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Authors: Arthur Bradford
Turtleface and Beyond
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To Maggie Vining
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CONTENTS
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Oh! Why I want to see
every leaf on every tree.
Who put all this burden on me?
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âHOLCOMBE WALLER, “ATLAS”
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We were paddling our canoes down a remote, slow-moving river, a full day's travel in either direction from the nearest road, when Otto decided to do something spectacular and stupid. Around a bend we encountered a sandy cliff rising up out of the water. Otto announced he would climb the cliff and then run down its steep face. We could all take pictures as he descended in long Olympian strides. At the end of his run, as he neared the base, Otto explained, he would launch himself into the river, a downhill running dive. It was late in the afternoon and we had all been drinking beer and whiskey.
Otto and I paddled to the cliff's base and he got out. Then he climbed. It was tough going due to all that loose sand.
“How's this?” he shouted down. He was about halfway up.
“Higher!” I shouted back. I was excited about the stunt and reasoned that greater height would maximize the effect.
I was feeling envious as well. Sheila and Maria were in the other canoe, watching intently. They wore cutoff blue jeans shorts over their swimsuits. Sheila was a photographer. She pointed her large-lensed camera up at Otto. Maria, my girlfriend, was a nurse and on the verge of dumping me for a number of legitimate reasons. At that moment I wished I possessed Otto's imagination and daring.
There was one other person with us, a cousin of Sheila's, named Tom. He was a large fellow who had joined the trip at the last minute. He couldn't, or wouldn't, paddle because he had broken his thumb. Instead, he declared he would be in charge of doling out the beer, and he spent the day sprawled in the center of the women's canoe doing just that. His skin had turned from pale white to dark crimson over the course of our journey. Maria had warned him about the dangers of exposure to the sun but he dismissed her advice with a wave of his cast-bound hand.
“I'll be fine,” said Tom.
Otto reached a point on the cliff where he could climb no higher. The terrain above him was too steep. He was perhaps a hundred feet above the river now, clinging to exposed tree roots for support. Clods of dirt tumbled down the slope and bounced into the water in front of us.
“Do it!” shouted Tom. He threw a half-full can of beer toward the cliff, where it landed without a sound in the sand.
“Are you going to pick that up?” asked Maria.
“Nope,” said Tom.
“I'll pick it up,” I said. I paddled my canoe back toward the cliff.
“Are you ready?” shouted Otto.
“Yes!” I shouted back.
“Where should I dive?” asked Otto.
I could see that Otto was having second thoughts. But the cliff shot straight into the river and the water below it was dark and deep. It all seemed fine to me.
“Go to my left!” I shouted back, pointing to a general area.
“My steps are going to be so long, man!” shouted Otto. “Watch this!”
Otto gave a halfhearted whoop and leaped into the air. He took one huge stride, and then another. He was right about those long steps. He covered a tremendous amount of ground with each leap, such was the pitch of the terrain. The sun shone down and sand kicked up behind him, creating an impressive, superhuman image.
Sheila clicked away with her camera and said, “Oh wow.” Maria nodded appreciatively.
Admiration and envy swelled within me. I should have come up with this, I thought, or at least climbed up there and done it with him, a tandem performance. We could have shared the glory. The women would have rubbed our backs around the campfire that night while recounting our heroics. Otto's body pitched forward as he neared the river's edge. He was losing control, legs scrambling, barely able to keep up with his downhill momentum.
“Ahhh!” he cried.
He dove forward, flying out toward the water, and hit the surface with a smack.
Ouch
, I thought.
“Whoa, fuck!” said Tom, slapping his knee with his one good hand. “Damn!”
The women were silent, unsure whether to laugh or be concerned. I moved closer to where Otto had landed. His body floated up in an awkward manner, facedown, arms splayed out from his sides.
“Turn over, Otto,” I said out loud.
Maria yelled at me, “Get him, Georgie!”
I swam out and flipped Otto's body over. His nose was smashed. Something was wrong with his lip too. Otto took a huge gasp of air. He was alive, a good sign. I recall thinking,
Oh, this isn't so bad
.
“He's okay!” I called to the others. “He's all right.”
“No, he's not,” said Sheila.
Blood began to spill from Otto's nose and mouth. Sheila was right. I had been too optimistic. He wasn't okay at all. Where was this blood coming from? What was wrong with his face? It was punched in. Jesus, how did that happen? It was just water.
We hoisted Otto on board Sheila and Maria's canoe. Tom got out begrudgingly to make room in the center. He stood next to me in the river while Maria, the nurse, attended to Otto's face.
Sheila kept saying, “Oh Lord. Oh my Lord.”
Tom opened a new beer and together we scanned the water where Otto had landed, looking for the rock or tree limb that must have caused the damage.
Eventually Tom said, “There's your culprit.”
He pointed to a dim, submerged object spinning in the current just below the surface.
“What is it?” I asked.
We watched for a moment as the object rose up, wiggled a bit, and then sank down.
“It's a turtle,” said Tom, almost chuckling. “He hit a fucking turtle.”
“Oh God,” I said.
It was a small snapping turtle, the size of your average pie. It was injured, too, and struggling to remain upright in the water.
I waded over and fished the creature out of the river. Its shell was cracked and I could see tender insides through the gap.
“Oh no,” I said.
“Tough day for him,” said Tom, shaking his head.
Over in the canoe, Otto coughed and moaned.
“What happened?” he sputtered. “What?”
“We need to get him out of here,” said Maria. “We need a hospital. A helicopter, something.”
Of course, there was no hospital or helicopter anywhere nearby. Our cell phones had lost any kind of signal long before we had even put the boats in the water that morning. I thought about shouting or blowing a whistle, but it really was no use. We'd simply have to paddle Otto downriver as fast as we could.
Our plan, before this happened, had been to camp out on a sandbar and reach the road crossing early the next day. From there one of us would hitchhike back up to the vehicle we'd left at the starting point. It was a plan hatched by a group of people in no particular hurry.
We fastened Otto down as well as we could. He was conscious, but dazed and in shock. The only lucky element in our situation was the presence of Maria, the nurse. She tended to him with improvised bandages and ice from the coolers. Even if there really wasn't much that could be done for Otto right then, we all felt better knowing that someone competent was involved.
Because Maria was occupied with her patient, that boat needed another paddler. I took her spot in the stern and Tom, broken thumb and all, was given the task of paddling the second boat solo.
“I can't do this,” he protested.
“Jesus, Tom,” said Sheila. “This is an emergency.”
We shifted most of the gear into Tom's boat to make room for both Otto and Maria in the middle of ours. As we readied to leave, I made a spur-of-the-moment decision. I fished the injured turtle out of the river. Then I emptied one of our coolers and placed the turtle inside it, with a little bit of river water. I put the cooler in our boat, under my seat.
Tom watched this procedure with disdain. “What the hell are you doing that for?” he asked me.
“We can't just leave him here,” I said.
“We sure can,” said Tom.
“We need to go,” said Maria.
Sheila and I set out at a frantic pace and nearly capsized the canoe right at the start. It would have been proverbial salt in the wound, dumping poor Otto into the water just then, but we managed to keep upright and soon hit our stride. It wasn't long before we had left Tom far behind, cursing and swirling about in the current. He was in for a long, rough trip, paddling one-handed all by himself, but we didn't have time to worry about that.
We paddled past lush pine forests and stunning rock outcroppings, hardly noticing the landscape in our haste. The wild surroundings had seemed pristine and magical that morning, but now it all took on a desolate air, especially as the sun dipped lower and cast long shadows in the canyons. I kept hoping we'd meet up with another group or pass some lonesome cabin equipped with a radio, but there was nothing. At one point we startled a moose.
“Moose,” said Sheila as we cruised past it.
“Wha?” said Otto.
“Shh⦔ said Maria. She had been talking to him throughout our journey, gently waking him from time to time to be sure he didn't slip into a coma.
“How's he doing?” I asked.
“Stop asking me that,” said Maria.
“How's the turtle?” asked Sheila.
“Not so good,” I reported. I held the cooler steady between my feet. The turtle lay still, listlessly sloshing about in the water, retracted inside its cracked shell.
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
Night fell and still we hadn't reached the road. Maria pointed a flashlight ahead of us so that it cast an eerie beam across the water, and we forged on. My hands were blistered and my shoulders numb. Sheila could barely lift her arms. She puked over the side of the canoe and collapsed. I felt a wave of admiration for her then, paddling so hard her body gave out on her. She hardly knew Otto, by the way. They had only been dating for about a week before embarking on this trip. We pulled over and Maria gave Sheila water and massaged her arms. Then they switched places. Maria placed a cool, wet bandanna over Otto's face.
“Don't lift it up,” said Maria as she took the bow.
We made good time with Maria's fresh arms and reached the bridge crossing around midnight. This felt like progress, except we soon found that there were no cars traveling the road at that hour.
“Fuck,” said Maria. “We should have paddled faster.” This comment seemed directed at me, since Sheila had clearly done all she could.
We dragged the canoe onto the shore and left Otto inside it. Maria grabbed a cell phone and ran down the road looking for a signal. Sheila and I stayed behind with Otto, both of us too tired to run around the wilderness on such an errand. Otto kept at it with his raspy wheezing and intermittent coughing fits. Awful as he sounded, the noises offered a bit of comfort. When he was silent we worried that he might stop breathing altogether.
