The Back of the Turtle

by Thomas King

  But then the dead rose up and went forth.

  No salvage.

  Wham-wham!

  There are rules. If you want to play on Sonny’s beach, that’s okay. If you want to die on Sonny’s beach, that’s okay, also.

  Play. Die.

  Okay. Okay.

  But pretending to die on the beach is not okay. It’s against the rules. And what has happened to the old guy’s clothes? Why is he naked? Has someone else taken Sonny’s salvage? That wouldn’t be fair. That wouldn’t be right.

  The pouch with the hammer and the wire cutters and the multi-head screwdriver jig-jig-jiggles against his thigh. Salvage is mine, Sonny reminds himself. I will be paid.

  Sonny looks at the sky and the ocean. It’s another beach day. Another day of ocean smells and ocean noises. Another day at the Ocean Star Motel. With the blue neon star that goes blink, blink, blink all day and all night.

  Follow the Star.

  That’s the motel’s motto.

  Follow the Star.

  Maybe today will be a good day. Maybe someone will stop by the motel and rent a room. Maybe today will be the way it used to be, with honeymooners and families and long-haul truckers and sports stars all flocking to town to see the turtles.

  Before the turtles left.

  Before That One Bad Day.

  A famous actor stopped by the motel once and told Sonny a funny story about a duck who went into a pharmacy looking for grapes. “Got any grapes?” That’s what the duck said. “Got any grapes?”

  The Ocean Star Motel. Twenty-four rooms. Cable television. Video rentals. Free Internet.

  The Ocean Star Motel. Pool. Ice-making machine. Laundromat. Vibrating beds.

  The EverFresh vending machine.

  Sonny stands on the patio in front of the EverFresh vending machine and considers the day. Maybe the ocean has brought new salvage ashore. That’s what Sonny likes about the ocean.

  Salvage.

  I have looked to the water, whence cometh my salvage. Verily, I say, my salvage is at hand. Sonny didn’t think these sayings up by himself. They all come from Dad, and Dad has had him repeat them over and over.

  In the beginning was the salvage.

  THE man hasn’t moved. Sonny considers going down to the beach, in case the man is really dying and is in need of encouragement. Maybe Sonny could tap him on the head with his hammer, just to get his attention.

  If the man is dead, Sonny could take a picture with his digital camera and sell the story to a newspaper in Vancouver.

  “Body found on beach by Sonny.”

  Wham-wham, hammer-hammer!

  Sonny shields his face with his hand and squints hard. The man on the beach is moving his toes. So much for the picture. So much for the story. So much for the salvage.

  Sonny has a thought. He’s had it before, but it’s a good thought and worth thinking more than once. Maybe he should go back to school. Better yet, maybe he should sign up for cable. The deluxe package with the movie channels, the technical training programs, and the nature shows.

  Sonny is trying to decide between going back to school and signing up for cable, when he hears something sharp and quick, lonely and far away. Sonny isn’t at all sure what the sound is. At first he thinks it might be the raven that used to sit on the motel sign and yell death threats across the parking lot.

  Throw rocks at that bird, Dad used to tell Sonny. Aim for the beak. No point in being subtle.

  In the distance, on the far side of the bay, Sonny can see the warm vapours hanging above the hot springs. Perhaps someone has wandered into the wrong pool. Perhaps that was what he heard.

  Sonny rests his hand on the head of the hammer and waits. But the sound doesn’t come a second time.

  4

  GABRIEL LAY ON THE BEACH AND SLOWLY WIGGLED HIS TOES. Now the sun was out. The inconsistent, unreliable, derelict sun. Back from its morning holiday. Where was it when he needed it? Where was it when he was on the rocks?

  And what of the people he had pulled out of the ocean? Who were they? Where had they come from? Where had they gone? Had he really sung them out of the depths?

  Ridiculous, of course. He understood physics, understood the intricacies of the universe. The people in the water weren’t mythical beings. He had no responsibility for them. His only concern was with dying, and that should have been a simple matter.

  In the distance, Gabriel could make out a figure moving along the shore. The young girl he had rescued? Maybe she was returning his jacket. He should have kept his glasses. That had been a mistake. Now he couldn’t see the world, couldn’t see what was coming at him.

  THE day he arrived in Samaritan Bay, Gabriel had stopped at the Co-op market and rummaged through the community bulletin board. Under rentals, next to a faded “Stop the Pipeline” poster, he had found a posting, handwritten on a piece of lined paper. “Land and trailer,” it said. “See the surf, sitting down. Nicholas Crisp, Finder-Minder.”

  He imagined that Nicholas Crisp would be short and thin, with translucent skin and a soft chin, but the man who walked into the Tin Turtle was tall and lanky with a bald head, sharp blue eyes, and a red beard that floated about his face like a cloud on fire. Seeing Crisp for the first time, Gabriel was struck by the odd fancy that the fellow had somehow got his head on upside down.

  “I believe you have a trailer.” Gabriel placed the flyer on the table and smoothed out the edges. “Is it for rent or for sale?”

  “Them’s the choices in life, to be sure.” Crisp broke off a piece of banana bread and held it out. “The milk or the cow herself.”

  Gabriel tried the bread. It was dry, days stale with the oily flavour of something left too long under plastic.

  “Not to your liking, is it?”

  “It’s not very good.”

  “Not much in life that is,” said Crisp, “but we eats it up anyway, crumbs and all.”

  THE figure was getting closer. He could make out what looked to be a woman in jeans and a blue shirt, wading in the surf. Perhaps she would pass without noticing that there was a naked man lying in the sand. Not that he cared if she found him. Not that he cared in the least. But you could never count on people. Sometimes they avoided things that were out of the ordinary, and other times their curiosity would float them into deep water.

  He watched as the woman left the surf and came towards him.

  “Hello.”

  Gabriel propped himself up on his elbows, scooped sand onto his groin, and tried to look stoic and fierce. “I’m naked,” he shouted. “Just so you know.”

  “Yes,” said the woman, sounding neither curious nor concerned, “I can see that.”

  He couldn’t make out her face, couldn’t tell if she was beautiful or plain, or if she was young or old, kind or cruel.

  “I found this on the beach,” she said, holding up a shirt. “Is it yours?”

  “I was on the rocks.”

  “Yes,” she said, “I’ve seen you out there several times.”

  “I’m trying to kill myself.”

  “You’re not very good at it.” The woman gestured at his groin. “And you missed a spot.”

  Gabriel rummaged in the pockets of the shirt. The photograph was still there, soggy and soft. So were his glasses. He wiped them off, put them on, and the world leapt into focus.

  “I’m Mara,” said the woman. “Mara Reid.”

  The shirt was wet and heavy and cold, but he slipped it on anyway, trying not to disturb the pile of sand on his lap.

  “Gabriel,” he said. “Gabriel Quinn.”

  THE trailer was an aluminum lump parked hard against a stand of Douglas fir and hemlock. It had been silver at one time, but the salt spray had skinned it grey. Gabriel wondered whether, if you rubbed the sides, a genie might pop out.

  “Flying Cloud, she be,” Crisp said, as they walked around the trailer the next morning. “Bath with a shower, stove and fridge, dinette, television with selected videos, and a bedroom with a view. Ye know trail
ers from trawlers?”

  “No.”

  “Nothing much to know. Simple they are, not like a house. Now there’s a pox. A house, ye see, don’t want to move. Once she’s built, she figures to stay put. A trailer’s more compliant. Ye doesn’t likes where ye have come ashore? Well, just drop the hitch on the ball and away ye go. Trailer’s the better companion. Happy on the road or off. All love for ye and your caprices, and no complaining.”

  Through the quartering fog, Gabriel could see a blue glow twinkling in the distance.

  “Ocean Star Motel,” said Crisp. “The boy’s poorly lit, but a sweet neighbour.”

  He waved a hand over the water, as though he expected the sea to part.

  “The Apostles is good exercise at low tide, if ye have no aversion to climbing about on carcasses and bones. But watch your back. The sea’s a shifty slut. She’ll tide in behind and suck ye up in a salty slurp.”

  “I’m not sure how long I’ll stay.”

  “There’s wisdom enough in that for shirts and pants to fit us all.” Crisp ran a hand through his beard, and it crackled and flashed in the pale light. “Will ye be needing a chair?”

  “Chair?”

  “For the deck,” said Crisp. “So ye can sit and imagine to have some say in creation. Would ye object to such an assembly?”

  “No, a chair would be nice.”

  “And what will it be?” Crisp clapped his hands together. “One for solitude, two for friendship, or three for society?”

  Gabriel tried to remember if Thoreau had had a preference. “One should be enough,” he said.

  “Then I’ll do that. Nothing illustrious or imposing. Won’t charge for the improvement, and I’ll still give ye the fugitive rate.”

  “Fugitive rate?”

  Crisp stepped in close and lowered his voice. It came with the smell of garlic and wet wool.

  “Folks used to come to the Bay for all manner of reason. Vacations, festivities, family, friends. All that before The Ruin, of course. Now, most of what gets washed up on this parcel of purgatory were a fugitive. Broadsided, blistered, and beached.”

  “It’s a fine trailer.”

  “Course it’s impolite to ask a man what’s disturbing his shadow, and sometimes a man don’t know precisely what set him on the hurry. But when he gets here, when he gets here, he’s clean out of run. For here be the land as we stand, and there be the water as we see.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  “Birds,” said Crisp, holding his arms out so that his coat caught the wind. “We might have prospects for an escape, if we be birds.”

  CRISP came by the next morning.

  “If ye must have a chair, a rocker is what’s required,” he said, as he dropped the tailgate of his pickup. “Like riding an ocean swell or resting safe in your mother’s arms.”

  “You made this?”

  “We used to sit on the ground,” said Crisp. “And we used to walk on all fours.

  “This is a nice chair.”

  “And for all the good truth will do us, we were happier then.” Crisp walked to the edge of the deck. “Have ye a name somewhere about your person?”

  Gabriel nodded. “Several.”

  “A name for every occasion,” said Crisp. “The Indians do such a thing, I’m told. Collect names as they’re earned or as they appear. In that, I’m a poor man with but one name to drag about.”

  “Nicholas is a fine name.”

  “It covers a territory, it does. St. Nick. Old Nick. Christmas and hell. And all the bleeding nicks of life in between.”

  “Gabriel. Mostly, I’m called Gabriel.”

  “Gabriel!” Crisp’s voice rushed through the trees like a truck in a tunnel. “Now there’s thunder and storm. The best-loved of the four angels. The one chosen to announce the birth of John the Baptist and to reveal the Qur’an to Muhammad. It’s Gabriel what tells Mary about the road ahead.”

  Nicholas shook his head with delight.

  “Dante made Gabriel the chief of the angelic guards placed at the entrance to paradise. Did ye know that? And if the creative arts are your butter and jam, there’s a movie called Constantine what has a Gabriel who betrays heaven and joins forces with the Dark Lord.” Crisp’s eyes flashed in the fading light and his lips curled away from yellowing teeth.

  “And now, at the meridian of the world, on this seal-piss and foggy-dog of a day, here stands another Gabriel, rigged for battle and havoc. It surely takes my breath away.”

  “I’m not that Gabriel.”

  “Yet here ye are,” said Nicholas, grabbing Gabriel firmly by the shoulders. “Here ye are.”

  “GABRIEL,” said Mara, pausing on each syllable. “Like the left-handed twin?”

  The dog came shuffling back, dragging Gabriel’s pants with him. They were colder than the shirt and full of sand.

  “Why do you want to kill yourself?”

  Putting the clothes on was a mistake. The chill sank into his bones, and the sand rubbed at his skin with every movement. The sun was weak, the wind off the ocean fresh and brittle.

  The dog leaned up against Mara’s leg and began testing her ankle with his tongue.

  “Sold,” Gabriel told the dog, “no licking.”

  Mara smiled. “His name is … Sold?”

  The dog whined and looked up at her, his face bright with expectation.

  Gabriel rubbed the dog’s neck and fingered the weather-worn collar. “The tag is corroded,” he said. ‘Sold’ is all you can make out.”

  “So, he’s not yours?”

  Gabriel could feel his clothes tightening around him. “He likes to follow me.”

  “You need to find him another name,” said Mara.

  Gabriel wanted to ask Mara about the sea people. Had she seen them? Had they washed ashore with his clothes? Had she found his jacket? If he had to live, he’d like the jacket back.

  And the drum as well, for that matter.

  Mara kneeled down beside the dog and looked into his eyes. “Sold … Solder … Soldering … Soldier … how about … Soldier?”

  The dog began humming happily and came to his hind legs.

  “See,” said Mara, “he likes that name.”

  “Sure.” Gabriel shrugged. “If that’s what he wants.”

  The dog rolled over in the sand and farted.

  “Are you alone?” said Mara. “Is that the reason?”

  “Everyone is alone,” said Gabriel.

  Mara wrapped her arms around herself and turned her back to the wind. “Are you going to try to kill yourself tomorrow?”

  Gabriel looked out across the sand, watched the water rise and fall as though the ocean were breathing.

  “If I were going to kill myself,” said Mara, “I’d do it when the sun was shining.”

  BY the time Gabriel got back to the trailer, Soldier was already splayed out on the deck. The woman on the beach had been somewhat disconcerting. She hadn’t been put off by his abruptness or his lack of clothes or his suicidal intentions. If anything, she had seemed … disappointed.

  Gabriel took out a black marker and wrote “SS Mont-Blanc” on the edge of the deck. Next to it, he wrote “SS Imo.”

  “1917,” he told the dog. “Over two thousand people killed. Nine thousand injured. The pressure wave bent iron rails and demolished buildings.”

  The dog struggled to his feet, hobbled over to the chair, and put his head in Gabriel’s lap. Wisps of high fog began floating through the trees. Gabriel understood the hydraulics. Warmer inland weather sucked the moist air from the ocean in across the land, and the differences in temperature caused condensation to form.

  “Okay,” he said to the dog, “you pick one.”

  Soldier sat up and grumbled.

  “West Anniston creek?” Gabriel took the marker out again. “Yes,” he said, “that’s a good one. That’s certainly one of my favourites.”

  But the dog had lost interest in the game. He limped away and lay against the door of the trailer.


  Gabriel stayed on the deck and tried to remember how many people had died in the Benxihu Colliery disaster in China, while below on the beach, the fog moved back across the waves and turned the world the colour of soft lead.

  5

  DORIAN SAT IN HIS OFFICE SPEED-READING A JAPANESE study that measured toxicity in furniture, and wondered, once again, if his health issues might be related to the bed that he and Olivia had purchased.

  “You’ll sleep like babies,” the sales associate had told them. “The foam moulds to your body and eliminates any pressure points.”

  They had taken off their shoes and stretched out on the mattress. It had been a pleasant enough experience, much like sinking into warm custard.

  But when the new mattress arrived and the plastic wrapping was removed, their bedroom immediately filled up with a violent odour that irritated their eyes and set the both of them to coughing.

  Olivia opened all the windows, but the room remained unbearable, and they were forced to take their books and pillows upstairs and sleep in the guest quarters.

  The next morning, Dorian called the store.

  Yes, the sales associate told him, off-gassing was quite common. Yes, all the emissions were within government regulations and did not pose a health hazard. Yes, in rare cases, the fumes might irritate eyes and cause some minor coughing. No, the guarantee only covered manufacturer’s defects. But there was no need to worry, the man assured Dorian. In most cases, the problem would resolve itself.

  Two months later, Dorian and Olivia were still in the guest suites. By then the smell had disappeared, but each time they tried sleeping on the mattress, they would wake up in the morning with headaches and sore throats.

  The store manager was sympathetic. “Aside from that, how does the bed feel?”

  “It’s comfortable,” Dorian admitted. “A little warm for my liking, but comfortable.”

  “And that’s the most important thing, isn’t it.”

  As a token of the company’s commitment to customer service, the manager gave Dorian twenty percent off on a special mattress cover that protected the bed from moisture but still allowed the foam to breathe.

  “We recommend this cover for people with heightened sensitivities, and it reduces the incidence of dust mites.”