The Back of the Turtle

by Thomas King

  “Very sorry,” said Mei-ling. “No pork. We use fish.”

  Gabriel took a mouthful. “It’s good.”

  “Good?” boomed Crisp. “This is a feast for any man, and more than most could hope for. Ye must try the jiao zi. Is that pronounced correctly?”

  “Yes,” said Mei-ling. “Very perfect.”

  “Dumplings,” said Crisp. “Melt in your mouth.”

  “Two families,” said Mara. “The Chins and the Huangs. That’s Mei-ling’s father, Chi-ming, and her cousins, Jia-hao, Guan-ting, and Jun-jie. They’re Taiwanese.”

  Mara went around the room, introducing everyone. “Mei-ling speaks good English. Her cousins do okay. The rest of the families not so much.”

  “I spies a good story on the horizon,” said Crisp. “But perhaps we should postpone the telling, so as not to confuse the tale with the tucker.”

  GABRIEL searched each face and tried to remember the order of the rescue, but it was hopeless. He had shared a bleak rock in a savage sea with these people. He knew them no better than he had known his own sister, and yet here he was, having dinner with the lot as though they were family.

  “We work on ship,” Mei-ling began. “Chin family, Huang family. But the ship is old. Nothing works well. My father fix this, and my cousins fix that, and then everything is good.”

  “But a fox can only chase so many rabbits,” said Crisp.

  Mei-ling stopped. “Fox?”

  “What he means,” said Mara, “is that more things broke than you could fix.”

  “Yes,” said Mei-ling. “We try very hard, but things break, and then more things break. Soon we can no longer fix the things that are broken.”

  One of the younger men said something to Mei-ling in Taiwanese.

  “Jun-jie asks that I tell you about the storm.”

  “A storm?” growled Crisp. “Splendid.”

  “Don’t mind Mr. Crisp,” said Mara. “He gets excited easily.”

  “Indeed, I do,” said Crisp, flinging his voice about the room, “for I’m a pirate’s dog with a bone, when it come to a good story.”

  Mei-ling’s father began moving his hand up and down. The other men nodded their agreement.

  “My father reminds me of the size of the waves,” said Mei-ling, “for they were … formidable. Is that correct? Formidable?”

  “Formidable,” roared Crisp. “Yes, yes, it’s a fine word. Yet all manner of mercy and mayhem may come out of a storm.”

  Mei-ling paused a moment to let Crisp’s words fly by. Then she continued.

  “The storm was very bad. Water was everywhere. And when it passed, the ship was broken. Neither my father nor my cousins could fix it. At first we thought someone would come, but no one did.”

  Gabriel’s butt still stung from having tried to sit on the orange chair. “You had no means of communication. No radio?”

  “No,” said Mei-ling. “No radio. No steering for the ship. There was computer for navigation, but it would not work properly.”

  “They were trapped on board,” said Mara. “Can you imagine?”

  “Yes,” said Mei-ling. “Trapped.”

  Mei-ling’s father reached out and patted the floor.

  “Then we see land and think we are safe.” Mei-ling’s eyes filled with tears. “But the land disappears.”

  “A woeful tale, indeed,” said Crisp, his voice wavering. “For to see salvation and have salvation denied is a great sorrow.”

  “But it comes a second time. The land. Closer now, and my father says we must try to reach the shore.”

  “A wise man,” said Crisp. “A most wise man.”

  “We get into a small boat. Enough room for all of us, but when we are near the shore …”

  Crisp ran a hand across his head. “The waves put the boat upon the rocks.”

  “Yes,” said Mei-ling. “We are in the water, and we are dying, until the singing man pulls us out of the sea. Until the singing man saves us.”

  Mara smiled and touched Gabriel’s hand. “His name is Gabriel,” she said. “Gab-ri-el.”

  Mei-ling quickly translated and the faces of her family and relations brightened.

  “Gab-ri-el,” they all said in bits and pieces.

  Mara turned to Gabriel. “The singing man,” she said. “I like that.”

  MEI-LING told about coming ashore, how the families lived in the woods and out of sight, fearful that they might be arrested, how they had found the reserve and the empty homes.

  “We are sorry,” Mei-ling said, “but we are cold and hungry.”

  “Yet welcome, nonetheless,” said Crisp.

  Mei-ling hung her head. “In the town. My cousins took things that did not belong to us.”

  “Nothing that wouldn’t have been shared had the need been known.” Crisp’s beard danced on his face. “I’ll settle all matters with the folks and leaves ye with free passes to the hot springs, where ye can throw off the trials of your old life and warm yourselves in the new.”

  “That is most kind.”

  “Not at all,” said Crisp, “for good company’s a rare thing and everyone else in this kingdom has heard my stories at least once. Tell me, do ye like stories?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Mei-ling, “we like stories very much.”

  “Excellent,” said Crisp.

  “And we have dessert,” said Mei-ling. “Jun-jie has made feng li su.”

  “Dessert!” Crisp gave his belly a great whack and threw an arm around Gabriel. “What say ye?” he bellowed. “Can we find the room?”

  “I should be getting back,” said Gabriel.

  Crisp leaned against Gabriel and whispered in his ear. “Look around,” he said. “This is the back to which ye needs be getting. Look around. Ye are already here.”

  80

  DORIAN SAT AT HIS DESK, FIGHTING THE NAUSEA THAT HAD decided to make a return engagement. Winter and the woman from Public Relations sat on the sofa.

  “Who wants to go first?”

  “It might actually work to our benefit,” said Lustig.

  “Having Kali Creek and GreenSweep splashed all over the national news might work to our benefit?” Dorian paused to let the concept hang in the room. “That’s PR’s spin on this?”

  “Not spin,” said Lustig. “Strategy.”

  “I’m waiting.”

  “We’re expecting the situation in Alberta to worsen in the next few days. There have been several communities along the Athabasca adversely affected by the spill.”

  “And by ‘adversely affected,’ you mean …”

  “A higher than expected mortality rate.”

  “People are dying.”

  “Fortunately,” said Lustig, “most of these are Native communities where the mortality rate is already higher than the norm.”

  “Higher than the mortality rate in … white communities.”

  “Making it difficult to determine whether the additional deaths are the result of the spill or lifestyle.”

  “We’re talking about poverty.”

  “Along with alcoholism, drug use, and irresponsible behaviour.”

  The nausea was threatening to turn into diarrhea. Dorian could feel his gut twisting around itself.

  “Kali Creek and the threat of a rogue scientist might give us some breathing room,” said Lustig. “Properly managed, it could take the edge off the Athabasca.”

  “Dr. Quinn is hardly a ‘rogue scientist.’ I’m not sure we want to suggest that he’s deranged.”

  Lustig’s smile was just short of patronizing. “He writes on walls.”

  “That makes him eccentric.” Dorian drew in a deep breath and tried to force the pain out of his abdomen. “What I want to know is how Manisha Khan knew about Kali Creek, how she knew about GreenSweep. Just how did that happen?”

  “I’m afraid that at this point we’d only be guessing.”

  Dorian could have gone straight from the studio to the condo and just called it a night. There was nothing he could do about the
interview, and a good night’s sleep might have been the better course of action. Instead, he had called Winter and Lustig, summoned them to his office after hours. It was a small pleasure, something that the CEO of Domidion could do.

  And he had.

  “Guess away.”

  Lustig took the lead. “According to Security, the documents found at Dr. Quinn’s house were all copies. It’s possible that Dr. Quinn sent the originals to En Garde.”

  “To what purpose?”

  “To embarrass the company,” said Lustig. “Or we may have an internal leak.”

  “Zebras? At Domidion?”

  “A possibility.”

  “So, we don’t know anything.” Dorian was on his feet and moving around the room. “We have no idea who leaked the GreenSweep file. We don’t know where our genius scientist has gone. We don’t even know if there are any good movies on television tonight.”

  Lustig frowned. “Pardon?”

  “Something I haven’t seen more than once.” Dorian struck the desk with his hands. In the silence of the office, it sounded like a shot. “All right. Let’s release the hounds.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Winter. “Release the hounds.”

  “Who was responsible for spraying GreenSweep at Kali Creek?”

  Winter tapped at the tablet. “Independent contractor out of Prince George.”

  “What about the company responsible for the construction of the holding ponds at our tar-sands facility?”

  “Somosi Construction.”

  “One of our subsidiaries?”

  “Yes.”

  Dorian turned to Lustig. “Use PR’s usual sources to leak Domidion’s intention to sue the former for negligence and the latter for breach of contract, and I want you to start a serious conversation on the possibility of sabotage.”

  “We can do that.”

  Dorian turned to Winter. “Go back ten years. Don’t we have other misadventures besides Kali Creek and the Athabasca?”

  “We do,” said Winter.

  “Let’s lump everything together. All our sins. Accidents, disasters, gross negligence, major miscalculations. Work up some plausible conspiracies. Toss out the t-word if you have the chance. Park the mess on the doorstep of a couple of the more annoying environmental groups, and be sure to mention the Zebras as many times as possible.”

  “That could work,” said Lustig.

  Dorian enjoyed the warmth that spread across his face. “It doesn’t have to work,” he said. “‘If you can’t convince them, confuse them.’”

  “Harry Truman,” said Winter.

  “Yes.” Lustig’s face was suddenly animated. “The conspiracy theorists will run with it all on their own, and we can work with the talk shows to organize discussion forums on energy extraction and domestic terrorism.”

  “That’s the spirit,” said Dorian. “Yellow, red, blue, green, purple, orange. You mix them all together and what do you get?”

  Dorian waited to see which of the women wanted to step forward.

  “Grey,” he said. “You get grey.”

  Lustig was on her feet. “We better get mixing.”

  WINTER waited until Lustig had reached the elevators. “Your wife has phoned several times. She sounds upset.”

  “Good.”

  “And Dr. Toshi’s office rang. They sound annoyed.”

  “Excellent.”

  “And I looked into that other matter.”

  Dorian wondered if Winter had a boyfriend or a lover. Not that it was any of his business. She could well be lesbian. Or celibate.

  “Dr. Quinn’s notes were accurate. Before GreenSweep was cancelled, Domidion had produced 10,000 litres of concentrate.”

  Not that Dorian was attracted to Winter, though he could see how she might be attracted to him.

  “The concentrate couldn’t be incinerated. Too toxic. Landfills, impermeable clay caps, and injection wells were also out of the question.”

  Perhaps after he and Olivia had taken care of their business, Dorian would ask Winter out to dinner. A business dinner, where the two of them could relax and talk about the corporation’s recent expansion into bottled water.

  “So it was put into drums and shipped to our storage facility in Tadoussac.”

  “Quebec?”

  “Yes.”

  “At least we know where it is.”

  Olivia had been fish and Chardonnay. Dorian guessed that Winter would be meat and Merlot. Not that you could tell such a thing just by looking at someone.

  “In fact,” said Winter, “we don’t. Shortly after the drums arrived in Tadoussac, they were loaded onto one of our barges for disposal at sea.”

  “What?”

  “There appears to have been a mix-up.”

  “GreenSweep is on a barge?”

  Winter always managed problems with a quiet competence. It was this ability, Dorian conceded, that made her good at her job. And attractive as well.

  “The Anguis?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Winter. “All of our stock of GreenSweep is on board the Anguis.”

  Capable assistants were rare, Dorian reminded himself, while lovers and wives were easy enough to find. Always best to maintain the line between the two.

  “Well,” he said, “then there’s not much to be done.”

  “No, sir,” said Winter. “There’s not.”

  Still, Dorian would have liked to have been able to ask Winter if she found power intoxicating, if she was aroused by authority. The question would have been completely inappropriate, of course, and easily misconstrued.

  He was simply curious.

  81

  TODAY IS A VERY GOOD DAY. IT IS SUCH A GOOD DAY THAT Sonny doesn’t even think to check for salvage as he walks along the beach.

  Big Red has returned.

  Halfway up the slope to the motel and the neon star, Sonny looks back at the water. He can’t see the tower anymore, but he can see the glow of the beacon fire burning bright.

  Sonny. Keeper of the flame.

  Sonny. Turtle master.

  The sand and the dirt roll under his feet, but he leans into the hill and climbs all the way to the top without stopping. Tonight is going to be a special night. Perhaps he and Dad will go for a swim. They haven’t done this for a long while. Not since the pool heater stopped working. Or maybe the two of them will sit on lounge chairs under the stars.

  Together.

  And Sonny will tell Dad what he’s done. He will tell him about the tower and the turtle and all the exciting things that have happened in the last little while, things that Dad may have missed.

  Wham-wham.

  They could even buy a frozen pizza from the Co-op. Pepperoni with extra cheese. They could sit on the patio by the pool and eat pizza together.

  Can you see the light on the beach, Sonny will ask Dad. Your Sonny built that. All by himself. See how it lights up the dark.

  Sonny hurries past the EverFresh vending machine and the Lava Java machine, and stands in front of Dad’s door.

  Dad.

  Sonny knocks softly on the door.

  Dad.

  Sonny knocks on the door again, his knuckles snapping against the wood.

  It’s your Sonny.

  But there is no answer. Perhaps Dad is sleeping. Or maybe Dad’s gone to town to pick up the pizza.

  Dad.

  Sonny slumps down next to the door and presses his face against the frame. All the light is gone from the sky now, and just as Sonny settles in to the darkness, the electric eye turns on the courtyard lights, and the patio is bathed in a soft yellow blush. Sonny curls up in the doorway and begins to sing quietly to himself.

  Turtle bone, clamshell, clamshell, clamshell.

  Turtle bone, clamshell, clamshell, stone.

  And little by little, he sings himself to sleep.

  82

  GABRIEL STOOD ON THE PORCH AND IMAGINED THAT HE could feel the world swell as it prepared to welcome the spring tide.

  Inside, Crisp and Ma
ra and the two families swapped stories. Crisp was telling everyone how, as a young man, he had worked his way to Australia on a tramp steamer, how he had been chased by a pig in the outback, how an emu had tried to kick down an outhouse while he was in it.

  The spring tide.

  It would arrive tomorrow, well before dawn, and Gabriel would follow it out to the Apostles. From the saddle high on the rocks, he’d watch the sea retreat, would watch it pause to take a breath before it turned and rushed back to the beach, drowning everything in its path. Tomorrow he would watch the sun break out of the mountains for one last time. Tomorrow the water would do the rest.

  GABRIEL heard the door open behind him.

  “Mr. Crisp suggested that I come out here and keep you company.” Mara stuffed her hands inside the sleeves of her sweater. “He said you were thinking of taking advantage of the spring tide.”

  “Why do women do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Put their hands in their sleeves. My mother and sister used to do the same thing.”

  “What do men do?”

  “We put our hands in our pockets.”

  “Then there’s your answer.”

  SCIENCE was supposed to have been the answer. World hunger. Disease. Energy. Security. Commerce. Biology would save the world. Geology would fuel the future. Physics would make sense of the universe. At one time, science had been Gabriel’s answer to everything.

  Love. Friendship. Family.

  He had loved the quiet calm of numbers and symbols, had been fascinated with the way in which molecules arranged themselves in orderly patterns, had been driven to see what was behind each of nature’s doors. Who wouldn’t be? Who could resist such questions? Who would want to?

  How had he come to such a fantasy, that there was a benign purity in scientific inquiry? He had mistaken the enterprise completely, had seen only the questions and had ignored the obvious answers.

  What was the proper goal of research?

  Profit.

  What was the proper use of knowledge?

  Power.

  He could see his errors now, could see all his illusions in stark relief. Too late, of course. Very much too late.

  “NICHOLAS said you walked the canyon.”