So Brave, Young, and Handsome (8 page)

“Put him over the side and be done with him,” I shouted, over the thumping turtle.

“No—he’ll feed us for days.” Glendon had found the snapper with his oar and now, night-blind as he was, reached down and got it by the tail. “Here, help me block him up.”

Quite gently he set the turtle back in the bow while I crawled forward and rebuilt the barrier.

“Poor bugger,” Glendon said. “Poor old uncle. Listen how quiet he’s got, Becket. How awful he feels. You were never in jail, I suppose.”

“Not yet.”

“Well, it ain’t any good. You don’t ever wake up and say to yourself, What a pretty day, I feel good today. No,” he reflected, “a jail ain’t nothing but a collection of corners.”

We struck no town that night and laid up at dawn on a sandy shore under a cottonwood tree. The tree would’ve provided superior shade, but by noon the sky turned to funeral wool and November came hissing through the grass. There are people who “predict” the weather, but on the Great Plains these are a fragile and disappointed little group. Glendon opened his kit and threw me a knitted sweater and donned an oilskin himself. We dragged the boat to high ground and knocked a few dead limbs off the cottonwood.

“Becket, I’m hungry. Go kill the turtle.”

I must’ve looked blank.

“Stick this branch in front of his nose. When he takes hold, pull him out of the boat. Pull his head as far out as you can and cut it off.” He handed me his knife.

“My hands are still pretty bad,” I said, despising my faint heart.

“I rowed us all night, I guess you can kill an old turtle,” he replied. His voice had a grouchy rasp I hadn’t heard before.

I returned to the johnboat. The snapper appeared relaxed. Warily I held out the stick, which he refused to notice.

“He won’t bite,” I called out.

“Tap his beak, that’ll fetch him.”

I tapped away but the turtle just blinked and drew his head into his cave.

“He isn’t coming out.”

Glendon came over and gave the snapper an admiring look. He said, “You been reading our mail.” To me he added, “Good luck,
Becket,” then off he went and started digging an earthen pit under the cottonwood tree. He had in mind to build a fire in the pit and drop in the turtle and roast him slowly in the shell, along with the squash. We’d had nothing since the bread and molasses—in this cold breeze a roasted turtle sounded like Christmas dinner.

I laid the tip of the stick against its beak and tried to pry it open but nothing. You don’t expect restraint from these beasts, you expect reflexive violence. Instead this snapper refused to snap and in fact looked canny and patient.

Soon enough Glendon had the pit dug and a vigorous fire inside it. He came over to watch my futile coaxings.

“You sound impatient. Look at his face—he doesn’t like your tone,” Glendon said, amused.

“If that was my toe instead of a stick, he wouldn’t show such control,” I complained. “Why don’t we just put him in the fire and cook him alive? That’s what they do with lobsters.”

But Glendon was displeased. “Cook him alive? Look at him. He’s probably older than me. It would be impertinent.”

“Well, you kill him then. I tried, and he won’t come out.”

“Cook him alive—for shame, Becket.”

This attitude of Glendon’s struck me as impractical and possibly priggish. We were hungry. It was cold. Nobody ever thought it was impertinent to steam a lobster.

Climbing the riverbank I walked out onto the meadow where an upstart wind whipped the grasses into confusion. I didn’t look at the sky until a cold gust struck my face—only then did I see the black storm front riding in from the west. It rolled forth in a toppling motion. Even over the wind I could hear the sizzling noise of water striking earth.

I turned and bolted, reaching the river with the first raindrops. They spanked the weeds, tore leaves off the cottonwood. Determined to cook something, Glendon had thrown the squash on the coals and covered the pit with dirt; without a word between us we turned the boat upside down and crawled under. The turtle was in there too, and together the three of us watched the rain turn to hail. It began
as fingertips but changed to knuckles and fists. Amid this deafening rumpus the turtle decided to escape. Forward he plowed—the gunwale lifted against his ridged back, hailstones thumped his mossy shell plates. I caught Glendon’s eye as the snapper moved out into the storm. Neither of us tried to stop him.

Luckily for the boat, it only hailed about ten minutes. Not many vessels could’ve stood up to more than that—some of those hailstones were as broad as my hand, and they fell in bunches. Peering out from under, all the land we could see turned white in a hurry. Even the river was lathered in the churn inflicted by that storm; the turtle left a dirty track through the ice as it shambled away, but that was quickly covered.

When the hail ended the rain resumed, a soothing noise after that unseemly pounding. I actually dozed awhile. When I crept out later, the smaller hailstones had all melted and the large ones lay shrinking in their craters.

Glendon sat under the cottonwood on the only dry patch in sight. Pale smoke drifted up from the mound where he had covered the fire. I could smell the squash cooking in the earth—my stomach lurched with desire.

“Look here, Becket,” said my friend.

Next to the mound, almost on top of it, lay the snapper. His feet were withdrawn but his head was extended and he looked curious and stately.

“What’s he still doing here?”

“I guess he likes the warmth,” Glendon replied. He took his knife and uncovered the two squash. They were ruddy from cooking and steamed when he pierced their skins. We still had a little butter and Glendon produced the salt in a milk-glass shaker. He said grace in an apologetic voice, given he had stolen the entire meal; my fingers shook while I ate, and my eyes watered, and it was a remarkable
supper right down to the seeds and the ropy core. I even considered eating the rind, but noticed Glendon laying his rind on the earth in front of the turtle. Instantly its beak flashed out—it wasn’t faster than sight, as people will say, but it was certainly quick as a flinch, and the report of that beak popping was impressive. In seconds our snapper bolted the squash rind, then retracted his head as if to contemplate its effects.

“Goodness,” Glendon said—we were both a little shaken. “What do you suppose he’s thinking about in there?”

“Fingers.”

“I had the same theory,” he replied. “Look at him, he’s disenchanted. Well, go on and feed him that rind, Becket—let’s see if he’ll do it again.”

Glendon changed my bandages before we left and was pleased to see no infection; my fever had disappeared as well, and I didn’t protest when he suggested I take a short stint at the oars. The only protest I did make was on behalf of the turtle, who, I argued, had earned a reprieve. Also, I confessed to a growing feeling it might be ill luck to kill the brute, even if I proved clever enough to do the job. But Glendon only laughed, saying, “Nonsense, he was lucky today. We’ll eat him tomorrow.” So we made a bed of sand in the bow for the turtle to sit on and poured water on the sand so he would be cool and content. At dusk we shoved off under emerging stars.

Rowing went better this time. I’d gotten used to the motion of the johnboat and the length of the oars, and the bandages guarded my palms from further damage; after an hour or so Glendon said I’d done enough and we switched places. I straightaway fell asleep in the stern.

I woke to Glendon’s voice. He was talking—praying, it turned out, though I couldn’t tell at first since he didn’t speak in the fraught inflections common to prayers, at least my own. It was more as if he were relating to a good listener the details of his day. He told in brief about the farmhouse he had robbed for our supper, its drafty construction and air of paucity. He told of peering round a corner to see the farmer close by in the field, encouraging his draft horses in a clay-dust
haze. In Glendon’s tone were sadness, acceptance, and finally humor—this as he told about the snapping turtle escaping in the hailstorm, only to take warmth and comfort from the very fire on which we’d planned to roast him. The irony made me chuckle.

“Monte, you’re awake.”

This may have been the first time he used my Christian name.

“Yes. I’m sorry to eavesdrop. I didn’t know you were devout,” I said.

“Oh, no.” He was much entertained. “Devout, ha! Nope, I got no such claim. Though I did get myself baptized, once upon a time.”

“As a boy, I suppose.”

“No, later, when I was staying at Hole in the Wall,” he said, so offhandedly you might’ve thought it was a colorfully named hotel and not the infamous lair of Cassidy and Longabaugh plus dozens of less likable bandits. “I know what you’re thinking,” he added, eyeing me.

“Hardly a spot for church doings,” I admitted.

“That’s true, and the fellow who dipped me was hardly church material. Crealock was his name; he’d been a thief, then a preacher, then came back around to thief again. But he’d preach sometimes at the Hole. He had a firm grip on Hell, yes he did.”

It was a serene night on the river, and Glendon told me of his salvation in some detail. Crealock had described Hell in upsetting similes until Glendon asked what he must do to keep from its torturous flames. There was a grassy stream flowing through the Hole and there Crealock baptized the young penitent, asking his name and receiving Glen Dobie; and Glen Dobie wept along with the preacher, who thanked him for his amenable heart and gave him a paperboard copy of Proverbs, although he could not read. Then the preacher instructed him to rest awhile and implore with God and taught him a short prayer to say. The new convert went to his bedroll rejoicing. He uttered the prayer a number of times and cried several times, feeling the mercy of God pour out like cleansing oil upon his limbs, and late in the day he arose and ate a sustaining meal of frijoles with side pork and rode out from the Hole with his friends and robbed the Union Pacific as it climbed the Wyoming foothills.

Then “Hold on, Becket,” he said. “Do you hear a noise?”

He held the oars still in the water for maybe a minute. There came a faint yawp or roar—an alarming, abrasive sound. As we listened it resolved to coarse laughter.

“Is there a boat?” Glendon asked. “Can you see anyone?”

The clouds had moved off the waxing moon. It was bright enough that dips in the land appeared as shadows. Looking upriver I saw a yellow light I had moments earlier taken for someone’s cabin window—now I could see it was an oil lamp hung on a black line sliding swiftly downriver.

“It’s a barge or raft,” I said. “See that light?”

“I’m afraid I don’t,” he replied, though between our progress upstream and theirs down, the distance was shutting dramatically.

“Look more to the left.” It was a big raft carrying the shapes of men. I couldn’t tell how many. They were laughing again, though with more reserve—some new note had entered their revelry.

Glendon said, “Hang these eyes of mine, what a disappointment they are.”

“There. Right there. See how close they’re getting?” Because now in the moonlight I could make out three or four men squatting at the near edge of the raft. Another was standing aft—from his motions I judged he was steering with a pole or long oar. “Look,” I said, “there must be a strong crosscurrent. They’re coming straight this way.”

But even at close range Glendon couldn’t see them, for abruptly their lantern was extinguished. Onward they came. There was no laughing now aboard that raft, nor talking either. The man astern poled hard across the current, and the others crouched at the waterline.

Violence seldom issues a warning—I saw that raft sweeping down, yet it still didn’t seem possible the men aboard intended us ill. “Hello the boat!” I shouted, only a little wary, when they were perhaps forty yards away, but received no answer. Not until they were within twenty yards and still silent did I comprehend our trouble, though Glendon did—he couldn’t see the raft but, guessing its position, dug in an oar and sent us surging away at an angle.

His maneuver saved us a ruinous collision. The man at the helm roared a vulgarism and bent viciously to his staff, aiming again to transect our course; the river brought them nearer and the men crabbed forward, one shirtless looking wild as Lear with his hair lashing his chest. Another was bristly and squat as a boar—the others I can’t recall, but with these two I own details because just before the raft swept downstream, missing us by perhaps fifteen feet, Lear and the boarlike fellow gathered themselves and sprang. In disbelief I shouted
Glendon, pull!
but they were robust swimmers and reached us in seconds. The bristly man clutched the gunwale and the johnboat heeled so that Glendon sprawled in the bottom. That brought cheers from the raft, then more as the bristly man got a leg over the rail—his face was chaos: mucky nostrils, warped lip. I stuck my foot on his eyes and shoved even as Lear came swarming up the opposite side. On his knees Glendon swung an oar but missed and Lear tumbled into the boat, getting a fistful of my shirt. We tilted steeply and something skidded down hard on my ankle. It was the snapper. A claw flailed, there came a blunt report like the one we’d heard at supper, then Lear began to shriek. Where the turtle took hold we will never know but I can tell you Lear
dragged himself over the side in the grip of a living bear trap and down they went the two of them, a final shriek burbling up out of the river like the sound of Hell established. The bristly fellow surely heard it too, for in his rush to escape he gave the johnboat a shove that carried us yards upstream. His companions on that wretched raft had drifted down a considerable distance, but I suppose he made it safely back. That devil was strong in the water.

From first to last the raft incident used fewer than ten minutes of our lives, yet every day I see the faces of those men—the one who went down with the turtle and the feral witless one who escaped. In the minutes afterward I was so glad to be living I could only tremble, but there was no sleep for either of us that night, nor much talk until just before sunup.