinn’s desk. A rather thick one.”

Dorian continued to wait.

“Of course, that’s not unusual,” said Thicke. “We all have files and folders on our desks, but when I asked him about it, he got quite angry and told me to mind my own business.”

“Why?”

“Why did he tell me to mind my own business?”

“No. Why did you notice the folder?”

“The colour.” Thicke wiped a muffin crumb off his lips. “The file folders we use in Biological Oversight are light tan. The folder I saw was green.”

“Green.”

“Dark green. I thought it might have been a personal file of some sort.”

“Because it was green.”

“And because of what Dr. Quinn had written across the face of the folder.” Thicke licked his fingers. “‘The Woman Who Fell from the Sky.’ In block letters.”

“‘The Woman Who Fell from the Sky’?”

“Frankly, he could be somewhat eccentric.”

“Was there anything else?”

Thicke’s eyes wandered around the room, as though they
were trying to find something they had lost. “Well, he was more talkative of late.”

“More talkative?”

“He even bought me coffee at the cafeteria. That was unusual.”

Mr. Muffin Mouth.

That’s who was sitting in Dorian’s chair, making important noises, and blowing brown crumbs all over his Mashad.

Not Dr. Warren Thicke. Not the biologist and genetics engineer.

Mr. Muffin Mouth.

“What did the two of you talk about?”

“
Klebsiella planticola.
” Thicke picked a strawberry off his plate. “The variation on SDF 20 that we developed.”

Dorian could feel his body tighten. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “GreenSweep,” he said, his voice calm and flat. “The two of you talked about GreenSweep.”

Thicke nodded and bit the strawberry in half. “Several times, actually. It seemed somewhat odd, since that project had been cancelled.”

Dorian rubbed his eyes. “Thank you for your time. I really appreciate your help,” he said. “But I should let you get back to your laboratory.”

Thicke struggled to his feet, knocking food off his pants as he stood. “I was hoping we might have a conversation about biofuels.”

“Right now,” said Dorian, shaking the scientist’s hand, “my immediate concern is finding Dr. Quinn. I’m sure you understand.”

“Of course.” Thicke held his plate up. “May I take this with me?”

GABRIEL LAY IN BED AND CONSIDERED HIS RECURRING
dilemma. It was morning, and he didn’t want to get up, could not think of a good reason to do so. Most days he would wait until hunger or bodily functions forced him from beneath the covers.

Today it was the latter, and today he had waited a bit too long to reach the bathroom in good order. Not an accident really. Merely a fender-bender.

He stood in front of the sink and peered in the mirror. Scruffy. Very scruffy. The “running with the dog in the woods and howling at the moon” scenario that he had considered the night before had lost most of its appeal. A shave was in order. Deodorant. Remove ear hairs. Flatten the shark’s fin of hair sitting on his head. Take a shower.

Scrub off the melancholy. Wash away the past.

Gabriel padded into the kitchen in a fresh shirt and clean underwear. He tossed his pants over a chair. He’d put those on when they became necessary. He had had to wear pants in the laboratory, of course, but now that that life was behind him, he saw no reason to rush into trousers when he had nowhere to go and no idea what he wanted to do.

Why was fresh underwear always so stiff?

The photograph was on the refrigerator door. He had taped it there the night before to keep it from curling. It was mostly dry now. Gabriel stepped back to make sure it was straight, and there she was. His sister. Smiling at him. As though she were happy to have found him at long last. That hadn’t changed. Each time he looked at the picture, Little was smiling.

The baby wasn’t smiling, but Gabriel wasn’t sure if babies, at that age, smiled much or if they smiled at all.

It was strange to see his sister all grown-up. And holding a child. The baby had Little’s eyes, full of marvel and pleasure. Gabriel tried to imagine having a child of his own, wondered whether it would come to know the world as he had or if it would be spared that sorrow.

Gabriel propped the door open and let in the day. Soldier was lying on the deck, a fine coat of dew on his fur.

“Good morning.”

The dog got to his feet, shook himself off, and limped into the trailer. He went directly to his bowl and pushed it to the centre of the room with his nose so Gabriel could see that it was empty.

“Hungry?”

Gabriel filled Soldier’s bowl and stood back as the dog did his impression of a vacuum cleaner.

“Slow down.”

The sun was out. The morning air was cool and, from the look of the waves, the tides had decided to take the day off. Gabriel walked out onto the deck and sat down in the chair. Maybe something would happen today, something that would move him in one direction or another.

Behind him, he heard the dog making strange noises in his throat.

“No puking.”

More noises.

Gabriel leaned out of the chair and turned around.

The dog had his pants. Soldier had Gabriel’s jeans stuffed in his mouth, the legs dragging along behind him.

“Cute.”

Soldier stuck his hind end up in the air like a stubby flag, his body alive with energy.

“How about we drop the pants.”

Instead, Soldier exploded off the deck, the pant legs flapping around his head, as though he had somehow caught an ill-tempered albatross.

“Bad dog!”

For a moment, Gabriel thought the dog might just roll about in the ferns and the underbrush until he got tired or bored, but, instead, Soldier turned and trotted up the trail.

Towards the headlands and the reserve.

Gabriel shook his head. He wasn’t about to play the game. He had all day. He would just sit on the deck and wait for Soldier to come to his senses and slink back full of remorse and apology.

His wallet.

His wallet was in the jeans.

FOR
the first kilometre or so, Gabriel tried to pretend that he had signed up for one of those health-and-fitness vacations where speed walking after an opinionated dog was part of the
spa’s daily exercise offerings. He hadn’t expected to be so short of breath, was not at all pleased with the sensation. The trail was pleasant enough, and, as he struggled along, Gabriel tried to push past the discomfort by humming in time with each stride.

Trees, rocks, ocean, sky. Trees, rocks, ocean, sky. Trees, rocks, ocean, sky.

Not much different from Toronto, when you got right down to it. Except for the traffic. And the pollution. And the noise. The city had trees. Not as grand as the cedars and the firs, but trees nonetheless.

And rocks.

There was an enormous granite boulder in Yorkville that had been brought down from the Canadian Shield in pieces and reassembled as the centrepiece of a small but tasteful park.

No ocean, of course. Still, Lake Ontario was large enough to fool the casual eye. It had certainly duped European explorers, who expected that the lake would lead them through the continent to the Pacific.

And he knew that there had to have been a sky over Toronto, but when you lived in a city, you didn’t spend much time looking up.

THE
trail came out of the trees for a moment, and Gabriel paused at the edge of a steep drop to watch the colours of the ocean shift and change, as the waves formed and broke apart on the rocks below.

Okay, so it wasn’t much like Toronto after all.

Gabriel took a last look at the water and then began the climb
to the reserve. He felt foolish traipsing about in just a shirt, a pair of socks, and shoes.

At least the underwear was clean.

It wasn’t a charitable thought, but he found himself hoping that he would find Soldier around the next turn, lying in the dirt, dying of exhaustion, sorry that he had started this nonsense in the first place.

GABRIEL
had never had a pet, and Gabriel’s father had been clear about animals.

“We got enough to do taking care of ourselves,” Joe told Gabriel and his sister.

His sister had ignored her father’s directive, had brought home any number of puppies and kittens, some strays, some that had been given to her by neighbours and friends. And, in turn, each one had been sent back. But Little hadn’t been discouraged. Instead of arguing with Joe, she began cutting out pictures of animals and taping them on the walls of her bedroom.

“This is my pet monkey, Merlin,” Little explained. “And this is Shadow. She’s my golden retriever.”

Gabriel enjoyed his sister’s pets. They didn’t make noise. They didn’t have to be walked. They didn’t have to be fed. And they didn’t grow old and die. Even Joe approved. One day he brought home a page from a magazine that had a picture of two baby seals cavorting on a beach.

“They look like you and your brother,” Joe told his daughter.

“Which one is me?” Little had asked.

“The one causing all the trouble.”

Joe. That’s how he had known his father. Gabriel wasn’t sure how it had come about. He couldn’t remember his father ever insisting that his children call him by his first name. Gabriel’s mother called her husband “Joe,” so that might have been it.

He got along with his father just fine. They simply didn’t live in the same universe. Joe was an RCMP officer, and he understood the world through its sins. Gabriel understood the world through its mysteries.

Late one evening, when he was twelve or thirteen, he overheard his parents talking in the kitchen.

“What are we going to do with him?” Joe had asked. “He’s smarter than the both of us.”

“I guess we’ll do what we can.”

“Don’t know if it’s a good thing,” said his father, “being that smart.”

“He’ll find his place,” said his mother. “I just hope he’ll be happy.”

THE
entrance to the Smoke River Reserve was blocked by a derelict school bus. Next to the bus was a large wooden sign bolted to posts set in the ground.

“Restricted Access Area,” the sign said. “Authorized Personnel Only. By Order of the Minister of Indian Affairs.”

There was a series of official-looking documents, from a variety of government agencies, affixed to the bus itself—warnings and prohibitions—and its long, yellow flank had been spray-painted with graffiti.

Gabriel stopped at the bus to catch his breath. And to read the messages. They were the usual assortment of Bible verses, declarations of love, profanities, protest slogans, and phone numbers. Across the bus’s windows, someone had scrawled “Indians Go Home” in white paint.

He wasn’t sure what the bus was supposed to do. It wasn’t much of a barricade. The only thing it blocked was the view.

One of Gabriel’s shoes was untied, and as he bent down to tie it, he saw Soldier. Under the bus. Lying on his pants.

“There you are.”

Soldier didn’t move.

“Come here, boy. Come on.”

Gabriel lay down on his side and scooted forward. He could see Soldier’s eyes now. They were open, full of sin and sedition.

Perfect.

“What are you doing?” Gabriel reached out for Soldier’s collar. The dog backed farther under the bus, dragging the pants with him. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

“Not sure someone lying under a bus in his underwear should be asking that question.”

The voice startled him. Gabriel jerked his head up and cracked it on the undercarriage. “Damn!”

“Sorry.”

Gabriel tried to hold his shirt down as he wiggled out.

“Hi.”

Mara was standing by the front wheel well. “You were on your back the last time I saw you.”

Gabriel stood and brushed himself off.

“Do you always go sightseeing in your underwear?”

“Sightseeing?”

“Smoke River. Beyond the fence is the reserve.”

Gabriel picked a twig out of his hair.

“But as you can see,” said Mara, “it’s closed for the season.”

Soldier pushed his way from under the bus and trotted to the fence, dragging the pants behind him. Mara watched the dog for a moment.

“I take it those are your pants?”

“They are.”

“I don’t suppose you gave them to him.”

“No.”

Soldier rolled over on his back. Mara walked to the fence and knelt down. She rubbed the dog’s belly and gently pried the pants from his jaws.

“Good boy.”

“Matter of opinion.”

Mara stood up and shook the jeans. “So who are you?”

Gabriel pulled his shirt down as far as he could. “Gabriel.”

“Which Gabriel is that?” said Mara. “Depressed Gabriel? Hopeless Gabriel? Miserable Gabriel? Mysterious Gabriel? Stop me when I’m close.”

“Just Gabriel.”

Mara’s eyes darkened.

“Okay, let’s try something simple. Why here? Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, why here?”

“Vacation,” said Gabriel. “It started out as a vacation.”

“Then you need to fire your travel agent.” Mara was smiling, but her voice was hard. “Course, we do have an authentic Aboriginal Ghost Town.” Mara extended an arm, as though she
were leading a tour. “Indians. See where they died. Tour their homes. Relive their last moments. That could be fun.”

“I just want my pants.”

Mara gave the pants a second shake and tossed them to Gabriel. “And here they are.”

Gabriel stepped into the pants and pulled them up. The crotch was sopping with slobber.

“I should get back.”

“To what?” Mara pushed off the fence. “No, you stay. This is your vacation. You don’t want to miss anything.”

“Why are you angry?”

“And the turtles. Everybody comes to see the turtles.” Mara brushed past Gabriel and started down the trail. “When you get to the beach, make sure you check out the turtles.”

GABRIEL
waited until Mara disappeared into the trees. Then he walked past the bus and stood by the sign. There were houses in the distance and some trailers. Off to one side was a small water tank that had been painted a robin’s egg blue. The colour was faded and chipped, but you could still read the words.

Smoke River.

On a trailer next to the tower, someone had painted an upside-down Canadian flag. Gabriel leaned against the cyclone fencing and cupped his hands in an effort to bring the townsite into focus.

But he didn’t see anything that felt familiar.