Come, Thou Tortoise Read online

  Verlaine’s Lada will not start. Jim Ryan is casting aspersions. Around the car he stomps. His crescent is plugged at one end with an ancient Soviet eyesore. What colour was it originally. Dark beige. What colour is it now. Dark beige. Weirdly, it has not rusted.

  Let me try.

  Verlaine gets out. Jim gets in. The engine turns over but will not catch. You can hear that it will not be catching any time soon.

  I put my hands over my ears.

  As a kid this sound—the sound of a car not able to start—could make me cry instantly. It was the sound of pain, of fever, of wanting to throw up and not being able to.

  Clint passes me on the steps. He sees my box of lights and says, Hey, Christmas Boy was here.

  I take my hands off my ears. What.

  Christmas Boy.

  You mean Judd, period. Julian-Brown hyphenated.

  You seen my dispatch office recently.

  Holy. That was him.

  Yes, God love him.

  There’s a crowd around the Lada now. The moon is up and on. They look like they’re in a play. Jim Ryan cannot stop himself from turning the ignition one more time.

  Finally Mrs. Ryan comes out of her house and screams, Jim Ryan stop flooding that G.D. engine.

  Hear hear.

  Jim gets out. Slams the door. Except it doesn’t slam. It sort of sticks. He pokes it. She’s made of cardboard, he says with disgust.

  Clint and Uncle Thoby poke around under the hood. Clint points. What were the Russians up to, I wonder, with this business.

  Verlaine chews a fingernail and spits it in the snow.

  Oddly, can you bring us some duct tape.

  I slump my shoulders. Part of me wants to go over there and console the Lada. Which is an old friend. The other part wants to stay right here on this step. Forever. No part of me wants to get up and look for duct tape.

  I’m not wearing boots, I call back.

  Uncle Thoby looks over his shoulder. That can change, can’t it.

  Yes it can bloody change. This is the worst feeling. I need coffee.

  Uncle Thoby unwinds duct tape by the metre, and I stand at the ready with scissors. I am Scissors Girl.

  Byrne Doyle and Clint are actually chatting. So the twain shall meet after all. Clint wears a short leather jacket that says CLINT WON’T COST YOU A MINT on the back. Byrne Doyle wears his wool straitjacket. They stand shoulder to shoulder in a posture not unlike that of their respective signs on the lawn behind them.

  Some shockin those antlers on Noel Antle, what.

  Sign on Empire says JOYEUX NOEL ANTLER.

  They chuckle. And continue chuckling. Oh my. Byrne Doyle wipes a tear from his eye.

  Sure he can’t complain. If anything it’s helped him.

  He should have been wearing antlers all along.

  He’s up in the poles.

  Up in the north poles.

  More laughter.

  Backstage Jim Ryan says, This car is making a political statement that I am not comfortable with.

  Verlaine tells him to va t’en.

  Pardonnez moy.

  I peer into the back seat. Hello old friend. What political statement are you making with that hole in your floor, two Piety pie boxes (one half-full), and an old hoof pick.

  The hole’s getting bigger, I remark to Verlaine.

  She is lying prostrate on a snowbank. Either she is making a snow angel or a political statement.

  I used to think the hole was on purpose. Those daredevil Russians.

  Do not put your hand or foot in that hole while the car is moving, Verlaine would caution me.

  What do you take me for, an idiot.

  I open the back door. I grab the hoof pick. Look. I hold it up for all to see. Who knows what this is.

  The Byrne Doyle–Clint conversation pauses briefly, then resumes. Funny how people will not see something they don’t recognize. I’d bet my bottom dollar that neither Clint nor Byrne Doyle has ever seen a hoof pick before. But do they pause to say, What an interesting implement, Audrey. What is that. No.

  Not the sharpest antler in the rack, Clint is saying.

  Uncle Thoby is still under the hood.

  Jim Ryan says, A silver question mark.

  I look at him. That is unexpected.

  It’s a hoof pick.

  Oh.

  I run my tongue over my front teeth. Rule Number One of Hoof Picking. Do not bend over the hoof with your mouth open. Do not sing, O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum, your branches green. Because if the horse shifts his weight, if he lifts his hoof so much as an inch, hey, where’d your front teeth go. Oh, they are down your throat.

  It is surprisingly easy to lose your front teeth.

  Examining my bleeding gums all those Christmases ago, Verlaine shook her head and said, Yes, well, you never were exceedingly bright.

  I was about to cry when she winked at me. Because we both knew I was one sharp antler.

  Verlaine thinks the Lada could be jump-started if it were pushed by a few burly men, a strong young woman, and two political candidates. Jim Ryan quickly agrees. And if by chance she won’t start, she can be pushed into Byrne Doyle’s driveway.

  Uncle Thoby has duct-taped God knows what under the hood. Yup, he says, nodding, like, my work here is done, but I hope no one will ever look closely at my work. Righto. And he slams the hood.

  I slide the hoof pick into one pocket, the scissors into another. I feel competent. We arrange ourselves like so along the back bumper: Byrne Doyle, Clint, me, Uncle Thoby, Jim Ryan. The idea is to push the car the rest of the way around Jim’s crescent and out into the street, thus making a big, and hopefully momentum-building, loop. Then we keep pushing on the straight, at which point Verlaine pops the clutch.

  There is much jostling. Clint says, You gonna be able to run in that sleeping bag you call a coat, Byrne Doyle.

  Maybe I should take it off and leave it on the bank.

  Yes, why don’t you.

  When we start pushing, Jim Ryan says, By Jesus she’s light.

  Bottom’s gone right out of her, says Clint.

  Is that Verlaine Russian, Jim says.

  “That Verlaine” can hear you. Her window’s open.

  Well is she.

  Why.

  I’m just wondering why anyone would buy a car of this persuasion.

  What persuasion.

  Eastern European, shall we say.

  That’s enough now, Jim, says Uncle Thoby.

  Byrne Doyle is of Polish descent, I announce.

  He is.

  I am.

  We are picking up speed. In the crescent it is not hard work. In the street it’s a little tougher, because the street has snow in it. Unlike Jim Ryan’s pristine driveway. We put everything we have into it. How fast are we going. Ten, twenty, forty, sixty kilometres an hour! No, a cheetah hits sixty. Maybe ten. Just as we pass Byrne Doyle’s house, the car hiccups to life. We feel it leaving our hands. What an amazing feeling. Verlaine gives us the thumbs-up out the window. The car turns at the end of the street, just like a regular car. Indicator blinking. Like dum-de-dum, I have not just been humiliated by Jim Ryan’s slurs about my homeland or by five people heaving my ass down a quiet cul-de-sac. Back to business as usual.

  I am the last to stop running, the last to let go. I feel a pang. I want the party to be over but I don’t want anyone to go home. Or at least I don’t want certain people to go home. I turn around. The others are under a streetlight. Byrne Doyle looks like a ghost in his shivery shirtsleeves. Jim Ryan puts his hands on his knees because everyone knows this helps you catch your breath.

  Uncle Thoby is beaming. He looks like himself for the first time since I got home. Group hug, he says. Everyone just stands there. So I run up and throw myself into his arms.

  ODDLY THE BIOGRAPHER

  My name is still Winnifred. Chuck has not changed it. The Willamette, I have discovered, is a river. Of course I knew that. I remember seeing said river from the dashboard on at le
ast one occasion. We crossed a bridge. Look, Win. The Willamette. Right. The Willamette pays tribute to the Columberer, which lumbers wider and gentler than that chasmic business beneath the bridge.

  The other day Linda said there was a movie about loan sharks being filmed on the Willamette and why didn’t Chuck go down and see about being an extra. Which word, extra, was like a red flag to a bull. Chuck is no extra.

  Linda the Unkempt said she’d seen people firing soundless guns on the bridge. Pretty cool.

  Chuck was unimpressed. He said the gun soundtrack came later.

  But to return to the Willamette. Now that I know it’s a river, Chuck’s frequent remark, that it looks inviting—what does that mean exactly. He holds me up to the window and faintly, yes, I can see a bridge in the distance.

  As I recall it was a long way down to the river from the bridge. A long way. Also, apparently there are sharks in it.

  There’s a knock at the door. Chuck looks at me. Would you, he says, gesturing.

  I blink at him with a piece of lettuce hanging out of my mouth.

  Fine.

  He hauls himself off the sofa.

  It’s a UPS guy. Wow, he looks so dapper compared to Chuck. Let’s do a quick comparison. The UPS guy, whose name is Julius, is dressed in a crisp brown jacket with yellow accents, brown shorts (in December!), and brown boots. He’s carrying a package and an electronic device that will record the signature of Chuck Stanch. Chuck is wearing the usual. Nothing. Well, boxers. He’s carrying Lowering the Bard. Julius eyes the book. Chuck eyes the package. Sign here, says Julius and looks around the apartment. Wow, is that a tortoise.

  Unfortunately, says Chuck.

  Julius hands Chuck the package.

  Gramercy, says Chuck.

  Sorry, says Julius.

  Godspeed.

  Chuck closes the door and turns the package over. It is small and disc-shaped. Well, he says. Guess who this is from. I drop my piece of lettuce.

  That’s right, he says. He sits down on the sofa. You know what it looks like.

  And not until he says it do I realize that, yes, the package is about my shape and size.

  If this is another tortoise, so help me.

  My blood runs cold. A Canadian tortoise. But that is ridiculous. You cannot mail a tortoise. Can you. And why would she send a new tortoise here, instead of having her old tortoise sent there.

  Chuck is slowly unwrapping. I watch with my head out the window.

  It is not a tortoise. It is a fire alarm.

  When Linda gets home, she does what the note says, which is to please install the fire alarm above my castle.

  Chuck says this is ridiculous. They already have a fire alarm in the other room. Linda says an extra one won’t hurt. Chuck says it’s because Audrey thinks they have electric heat. But they have hot water radiation. The castle might warp, but it will not catch fire.

  Nevertheless, says Linda. You smoke.

  Not inside.

  You smoke in the vicinity.

  Would that I were not required to smoke in the vicinity, he says.

  Later, when they are asleep, I climb into my pool for a nocturnal dip, and when I look up, I see the red light of the fire alarm, like a plane crossing the sky. It reminds me of the old flat, because there was a plane in the sky there too. And if I keep very still, the red light makes a bright dot on the surface of my pool, which I can then try to eat, unsuccessfully.

  She sent the fire alarm to keep me safe, and to make this place feel more like home. That is thoughtful. But sending a fire alarm also suggests a long-term tenancy on Taft Street, doesn’t it.

  It is not fire I need to worry about.

  Methinks Chuck has been preparing me in his ungentle way for a long fall from a bridge. Doesn’t the Willamette look inviting. How long before he decides the tortoise is better off in her “natural” habitat.

  What scares me more than the sharks is the thought of being dropped. I mean, I love water as much as the next tortoise, but if you hit it with enough force, it’s curtains. Especially if you have a flat plastron like me. You can skip me like a stone, so flat is my plastron.

  I was once dropped from a great height, though not from a bridge. A previous tenant (quite previous, perhaps thirty years previous) threw me in the trash on the assumption that I was a doorstop left by the tenant before him. That tenant, who left in a hurry (“credit” problems), had not bothered to inform the subsequent tenant of the pre-existing tenancy of a tortoise. Dark days for yours truly. I found myself in a paper bag with a few other miscellaneous scraps left behind by the in-debted tenant (shaving brush, hair dye). I was not, however, in the trash more than an hour when the bag was torn open—alas, not by human hands, but by seagull feet, which might as well be hands, so dexterous are they—and I was carried to a great height, for which purpose you can well imagine. To be dropped. And, were it not for a child’s inflatable pool, which had been inflated that very morning by the new tenant’s daughter, I would have been shell-smashed, food for birds. But fate intervened, lucky for me. Because splash. Into the pool and, more precisely, into the plump lap of the child, whose legs were just beneath the surface, fell I. She screamed bloody murder at first, but then—calm down, calm down—yelled to her father, who was leaning out the window: A turtle just fell into my lap.

  Tortoise, please.

  A turtle, a turtle. Can we keep him.

  Her.

  And the rest is history, as they say.

  But that fall. I will never forget how it felt to fly at such a speed. How death approached fast in the form of ground. It was as if the path that I call the Ebb had turned vertical, and I was rushing headlong towards the End. My heart stopped. The body knows when it’s falling. And understands the outcome before the brain does.

  Which is why, as Audrey once pointed out, people scream on roller coasters. Their bodies think they are dying.

  We were driving through the Mojave Desert and we heard the screams before we saw the roller coaster. We had seen nothing for miles. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Then Audrey said, I think I hear a theme park. It was the end of a long day and I assumed she was hallucinating. We had both hallucinated Cliff on that particular stretch of highway. But no, I could hear screams too. And then I saw it: a giant roller coaster that spelled hell across the sky.

  A dry wind blowing. She pulled the car over. We watched the little coaster inch its way up the H and then drop, tracing the cursive script. Who would want to fall like that, she said. On purpose.

  Good question.

  After a moment I realized she was talking about Cliff the Unmentionable, who, as an amateur stuntman, aspired to do precisely that. Fall on purpose. But let’s not discuss Cliff. And hadn’t she fallen for him, as they say, in the country with the Yelps. Hadn’t they been skiing and hadn’t she windmilled down the hill, possibly on purpose. And that was it. True love. Coup de foudre, as she always said. But what do I know.

  The sound of screams on a desert wind. That is quite a sound. I sipped some water from the Yoplait container stuck to the dashboard with gum.

  Wanna see it, she said. Up close.

  I lifted my head.

  She put the car in gear. She had on a red T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up over her shoulders. It had been a hot day for humans, though not for dashboard tortoises. No air conditioning in Cliff’s car. The arm that had been stuck out the window was burnt and freckled. Her hair was damp around the edges. Now she wants to go to a theme park. Because she thinks he might be there. People who love to climb and fall do tend to gravitate towards such places: theme parks, airports, bridges. Cliff would love that roller coaster, sure, but he will not be on it, Audrey. He is not right now tracing the tracks of hell. He isn’t.

  We turned off the highway. The sky was pink. We pulled into a parking lot the size of Oregon. We found a space in the Tortoise section.

  The park was all sparkling lights. I was tucked under her burnt arm. The temperature dropped, as it will in a desert at night,
and all around us people dropped. A ride called the Plummet was just a broken elevator that continued to break, over and over. A ride called the Triple Bypass had, for many, contributed to their sooner-rather-than-later need for that operation. So the sign said. And then of course the main attraction, the roller coaster we’d seen from the highway, was far steeper and bulkier than its lower case script had suggested. It was called the Defibrillator because there was one waiting for you at the exit. Ha.

  We stood under the Defibrillator and watched its passengers make the slow climb up the H. They were not yet screaming. But soon, soon.

  When they dropped, Audrey hugged me close.

  The reason a ride like the Defibrillator is quote unquote fun, she explained later, when I was safely back on the dashboard and she had her seatbelt securely fastened, is because you survive. Surprise, you survived. That is the fun.

  We backed slowly out of our Tortoise spot. There were goose-bumps on her arms. Outer space will suck the heat right out of a desert.

  Later, back on the highway under the stars, I recalled my own heart-stopping fall into the lap of a child, and how I loved her for catching me and for never once begrudging me the tortoise-shaped bruise I left on her thigh.

  My first memory is of the plane crashing. I say crashing because we were, for a while, crashing. And I say first because my memory of everything before the plane is fuzzy, while everything after the plane is sharp, bright, of the highest resolution it is possible to have in a brain. In this brain, anyway.

  I was somewhere between my first and second leap birthdays. Closer to my first than my second. We were flying home from England. A line was crossed up there in the air. Or no, to be precise, a line was crossed back on the runway at Heathrow. Yes, on the runway. Because I remember the beginning of the flight too. I remember the plane girding its loins, as my dad liked to say.

  What are loins.

  He pointed vaguely at his stomach.

  I did not like the sound of the plane. I did not. It girded, it gathered, it heaved itself into the grey sky.