The Great Snapping Turtle Adventure (5 page)

The room was divided into two long halls that went the full length of the building. On both outside walls and right down the middle were long work tables. Some held mysterious machines, others were wooden troughs filled with some type of water-like fluid and hundreds of little buttons.

“Never been to a button factory before?” the man asked.

“Never,” admitted Fred. The boys nodded.

“Well, this here ain't like the majority of modern ones. Here we only make one kind of button. We make 'em natural from shells.” He reached under one table and pulled a fan-shaped shell out from a wooden basket. It was pearly white and as big as a large dinner platter.

“This here is a mother-of-pearl shell. My son collects them for me down in the ocean off the coast of Bermuda. He dives down wearing all his fancy scuba gear and comes up with them. Dangerous 'cause some of the creatures down there could take a man's whole leg in their mouth and never let go. Giant mollusks.”

“Wow,” murmured the boys.

“My son brings 'em to me and after nature has cleaned 'em up a bit, I use them to make buttons.” He handed the shell to Max.

“How does nature clean them?” asked Charles, touching the shell.

“Well, let's put it this way. All the living tissue that died when we brought it up from the ocean makes a nice feast for other little crawly critters.”

“Oh,” said Charles, understanding.

“After the shells are cleaned up and ready, we bring 'em in and start making buttons.” The button man moved over to a huge machine. There were several shiny, drill-like tubes hanging down from its center. “This here machine does the first step—it bores out the buttons from the big shell.” He held the shell up under the cutting tubes and flipped a switch. There was a whir as they slowly descended. Circling and circling, they cut into the shell. In a moment, 15 or 20 perfectly round little buttons fell onto a pad below.

“Here ya go,” said the button man, switching off the machine and handing the shell back to Max.

“It looks like a fat, hard piece of lace,” said Max. The shell was filled with holes. It did, indeed, look like lace.

“Or a fan-shaped snowflake,” said Charles, bending over to peer through the holes.

“You can keep it if you want,” said the man. He reached under the drills and scraped the little pile of buttons into his palm.

“Look!” said Max. “There are more buttons than holes.”

“That's true,” said the button man.

“How can that happen?” asked Charles, looking at all the little circular pieces of shell that had come from just a few holes.

“Well, the shell is in layers. When we drill it, the blanks break into several slices. Blanks are what we call buttons before they get their thread holes.”

“So they are kind of like when your Mom makes buttermilk biscuits from those rolls of dough she buys,” said Fred.

“Oh yeah, the dough's in flaky layers. It's real hard to decide how fat to make the biscuit,” said Charles. His stomach told him he'd love to be eating a biscuit.

“Well, it's about the same thing, I guess,” said the button man. “Only thing is, the shell is a lot harder than raw dough. The blanks flake off when the drill hits them. Some are a good thickness for buttons, some are too thin, others are too fat. We can take the fat ones and give 'em a tap like this.” He put down all the blanks except for one fat one. The fat blank he placed on its side, holding it between his thumb and index finger. With his other hand he picked up a small chisel and gently gave the blank a tap. It broke into two blanks. Then he took each of the two and tapped them again with the chisel, ending up with four more little blanks.

“Tedious work,” commented Fred.

“Yeah, can't do too much of it at one time. You begin to get careless and end up with sore fingers,” said the button man, laying down the chisel.

“Look, this layer is so thin I can see through it—almost,” said Charles, holding up one of the blanks.

“You can have that, too,” said the button man. “It's too thin for me to put holes in.”

“Thanks,” said Charles, carefully holding the fish-scale thin piece of pearly white shell.

“Next step,” said the button man as he moved a couple of feet down to another machine. “Here's where we add the holes.” He threw the handful of blanks into a funnel at the top of the machine. From a box of blanks that rested on the dusty floor, beneath the machine, he took another handful of blanks to add to the batch in the funnel.

Again, when the machine was switched on, there was a soft humming sound. Four drills came down and quickly cut four holes into a blank. Now, it was a real button. In about a minute's time, all the blanks had fed through the funnel and were buttons. The man flipped off the machine.

“Wow, that was fast,” said Max.

“One of the fastest machines I have,” said the button man.

“So, now we have buttons ready for market,” said Charles.

“Nope, not yet. Some folks want white buttons. Some want black. Some want brown. We make all three. For black buttons, the kind some gentlemen wear on their fancy tuxedo shirts, we have to put them in a bath of chemicals. Over this way.” He walked a few more steps until he reached a long trough filled with hundreds of little black buttons. “Don't put your fingers in there. It will burn you,” he warned.

“Do they have to stay in there long?” asked Charles.

“Couple of days. We make brown ones by taking them out quicker. But I'm not doing any brown ones these days. The market for them is just not as good as for white or black.”

“Then are they done?” asked Max.

“Nope.” The button man moved to still another machine. “They need to get rims on 'em and they need to be polished up, so nice and shiny you can almost see yourself in 'em. Some don't get rims. That's a matter of fashion, I guess. But all need to be rubbed bright. No one wants dull buttons. Guess that's a matter of fashion, too.”

It was hard to imagine someone like the button man talking about tuxedos and fashion. Dressed as he was, in dusty, dirty clothes, Charles thought he looked more like the miller who ground the wheat into flour for the
Little Red Hen.
“You keep up with fashions?” he blurted out.

“Got to. In my business, you have to know what buttons people want. 'Course, some folks these days are settling for plastic buttons. That's bad news for me. They come in many colors that I can't make and are a lot cheaper to produce. But places of high fashion, say up in New York City, still need my buttons for their really fine clothes. Those folks don't use plastic. They use my mother-of-pearl buttons in white, black, or brown. They tell me the size. They tell me the color. I do the rest for them, and they are pleased.”

The button man showed Fred and the boys the machine for making rims and the one that rubbed the little shell buttons until they shone as bright as clean glass.

By this time, they had arrived back to the front door, having seen thousands of buttons and having stepped on thousands more that littered the floor with their small imperfections.

“Well, that's about it,” said the button man. “Each of you can take one of those ‘holy' shells home as a souvenir, but only one. We put them back in the oyster beds. They help nature make a place for the little spats, or young oysters, to grow up on.” He smiled and rubbed his calloused hand across his two-day-old beard. “If I knowed I was going to have company, I'd 'ave shaved this morning.”

“Thanks for showing us the factory,” said Fred. “It really is amazing.”

“Well, come back sometime. Maybe I'll have figured out how to make red buttons by then. Get yourself a couple buttons here,” he said, holding out a little tin box filled with hundreds of beautiful, perfect buttons. “Maybe your momma can sew 'em onto tuxedo shirts for you boys. Then when you go to your high school prom, you can remember the day you came visiting my button factory.”

“And we'll remember you, too,” said Max with a smile.

“Thanks lots,” said Charles, thinking a prom was something too far in the future to even worry about.

“Thanks,” said Fred, waving.

“Bye,” they all called to the button man.

“You take good care now,” he said.

Fred and the boys slowly walked back up the little drive, stepping on thousands of broken buttons.

“Quite an adventure,” said Fred when they were back in the truck.

“Yeah, a real nice guy, too,” said Max.

“And we never even found out what his name was,” added Charles.

“You're right,” said Fred. “We don't even know the official name of the factory,” he added as they drove past the little wooden arrow.

“Strange!” said Max, looking back at the gray building.

“Quite a mystery. One never knows what one will find when traveling down some of these back roads,” said Fred.

“Yeah, I wonder what we'll see next,” said Charles thoughtfully.

“At the Vienna Inn,” finished Fred.

“I don't care where, as long as we eat dinner soon. I'm starved!” sighed Charles.

CHAPTER 8

T
HE RIDE OUT FROM THE
End of the World seemed faster than the ride there. Fred and the boys passed watermen headed home from the markets. Each time they met a truck, they would pull over, and in each case such courtesy was met with a friendly wave or shout of “Thank-ee kindly!”

Back in the town of Vienna, Fred checked into the Vienna Inn. It was a tall, old brick house right on the Nanticoke River. Wild geese and mallard ducks swam down the river and white swans rested with their black bills tucked deeply into their long-feathered wings.

“This is great!” Max announced as he peered out the third-floor window to the water below. “Can we explore?”

“Sure. Miss Marie, the owner, said for you to check around by the water. All kinds of interesting things wash up there. She also said it would be ‘just fine' for you to place Cinderella in her basket down where the waves can lap over her and keep her cool.”

“Good. We don't want her to get sun stroke or anything,” said Charles.

“Well, it's pretty late in the day for that. She's more liable to get moon struck,” said Fred. “Better tie her up before you get cleaned up for dinner, as it's probably rather muddy down there. I'll take my shower while you're gone.”

“Yeah! 'Cause I'm starved!” yelled Charles, running from their room and heading for the steps.

“Shhhhh!” Fred stage-whispered after him.

Outside, Charles and Max placed Cinderella and her basket-coach under the tall marsh reeds. The waves lapped up against the bottom of the basket, making a shhh-shhh sound.

“I think she'll like it here, don't you? asked Charles.

“Yeah. Say Charles, I've been thinking,” said Max slowly. “We're not going to eat this turtle.”

“No, I don't think we could. She's gotten to be a friend.”

The boys watched the basket sway from left to right as Cinderella adjusted to her new environment.

“Definitely mean,” Charles agreed.

“Yeah, but you know, you'd act mean too if someone scooped
you
up, hung
you
upside down, by
your
tail, the way ol' Hattie Harriston did. Then someone else locks
you
in a basket with a lid tied down on it. Geez, that's no fun.”

“Yeah, well, we can turn her loose in the garden at Turkey Legs Toni's house like we talked about. She'll like it there where there's a garden to lay her eggs and a pond to swim around in,” said Charles.

“But there's also the road. It's not far from the pond, you know. And nobody stops for anything on that road. You know how many little chipmunks, rabbits and squirrels get killed there. Not to mention big animals like opossum and raccoon,” said Max sadly.

“I know. It's like some drivers are just trying to kill the animals. They don't even brake,” said Charles, feeling angry and sad for all the little creatures he'd seen dead not far from his house.

“But down here, it's different. The roads are different. They're small and nobody can drive fast or else they might end up upside down in the marsh,” said Max.

“Except for Route 50, that's a fast road,” said Charles.

“Except for Route 50,” agreed Max. “But we're pretty far from 50 here by the Vienna Inn. Cinderella would really have to travel a long way to get near it. Why would she want to, when there's all this marsh to slip into, plus the Nanticoke River?”

“So, what are you suggesting?” asked Charles. But he was pretty sure he already knew.

“Well, we might turn her loose right here. But not now. I mean, Miss Marie might not like it if she knew we let a snapping turtle loose so close to her tomato plants and flower garden. Not good PR, so to speak.”

“Yeah, stay at the Vienna Inn and be entertained by a Snapping Turtle Solo,” quipped Charles.

“And we don't want Fred to know either. After all, no matter how ‘with it' he is, he's still a grownup.”

“And we know how grownups can be,” added Charles.

“So, tonight, after we get back from dinner, you and I will ask to go out—like we want to take just one more walk down by the water, or something—and we'll let Cinderella go.”

“Good plan, except if Fred wants to take a walk with us, then we'll have to divide and conquer or sneak out later when he's in dreamland.”

“Yep, so that's the plan,” said Max.

Charles went over to the basket. “I'd hate to see her get all homesick for the Eastern Shore up our way,” he said.

“Or smashed on the road,” added Max.

“Or smashed on the road,” repeated Charles.

“
Ok!
We're on!” Charles put his hand up and together the boys slapped high five.

“Let's go in and get ready to eat!” said Max.

“Race you!” yelled Charles, taking off at a sprint.