The Back of the Turtle (16 page)

BEATRICE HOT SPRINGS WAS MARKED BY DARK PILLARS OF
dry-fit stones, with a heavy header of rough timbers. Even with the light from the lanterns, the entrance looked like the mouth of a cave.

Gabriel had to hurry to catch up to Mara. “You move pretty good.”

Someone had carved words into the face of the timbers that spanned the pillars. Gabriel had to stand at an angle and fight the shadows to read them.

Aeterna Sustineo.

“It’s Latin,” said Gabriel.

“Of course it’s Latin,” said Mara. “Come on. I smell food.”

THE
entrance was dark and narrow, but the path immediately opened onto a broad garden, framed by a cathedral of tall trees. Mist had settled over everything, and, while Gabriel couldn’t see the pools clearly, he could hear the sound of water moving.

“Welcome!” Crisp strode out of the fog, naked, with an enormous smile on his face. “The table’s set, the fare anxious for approval, and damned be him what cries, hold, enough.”

The man looked to have been put together from unrelated parts. Bald head, flaming red beard, smooth muscular chest and stomach, trim waist, and thin, sinewy legs that were covered with hair and reminded Gabriel of a goat.

“Nine pools in all,” said Crisp, “and each available, though I’d sail clear of the alpha and the omega.”

“Happy birthday, Nicholas,” said Mara, and she gave Crisp a hug.

“Happy birthday, Mr. Crisp,” said Gabriel, extending a hand.

“Sweet words,” cried Crisp. “Sweet words! But come! Let’s be about the waters. There’s places there in the shadows to change if ye have an issue with modesty.”

“No issue here.” Mara slipped out of her dress and turned to Gabriel. “What about you?”

“I’m going to look at the food first.”

“Suit yourself.”

GABRIEL
wandered along the tables and helped himself to some cheese and crackers. He passed on the thick sausages, which reminded him of Crisp’s penis, and went with the sliced ham instead. He could always eat more later.

Somewhere in the fog, he could hear voices and splashing. Mara and Crisp were in the water together. Gabriel could feel an unwelcome energy surge through his body, and suddenly he was no longer hungry. He set the plate on the table, pulled the underpants out of his jacket pocket, and folded his clothes on a chair.

He quickly slipped into the first pool he could find. As far as he could tell, the springs meandered through a broad meadow.
Wooden boardwalks followed the pools, and there was a large deck where you could sit and enjoy the natural surroundings.

“Master Gabriel!”

“Here.”

“Stay where ye are,” shouted Crisp.

There was more splashing and laughing, along with the sound of bodies pushing through water.

“Be ye here?”

“Yes,” said Gabriel, “I’m here.”

Crisp appeared out of the mist first, in the pool just above Gabriel.

“There ye be.”

“Here I am,” said Gabriel.

Crisp leaped and dropped into the lower pool with a splash. Mara was right behind him. Gabriel sank a little lower in the water and quickly removed his underpants.

“Did ye get your fill?”

“I did.”

“Then it’s time to begin the celebration.” Crisp climbed out of the pool and onto a large rock, his disparate parts glistening in the lantern light.

“Bring me my Bow of burning gold,” he shouted, holding his arms out to the night. “Bring me my Arrows of desire. Bring me my Spear. O clouds unfold!”

Mara floated towards Gabriel. “Bring me my Chariot of fire!” she whispered.

“Aye, girl,” roared Crisp, with such force that ripples spread out across the water. “That’s the line all right. But it must be said in thunder. ‘Bring me my Chariot of fire!’”

Crisp shook his beard and stamped his foot as though he expected the rock to split. And then he leapt into the air, curled up in a tight ball, and hit the water with the force of a comet.

“Mercies!” he bellowed. “But you’ve got to love Blake.”

“‘Jerusalem,’” said Mara. “The man likes his poetry.”

“Indeed, I do,” said Crisp. “But even Blake don’t hold a candle to ‘The Woman Who Fell from the Sky.’ We tell that story here each year as a reminder.”

“A reminder?”

“Indeed, Master Gabriel.” Crisp lowered his voice and sent it skipping across the water. “As a reminder.”

Gabriel’s mother had told the story any number of times, but he couldn’t remember if she had ever given a reason. Gabriel and his sister had taken turns cheering for the various animals who dove down to the bottom of the ocean, betting cookies on who would be the first to try to find dirt. Gabriel suspected that his mother varied the outcome, so that neither of her children got too far ahead of the other in the overall standings.

“Do ye know the tale?”

“No,” said Gabriel. “I don’t think I do.”

“Well, then,” said Crisp, “’tis time ye learned it. And since there are but the three of us, I’ll call on Mistress Mara to do the honours.”

“You’re a better storyteller, Mr. Crisp.”

“True enough,” said Crisp, “but it’s not my story to tell. I only do so when there’s not a proper human being in the assembly.”

“He means an Indian,” said Mara.

“It’s a story that comes with the land, and the two are forever wedded,” said Crisp. “Do ye not agree?”

“I suppose,” said Gabriel.

“Don’t be supposing in the pools,” said Crisp, “for they’ll not tolerate indecision or arrogance.”

“Be that as it may, no one’s been here longer than you, Mr. Crisp,” said Mara. “As well, it’s your party, so you must tell the tale tonight.”

The fog hung in the air like gauze. Mara floated in front of him, the swell of her breasts breaking the water. Somewhere in the shadow of the trees, something moved. Gabriel wondered if it might be Soldier and was about to call out when Crisp began.

“’Tis flattery I smell,” cried Crisp. “But I do love the tale and so will succumb to my base instincts.”

“It was on a night such as this,” Mara began.

“Aye,” said Crisp, jumping in without further encouragement. “It could have been night or perhaps it was day. No difference, no difference, and somewhere high above this plane, somewhere in the black realm of space, on another world, a woman was digging for tubers. And where do we find the best of the tubers?”

“Under old trees,” said Mara.

“Exactly!” shouted Crisp. “So our woman searches until she finds the oldest and largest in the forest and she sets to digging her hole. She’s a strong woman, she is, and she digs and she digs and she digs, until …?”

“She digs a hole into the sky,” said Mara.

“Put your back into the telling!” howled Crisp. “For it’s an uncommon dig by an uncommon woman.”

“She digs a hole into the sky,” shouted Mara, and she reached across and poked Gabriel in the thigh with her foot.

“And what’s a woman to do when faced with such an aperture? Why she looks into it. That’s what she does. She looks and leans in. She looks and leans in further. She looks and leans in even further. And then …”

Crisp paused and waited. Mara poked Gabriel a second time.

“She falls in!” Mara’s and Gabriel’s voices filled the meadow.

“She falls in!” Crisp raised himself out of the pool until you could see his penis floating on the surface and the tops of his goat thighs. And then he fell back into the water and disappeared.

Mara and Gabriel waited, while the water calmed and softened, until there was nothing to mark Crisp’s plunge.

“He’s okay, right?”

“I guess it’s just the two of us.”

“I thought I heard Soldier in the trees.”

“I wonder,” said Mara, “if this is what Eden was like.”

“The fortunate fall,” shouted Crisp, as he burst from the water, “for our woman was falling through time and space, tumbling, tumbling, tumbling through the blackest night, down, down, down, she comes, and off in the distance at the edge of reason and sight, what does she see?”

“A small blue dot.”

“Such clever children,” hissed Crisp. “For indeed it is as you say. A small blue dot. A blessed plot, a magic realm, this earth. But at that time, it was nothing but …”

“Water,” yelled Mara and she began splashing Gabriel.

“Manners,” trumpeted Crisp. “But ye are correct. The world towards which our woman was falling was a world with naught but water.”

“She’s going to get wet,” said Gabriel, and he splashed Mara back.

“We all fall into the world wet.” Crisp raised his arms and let the water flow off his palms. “Yes, it were a water world, but it weren’t
terram vacuam.
It were filled with water creatures.”

“Water birds,” said Mara, holding up the necessary fingers, “and water animals.”

“Quite so,” said Crisp. “All that and more. The birds be the first to see her, for they possess the gift of sight. So, down our woman comes, picking up speed as she clears the moon, and the birds can see that if she hits the water at flank speed, there’ll be nothing but trouble.”

“Trouble.” Gabriel splashed more water at Mara. “Hell, at thirty-two feet per second, per second, she’ll destroy most of the planet.”

“A scientist,” cried Crisp. “I knew ye were no ordinary castaway. Yes, it’s true, and the birds knows this to be true as well, and they fly up into the sky, beat their wings to great effect, and catch her on their backs. Then slowly, very slowly, they lower her to the surface of the water.”

“But there’s no place to put her,” said Mara.

“Just dump her in the water,” said Gabriel.

“She’s not a water creature.”

“Quite so,” said Crisp. “Our woman is no water creature, and, if the water creatures abandon her to the sea, she’ll drown.” Crisp paused and sank into the pool until his beard appeared to float free of his face. “What to do, what to do?”

“I know,” said Mara. “I know.”

“Let’s be giving the other children a chance to shine,” said Crisp.

When Gabriel’s mother had told the story, she always liked to draw this part out and let Gabriel and his sister guess. His sister favoured whales and walruses. She had never been happy with a turtle. “They’re too small,” she had told her mother.

Gabriel shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe a turtle?”

Crisp squinted at him. “Are you sure ye have not heard this tale before?”

The noises in the woods were back. Gabriel was sure he could make out voices now, low and indistinct.

“You hear that?”

“Softly,” said Crisp. “For they don’t wish to be acknowledged.”

Mara rose out of the pool, the water sliding off her body. Gabriel had seen breasts before. Movie breasts, television breasts, magazine breasts. Just not that many in-person breasts.

“Miller, Webb, Canakis, Collins.” Crisp kept his voice low. “The ones who survived, the ones who stayed. Tragedy has a trick of bringing folks together.”

“Or it can separate them from the world,” said Mara, “isolate them from their families and friends.”

“Ye have it whole,” said Crisp. “Each year on my birthday, I set the table and open the pools, and they come and go as they please, alone and in darkness.”

“But they survived,” said Gabriel.

“And that’s the sin they live with,” said Crisp.

“So what are we supposed to do?”

“Finish our story,” said Crisp. “There ain’t nothing to do but finish our story. Now where were we?”

Mara slid back into the water. “On the back of a turtle.”

“Aye,” said Crisp, and he clapped his hands together. “On the back of a turtle.”

SONNY SLIPS OUT OF THE TREES AND MAKES HIS WAY THROUGH
the fog to the long table. He is very stealthy, and he is very hungry, and he wastes no time filling a plate with food. He can hear happy voices in the pools behind him, and he is bewildered once again.

Why would anyone come to such a place? How could anyone find pleasure bathing in lakes of fire and ice.

The food. Of course. Sonny doesn’t know why he didn’t think of this sooner. This is where the food is. This is the lure that leads the unwary into the trap. Come for the food, stay for the sulphur.

Wham-wham.

Sonny piles the plate as high as he can. He slips several sausages in a pocket and stuffs vegetable bits into the other. He has no intention of staying.

Watch me, Dad, watch me.

The voices slide through the fog, along with the sound of splashing, and then someone shouts, “Water.” Sonny peers into the mists that boil off the pools, and for an instant, he can see three grey shapes in the gloom.

Sonny turns back to the food and discovers that he’s forgotten about the desserts. His plate is full, and there is nowhere in his pockets to put the lemon squares and the chocolate brownies. Which means only one thing.

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.