The Turtle Warrior (4 page)

Once when James was dancing to his music in the hayloft and Bill was fighting and singing below in the toolshed, their father furiously loped around the corner of the barn. He pushed open the sliding red barn door and yelled up into the hayloft, “Will you shut off that goddamn wango-bango music! Shut it off! Do you hear me! Shut it off!”

Then he ducked into the toolshed and grabbed Bill’s sword out of his hand. He dragged Bill by his arm out into the yard, and while his son stood violently trembling, John Lucas flung the sword into the field next to the barn.

“Now quit dreamin’ and do some chores!” his father yelled, lifting him off the ground by the neck of his shirt. Bill’s arm dangled inside the turtle shell. He held his breath. His father stank of tractor oil, sweat, and Jim Beam whiskey. Then he dropped Bill and strode just as furiously back to the tractor he was supposedly repairing behind the barn.

“Christ, he’s hung over. Probably woke him up,” James muttered, having climbed down from the loft to stand near Bill. Bill watched as James turned in the direction their father had gone. His brother raised one brown muscled arm and, closing his hand into a fist, lifted only his middle finger. Bill watched that bird fly.

“Hey!”

Bill looked up.

“Get over here!”

Bill broke into a reluctant jog until he caught up with them. The snapper’s flow of blood had slowed to a trickle. She appeared almost dead except for the rhythmic clawing of her legs.

“Quit being so poky, and c’mon,” James said irritably, shifting the turtle to his left hand. Bill could tell James and Terry were coming off their beer buzz because their shoulders slumped and they weren’t talking anymore. They barely lifted their feet, shuffling like elderly men.

Minutes later they were walking out of the curve that hid the Lucas farm from the road when they heard the low hum of a vehicle coming up behind them.

“Wonder who it is. Your old man?” Terry asked.

James stopped and listened, his head cocked toward the sound. “Nah. My old man is in town. I’ll bet it’s Ernie Morriseau. Sounds like his truck. Can you hear that knock?”

The hum and knock became louder. Bill hoped it was Ernie Morriseau, and when he turned around, his hope was confirmed as the gray ’64 Ford truck appeared behind them. Ernie Morriseau slowed down behind the boys and brought his truck to an idling halt beside them. He eyed the turtle in James’s hands.

“Did you get that snapper down at the river?” He leaned out of his truck window for a better look.

“Yeah ... we’re taking her home to Mom for soup,” James answered stiffly.

Ernie glanced at all three boys. “What happened to her jaws?” He said it quietly, but they heard him despite the idling engine.

“Nothin’,” Terry answered sullenly. “We were just havin’ a little fun.”

Bill watched Ernie’s eyes narrow toward his brother and Terry. The turtle let out a groan. Bill’s eyes watered again. Ernie cut the engine.

“How bad does your mom need a turtle for soup?”

Bill could tell Ernie was mad. The skin on Ernie’s neck was a sun-weathered red-brown, and when he was angry, it turned bronze.

“Not bad.” James shifted the turtle back to his right hand.

“I’ll buy it from you.” Ernie reached into his back pocket.

“Ten bucks!” Terry suddenly demanded. For a few precious moments Bill thought Ernie was going to reach out of his truck window and grab Terry by his greased-down hair. His heart beat faster.
Maybe,
Bill thought with no small amount of joy,
he’ll slam his head into the door.
Bill looked up at James. His brother had that cocky look on his face that really meant that he was scared.

“Okay,” Ernie answered coolly, “ten bucks it is.”

He got out of his truck and handed the ten-dollar bill to James instead of Terry. James extended the hand holding the turtle’s tail toward Ernie.

“Wait.”

Ernie grabbed some tarpaulin from the bed of the truck. He lined the floor on the passenger side with it. Then he took hold of the turtle hanging from James’s hand by both sides of her shell and placed the almost dead animal on top of the tarpaulin. After stepping onto the running board, Ernie swung back into truck’s cab and started the engine. He looked back at the silent boys.

“Billy,” he said, hooking his thumb toward Bill, “how’d you like to come over for supper? Rosemary would love to have you.”

Bill looked at his brother. James wasn’t cocky anymore. He dropped his head and stared at his boots. “Go ahead,” he mumbled to Bill. “I’ll tell Mom where you are.”

Bill hesitated. Ernie reached over to open the passenger side door. Bill walked slowly around the front of the truck.

“Better take care of that thumb. It looks pretty nasty,” Ernie commented to James as Bill climbed into the truck; he kept his feet on the seat instead of resting them on the snapper’s back. Then Ernie revved the engine, and the truck rolled forward. Bill twisted his head around to stare out the cab window. Just above the brown dust of the road, he saw James’s startled face staring after them, his other hand holding the bitten thumb.

When they pulled up close to the yellow farmhouse, Bill saw Rosemary Morriseau’s face appear in the kitchen window. She vigorously waved when she saw that Bill was in the truck too.

“Rose! We’ve got company for dinner!” Ernie called from the open window of the truck. Bill got out and walked around to Ernie’s side.

“Billy!”

Rosemary Morriseau flung open the screen door and almost skipped down the porch steps. She reached forward and hugged him, his face nestled just under her breasts. Bill’s guilt at leaving James washed away in the luxury of her hug and smile. He could not recall a time when his mother greeted him the way Rosemary Morriseau did, nor did his mother smell like her. He pressed his nose into the bottom crest of her ribs and inhaled. She wore lily of the valley perfume and that other smell of her body. He could not name it. He only knew it as her smell. It gave him joy and made him feel safe.

“Dinner will be ready in forty-five minutes,” she said, stepping back and ruffling his hair.

“We’ll be in the house in a bit.”

Rosemary ruffled his hair again before stepping back inside the house to finish cooking dinner. Bill hoisted himself over the tailgate to sit in the box of the truck. Ernie drove the truck to the back of the barn. He got out of the driver’s side, walked around the front of the truck, opened the passenger side door, and lifted the turtle out of the truck. Bill swung himself over the tailgate and onto the ground. He watched as Ernie placed the turtle on a small bed of straw. The snapper clawed the loose straw but could not lift her head. One glassy eye seemed riveted on Bill’s face.

“What did James do to her jaws?”

“Terry too!”

“Terry too,” Ernie echoed, and then repeated, “What did they do to her jaws?”

Bill didn’t know if he could say. “Our neighbors don’t need to know what goes on in our home,” his mother always said, looking at Bill and James nervously after they had been at the Morriseau farm. But this had happened at the river, not at home. Bill suddenly felt very tired.

“Firecrackers.”

“Huh,” Ernie grunted. He bent down to take a closer look at the snapper. “I thought I could wire her lower jaw back together, but it’s too bad even for that.”

He stood up and stepped back so that he could lean against the truck. Bill joined him, sitting on the running board.

“Are you gonna make soup outta her?” Bill asked tentatively.

“No.”

Bill inhaled deeply. He could smell the sweat of hard work and the mint-flavored gum that Ernie always carried in his shirt pocket.

“That,” Ernie explained quietly, “is the last of the dinosaurs. You know why snappers keep moving even after they’re dead?”

Bill shook his head. He just assumed snappers were that way, and no one at home told him differently. When his father beheaded one, the body continued to crawl around the yard until his father nailed the turtle by its tail to the light post so that the body would bleed out. After a few hours his father cut the turtle free from the base of its tail and, after flipping the animal over, unhinged it to get at the meat. The tail continued to move for days before becoming motionless. Until Bill touched it. Then the tail reflexed as though it were still alive.

“Well, scientifically speaking, they are considered primitive. Their nerve endings take a lot longer to die. This one is very old,” he added. “You can tell by the shape and size of her shell. At least it looks as though she’s laid her eggs already. You boys didn’t bother the nest, did you?”

“No.” Bill could answer that truthfully.

Ernie looked up, his gaze focused on the waving oats in his field. “If my father was here,” he commented, “he’d tell you differently. He would tell you that turtle created the world.”

They watched the snapper for a minute more until Ernie pushed himself off the truck.

“You better run up to the house and help Rose with supper. I’ll take care of the snapper.”

He gave Bill a small nudge. Bill knew what that meant. Ernie would take the .22 rifle he kept in the barn and shoot the turtle behind the head.

They were just finishing dessert when they heard a car pull into the driveway and heard the dog bark. Ernie pushed back his chair and stood up from the table to look out the kitchen window.

“Billy, it’s your dad.”

Bill stiffened, unable to swallow the chocolate cake lumped on his tongue. He wiped his mouth and, guided by Rosemary, followed Ernie out of the porch door. He could hear Ernie calling their dog, Angel, away from the station wagon so that John Lucas could get out. Bill watched as Ernie caught the dog from lunging, holding him by his collar until Rosemary knelt down and wrapped her arms around the dog to physically restrain him. Ernie stood up.

“John.” He extended his hand toward Bill’s father.

John Lucas shook Ernie’s hand as though it were covered with shit but unavoidable and said coldly, “I came to pick up Bill.”

“Did Jimmy tell you we invited Bill to dinner?” Ernie asked.

John Lucas nodded. “We need him at home now. C’mon, Bill.” John Lucas motioned to his younger son.

Ernie laid a hand on Bill’s shoulder and let it slide off as Bill walked by him.

“Say, John, if you don’t need Jimmy this summer, I’ll pay him to work over here. I could use some help this summer.”

John Lucas released his hand from the handle on the door, caught by Ernie’s request. “Well, he can’t do that. He won’t be here this summer. James enlisted. He’s leaving tomorrow.”

Bill stopped before opening the passenger side door to the station wagon.
Enlisted.
Bill didn’t understand what his father was talking about. He waited and listened for Ernie’s response. But Ernie appeared stunned. Bill shifted his eyes to stare at his father.

John Lucas was a tall man with sparrow-colored hair and sallow skin. He towered over Ernie Morriseau, but Bill noticed that Ernie was more muscular, more compact than his father. He wondered which man would win, if it ever came to fists. But he didn’t have to wonder long because he could see that Ernie would be able to drop his father despite John Lucas’s height. All Ernie would have to do is punch John Lucas’s soft white belly and the tall man would fall like a chain-sawed pine in the woods.