The Turtle Warrior (5 page)

“Enlisted,” Ernie repeated as though he hadn’t heard right. “There’s a
war
going on.”

“Yeah,” John Lucas snorted. “There usually is when you enlist. If you’re a real man. James is gonna serve in the Marines like I did.”

With that said, John Lucas’s chest puffed out arrogantly, and he stared down at Ernie Morriseau before opening his car door and sliding into the driver’s seat. Ernie looked as though he were going to say something, but he only nodded his head and walked back to the steps where his wife was standing. Bill did not see the dog, but he heard him, hysterically barking just inside the door.

Bill waited tensely for the barrage of yelling to begin, but his father stayed silent during the short mile home.

“Do you want me to do somethin’?” he asked timidly when they got out of the car.

“Nah. Go play.” Bill watched his father saunter into the house. Then he ran toward the lyrics of “Only the Lonely” streaming out of the hayloft.

James wasn’t dancing. He sat on a yellow hay bale, staring out the small window he had installed when he moved his record player into the loft. The smoke from his home-rolled cigarette anchored between his fingers drifted toward the barn rafters, and the ashes fell in gray clumps onto the wooden floor. An open Pabst bottle was next to his feet. Bill took a few steps forward and then waited to see if James would notice him. His brother’s face was so blank, staring off in the distance at the house, that Bill couldn’t tell what mood James was in. Bill decided to chance it.

“Your lungs are gonna turn black like Terry’s.”

James turned his head and stared at Bill. Stared through him. Bill shivered. Then his brother smiled. “How was dinner?”

Bill skipped over and sat on the hay bale next to James. “Great!”

“Yeah. Rosemary Morriseau sure is a good cook.” He rubbed his chin with his free hand. He didn’t seem hurt anymore. Bill waited for him to ask about the snapper. But James only took a drag on his cigarette, reaching over to flip the record before exhaling the smoke. Roy Orbison’s melodious voice surrounded the space around them. Bill silently sang along to “In Dreams.”

They sat for a while and listened to the music. Finally Bill couldn’t wait any longer.

“Dad says you enlisted.”

“Yup.” James picked up his beer and took a long swallow.

“What does that mean?”

James glanced at him, his eyebrows pulled together over his eyes. “You know.
Enlisted,”
he answered irritably, and looked again at Bill to see if he understood.

Bill still didn’t understand.

“It means,” his brother explained, “that I joined the military of my own free will instead of being drafted. You know. Forced to go.”

Bill kicked a dried chunk of manure off the toe of one of his sneakers.

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” James said, dropping his cigarette on the floor and smashing it with the heel of one boot. “Mom and the old man are driving me to the bus station.”

“How come you didn’t tell me?” Bill’s chest quivered, and his eyes watered.

“I dunno,” James answered. “I guess after I signed up, I couldn’t believe I did it. I signed up last winter, and it just didn’t seem like the day would come when I’d have to leave.”

Bill began to shake.

“Oh, Christ. Don’t cry. I meant to tell you.”

Bill’s chest hammered even though he heard the words. James tensed and then relaxed. He ran one hand through his slicked hair before flinging it and his arm around Bill’s shoulders.

“Hey!” he said, shaking Bill gently. “Is this the same kid that chases everything with that stupid sword? The dog can’t even take a piss when he sees you comin’ with that turtle shell and hunk of wood. Hell,” he added with a strange laugh. “Maybe you oughta join the Marines with me. I’ll just tell them you’re a midget or somethin’ like that.”

Bill giggled.

“Here,” James said, holding the bottle toward Bill. “Have a sip of my beer.”

Bill looked at his brother’s long fingers wrapped around the bottle. His fingernails were transparently white even though his hands had been covered with dirt and blood that afternoon. Even the bandage on his thumb was still clean and white. But that was his brother. James was fastidious about his appearance right down to the intricate and unseen details like the perfectly clipped toenails on his feet. Bill couldn’t imagine James as a solider, like the soldiers they watched in the WW II movies on TV, trudging through the muddy jungles of the Pacific or bunkered up in a bombed-out café in Italy. Bill took a small sip of beer, swallowing it quickly to get rid of the bitter taste. He gave the bottle back to his brother and wiped his nose on the front of his T-shirt.

“Well, the old man is happy. He’s finally getting rid of me. After basic training in San Diego, they’ll probably send me to Vietnam.” He took another long swig of beer, the condensation from the cold bottle wetting his fingers.

“Dad was in the Marines. In World War Two,” Bill said, thinking their father was happy because James was doing what he had done.

His brother snorted with disgust. “The old man was only in for the last few months of the war.” James sneered, rolling another cigarette.

“Ernie Morriseau is a different story.” James spoke again, tilting his head in the direction of the Morriseau farm. “Ernie saw a lotta action in WW Two, in the Philippines. He’s still got shrapnel in him. You know those blue bumps on his back?”

Bill nodded.

“Well, that’s metal working its way to the surface. That metal is twenty-some years old.”

Bill remembered seeing those bumps when Ernie worked shirtless in the heat.

“Rosemary cuts out the shrapnel closest to the skin with a razor blade,” James added.

He didn’t put on another record and instead puffed away on his cigarette. Bill chewed on a piece of straw. Shadows descended across the diminishing light from the window, and the thin strands of sunlight that had shone through the cracks in the rafters were gone.

“We better go in,” James said, and stood up.

They walked to the ladder, and James motioned for Bill to go down first. When Bill was halfway down, James spoke, his deep voice echoing above Bill’s head. “You comin’ to the bus station tomorrow?”

Bill paused, one leg already down on the next rung, and looked up. He was dumbfounded. Of course he would go because James was leaving and Bill wanted to see him off. And he was only eight. Where else would he be since he was still too young to be left at home alone?

“Yeah, I’m comin’.”

In the brief moment before he released his other leg, Bill thought he saw a shining glint in his brother’s eyes, but James looked away, so all Bill could see was his shadow-covered Elvis head.

The next morning Bill crept out of the house in his pajamas and ran for the toolshed. He scooped the turtle shell and sword out of the woodbin and raced around to the back side of the barn, where he couldn’t be seen. He had heard his enemies calling him and taunting him all night to come out. Come out and fight them. He kicked off his sneakers, already soaked by the early-morning dew, and positioned his bare feet on the dusty ground. He raised his turtle shield so that it covered the left side of his chest and, with his right hand, gripped the sword.

Swish! One came at him almost before he was ready, but Bill managed to dance aside, catching his enemy in the neck. He heard the footsteps of another behind him and swung around very fast, extending his sword out so that it sliced that enemy in half. Bill weaved backward and forward, sideways and back, while his enemies came at him with the unnatural energy of those who did not need sleep. He heard them call his name, and he raised his shield to identify himself. But he was too fast for them, and they began to pile up like dead flies. Then, while Bill was in the middle of a battle that was forcing him up against the barn, he heard one of them call his brother’s name.

Bill lowered his sword, and the enemy in front of him disappeared. They all disappeared. Bill was listening for the voice again when he heard his mother calling him.

“William Lucas! Get in here and get ready for breakfast!”

Bill reluctantly walked around the barn to the toolshed. He opened the woodbin and placed his sword and shield on top of the cut wood. He briefly wondered where Ernie had buried the snapper and if it would be a sin to dig up the grave so that he could have the shell.

“Bill! Quit dawdling and get in here! Now!”

He trotted back to the house.

James was okay through breakfast, even joking with their mother, and he was okay when they loaded his duffel bag into the backseat before he got into the station wagon. Bill noticed that James really looked like Elvis that morning. His hair was ridged especially high, and his rockabilly black boots shone with new polish. He winked at Bill when their father swore at the truck in front of them for going so slow. But when they pulled into the Standard gas station that doubled as the bus stop in the middle of town, James’s face went blank, and he got out of the station wagon stiffly.

The bus wasn’t due for another half an hour, so they waited inside the station on rickety green plastic chairs. Bill passed the time by pushing his nose up against the dirty picture window, allowing him to see the cars that drove up next to the gas pumps for refueling. Their father leaned back in his chair and dozed, the bristly hair in his nostrils quivering every time he inhaled and exhaled. Their mother nervously fanned herself with a tattered Wisconsin road map even though it wasn’t that hot, and James sat as though frozen to his chair. Bill watched the two service station attendants scurry between the cars before fixing his eyes on a Volkswagen parked behind the station’s red tow truck.

It was the third time he’d seen one of those little cars that did indeed look like beetles. Nobody in town owned one. “Hippie cars,” his father sneered once. It was covered, front to back, with bumper stickers and Bill squinted to catch the print on some of them. One said “I don’t wanna know your name ’cause I don’t like your game,” and another one said “Flower Power.”