Turtleface and Beyond (3 page)

“No, Charlotte,” he would say. “You can't have any of this! Turtles can't eat citrus.”

These conversations would go on at all hours, sometimes becoming so heated that I feared for Charlotte's safety. But for the most part it was just companionship. Where Otto had once seen Charlotte as the agent of his destruction, he grew to view her more as a comrade in arms. No one else understood what they had been through. I sometimes felt that they were forming an alliance against me, despite all I had done for them. We rarely spoke of the accident, but when we did Otto would always be sure to centralize my role in encouraging him.

“We all know why you took Charlotte home and nursed her so carefully,” Otto explained to me. “Because of what you'd done.”

“She needed help,” I said. “If anyone should feel guilty, it's you. You landed on her.”

“Ha!” Otto said with a laugh. “I should feel guilty? Look at me. Do I look like I should be feeling guilty about anything?”

Throughout this period Otto ingested vast amounts of pain medication and I began to suspect that he was playing several doctors at once for prescriptions. Meanwhile, preposterous bills relating to his hospital stay showed up in the mail.

“One hundred and forty thousand dollars!” screamed Otto. “How do they expect me to pay that?”

One of the bills suggested Otto call a helpline to discuss his situation, which he refused to do. I decided to call the number myself one afternoon. It turned out this wasn't a financial helpline, as I had thought, but rather a connection to some kind of support group for people who had experienced traumatic injury. I signed Otto up for one of their meetings and told them I'd bring him there myself.

“Why would I want to attend some shit like that?” asked Otto, after I told him what I had done.

“It might be helpful,” I said. “You stay in the house all day long. It isn't healthy.”

“Healthy? What does that even mean, ‘healthy'?”

Otto retreated to the corner near Charlotte's pool, as was his wont. He stared in at her and whispered something I could not understand.

The next day Otto fashioned a small leash for Charlotte and announced he was taking her outside for walk. At first this idea seemed ridiculous to me, but it turned out regular constitutionals of this sort are recommended for captive snapping turtles and the practice proved to be enjoyable for both Otto and Charlotte. Of course, the walks were anything but brisk, and the two of them together presented an odd spectacle, eliciting even more attention than Otto had when he'd ventured out on his own. But Otto clearly took comfort in Charlotte's companionship, and I was thankful for the time alone in the apartment. Around town, Otto became known as “Turtleface,” a moniker I did my best to hide from him.

When the time came for the first support group meeting, Otto put on his coat agreeably, then casually picked up Charlotte and wrapped her in a thin blanket.

“She's coming with us,” he said.

“Okay,” I consented. It seemed a small price to pay for progress.

The meeting was held in a classroom at the local community college. Otto and I walked in late and scanned the room, a semicircle of wheelchair-bound amputees and various examples of disfigurement. One man had a leg swollen up the size of a barrel.

“Oh fuck,” said Otto, “would you look at this?”

“You're one to talk,” said the man with the swollen leg. “And what's that, a turtle?”

Otto covered up Charlotte with his coat, a protective gesture.

“It's my turtle,” said Otto. He seemed to think the man wanted to take it from him.

“Actually, the turtle belongs to me,” I pointed out. “I was the one who nursed it back to health.”

“We share custody now,” said Otto.

“Why don't you two sit down?” said a small woman named Nadine. She was the facilitator. We sat down and joined the semicircle.

Although they were in compromised physical shape, the people before us seemed to be a fairly well-adjusted bunch. They told stories and laughed at their wild misfortunes. One woman had been mauled by a chimpanzee at the zoo.

“It was my own fault, really,” she said, showing us the scars on her neck, back, and shoulders. “Everyone knows how strong a chimp can be when it's angry.”

Another man had a mental affliction that compelled him to dump scalding hot liquid on himself whenever he discovered it was within reach. The coffee machine was kept in another room on his account. His face was shiny from all the burns he had suffered, and much of his hair was gone.

Otto had no sympathy at all for this person. “Well, I can tell you how to solve this problem,” he said. “From now on don't pour any more hot water on yourself, okay? Just stop doing it.”

The burned man looked Otto up and down. “Suppose I told you to stop running into turtles,” he replied. “Would that help?”

Otto pulled Charlotte out of his coat and handed her to me. “Hold her,” he said. “I'm going to kick this guy's ass.”

Nadine stood up and expertly talked Otto down. Apparently this sort of confrontation was not uncommon when someone new entered the group.

“You seem angry,” she told Otto.

“Of course I'm angry,” he said.

*   *   *

Afterward, I felt that the support group had done little for Otto, but the next day he told me he had experienced an epiphany overnight.

“I've come to the conclusion that we need to return Charlotte to the wild,” he said.

I was resistant to this idea at first. I liked Charlotte and had imagined that when Otto finally left my home the two of us would lead a content existence together. Perhaps you are aware that snapping turtles have life spans nearly as long as humans' and as such make for good long-term companions.

But Otto laid out his plan and I couldn't deny the simple logic of it. We would return to the location of their misfortunes. Charlotte belonged back in her homeland now that she was well. And the journey would be cathartic for us all, he claimed.

Maria wanted nothing to do with such an endeavor, but we managed to persuade Tom and Sheila to join us for the trip. It was late fall, and chilly, by the time we got everything together and set off. Tom brought along a crossbow because he claimed it was bow-hunting season and he hoped to shoot an animal of some sort.

“I'd be more than happy to dress and cook it for everyone while we're camped along the river,” he said.

“No, thanks,” said Sheila. She was a vegetarian.

Tom refused to apologize for wanting to eat Charlotte back when she had been injured.

“It would have saved us a lot of trouble,” he pointed out. “Though I do support returning her to her natural state since the resources have already been wasted bringing her back to life.”

“She was never dead,” I pointed out.

“Close enough,” said Tom.

Otto was stoic throughout the journey down the river. He spoke softly to Charlotte, who rode in a large cooler beside him, and pointed out the sights along the shoreline.

Tom and I took to drinking whiskey from a tin flask, and by the time we reached the sandy cliffs where Otto had crashed months before, I was feeling sick. We had gotten a late start that morning and the days were shorter at that time of year, so it was nearly dark.

“We'll camp here,” declared Otto, “and release Charlotte in the daytime. She might get disoriented if we let her go at night.”

“I'm going hunting,” said Tom. He donned a headlamp and smeared mud on his cheeks. “I'll go get us some dinner.”

Tom stumbled off into the woods and that was the last I saw of him.

I helped Sheila set up the tents and then passed out inside one of them. Outside, I could hear Otto making a fire and chattering away with Charlotte. He was full of energy and kept calling out for Tom. At some point Sheila crawled inside my tent and said, “I'm cold. Can I sleep with you?”

I woke up in the morning, naked, holding on to Sheila, who was naked as well. My arms and head were freezing, having been exposed to the cold all night. Sheila shivered and huddled farther beneath our blankets. She felt wonderfully soft and warm and I tried to remember what we had done together.

Eventually I wandered out of the tent and found the fire still smoking. The other tent was empty and one of the canoes gone. On Charlotte's cooler I found a note. It said:

WENT LOOKING FOR TOM —OTTO

The sun rose and things got warmer. I made myself some coffee and began to feel awake and good. I splashed some of the cold river water on my face and looked around for signs of Otto and Tom. It was all trees and wilderness. Sheila and I seemed to be the only humans for miles.

Up above me loomed those tall sand cliffs. Sheila was still sleeping and I decided Charlotte had been left in that cooler long enough. It was my understanding that Otto wanted to make some kind of ceremony out of releasing Charlotte back into the wild, but I overruled him. I placed the cooler in the remaining canoe and paddled across the river to the cliffs and the spot where Charlotte and Otto had collided earlier that summer. It was difficult to determine the exact place, but when I'd gotten close enough I opened the cooler and dumped Charlotte in the river. She landed sideways and spun about, bewildered at her new surroundings. She paddled up to the surface and poked her hooked snout into the air. She stayed there for a moment, floating, that sealed-up scar still visible on her bumpy shell. I imagined the other turtles would wonder at it, and perhaps she'd tell them of the strange land she had visited and the weird behavior of her caretakers. Readjusted now, Charlotte sank down below the surface, swiftly paddling her sturdy legs, and disappeared into the murk and sway.

I turned my attention now to finding Tom and Otto. I thought I might climb the cliff to get a better vantage point. From there I could call out for them and see the lay of the land. I fastened the canoe to a nearby tree and began to climb up the sandy slope, just like I should have done earlier that summer when I had meekly watched Otto from below. Stopping several times to catch my breath, I eventually ascended even higher than Otto had, until my feet were scratched and sore and my chest heaved from the exertion. I stood there gazing down at the ribbon of river beneath me and tried to steady my breathing.

I called out, “Hey, Tom! Otto! Tom! Otto!”

But no one could hear me. The river down there was just a whisper. I pictured Otto standing near this spot, trying to discern the directions I had called out to him. It wasn't my fault. It had all been his decision, of course. I could see that plainly.

Far below me I saw Sheila emerge from the tent, stretch her arms, and gaze about. She was stark-naked, a female beauty in the wild. I felt like a god, or a ghost, peering down upon her, unseen at this great height.

And I thought I might do something daring then, something a little spectacular, and unexpected. I launched myself forward. One, two, three, four, five … giant long jumps down the mountainside. I cleared thirty, forty feet per stride! I was a monster, a freak of nature, hurtling toward the water.

“Hey, Sheila!” I called out, glancing her way, trying not to land on my face as I careened down the cliffside.

She looked about her, startled.

“I'm over here!” I shouted. I was nearing the bottom now, carrying impossible speed. I leaped out, shooting into the water, sleek like a dolphin, waiting for the pain.

A crashing noise filled my ears and then coldness walloped me from all sides. Fuck, the water was so cold. A sharp, aching pain shot up my genitals and I struggled to the surface, gasping for air. The current carried me downriver and I kicked a rock hard with my foot. I sputtered to the shoreline and flopped myself into the canoe, wheezing, unable to fill my lungs with enough oxygen. My big toe had been cut open by the rock when I'd kicked it and now it started to hurt, and bleed. I'd cracked the toenail and my head ached as well.

I heard a voice, Sheila, calling out to me. “Georgie! Georgie! Are you all right?”

“I'm okay,” I said, holding up my hand, waving it above the gunwale so that she could see it. “I'm all right.”

A moment passed during which I imagined Sheila standing there, still naked on the shoreline, worrying about me. I wondered if she'd even seen my great feat, that perfect running dive into the cold water. Again, I raised my hand up, and again I said, “I'm all right. I'm fine.”

“I'll make us breakfast,” called out Sheila. “Vegetarian sausage and eggs.”

“Thank you,” I called back. “I'd like that.”

I stayed down there, lying on the canoe floor, not wanting her to see me just yet. I lay back on the bottom of that canoe and I listened to the water flowing underneath me and I began to feel very good indeed.

 

COLD FEET

 

Earlier that year, before the winter set in, I moved into a large farmhouse outside the northern town of Burlington, Vermont. It was a community living arrangement and my housemates were hippies who didn't believe in using fossil fuels for heat. There was hardly any point in heating that place anyway. It was thin-walled and drafty, built long ago by someone who didn't take the climate into account. I believe it was only meant to be a summer residence. This was why the rent was so cheap. At any given time there were a dozen or so of us living there. In the summer our numbers swelled and people slept on the porch and unkempt lawn, but that winter our ranks dwindled, and those of us who stayed were always cold and unwilling to admit it.

We wandered through the hallways draped in blankets, watching our breath condense in the air. We burned the furniture when we ran low on wood for the woodstove. At night we piled clothing and rugs on top of our blankets in an effort to hold in the heat. Each morning, we remained huddled underneath our dusty piles of fabric until nearly noon, too afraid to get up and face the chilly air. We conducted conversations by yelling from room to room.