Turtle Moon

by Alice Hoffman

  Julian reels in Arrow’s lead so the dog won’t get it into his head to attack. They walk side by side into the tunnel, where field mice are burrowing in the dry earth and blue crabs scuttle along the concrete. The children are huddled together, their arms looped around each other. For some reason, Julian can’t bear the thought of waking them. He watches them sleep, while beside him the vicious dog who would think nothing of tearing a man apart tilts his head back and whines.

  The boy shifts in his sleep. He can never get comfortable. He has lost his voice and all his courage, yet when Julian finally bends down and shakes his shoulder, he’s ready to run. He scrambles to his knees, out of breath and shivering from his dreams. He reaches blindly for the baby beside him, and when he finds that instead he’s clutching a huge dog, he’s no less amazed than Julian to discover that the dog who has tracked these children into this tunnel now lies down beside the meanest boy in Verity, and refuses to budge.

  Last week, Lillian Giles had three willow trees cut down and carted off her property. She had considered having these trees chopped down for a long time, nearly thirty years, since she was tired of warning visitors not to trip over their twisted roots. Sooner or later someone would break a leg, so she finally had them hauled away, and she can tell, already, it was a good decision. There, where the willows once stood, a circle of apple mint has already begun to spring up.

  Lillian has always kept hutches full of brown rabbits, all of whom she calls Buster, although some are certainly female, since every spring there are new baby rabbits who sit in the palm of her hand, begging for leaf lettuce and sunflower seeds. Lillian has cared for more foster children than anyone in the country; all the social workers call her by her first name. Not too long ago, one of the children she raised, who’s grown up to be a tax accountant in Orlando, bought Lillian a satellite dish, so now, when her feet begin to ache, she can rest them on a hassock and turn on Oprah, and that’s a relief.

  Lillian has always had a knack with babies and could put even the most difficult ones down for a nap within minutes. She still keeps a long-handled axe over by the shed for big, angry boys who need to chop wood. She never called any of the big boys in for supper, no matter how much wood they chopped, until they were good and ready, and then she’d fix them franks and beans, with brownies for dessert. She has two cribs stored in her back room, and two roll-away cots, and several large wicker laundry baskets filled with toys. Although she can’t recall the name of the host of the Today show whom she watches every day, she remembers every child she’s ever taken in, even the ones who stayed just for a day. In all these years she’s never had a favorite, except for one, and that was Julian Cash, who was probably the ugliest, fussiest baby ever born. Time has gotten mixed up on Miss Giles. It seems like yesterday that she changed Julian’s diapers and years ago that he drove up to make certain the men she’d hired were taking the willows out by their roots, since it was the roots that were causing the problem. She knows, in fact, this isn’t possible, since some of the lemonade she served Julian and the yard men is still in a pitcher in her refrigerator. That’s one thing some of the children complain about, that she never adds sugar to her lemonade, but after a while they all get used to it, and when they grow up they can’t bring themselves to drink the store-bought stuff; it’s way too sweet for their tastes.

  A long time ago, Lillian was in love with Charles Verity’s great-grandson, but he went to New York and married a rich girl, and Lillian stayed put. It was simply her good fortune that somebody’s burden was another person’s delight, because that’s the way she got Julian, and she’s been taking in children ever since. She may be a little deaf, but that’s no crime, and she can still tell Julian’s car as soon as it pulls in her driveway. His car parks in front of the house tonight when it’s very late and the frogs in the hedges are singing the same song they sing every May. Lillian has always been a light sleeper. She gets out of bed and pulls on her robe and hopes that she has enough food to fix Julian something, since she knows he never cooks for himself. When she goes to the front door to watch him get out of his car, her heart just about flips over. She opens the screen wide enough for him to bend down and kiss her.

  “I brought you a little something,” Julian says.

  “How little?” Lillian knows he’s not talking about a satellite dish or a microwave oven.

  “A year or so,” Julian says. “You know I can’t judge.”

  Lillian peers out the door and sees Keith’s sleeping form, slumped against the car window. “Looks a little older.”

  “And a twelve-year-old,” Julian admits.

  “Pick them up by the side of the road?” Lillian asks.

  Julian grins at her. That’s what she used to tell him whenever they had a new child in the house. She just happened to be out walking when she picked this one or that one up by the side of the road. Once there was a baby so small and dehydrated that Miss Giles had to feed it with an eyedropper, the way she sometimes feeds the baby rabbits. Julian stood next to her, beside the rocking chair, dressed in his pajamas, listening to her talk that baby into opening its little pink mouth. He used to believe Miss Giles had night vision, like an owl, since she was the only one who managed to find all these children by the side of the road. When he got older, he would hear the social workers’ cars pull up, at odd hours. Sometimes he would put his ear up to the bedroom wall and discover there was a woman wailing in the kitchen. He opened his door a crack one night and saw a woman pulling on her hair, rocking back and forth in Miss Giles’s chair as she held a baby in her arms. Maybe it was only the moonlight, or maybe there really was a silver pool of tears on the linoleum floor, or maybe it didn’t even matter, since in the morning both the silver tears and the woman were gone and there was a new baby sleeping in the spare room.

  Tonight, as they stand at the screen door, Julian realizes that Miss Giles has grown smaller. She’s been shrinking and he hasn’t even noticed. He guesses she is somewhere in her seventies, but he doesn’t know for sure. All he knows is that when he was sent away, Miss Giles packed his suitcase and gave him a dozen brownies wrapped in tinfoil for the bus ride, then went into the bathroom and locked the door so he wouldn’t hear her cry. Each week she wrote to him on thin blue paper. Baby, she’d write, somebody here is missing you so she’s losing a quarter of an inch of herself every day, and it’s all coming out of her heart.

  “You’d better bring in those little packages,” Lillian Giles tells him.

  While Lillian goes to make up a crib and a cot with clean sheets, Julian walks out to the car. In the backseat, Arrow paces behind the metal grating. Julian had to pull him away from the boy down in the tunnel, then tie him to a telephone pole in order to get close to the children. Now, as Julian opens the driver’s door, Arrow begins to growl.

  “Jesus,” Julian says under his breath.

  He doesn’t expect Arrow’s obedience, but he’ll be damned if he lets his own dog keep him out of his car. The little girl is curled up on Keith’s lap, but she doesn’t wake as Julian lifts her up. He carries her to the porch and she startles, just a bit, when he hands her over to Lillian.

  “Ssh,” Lillian says. The baby’s eyelids don’t even flutter when Lillian smooths her knotted hair and takes her into the house.

  Walking back to his car, Julian knows he’s making another mistake. Actually, it’s a done deed. The mistake was made as soon as he started driving to Miss Giles’s instead of heading directly to the station. That woman from New York has got him so messed up he’s thinking about her even when he doesn’t want to. It’s that time of year when you have to be careful even when you can’t. It doesn’t help that the boy seems to be some kind of mute; every time he tried to speak to Julian all that came out was a croak. He fell asleep in spite of himself; dreaming, shirtless, he looks younger than twelve.

  Julian gets into the car. “Wake up,” he tells the boy.

  The meanest boy in Verity nearly jumps out of his skin. When he sees Julian, then r
ealizes that the baby is gone, he gets that wild look that Arrow has when he’s cornered.

  “Relax,” Julian says. He raps on the wire meshing behind them to try to quiet Arrow, who’s still growling.

  The boy stays absolutely still, but all his muscles are tensed, just in case he has to make a run for it.

  “Something wrong with your throat?” When the boy doesn’t answer, Julian shrugs and adds, “It’s probably a good thing you can’t talk. This way you can’t bullshit me.”

  Julian takes the pack of cigarettes from the dashboard and shakes one out, then takes out another and holds it toward the boy.

  “Go on,” he says when the boy doesn’t move. “I just told you. You can’t bullshit me.”

  When Julian lights the cigarette the boy inhales deeply, then coughs his dry, brown cough. There’s panic all over him, so Julian speaks softly, as if talking through the chain link of the kennel.

  “You got yourself into a mess, all right. But I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m not going to turn you in.”

  The boy cups his cigarette in his palm and narrows his eyes. Julian notices that his right hand is on the door handle. He’d be fast if he decided to run.

  “Anybody ever tell you how stupid you are?” Julian asks. “Anybody ever tell you that everything you’ve done so far has made you look guilty of just about anything, including murder?”

  He can see the boy’s fingers tighten on the door handle. “You can run now,” Julian tells the boy. “But whoever did kill that neighbor of yours might just catch you and slit your throat. One thing you can be sure of—I’m not about to kill you.”

  The boy lets go of the door handle and wraps his arms around himself so he’s all hunched up.

  “Okay.” Julian nods. “You made a good decision right there. Now just put out that cigarette before you burn a hole in my upholstery, and follow me into the house.”

  The boy is shivering, but his mouth is set in a fierce line. Julian can’t help but remember exactly how much he had to prove at that age. He used to climb out his bedroom window and meet his cousin where the willow trees stood until last week. They could easily find their way along the road without a flashlight, even on nights when there was no moon.

  The boy has reached through the wire meshing, into the back, so that Arrow can sniff his fingers.

  “Want to leave that dog of mine alone?” Julian says as he swings his door open. “He’s vicious.”

  After going around to the passenger side, Julian opens the door and waits. The boy looks up at him, then gets out. His hair sticks up on one side, from sleeping all folded up against the door.

  “Just watch out for coral snakes,” Julian says, in case the boy gets it into his head to take off.

  The boy is shivering so badly that his teeth hit against each other, and Julian wonders if he should have offered him his own shirt. As they near the house, Julian realizes just how run-down the place has become; the porch is sagging and the roof is covered with leaves. Miss Giles stands at the screen door, holding her robe closed. In the dark, with the wind coming up, Julian figures this could easily look like a place where they popped you in the oven, then ate off your fingers and toes.

  “Don’t tell me you’re scared?” Julian says softly when the boy hesitates.

  The boy gives him a look of pure hatred, then continues up the steps. Julian knows that when he was twelve he didn’t want anyone too close to him, so he makes certain to walk a pace behind. At the top of the steps, he reaches past the boy and pushes open the screen door, and when he sees that Miss Giles is holding her long-handled axe, Julian has to bite his lip to stop from laughing out loud. It’s a test. If they can’t trust the boy, they might as well find out right now. The boy looks terrified of Miss Giles, who greets him in her robe and the fuzzy slippers she always refers to as mules.

  “If I’m going to make you hot chocolate, then I need some wood,” Lillian Giles says. She holds out the axe and the boy stares at her; Julian can see the lump in his throat. “Right out by the back door,” Lillian says.

  The boy takes the axe, but then he sees the stuffed bunny, so badly stained with chocolate and dirt, and it becomes clear to him that he’s not going anywhere without the baby. He opens his mouth but nothing comes out.

  “He doesn’t talk?” Lillian asks Julian.

  “He’s having a problem with his throat,” Julian says. “I don’t know, maybe he’s got strep.”

  The boy keeps on staring at the bunny, running his fingertips along the smooth handle of the axe. He looks as if he’s been swimming in mud; when he turns his head, little clouds of gnats fly out.

  “I’ll let your mother know you’re all right,” Julian tells him. “All you have to do is chop some wood and keep your mouth shut, which shouldn’t be too hard for you to do.”

  But the boy still refuses to move, and that’s why Miss Giles leads him to the spare bedroom. She waits in the hall till the boy gets up enough nerve to follow her; then she opens the door so he can see the baby in her crib, filthy and safe, sucking on her thumb.

  “Now you go out by the back door,” she tells the boy. Bossing around runaways who carry sharp axes has never bothered her in the least. The boy has no choice; since he’s not about to run and leave the baby behind, he does exactly as he’s told. The dog in the car is watching him as he walks to the woodpile. Arrow makes a soft whining sound that makes the boy shiver even more. Shirtless and cold in the moonlight, he’s afraid of coral snakes and death and his own loneliness, but he starts to chop wood anyway.

  They can hear him in the kitchen, where Miss Giles heats up a pan of milk. She hasn’t had a wood-burning cookstove for years, not since one of her foster children grew up to manage an appliance store in Hartford Beach, but sometimes chopping wood is what’s needed anyhow.

  “You’re exhausted,” she tells Julian as he lights a cigarette off the back burner of the stove. “You’re getting that froggy look around your eyes.”

  Julian grins and heads for the living room, but he stops and turns back in the doorway. “You’re sure I can leave you with that?” he asks, nodding toward the back door.

  “Baby, you can leave me with ten more just like him,” Lillian Giles says.

  If Julian weren’t who he is, he would put his arms around her. He always loved to watch Miss Giles make hot chocolate; she used a big wooden spoon and round motions that made it appear she was using all her strength.

  “You’ve got diapers and all that?” he says, hesitating.

  “I’ve got everything,” Miss Giles assures him. “Scat.”

  Julian walks out to his car just as the quarter moon appears in the sky. He gets in behind the wheel and works the wipers once, just to get some of the mosquitoes off the windshield. In the back, Arrow stretches out and groans, then licks at the torn pads of his paws. As Julian hears the boy chopping wood, he remembers that all you needed was three strokes to split a log. But to get a pile big enough to suit Miss Giles took a lot of energy. By the time that boy was done, his shoulders and arms would ache, his palms would be bloody and raw, and he’d be just about tired enough to crawl into bed and sleep the whole night through.

  FIVE

  LUCY IS ASLEEP ON THE couch when he phones her. It’s only natural that she thinks at first that it’s Evan, who’s been calling her constantly. As soon as she does recognize Julian’s voice, she sits up straight, completely awake. He tells her that her son is safe, but that isn’t enough. Even after he explains how isolated Miss Giles’s place is, after he gives in and tells Lucy exactly where the house is, she isn’t satisfied. She needs to know how long she has before Julian turns Keith over to the police for questioning. It’s late, but Lucy quickly gets dressed. She chooses her clothes carefully: a short black skirt, a silk blouse, high heels. When you are going to beg you must never look like a beggar. That’s common sense. You need to look like you deserve what you’re asking for, and in Lucy’s case all she wants is time.

  She drives tow
ard the marshes, but in the dark everything looks different; she’s not certain she’ll recognize his driveway until it’s right in front of her. She parks out on the road, near the sweet bay, which leaves its scent on her clothes, then walks down Julian’s driveway. As she finds her way in the dark, she rehearses what she will say to him. She’ll say Please and Thank you and If you had a son, you would know. But mercy is more difficult to ask for than to grant, and when she nears the house, she hesitates. She doesn’t notice the toad that scrambles across her path. When she stumbles, the dust rises around her in a cloud and the dog in the kennel begins to bark. It’s an awful, bellowing sound, as if the dog had been wounded.

  Is it possible that Julian Cash waits for prowlers? He’s wearing jeans and has already stepped into his boots when he comes out to the porch. He’s holding tight to the female shepherd’s collar, so she can’t break away. When he sees Lucy, there in the dark, almost at his front door, she looks like something he dreamed, as though she belonged to him. Julian quiets Loretta and has her sit. There are white moths trying to get inside his open front door, and his porch is lined with rotten boards. Julian can’t look away from Lucy; he’s hypnotized by the way she opens and closes her hands when she speaks, as if she were using sign language. Behind her, the black sky shimmers with living things, mosquitoes and night beetles and moths.

  “I want to make a deal with you,” Lucy is saying.