The Turtle Warrior

by Mary Relindes Ellis

  “Did you get that snapper down at the river?” He leaned out of his truck window for a better look.

  “Yeah ... we’re taking her home to Mom for soup,” James answered stiffly.

  Ernie glanced at all three boys. “What happened to her jaws?” He said it quietly, but they heard him despite the idling engine.

  “Nothin’,” Terry answered sullenly. “We were just havin’ a little fun.”

  Bill watched Ernie’s eyes narrow toward his brother and Terry. The turtle let out a groan. Bill’s eyes watered again. Ernie cut the engine.

  “How bad does your mom need a turtle for soup?”

  Bill could tell Ernie was mad. The skin on Ernie’s neck was a sun-weathered red-brown, and when he was angry, it turned bronze.

  “Not bad.” James shifted the turtle back to his right hand.

  “I’ll buy it from you.” Ernie reached into his back pocket.

  “Ten bucks!” Terry suddenly demanded. For a few precious moments Bill thought Ernie was going to reach out of his truck window and grab Terry by his greased-down hair. His heart beat faster. Maybe, Bill thought with no small amount of joy, he’ll slam his head into the door. Bill looked up at James. His brother had that cocky look on his face that really meant that he was scared.

  “Okay,” Ernie answered coolly, “ten bucks it is.”

  He got out of his truck and handed the ten-dollar bill to James instead of Terry. James extended the hand holding the turtle’s tail toward Ernie.

  “Wait.”

  Ernie grabbed some tarpaulin from the bed of the truck. He lined the floor on the passenger side with it. Then he took hold of the turtle hanging from James’s hand by both sides of her shell and placed the almost dead animal on top of the tarpaulin. After stepping onto the running board, Ernie swung back into truck’s cab and started the engine. He looked back at the silent boys.

  “Billy,” he said, hooking his thumb toward Bill, “how’d you like to come over for supper? Rosemary would love to have you.”

  Bill looked at his brother. James wasn’t cocky anymore. He dropped his head and stared at his boots. “Go ahead,” he mumbled to Bill. “I’ll tell Mom where you are.”

  Bill hesitated. Ernie reached over to open the passenger side door. Bill walked slowly around the front of the truck.

  “Better take care of that thumb. It looks pretty nasty,” Ernie commented to James as Bill climbed into the truck; he kept his feet on the seat instead of resting them on the snapper’s back. Then Ernie revved the engine, and the truck rolled forward. Bill twisted his head around to stare out the cab window. Just above the brown dust of the road, he saw James’s startled face staring after them, his other hand holding the bitten thumb.

  When they pulled up close to the yellow farmhouse, Bill saw Rosemary Morriseau’s face appear in the kitchen window. She vigorously waved when she saw that Bill was in the truck too.

  “Rose! We’ve got company for dinner!” Ernie called from the open window of the truck. Bill got out and walked around to Ernie’s side.

  “Billy!”

  Rosemary Morriseau flung open the screen door and almost skipped down the porch steps. She reached forward and hugged him, his face nestled just under her breasts. Bill’s guilt at leaving James washed away in the luxury of her hug and smile. He could not recall a time when his mother greeted him the way Rosemary Morriseau did, nor did his mother smell like her. He pressed his nose into the bottom crest of her ribs and inhaled. She wore lily of the valley perfume and that other smell of her body. He could not name it. He only knew it as her smell. It gave him joy and made him feel safe.

  “Dinner will be ready in forty-five minutes,” she said, stepping back and ruffling his hair.

  “We’ll be in the house in a bit.”

  Rosemary ruffled his hair again before stepping back inside the house to finish cooking dinner. Bill hoisted himself over the tailgate to sit in the box of the truck. Ernie drove the truck to the back of the barn. He got out of the driver’s side, walked around the front of the truck, opened the passenger side door, and lifted the turtle out of the truck. Bill swung himself over the tailgate and onto the ground. He watched as Ernie placed the turtle on a small bed of straw. The snapper clawed the loose straw but could not lift her head. One glassy eye seemed riveted on Bill’s face.

  “What did James do to her jaws?”

  “Terry too!”

  “Terry too,” Ernie echoed, and then repeated, “What did they do to her jaws?”

  Bill didn’t know if he could say. “Our neighbors don’t need to know what goes on in our home,” his mother always said, looking at Bill and James nervously after they had been at the Morriseau farm. But this had happened at the river, not at home. Bill suddenly felt very tired.

  “Firecrackers.”

  “Huh,” Ernie grunted. He bent down to take a closer look at the snapper. “I thought I could wire her lower jaw back together, but it’s too bad even for that.”

  He stood up and stepped back so that he could lean against the truck. Bill joined him, sitting on the running board.

  “Are you gonna make soup outta her?” Bill asked tentatively.

  “No.”

  Bill inhaled deeply. He could smell the sweat of hard work and the mint-flavored gum that Ernie always carried in his shirt pocket.

  “That,” Ernie explained quietly, “is the last of the dinosaurs. You know why snappers keep moving even after they’re dead?”

  Bill shook his head. He just assumed snappers were that way, and no one at home told him differently. When his father beheaded one, the body continued to crawl around the yard until his father nailed the turtle by its tail to the light post so that the body would bleed out. After a few hours his father cut the turtle free from the base of its tail and, after flipping the animal over, unhinged it to get at the meat. The tail continued to move for days before becoming motionless. Until Bill touched it. Then the tail reflexed as though it were still alive.

  “Well, scientifically speaking, they are considered primitive. Their nerve endings take a lot longer to die. This one is very old,” he added. “You can tell by the shape and size of her shell. At least it looks as though she’s laid her eggs already. You boys didn’t bother the nest, did you?”

  “No.” Bill could answer that truthfully.

  Ernie looked up, his gaze focused on the waving oats in his field. “If my father was here,” he commented, “he’d tell you differently. He would tell you that turtle created the world.”

  They watched the snapper for a minute more until Ernie pushed himself off the truck.

  “You better run up to the house and help Rose with supper. I’ll take care of the snapper.”

  He gave Bill a small nudge. Bill knew what that meant. Ernie would take the .22 rifle he kept in the barn and shoot the turtle behind the head.

  They were just finishing dessert when they heard a car pull into the driveway and heard the dog bark. Ernie pushed back his chair and stood up from the table to look out the kitchen window.

  “Billy, it’s your dad.”

  Bill stiffened, unable to swallow the chocolate cake lumped on his tongue. He wiped his mouth and, guided by Rosemary, followed Ernie out of the porch door. He could hear Ernie calling their dog, Angel, away from the station wagon so that John Lucas could get out. Bill watched as Ernie caught the dog from lunging, holding him by his collar until Rosemary knelt down and wrapped her arms around the dog to physically restrain him. Ernie stood up.

  “John.” He extended his hand toward Bill’s father.

  John Lucas shook Ernie’s hand as though it were covered with shit but unavoidable and said coldly, “I came to pick up Bill.”

  “Did Jimmy tell you we invited Bill to dinner?” Ernie asked.

  John Lucas nodded. “We need him at home now. C’mon, Bill.” John Lucas motioned to his younger son.

  Ernie laid a hand on Bill’s shoulder and let it slide off as Bill walked by him.

  “Say, John, if
you don’t need Jimmy this summer, I’ll pay him to work over here. I could use some help this summer.”

  John Lucas released his hand from the handle on the door, caught by Ernie’s request. “Well, he can’t do that. He won’t be here this summer. James enlisted. He’s leaving tomorrow.”

  Bill stopped before opening the passenger side door to the station wagon. Enlisted. Bill didn’t understand what his father was talking about. He waited and listened for Ernie’s response. But Ernie appeared stunned. Bill shifted his eyes to stare at his father.

  John Lucas was a tall man with sparrow-colored hair and sallow skin. He towered over Ernie Morriseau, but Bill noticed that Ernie was more muscular, more compact than his father. He wondered which man would win, if it ever came to fists. But he didn’t have to wonder long because he could see that Ernie would be able to drop his father despite John Lucas’s height. All Ernie would have to do is punch John Lucas’s soft white belly and the tall man would fall like a chain-sawed pine in the woods.

  “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.

  James.

  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.