The Turtle Warrior (53 page)

He remembered the night he fought with Ernie. How he woke up beside him the next morning. To see a male face inches from his own, sound asleep and rough with silver-tipped stubble like an old bear. On rare occasions James would crawl into Bill’s bed when he was having really bad dreams. When he felt Ernie’s breath on his face that morning, he remembered the hot comfort of his brother’s breath.

He woke up this morning, feeling his dark-eyed son pat his cheeks and smelling the chocolate cookies on his breath from the night before.

“Wake up, Daddy,” he sang.

Through persistence and complete stubbornness, Bill did get the job he wanted in northern Wisconsin, alternating fieldwork with grant writing to keep his research projects alive. Liz lucked out as well, acquiring a job as a soil scientist with the County Extension Service. After they were married, Liz did not use birth control in the hope that maybe Bill was not sterile. But nothing happened. He was secretly relieved.

“We could adopt,” she said.

He shook his head. She would not let it go, and it led to one of their few bad fights.

“You will not turn into a monster. Or your father,” his wife whispered to Bill that night in bed. He was glad it was dark and she could not see his face.

e said nothing.

Her sigh was as heavy as water.

“This big place needs kids. Your mother needs grandchildren. And some child,” she said, walking one hand up his chest until she could tap his chin with a finger, “deserves to have you as a father. No one,” she added, and her voice drifted above him, “expects you to be perfect. Except you.”

They did not speak about it the next morning, eating their breakfast in silence. It was Sunday, and he and Ernie had planned to fish the Chippewa before the really cold weather had set in.

They pushed north on the river against the current in Bill’s new ultralight canoe. Bill could see that Ernie was favoring his left arm, and he knew that Ernie’s right shoulder hurt from paddling. Ernie was in his seventies, and Bill wanted him just to sit and enjoy the river for once and let Bill do the steering and paddling. But Ernie insisted on paddling too.

They no longer entered the river at the old logging bridge, preferring to drive in on an old fire lane farther south. It meant backtracking a bit on the water, and they eventually paddled past the sandbanks and shoreline that Bill and his brother haunted as children. It was quiet except for the noise their paddles made cleaving the water. As they approached the banks, Ernie pulled his paddle in and stared at the shoreline.

“You know, this past spring I came down here to see if the turtles had nested,” he said over his shoulder to Bill, “but I went there for five days straight, and I didn’t see one snapper. Not even any drag marks or signs of digging. I guess,” he went on before Bill could say anything, “I didn’t think it would change. They’ve nested there since I was a kid. But maybe something is wrong with the river.”

Not the river,
Bill thought. The logging bridge had always been a place for teenagers to hang out, but in addition to beer cans littered on the road, Bill found used condoms, syringes, cigarette butts, and the scant remains of joints. Then there was that persistent rural belief that snapping turtles were unwanted predators like badgers, wolves, and coyotes. Many of the locals shot snappers on sight, always justifying their actions by saying the turtles were hurting the walleye population or preying on too many wild ducklings. Bill also surmised that kids had raided the nests for years now, throwing the eggs against the bridge for sport, and that any of the old females that would have returned were probably dead.

“Not the river,” he said out loud, “although the water quality could be better. Our water biologist, Charlie, says snappers can survive in some pretty funky water. They still live in the Mississippi in Minneapolis.”

Ernie shrugged and put his paddle back in. They glided under the bridge. The noise of their paddling echoed, and Bill thought he could hear their breathing bounce off the rusty brown sides. They paddled for quite a ways until Bill saw the slump of Ernie’s shoulders.

“Hey! Let’s shore up first,” he said. “I’m hungry.”

They sat in a grove of white-barked birches, lovely even without their leaves. Ernie chewed on the venison sausage sandwich that Liz had made, tasting the tang of cheddar cheese against the peppery meat. Bill watched him.

“Were you ever afraid to be a father? I mean, whenever Rosemary got pregnant, did it scare you?”

“Nooo,” Ernie answered slowly. He paused from eating. “I was afraid after the first miscarriage and then every time she reached about the fourth month. One time she even made it to six months. I was more afraid that Rose would die from complications of a pregnancy or that another one wouldn’t make it. And after a while I got angry and blamed her. It was stupid of me. It wasn’t her fault. Fear”—he sighed—“and disappointment can make you do stupid things.”

Bill took a bite of his sandwich, but he could feel Ernie watching him. “Liz wants to adopt children,” he said at last. “We’ve been arguing over it.”

Ernie nodded. He had resumed eating, and Bill could hear the slight grinding noise of Ernie’s jaws. Ernie lifted his coffee cup and took a drink.

“Well”—he coughed to clear his throat—“I think it’s natural for her to want a family. But if you don’t want to be a father, then you shouldn’t be one. Or,” Ernie added quietly, “are you afraid?”

Bill stared down at this boots. “I don’t know exactly. I don’t know....” His voice trailed off.

Bill didn’t want to talk about it anymore. He poured more coffee into his cup from the thermos. Then he remembered something, spurred by their earlier conversation as they passed the sandbanks.

“Do you remember what you told me the night you killed that turtle?”

Ernie put his cup down. He shook his head.

“You said that your father told you that turtle made the world,” Bill said, taking a sip from his own cup. “I’ve wondered about that for years. How did a turtle make the world?”

“I don’t remember killing a turtle,” Ernie said, bewildered. “Are you sure I killed a turtle?”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll explain it later. You didn’t kill her in the way you are thinking. Just tell me the story.”

Ernie pressed a hand to his aching shoulder. “That’s one story I can remember well. It was my favorite story when I was a kid. My father could always make me laugh. I tried to memorize it, but he told it to me so often that I remember it or at least most of it. My father said not to worry, that each storyteller adds a bit of himself in telling it.”

Ernie thrust out his cup. Bill poured coffee from the thermos into the tin cup and, nudging Ernie’s arm, dropped two ibuprofen tablets into his hand. Ernie swallowed the pills and washed them down with hot coffee.

“You know,” he said slyly, “I had to go to the kitchen and get something sweet for my father before he’d tell me the story.”

Bill shook his head. “Your blood pressure. Rosemary would kill me,” he said, reaching inside his field jacket and pulling out a Hershey bar.

“A Hershey bar! I always carried Hershey bars when I went hunting with your brother.”

Ernie popped the chocolate into his mouth and took another drink of his coffee, savoring the melting taste of chocolate and coffee. He stared out over the river and briefly waved a hand toward it.

“This used to be all water once. Either a big lake or an ocean. At that time all the animals lived in water, but many of them could ride the waves or would surface like mayflies to breathe and look up at the sky. They knew a spirit woman lived there. Sky Woman is what they called her.

“One day a moist wind blew across their faces, and they knew it was her breath and that she had been crying. They looked up and could see that she was tired and unhappy. That made them all feel bad. They got together and tried to think of ways to make her happy again. Then they thought of something, but before they did anything, they asked Loon to go beneath the water and call for giant Turtle, who lived below. Loon had to go down several times to persuade Turtle to help them. Finally Turtle rose to the surface of the water and agreed to offer his back as a home for Sky Woman.”

Ernie put out his cup for more coffee.

“That sky,” he said, nodding upward, “is the gray that always tells me I’ve got work to do on the house before winter.”

He took a sip of his coffee.

“All the water creatures called up to the sky and invited Sky Woman to come down and live with them. She agreed and left her house in the clouds and settled on Turtle’s back. They all climbed up on Turtle’s back as well. Once she had made herself comfortable, she turned to the animals around her and asked, ‘Who of you can get me a handful of dirt from the bottom?’

“Beaver volunteered right away and dived down. He soon came back up, coughing for air and saying he couldn’t do it. Then Fisher tried, but he couldn’t do it either. Marten and Mink tried too, but they said the water was too deep. They urged Loon, knowing that he could stay under the water for a long time, and Loon dived down. He stayed under for quite a while, but then Loon too came popping up like a cork. He said it was too dark down there and that he couldn’t see where he was going, much less find the bottom. They all hung their heads down because they were so ashamed. Here they had invited Sky Woman down from the sky, and they could not perform her one request.

“Then they heard a small voice. ‘I will try.’

“It was little Muskrat, and they started laughing.

“ ‘You! Ha!’ said Mink. ‘I’m a lot stronger than you. I have more oil to make me glide through the water. And I smell the best!’

“ ‘You mean, you stink the best,’ said Muskrat, because like Mink and Fisher and Marten, they all had musk glands. But while Muskrat was proud of his musk, he realized that only others of his kind thought the smell was beautiful.

“ ‘Mink is right,’ said Fisher. ‘We are much stronger than you, and we couldn’t do it. You are the weakest among us. It isn’t possible. Don’t cause us to waste time.’

“Sky Woman looked at little Muskrat. Muskrat looked at her.

“ ‘I will try,’ he repeated, and with that said, he dived off Turtle’s back and plunged beneath the waves. They laughed and joked while waiting for Muskrat to come up just as they had done, with no dirt to offer. But time passed. They kept joking, but their laughter began to sound hollow. Finally they became afraid and felt bad that they had picked on Muskrat because they feared he had drowned. When they had just about given up hope and were ready to apologize to Sky Woman, Muskrat floated to the surface, and it was only the quivering of his whiskers that told them he was alive. In one paw was the lump of soil that Sky Woman needed.

“While Mink and Fisher and Marten patted Muskrat on the back to get the water out of his lungs, Sky Woman took the dirt and painted the rim of Turtle’s back. Pursing her lips, she breathed upon it and gave it life. The animals couldn’t believe their eyes. The soil grew and covered Turtle’s back and formed an island where even more creatures could live, and eventually the People. Sky Woman spoke to Turtle.

“ ‘Thank you for helping me build my home. I shall call this place Mishee Mackinokong, which means the Place of the Great Turtle’s Back. As a reward, I shall give you the ability to understand and speak the languages among the other beings, great and small. They will come to you so that you can interpret their thoughts and send them to others. This must be done slowly and with the clearness of spring water. Everyone will know that it is through you that thoughts should be given and shared.’

“Turtle bowed his head with honor and then swam away.”

Ernie paused and sat up so that he could relieve the cramp that had now traveled to his lower back.

Bill involuntarily shivered and drew his legs up to his chest to stop it. “What about Muskrat?” he asked. “Didn’t he get anything?”

Ernie laughed. “I asked my father the same question. He said Sky Woman winked at Muskrat. Never”—he grinned, wagging a finger at Bill—“underestimate a muskrat. When the beaver and the rest of them move out looking for better places, the muskrat stays and survives all the same.”

Ernie looked up at the sky again and then back at Bill. “We better get moving if we’re gonna do any fishing today.”

They hadn’t even gone a quarter of a mile toward the oxbow where they fished when Ernie spoke over his shoulder. “Say, whatever happened to that turtle shield you used to have as a kid? And that wooden sword Jimmy made for you?”

He hadn’t meant to, but Ernie’s sudden recollection kicked Bill and threw him back. For a few seconds he was not thirty-nine years old but eight again. The grief erupted so unexpectedly that he could not speak. Grateful that the pain in Ernie’s shoulder prevented him from turning around to look at him, he lowered his face and clenched his teeth.

He could almost feel the wooden sword in his hand, the spin of his body, and the hot dust under his feet. The rope of the shield as it rubbed against the skin of his forearm. The bright yellowness of the sun in his eyes until he moved his arm. The larger-than-life shadow cast on the ground by his shield and how protected he used to feel, hovering inside that shadow.