Carl Hiaasen (51 page)

“Clara would know.”

“Yes. She would. Come on, it’s time.”

She led him down to the creek. They walked along the bank, stopping here and there to place baby turtles in the water.

JoLayne was saying, “Did you know they can live twenty, twenty-five years? I read a paper in
BioScience …”

Whispering all this—Tom wasn’t sure why, but it seemed natural and right.

“Just think,” she said. “Twenty years from now we can sit up there and watch these guys sunning on the logs. By then they’ll be as big as army helmets, Tom, and covered with green moss. I can’t wait.”

He reached into the sack and took out the last one.

“That’s a red-belly,” she said. “You do the honors, Mr. Krome.”

He placed the tiny cooter on a flat rock. Momentarily its head emerged from the shell. Then out came the stubby curved legs.

“Watch him go,” JoLayne said. The turtle scrambled comically, like a wind-up toy, landing with a quiet plop in the stream.

“So long, sport. Have a great life.” With both hands she reached for Tom. “I need to ask you something.”

“Fire away.”

“Are you going to write a story about all this?”

“Never,” he said.

“But I was right, wasn’t I? Didn’t I tell you it would be a good one?”

“You did. It was. But you’ll never read about it in the paper.”

“Thank you.”

“In a novel, maybe,” he said, playfully pulling free. “But not in a newspaper.”

“Tom, I’ll kill you.” She was laughing as she chased him up the hill, into the tall pines.