Short Fiction
Turtle
a short story by David Ortmann
first written 2001, still in progress
"Turtle? Where in the hell are you?"
Jasper heard his grandmother call out from somewhere in the cornfield and he giggled into his tiny fists. She'd never find him over here, he thought, under the old washtub. Hide and seek was Jasper's favorite game and his grandmother his favorite partner. He just never got around to asking her to play. He would just run off and hide, leaving her to join in the game when she realized he was missing.
Jasper Cameron had been called Turtle for as long as he could recall. He thought his grandmother started it, but he couldn't remember. Remembering was Jasper's biggest problem. That's what his grandmother said, at least. Whether he forgot to close the door to the outhouse, remove his mud sculptures from the garden path, or match his socks, his grandmother's words were always the same. "I swear, Turtle, you ain't got the brains God gave you."
Jasper's grandmother was part American Indian, part doublewide-bred Texas trailer trash. She drank corn liquor from an old mason jar and inhaled the crude cigars she smoked. She worked their farm from dawn until long after sunset. By age forty-five her skin had hardened and cracked like the neglected bits of saddle leather that gathered dust in the corner of their barn.
Jasper's grandfather was over six feet tall and had fiery red hair. His red beard was streaked with gray and reminded the boy of an evening campfire, half-snuffed out. He had the warmest smile Jasper had ever seen, but Jasper had never heard him speak a word.
Jasper hadn't always lived with his grandparents.
Sometimes he might have a memory of his mother and father and of life in a green trailer, but it would never linger. The memories came only when the boy smelled macaroni and cheese cooking. Since his grandmother stopped making it, the memories faded.
"Every time I cook that shit, the Turtle just stares off into space and starts in crying," Jasper's grandmother said to her husband. "Thank God for Hamburger Helper."
Jasper's father drank. The boy couldn't remember anything about the man, except that when angry or drunk or both, he would punch his son hard in the head and beat him with a broomstick handle. Sometimes his ears would ring, and the boy would think angels were singing to him. Then he would go to sleep.
When Jasper was five, his father beat his mother worse than usual. Small and weary at twenty-one years, she died that night on the kitchen floor of their trailer in a pool of blood. Jasper found her and thought she was asleep. He kissed her cheek again and again, just like the prince in the fairy tales she'd told him. He became frightened when he found his mother's face cold and hard, like cement against his lips. His father went to the Texas State Penitentiary, and Jasper went to live with his maternal grandparents on their farm in Sweetwater.
Jasper could run faster than any boy his age, but he was still considered slow. No one knew if he was born with developmental problems or if they resulted from his father's beatings, but by the age of eight he had progressed only to the mental and emotional level of a four-year old. "That poor retarded boy," his grandmother would say, often to no one in particular. "He sure as hell got dealt a sad hand."
Jasper was a local curiosity in Sweetwater, a rural town without museums or monuments. To say that he turned heads would be an understatement, for Jasper had inherited his father's hair, the color of hay that had been left to dry in the field all summer, and his mother's emerald eyes. His eyelashes were as black and as thick as a rooster's tail feathers.
"Rich ladies from Dallas with tons of money don't have eyes as pretty as the one's you were born with, son." His grandmother would say.
Whether it was Jasper's beauty that turned heads or his propensity for eating dirt, talking to trees, or wearing mismatched socks, nobody could figure.
"He's downright creepy," Buzz, the grocer, would say. "That little fucker looks a'cha like he could read into your soul. I read somewhere them retard types is saints or devils or some shit like that. I dunno. But I like to never look that little critter in the eyes. He's damn spooky."
Unlike most boys, Jasper didn't go to school. If you asked him why, he would tell you, "Because the bees came." If she were within earshot, his grandmother would roll her eyes skyward. "Poor stupid thing," she'd shake her head and continue to pin laundry to the frayed rope tied between two oak trees. "They say God protects the very young and the very dumb. If that's the case, the Turtle's got double protection. Not the brightest bulb on the tree you know. The child trusts everyone. Never heard him speak a negative word 'bout anyone or anything. Boy'd walk off with the postman if we didn't keep an eye on him."
The bees came when Jasper was seven. It was the reason his grandmother refused to send him to school. No one was sure exactly how it happened, but somehow a gang of twelve-year-old boys befriended Jasper during recess one afternoon. With promises of candy, toys, and secrets, they led him deep into the woods surrounding Sweetwater. They told him they were going to play a game. Jasper liked games and began to jump up and down.
Once the game had begun, Jasper thought it hurt much more than other games he'd played, especially when the boys removed his shirt and used heavy ropes to tie him to an old oak tree. The old ant infested bark made his back itch, but he'd giggled as they pulled off his green Toughskins jeans and white Fruit of the Loom briefs. It especially tickled when they'd slathered the sticky honey over his budding genitals, his thighs, chest and backside. Swinging a fallen branch, the boys smashed open a nearby beehive and sent it crashing to the ground. They'd stood back and laughed as hundreds of bees converged on the screaming boy. When he was found that night, Jasper was delirious and had been stung over two hundred times.
Unconscious for two days, Jasper spent the next three weeks in bed with orange Mercurochrome dots covering his little body. His grandmother said he looked like a road map with too many important towns. Although everyone at school was certain it was Brad McCormick and his gang, Jasper was never able to identify the boys who'd hurt him.
"That school ain't no place for the Turtle," his grandmother said evenly to her husband. "I'll teach the boy at home if need be."
She marched down to the schoolhouse and withdrew him the following day. She was by nature a headstrong woman and was as angry with the school as those bees must have been when their home was destroyed. The Principal gave her no argument. The boy could be schooled at home, even though it wasn't quite legal. Mr. McCormick, the Sweetwater truant officer, would always turn a blind eye toward their farm.
Jasper, recovered, was drawing animals into the cracked earth behind the farmhouse with a stick while his grandmother pulled weeds from the turnip patch one hot summer afternoon.
"Whhhhy d'ya always cccc.call me Ttttt.turtle?" He asked, peering around the rusted washbasin that was also his favorite hiding spot.
His grandmother paused and wiped the sweat from her forehead with the red bandanna she kept tied around her wrist. "Kid, you never get tired of bothering me with questions, do you?" She feigned annoyance and smiled at the boy. Jasper cackled and banged his dirty fists on the washbasin.
His grandmother bit into a turnip and drove her pitchfork into the soil. "Well, Turtle, it's like this. In the beginning, the earth was all covered with water." She noted the confusion that spread across the boy's face. "You know, like a big swimming hole with no way to get out."
Jasper nodded, and with a burst of excitement pounded the earth with his fists and cackled again. Jasper liked to swim.
"So God looked around and said, 'Now where in hell am I gonna put all my little critters who can't live in the water?' You see, Turtle, all the land was underneath the water. So God called up the frog, who is a very special little creature. God asked the frog to swim down to the bottom of the ocean and bring up some land in her mouth. The frog swam all the way down to the bottom and brought up a piece of earth for God. But when the frog set that bit of earth down on water, it just broke apart and sank to the bottom all over again."
"You see, Turtle," his grandmother spat a chunk of the bitter root from her mouth, "people think God has all the answers.but I think He needs a little help every now and then. So God called up His most ancient creature of all, the turtle. Turtle was a big, wise, old guy with a lovely shell that protected his squishy little body from all sorts of bad stuff. And I think," she whispered, as though sharing a secret, "that's why he's been around so long."
"God told the turtle all about the trouble with the land, while he treaded water and thought about the problem. The turtle thought for a long time, real quiet like. Then he told the frog to go all the way back down to the bottom of the ocean and bring up more land in her mouth, and the frog did just like the turtle said. This time, instead of setting the dirt onto the water, the turtle told the frog to set the earth on his back. The frog swam down again and again and again and each time she brought up a mouthful of land to place on the turtle's back."
The grandmother saw the distress in the boy's face. "Oh, the frog wasn't tired from all that work!" she said quickly. "It was magic like. God and animals are like that."
"By the time that sweet frog was done, all the dirt that was underwater was above the water. And that's how we have land, prairies, and mountains.because the turtle let God build the earth on his back."
"And that's you, Turtle." She tossed the turnip rind over the backyard fence. "Covered in dirt with the weight of the world on your shoulders and a smile on your face."
Jasper laughed and dug his hands deep into the dry earth and screamed, "Ttttt.turtle mmmm.made earth! Ttttturtle mmmmade earth!"
His grandmother watched as the boy shoveled little fistfuls of dirt into his mouth and laughed. Mud and spit trickled down his chin between bursts of giggling. "Turtle, how many times do I have to tell you that earth is good, but we don't eat it?" She whacked him playfully on his backside and led him into the house for a lunch of ketchup sandwiches and Grape Tang.
* * * *
With purple Tang stains ringing his mouth, Jasper set out to find the turtle. His grandmother told him that turtles live for a very long time, sometimes seventy-five years, and, to the boy, that was practically forever.
Unafraid of the dark things that haunt the fringes of other children's imaginations, Jasper began his quest in the thick woods surrounding Sweetwater. The turtle was probably lonely there, he thought. He would find him. Then he and the turtle would both have a friend.
Of course, Jasper didn't tell anyone where he was going. He just set off, dressed in shorts and a large tee shirt, with streaks of ketchup drying on his hands. Before he turned the corner of the cornfield, he was skipping.
The grandmother didn't see him leaving. Nor did she hear the sound of his whistling fade down the dirt road that led to the woods. Finished scraping the dried ketchup from the lunch dishes, she settled into the rusted wrought iron chair that overlooked the yard. She lit a cigar and inhaled deeply. She closed her eyes. There were miles of weeds to pull before dinnertime, but they could wait a few minutes.
Jasper had only ever seen a turtle in his picture book and didn't know where to begin looking. Remembering that turtles liked water, Jasper followed the Sweetwater creek as it wound deep into the forest. Although the woods surrounding the town were vast, some say the largest in Texas; it was unlikely that Jasper would be lost in them.
"That boy has an inner compass that just can't be turned 'round." The grandmother had said about Jasper's uncanny sense of direction. "He can't match his socks worth a shit, but he ain't the type to go gettin' lost, 'lest he's hiding and then God only knows where the hell he'll turn up."
The boy trod on with determination along the banks of the creek, marching through dense weeds, listening to the sounds of his sneakers squish into the mud, and humming to himself. Almost two miles later he came upon Molasses Pond, named for the thick black crater around which children rarely crept. Schoolyard rumors said the dark water was bottomless. Others said the great Molasses Serpent lived within and ate anyone who came too close. Even twelve-year-olds, like Brad and his crew, were afraid of Molasses Pond.
But Jasper was not. He just giggled, as knee-high crabgrass tickled his bare legs, and surveyed the forest and sky around him. It was mid-day and the sun still burned hot, but the trees and brush covered the pond in shadows. Jasper stopped.
"Ttttturtles here," he said definitively and plopped himself down on the banks of the pond and waited.
Had Jasper's grandmother known where he was going, she might have told him, "Forest critters are smart, Turtle, and they have real good ears. They can hear people coming from miles away and that gives 'em all plenty of time to hide off 'til we pass on by. Child, I reckon we've given all sorts of creatures good reason to hide from us."
Jasper's grandmother had also said that there were special people, people with abilities that help them get by in the woods. She said Jasper was one of those people.
"He's so damn quiet, that boy. Can't never find the poor fool! And talk about a watcher! He'll sit in the same spot for hours.just waiting to see a bird or possum or some other such thing. I guess that's why all the little critters like him so much."
Jasper sat by Molasses Pond without moving for over two hours. Then, like his picture books, the forest began to open before him.
The cry of a hawk circling high overhead was the first thing that drew Jasper's gaze from the water.
"Hi, bbbb.bird," Jasper whispered and waved, not wanting to scare the other critters he knew were lying about. He saw a lizard next, scurrying around the bank. It looked at him curiously for a moment, burrowed under a blanket of wet leaves, and was gone. Jasper wanted to say "hi" but didn't know what a lizard was called. He didn't know what the snake was called either; only that it was very small and seemed to be painted with colorful patterns.
"Ttttt.triangles," he whispered.
He hadn't known the little snake was even beside him until he heard the sound. It made the sound like the instruments he used to shake during music class at school. A maraca, it was called. Like the snake, it rattled.
Jasper reached out to say "hi."
With one lurch the baby rattlesnake sunk its teeth deep into the boy's calf and instantly recoiled. The boy felt surprise first and pain second. The bite began to burn. Jasper didn't move. He just stared at the snake. It's scared, he thought. The snake stared back and then slithered away.
By then, the burning was replaced with a deep throb in his leg. It was like a tiny heartbeat, the boy thought, thuhthump.thuhthump.thuhthump. Only this heartbeat wasn't in his chest. Jasper was confused.
It was only when the skin surrounding the thud began to itch that Jasper noticed the two holes. They were viscous little craters oozing twin streams of yellow and red. They ran in a slow rivulet down the boy's calf and onto his white sneaker where they crusted and dried.
"Orange drip," Jasper mumbled as he clawed the swollen skin with his dirty jagged fingernails.
The boy stood unsteadily, angry with the pretty little snake for ruining his silent watch. He had to walk around to keep from thinking about the thud and the pain. He hoped he wouldn't scare the turtle away, but by the time he got to the edge of Molasses Pond, the venom had saturated his bloodstream and was coursing through his little body with a vengeance.
"Babies," he muttered toward the sky, to the angels he saw there singing to him. His eyes were heavy. Sleepy, he thought, stumbling. Just as he leaned against an old tree and began to let his eyes fall shut, he caught sight of the old snapper lumbering along the water's edge.
He was huge, just like his grandmother said! Jasper began to pound the damp earth with his little fists and howled excitedly, ignoring the spasms of pain that shot through his legs, up his convulsing back, and into his head.
The turtle's shell was the size of well cover and encrusted with mosaics of green, red, purple, yellow, orange, blue and brown. Jasper watched them swirl before his eyes like a kaleidoscope. "Wwwheels," he whispered, his mouth a perfect "o" as he watched the colors spin.
This was the turtle. The boy was sure. The snapper's gnarled head swam out from beneath his shell, peering at him with patterned yellow eyes. The turtle's neck was as thick as a farmer's wrist. The knobby head perched on the end of it titled to one side, as if questioning the boy who jumped up and down before him blathering, "Hi, Tttt.turtle! Hi, Tttt.turtle!"
The turtle did not retreat as the wide-eyed boy approached him on unsteady feet. The old reptile stood at eye level with the drooling wound on the boy's calf. The boy reached out and touched the old turtle's shell.
"Wwwwhh...whirly ccco.colors," the boy cried. He reached down and picked up the turtle. He hugged the huge animal to his chest and was shocked to find him so very cold. All animals, the boy thought, should be as warm as the stuffed dog he fell asleep with each night. The turtle was cold. Cold like cement. Cold like his mother's cheek.
Clutching the creature tighter to his chest, the boy's mind flashed with memories. "Nnnn.no, no, no no no nonono," he said shaking his head to clear them. He remembered kissing his mother's cheek, cold like the turtle. When the boy finally caught his breath, he screamed with a longing so heart wrenching and loud that birds took to the sky from the trees around him. The boy's infected body convulsed with despair and poison and still he held the turtle tighter, trying to warm the cold reptile against his shirt. "Don't die." The boy cried, tears and snot running down his face and into his mouth. He coughed and stuttered, "Don't dddd...die, turtle."
He began to run. He ran away from the pond. Holding the turtle closer to his chest, he ran, ignoring the sickness in his body.
* * * *
The grandmother was frantic. She'd drunk two jars full of corn liquor and inhaled four cigars in the three hours she spent looking for the boy. She'd searched everywhere, all the usual hiding places. She'd yelled so loud for the boy her throat was raw. She knew it was bleeding. Still, she smoked. She fought not to think about the bees.
She, who cried only once in her life at her daughter's funeral, was in tears as the boy's grandfather silently led her toward town. They would search downtown Sweetwater until it got dark. He didn't know what they would do then.
She heard the boy before she saw him.
"Turtle?" she turned toward the dirt road in time to see him burst from the cornfield. In his arms, he carried a huge, old truck tire. He was hysterical and yelling something about a turtle dying. She saw the blood on his discolored leg. She saw the dirt smeared on his clothes. She saw him collapse. She, who feared nothing, fainted dead away.
The grandfather ran the two miles to the downtown hospital with his grandson in his arms. The boy remained unconscious for three days. The grandparents never left his side. The doctor, a slender, sympathetic man, shot the boy full of anti-venom, and assured the grandparents he would be fine. "He's dehydrated, no doubt about it. Definitely in toxic shock, but it's not a coma. Just give him some time." He left them alone with their grandson.
Two days later, the boy opened his eyes. He rubbed them with his fists and looked around the hospital room.
His first words were. "Is the turtle all right?"
The grandmother drew him close to her. "The Turtle's fine," she said. "The Turtle's fine."