The Back of the Turtle

by Thomas King

  He’ll have to eat the desserts on the spot.

  Sonny selects a lemon bar and finishes it in one bite. Excellent. Sonny likes lemon bars, especially the ones that are tart and don’t have too much sugar. He picks up a brownie, and just as he’s about to take a bite, he realizes that he’s not alone.

  Someone else is at the table with him.

  At first Sonny thinks that the people in the pool have gotten out, but he can still hear them talking and splashing. The people at the table are different people.

  Samaritan Bay. Of course. The people at the table with Sonny are from town. The people at the table with Sonny are the ones who stayed. They must be hungry just like Sonny.

  And then the ghost Indian in the power jacket steps out of the fog.

  Wham-wham, hammer-hammer!

  Not the town. Not the town at all.

  Behind the Indian girl are more people. All Indians. Black hair. Flinty eyes. Sonny watches as they float about the table, taking small portions of everything. Ghost Indians. More ghost Indians than Sonny could have imagined.

  The Indian girl doesn’t have much on her plate. Sonny supposes that ghosts, even Indian ghosts, don’t eat all that much. Perhaps they don’t eat at all and are only taking food to be polite.

  Sonny puts a lemon square on the Indian girl’s plate. She smiles at him and nods her head. Sonny nods back, and he wonders if Dad has any rules about being friends with a ghost. But before Sonny can examine such a proposition, the ghost Indians with their plates of food step off the deck and vanish into the trees and the night.

  And Sonny is alone again.

  41

  WHEN CRISP RETURNED TO THE STORY, HE RETURNED WITH passion and fury. He moved about the pool, climbing on the rocks, leaping into the water, plunging beneath the surface, and then slowly rising, his back breaking water first to simulate a turtle shell.

  “It were the birds,” he boomed. “The birds what brought our woman to safety and sanctuary on the back of the turtle.”

  Mara had heard Lilly’s mother tell the story any number of times. Rose was more delicate and particular in the telling. Crisp was bold and bombastic.

  “And sanctuary was what were needed, for when the water creatures placed our woman on the back of the turtle, they discovered that she be pregnant.”

  Rose had spent time on why the woman was digging in the first place and how her clothes were torn off as she fell through the sky, how she arrived on the water world cold and naked, how the water creatures gathered around to keep her warm, and how the labour had been long and hard.

  Crisp had none of that in his telling.

  “Twins,” he shouted, tossing the details to the side. “She gives birth to twins.”

  Rose said that she had heard the story from her mother, and that sometimes the twins were two boys and sometimes they were two girls and sometimes they were one of each. Rose said she guessed her mother varied the gender based on her audience. But in every case there was a right-handed twin and a left-handed twin, a light twin and a dark twin.

  “Boys they were. Left-handed and right-handed, one cold, one hot. And now there’s not room on the back of the turtle for the family.”

  Mara had always enjoyed the next part.

  “So our woman calls all the creatures together and announces a contest,” sang Crisp, as he treaded water. “A diving contest and all are welcome to participate. The first to reach the bottom and bring up a ball of mud wins! The line forms here!”

  Lilly’s mother had always started with the pelican.

  “First up is the beaver.” Crisp smacked the water with his hand. “Down he goes, down into the depths. But he ain’t got the breath for it and he floats up scarce alive.”

  Mara stretched out and floated on her back. She knew her breasts were exposed, and she caught Gabriel glancing in her direction. She wasn’t sure what he could see through the mist with fogged glasses, but there was unexpected pleasure in the mystery.

  “Next is the loon, then the grebe, and after that the cormorant.” Crisp held his arms out from his sides and glided about in a circle, the water swirling around his waist. “But none of them could dive deep enough.”

  Mara never understood why whales and dolphins weren’t part of the story. Whales, in particular, could hold their breath for long periods and dive to great depths. They’d be able to get to the bottom and bring up the mud. But, in the telling, Rose had never mentioned them. And neither did Crisp.

  “One after the other, the creatures tried, and one after the other, they failed.”

  Rose had generally made the otter the hero of the story.

  “Until there weren’t no one left. Save muskrat. None of the other creatures had any faith that muskrat could do what they could not, for muskrat weren’t the biggest nor the swiftest. She couldn’t run fast or dive deep. But muskrats is cranky and stubborn, and this one weren’t no exception.”

  Mara floated against the side of the pool and tried to imagine what it would have been like to ride on the back of a turtle with two babies.

  “So down muskrat goes, down to where all light is gone, and nothing moves in the black. Down into the freezing depths what drops into eternity.

  “And she don’t come up.” Crisp took a deep breath, and, without another word, he dove underwater.

  Mara waited for the water to settle. “How long can you hold your breath?”

  “I don’t know,” said Gabriel. “A minute. Maybe two.”

  “Used to be able to hold my breath for three,” said Mara. “Are you wearing a suit?”

  “What?”

  “A swimsuit,” said Mara. “Are you wearing a swimsuit?”

  Crisp broke the water between them. “Then up she comes! Belly up, that is. Dead. Well, almost dead. All the creatures gather round and there in muskrat’s paws is a ball of mud. Like this.”

  And Crisp sucked in another breath and dove underwater again.

  “I’m not wearing a suit.”

  “Okay.”

  “Why did you want to know?”

  “Just curious.” Mara took a step forward and hooked her foot on something soft and stretchy. At first she thought it was a lump of pond vegetation, but as she drew it out of the water, she could see that it was a pair of dark underwear. She held the underwear up to the light of the lanterns.

  “Yours?”

  “Nope.” Gabriel dipped his glasses in the water and shook them clean. “Never saw them before.”

  “Must be from another party.”

  “Mud!” shouted Crisp, as he broke the surface. He held one arm aloft with his fist clenched. “The universal glue!”

  Crisp opened his hand. It was mud all right, dark and slimy with a somewhat putrid smell, and Mara hoped that the woman who fell from the sky had had something better to work with than this.

  “Mistress Mara,” said Crisp. “Do ye know any songs appropriate to the moment? For now our woman puts the mud ball on the back of the turtle and commences to sing.”

  Mara had been daydreaming: fragmented flashes of sausages and wet underwear. “What?”

  “A song, girl,” said Crisp. “Do ye know a song for our occasion?”

  “No,” said Mara, shaking the pieces out of her head. “But our Gabriel does.”

  “Does he?” said Crisp.

  “He was singing a round dance on the way to the springs.”

  “That’ll do,” said Crisp, “for it’s a social song, as I recall, and it ain’t hard to imagine all the creatures grabbing hands and two-stepping about the turtle.”

  Gabriel opened his mouth to object.

  “Nay, nay,” scolded Crisp. “Now’s your time, Master Gabriel. Quickly. Help us call the world into being.”

  Mara drifted next to Gabriel. “Take the lead,” she said. “I’ll sing behind you.”

  “We don’t have a drum.”

  Mara touched Gabriel’s shoulder. “Use the water.”

  THE surface of water, Gabriel discovered, would never tak
e the place of a stretched hide, but he slapped out a rhythm anyway and sang the song. Mara came in at the turn, her voice pitched higher and stronger than his, while Crisp danced his way around the edge of the pool.

  “A fine melody,” Crisp sighed, when Gabriel had brought the song to an end, “for now that small ball of mud has grown into the world as we know it.”

  “See,” said Mara, tapping Gabriel on the hip with her hand. “That wasn’t so hard.”

  It had been a while since he had sung like that. In front of people. For a purpose. And he had to admit, it felt good.

  “But our world ain’t naught but mud. So now our twins go to work on it.”

  Mara closed her eyes. So this Gabriel had been telling the truth. He wasn’t wearing a suit.

  “The right-handed twin makes the mountains nice and low with easy slopes, so the walking about is pleasant, and he smooths out valleys, so all are broad and flat. The left-handed twin comes along and grabs those mountains with his hands and pulls them into the sky, chips off the sides, makes them craggy and inhospitable. He stomps on the valleys, so some be deep and narrow and trapped by the terrain.”

  Crisp paused for a moment to catch a breath.

  “The right-handed twin makes medicinal plants what will cure all manner of malady. The left-handed twin fixes it so some of those plants will cure while some will kill.”

  “You were lying,” Mara whispered to Gabriel.

  “I’m not wearing a swimsuit.”

  Crisp forged on ahead. “As for the rivers and the streams, the right-handed twin made them languid and running in both directions at the same time. Then that rascal of a brother came along and turned them to one ways only, tossed rocks in, and conjured up rapids and falls.”

  “No,” said Mara. “The story. You’ve heard this story before.”

  “And on they went. The right-handed twin creating a world of ease and convenience, the left-handed twin complicating the parts, until the world were complete and perfect.”

  Crisp slid into the water, exhausted. “’Tis a hard story,” he said.

  “It’s long,” said Gabriel. “That’s for sure.”

  “Not the length,” cried Crisp. “But the sadness of the thing.”

  Gabriel nodded. “Sort of like the Garden of Eden.”

  “Nothing like it,” roared Crisp. “For in that story we starts with a gated estate and are thrown into suburbia, because we preferred knowledge to ignorance. In our story, we begins with an empty acreage, and, together, the woman, the animals, and the twins creates a paradise what gets pissed away.”

  “Free will.”

  “True enough, Master Gabriel,” said Crisp. “You’ve nailed me there. And in the end, whether we was tossed or whether we was the architects of our own ruin, the end’s the same.”

  Mara held up a hand. “Might we continue this conversation over food?”

  “Clams in custard,” shouted Crisp. “What manner of a host am I? Ye must be staved in at the ribs. Come, come. Let’s leave the waters and attend to the tables.”

  Crisp bounded out of the pool.

  Mara smiled at Gabriel. “You first, please.”

  THE food glistened under the lanterns.

  “Do ye see!” said Crisp. “Do ye see! They’ve come and gone, eaten the food, and in that they do me honour and celebration.”

  “They didn’t say anything.” Gabriel looked over the table. There were three lemon squares left. “They ate your food without a word.”

  “‘Twas why it was there,” said Crisp. “Food’s for the belly, and I’ll feeds the silent as certain-sure as the noisy, with no expectation of praise for him what sets the table.”

  Gabriel was thankful that Mara had put on her dress. And disappointed. He climbed into his own clothes as quickly as he could. Only Crisp remained naked.

  Mara picked up a plate and helped herself to the vegetables and the hummus. “There’s lots of food left.”

  Only Crisp’s plate remained empty.

  “You all right?” said Gabriel.

  “Fine,” said Crisp. “Fine. A bit sodden, if truth be the point, for I had hoped that the boy would bend the rules this fine evening and join us.”

  Mara looked up from the food. “Sonny?”

  “The kid from the motel?” Gabriel helped himself to the tomatoes. “The kid with the hammer and the talk about salvage?”

  “A sweet lamb,” said Crisp, “with a brutish burden to bear and no whereabouts in his head to carry it.”

  “He’s a little … different,” said Gabriel.

  “As are we all,” said Crisp. “My brother’s boy, so I adjust for tolerance.”

  “Brother?” Mara set her plate on the table.

  “Did ye not know?” Crisp suddenly slapped the side of his head. “But of course ye wouldn’t, would ye? Before your time. Not even your grandmother would carry that tale.”

  “Sonny’s dad is your brother?”

  “Twins we were,” said Crisp. “Just like in the story. I was the oldest, but nought by more than a breath and a bellow. Me feeling my way along and him pushing from behind.”

  “So, Sonny’s your nephew.”

  “Aye,” said Crisp, squeezing the water out of his beard. “Blood of my blood.”

  Mara stepped into the light of the lanterns so she could look into Crisp’s face. “I can see a story.”

  “Ye has a raptor’s eye,” said Crisp. “We weren’t always from the Bay, ye know. In another time, Dad and me were loose in the world, astride the universe with grand designs, him with his assurances and admonishments, me with my appetites and adventures. We believed we was elemental and everlasting.”

  Crisp sighed and shook his head. “Wondrous,” he whispered into the night. “It were wondrous.”

  Gabriel set his plate on the table next to Mara’s. “What happened?”

  “What always happens to such fantasy and enterprise.” Crisp helped himself to a slice of apple. “And then there were the cruel words what can’t be retrieved, expectations thwarted, convictions undone, dreams collapsed. Rough seas followed, and here was where we was washed ashore.”

  “The Bay.”

  “The Ocean Star Motel,” said Crisp. “My brother took Room Number One, even though I was the oldest and should have had the first sitting, but arrogance and inflexibility had followed us, so, for the sake of goodwill and tranquility, I took the third room along, and we put Sonny in between. And when that didn’t succeed, I came here.”

  “That’s sad.”

  “Heart-rending,” said Crisp.

  “You could still reconcile.”

  “Ah, Mistress Mara, ’tis a sweet thought, but not one that will bear any weight, for there’s no one with whom to reconcile.”

  “Sonny’s dad is …”

  “Gone,” said Crisp.

  “The Ruin?”

  “Nay. Dad was gone long before that black day.”

  “What happened?”

  “But ye have had your own losses,” said Crisp, “and Master Gabriel as well, for you can hear it in his voice and see it in his stride. There’s none here tonight but what’s not been cut and bled.”

  Crisp wiped his face. “Listen to me. Blubbered up like a beluga. ’Tis a party we’re at, and I’ll not have melancholy corrupt the water nor sorrow foul the food. Eat up. Sing if ye have a mind. Dance if ye have a will. As for me, I’m back in the bath to warm the bones and ease the heart.”

  And Crisp sprang off the deck, disappeared with a splash into the depths.

  Mara and Gabriel stood by the table with their plates.

  “I guess it’s just the two of us.”

  Gabriel held up a brownie. “You like chocolate?”

  It was at the end of the table, just beyond the lemon squares. Folded neatly as though it had just been cleaned and pressed.

  “Is that your jacket?”

  Gabriel picked it up and held it out. The tipis were sharp and bright. “Didn’t expect to see this again.”
/>   “Someone from town must have found it,” said Mara. “Tonight’s your lucky night.” She turned away from the pools and the darkness of the forest. “You know what I’d like?”

  “More desserts?”

  “No, I’d like to go home.” Mara twisted her wet hair into a knot. “And while you’re at it, Muskrat,” she said, “I’d like some mud.”

  42

  SONNY SITS IN ROOM NUMBER TWO AT THE OCEAN STAR MOTEL and watches The Sound of Music on the classic movie channel. Sonny likes all the singing and dancing and people being kind to each other. Sonny especially likes the children, who start off wilful and wild, but who become obedient and well behaved.

  He doesn’t like the German soldiers, and whenever they come on the screen, Sonny mutes the sound.

  Most of all he likes the father, who protects his children and keeps them from harm. Whenever the father is on the screen, Sonny whispers, You’re a good dad, to the television set.

  Sonny likes most of the songs. He especially likes the song about the deer, and sometimes he dances along with the children as they sing about needles pulling thread and tea you eat with jam and bread.

  Tonight Sonny doesn’t dance with the children. Sonny is busy eating the food from the hot springs, and he knows that if he tries to dance, it will just hurt his stomach. But Sonny sings along with the songs. Eating and singing doesn’t hurt his stomach.

  When Sonny watches The Sound of Music, he wonders what it would be like to have brothers and sisters. Sonny has mentioned this to Dad on a number of occasions.

  Sonny would like some brothers and sisters.

  Sonny looks up from one of the sausages. The German soldiers are back. He wipes his hands and hits the mute button. Bad things aren’t nearly so bad when there’s no sound.

  One of the special songs in the musical is about all the favourite things Maria can think up. Raindrops and sleigh bells and wild geese in mittens. Ponies with wings and cream-coloured kittens. Sonny likes to sing along with the song, and sometimes he makes up his own favourite things.

  Tourists and turtles who come in the summer.

  Movies with heroes and four-wheel-drive Hummers.