The Back of the Turtle

by Thomas King

  Perhaps Dad is hurt.

  Sonny knocks on the door.

  Dad!

  He knocks harder.

  Dad, Dad, Dad!

  The dog keeps jumping against the door, and now Sonny jumps with him.

  Wham! They hit the door together.

  Wham! They hit it again.

  Hammer-hammer!

  They crash into the door as hard as they can, and this time the frame splits and the door flies open.

  Dad!

  Sonny and the dog fall into the room.

  Dad!

  When Sonny gets to his feet, he is covered in cobwebs and dust. So is the dog. Both of them are covered in cobwebs and dust.

  Dad.

  Sonny can see that Dad is no longer here, that Dad has not been here in a very long time. Sonny sits on the bed, and a cloud of dust floats off the covers and hangs in the air. No wonder Sonny has been so lonely. No wonder Sonny has been so hungry.

  Cobwebs and dust.

  The dog comes over and licks Sonny’s hands. He lays his head on Sonny’s lap and sings gently. Then he takes Sonny’s shirt sleeve in his mouth and pulls on it.

  No, doggy. Sonny does not want to play.

  The dog pulls harder.

  No, doggy. Sonny is sad.

  But the dog does not stop, and it occurs to Sonny that the dog might be trying to tell him something. The dogs on television do this all the time. Drag people out of the woods. Drag people to anxious relatives. Drag people to safety.

  Drag people home.

  This dog wants to drag Sonny out of Dad’s room.

  Do you want to show Sonny something, doggy? Is that what you want to do?

  The dog yanks and tugs on Sonny’s sleeve and pulls him out the door.

  All right, doggy, Sonny tells the dog. Sonny will follow you. Maybe we can play together. Maybe we can find some food.

  The dog releases Sonny’s sleeve and lopes on ahead. Sonny looks back at the open doorway for a moment, and then he follows his friend down the hill to the beach.

  87

  MARA LAY IN HER BED WITH HER EYES CLOSED. SHE WAS NOT asleep, had not been asleep, was probably not going to get any sleep. She should have been happy and at peace. The stove, the refrigerator, the kitchen table, her grandmother’s cast iron stove. All returned. Mr. Crisp was an enigma, to be sure. What else had the man put into storage? What else had the man rescued?

  But Mara wasn’t happy. The fury had been overwhelming, and it had not subsided. So that was why this Gabriel was trying to kill himself. He wasn’t unstable. He wasn’t depressed.

  He was guilty.

  GreenSweep? That’s what he had called it. As though it were a handy household cleaning product. Who does that? Who makes such a lethal concoction simply because they can? What had he been thinking? He had destroyed a community, devastated an ecosystem, and what had been his reason?

  Science.

  That’s what he said when she had asked.

  Science.

  Mara couldn’t think of a single intelligent question that had science as the answer.

  Shit!

  Shit, shit, shit!

  So, she was awake, and she wasn’t going to get to sleep, and if she wasn’t going to sleep she wanted to talk. She wanted to talk with this Gabriel, wanted the hard facts, whole and complete, not just the self-indulgent fragments of remorse and shame.

  She wanted the truth.

  Well, not the truth. The truth was useless. She knew what had happened. She knew who was responsible. What more was there to know?

  And what of this Gabriel? He hadn’t wanted forgiveness, wasn’t seeking absolution. He had wanted confirmation of his transgressions. He had sought out condemnation.

  Well, it wasn’t going to be as easy as all that.

  Shit.

  Mara threw off the covers and stepped onto the cold floor. She stood there for a moment shivering, debating whether this was as good an idea as it had seemed when she had been warm in bed.

  Probably not.

  But she got dressed anyway. She grabbed the yellow slicker from the closet, laced up her boots, opened the door, and walked out into the night.

  88

  THE LOBBY OF THE HERMES WAS SMALL BUT ELEGANT. ART DECO ironwork framed the doorways and the windows. The walls were patterned with dancing figures that reminded Dorian of the Etruscan frescoes he and Olivia had seen when they were in Rome. The floor was covered with a series of thick Persians, the air scented with the faint aroma of rose.

  Yes, they could accommodate him.

  Yes, the twenty-four-hour concierge service could provide him with a meal.

  Yes, they understood the stresses that captains of industry had to endure.

  “We have a junior suite available. Do we need parking?”

  “No,” Dorian told the young man. “We don’t. My limo will pick me up in the morning.”

  He had thought that the food would relax him, but after he finished his meal—an Algerian lamb shank with seared baby bok choy and couscous, along with a glass of the house red—he was still awake.

  The room was spacious, and he tried walking from one end to the other, weaving his way in and out of the bathroom, with its separate shower and tub and an alcove with a door for the toilet. He turned on the television in the hopes of finding a movie, but there was nothing on the networks, and he had seen everything on the pay-per-view channels.

  In the end, he got dressed and took the elevator down to the lobby.

  “Is everything all right?”

  “Everything is fine,” Dorian told the young man at the desk. “I’m just restless. I think I’ll go for a walk.”

  “It’s a lovely night for a walk,” said the young man. “Should I call you a cab?”

  “That wouldn’t be much of a walk now, would it.”

  “Of course,” said the young man. “Do you require a map of the area?”

  “I live here,” said Dorian, his voice warm and generous. “This is my city.”

  IT was four-thirty when Dorian stepped out onto the street. He had already decided on a route. East on Cumberland to Bay, south on Bay to Bloor, and west on Bloor to Avenue Road.

  Bloor was the quandary.

  If he walked on the north side of the street, he’d pass Harry Rosen, Williams-Sonoma, Burberry, and Louis Vuitton. If he crossed with the light to the south side, he’d be able to look in on the merchandise at Cartier, Royal de Versailles, Coach, and Prada.

  North or south. In the end, he might have to flip a coin.

  The walk did not start well. In the dark, the shops along Cumberland seemed somewhat mingy and reduced, a little too common, a little too tawdry. Travel, eyewear, sushi, hair and skin care, lingerie, gelato, luggage, cosmetics, a parking garage, all anchored by a statue of an overweight businessman in hat and overcoat.

  The bronze man had his mouth open, one hand raised in a startled expression as though he had just received word of an unexpected downturn in the market.

  Dorian strolled past the small park with its ornamental grasses and wooden walkways. There were tables and chairs set in a pebble clearing, trees growing inside concrete doughnuts, a water wall, and an enormous granite boulder that had been brought south in pieces and reassembled next to the TTC station.

  Without the sounds of the business day, without the annoying wrangle of traffic and the garbling jangle of shoppers, the street was a dead thing.

  So this was Toronto, when no one was looking.

  DORIAN should have checked himself in to the hospital. The problem wasn’t going to go away. The nausea and the pain were more frequent now, the flights of fancy more pronounced. He should have sat down with Toshi, should have listened as a stranger told him that his life was coming to an end.

  How did you tell someone that? How did you start?

  Six months, eight months, a year? Did you get to spin a wheel?

  Dead man walking in a dead town. The difference was the city would come back to life, would rise out of the
grave each day and open at nine.

  Saturdays and Sundays, ten to five.

  Of course, there would be options. There were always options. Toshi would have brochures that outlined the available choices. An operation. Chemotherapy. Radiation. Diet and alternative herbal therapies. A new, cutting-edge risk-reward protocol.

  A limited engagement at a hospice.

  Or nothing.

  There was always nothing.

  Dorian stayed on the north side of Bloor. Here, the stores were better lit. Harry Rosen had the spring collection on display.

  Teal. The colour for this season appeared to be teal.

  There was life on Bloor. Cars were moving, their lights glittering off the glass of the store windows. Dorian could feel his body relax as it soaked up the shifting colours and the liquid reflections.

  He was enjoying the moment and didn’t see the woman huddled in the doorway, wrapped in a sleeping bag.

  “You got a cigarette?”

  “Sorry,” said Dorian. “I don’t smoke.”

  “Twenty dollars.”

  “Pardon?”

  The woman unzipped the sleeping bag and stood up. She was taller than Dorian would have expected and older, with a tangle of black hair and blue eyes that were crisp and startling.

  “I’ll read your fortune,” she said. “Twenty dollars.”

  Dorian smiled. “You read fortunes?”

  The woman stepped in against him. “Did you know that a fortune may be read on a face and a fate found in a query?”

  Dorian could feel the heat bristle off her body, could taste her breath on his face. The whole affair was somewhat disconcerting, but oddly enough, Dorian found that he was enjoying himself.

  “Twenty dollars.”

  “All right,” he said. “Twenty dollars.”

  “You get one question.”

  “One?”

  “You’re already rich, so you don’t need to ask about that. Your wife doesn’t love you anymore, but you know that already. Don’t waste my time with the stock market.”

  Dorian took the money clip out of his pocket, removed a twenty-dollar bill, and handed it to the woman.

  “Shouldn’t I get three questions?”

  “There’s only one question worth asking.”

  Dorian felt an unexpected chill snatch at his body.

  “Go ahead,” said the woman, her voice soft and low. “Ask.”

  Across the street, Dorian could see Tiffany’s rose-speckled stone facade and its alcoved entrance. From a distance, the two windows on either side of the doorway looked like gun ports guarding access to a fortress.

  “Why don’t you just keep the twenty.”

  The woman reached out and touched his face. “Ask the question.”

  “There’s nothing I need to know.”

  The woman was smiling now. Her eyes flashed in the night, and her lips curled away from thick, yellowing teeth.

  “Ignorance will cost you another forty.”

  Dorian looked at the money in his hands.

  “Deal,” he said.

  The woman picked up her sleeping bag and stepped out into the lights of the city. She looked older now, and her hair wasn’t black, as Dorian had thought. It was dark red, more the colour of old blood.

  “I am well,” she said, as she took the twenties, “if you are well, too.”

  Dorian watched her walk away, the sleeping bag bundled in her arms.

  Will I be remembered?

  That’s what he should have asked her. Dorian considered running after the woman. For sixty dollars, she could surely answer that question. But now he was cold from standing in one spot, depressed by what he already knew.

  Will I be remembered?

  He continued west, walking past Williams-Sonoma and the rest of the shopfronts, hoping to recapture his good cheer and optimism. At his back, the sky was beginning to lighten, and for a moment, he was tempted to turn around and walk into the rising sun.

  Instead, he made his way to the Hermes, where the hotel staff knew who he was and were waiting to welcome him home.

  89

  IT WAS TIME.

  The spring tide had arrived, the highest and lowest water of the season. And all around, for as far as Gabriel could see, there was sand where there had been sea.

  Life as a circle.

  Not that his life had had any such shape. Lethbridge. Minneapolis. Palo Alto. Toronto. Samaritan Bay. Not a circle. Not a straight line. Something less precise. Something broken.

  Gabriel stood and shook the beach off his pants. He would have liked to have said goodbye to someone. To Mara especially, not that that was going to happen. To Crisp, for Gabriel had come to enjoy the man and his passions. Even Sonny would have been welcome company.

  And where in the hell had Soldier gone?

  THE walk across the sand flat was uneventful, but as Gabriel started the climb up the side of the Apostles, he was surprised by the flashes of colour against the darker rock. And movement. Tiny crabs scuttled about. An orange starfish tucked itself away in a deep crevice. He was still climbing on brittle shells and bones, but now there were living creatures to avoid.

  The ocean was coming back to life. In spite of everything, it was coming back to life.

  Not that Gabriel could claim any credit.

  He found the saddle. The wind was sharp, and he gathered his jacket around him for warmth. He wouldn’t take it off this time. Fully clothed or naked, it wouldn’t make any difference.

  He fished the marker out of his pocket and tried it against the rock, but the surface was too damp and cold to leave any sign. What he needed was a sharp knife or, better yet, a piece of caulk.

  Church Rock.

  He had almost forgotten about that. He touched the basalt, slowly using his finger to spell out each word. New Mexico. 1979. The Navajo reservation. A large nuclear waste spill had destroyed the Puerco River a few months after the Three Mile Island disaster.

  Gabriel picked up his drum and wiped the head against his jacket. He hadn’t intended to bring it with him, but Mara had made it clear that she wanted all of him gone. He tested the hide. Soft. But the sound was still good, and he began a steady rhythm, matching the beat to the ocean, pitching the song against the wind as it drove the waves onto the rocks.

  He turned to face the shore. In the distance, he could see the burning tower and was cheered by the light. The drum sounded good. He sounded good. He could almost hear his father singing with him.

  “A crow hop?”

  Gabriel reared back and lost his balance. The drum banged against the rock.

  “Damn!”

  He whirled around and came face to face with a large yellow sea creature that had clambered over the side of the basalt and was slithering towards him.

  “Suicide?” shouted the yellow creature. “Suicide? And you sing a crow hop?”

  “Mara?”

  Mara’s face was obscured by a slicker. It had slid over her head and bunched up in a wedge around her shoulders. More than anything, she looked like a movie-monster crab with a lumpy dorsal fin.

  “You can’t be here.”

  “Sure I can.” Mara pushed the slicker off her head.

  “The tide’s coming in. You need to get back to the beach.”

  Mara looked over her shoulder. The early surges had already found the base of the Apostles. “You don’t get to kill yourself.”

  “What?”

  “I have questions.”

  “Questions?”

  “And I want answers.”

  “We don’t have time for this.”

  “Make time.” Mara braced herself against the side of a column. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “This is crazy.” Gabriel wiped the salt spray out of his eyes. “I killed your mother. I killed your grandmother.”

  “I know.”

  “I killed my sister and my nephew.” Gabriel’s voice was a whisper now. “I killed them all.”

  “Yes,” said Mara. “You
did.”

  “I couldn’t save any of them.”

  “Maybe you can save yourself.”

  “I don’t want to save myself.”

  Mara moved forward along the rock face until their shoulders were touching. At her back, she could feel the waves slam into the pillars.

  “All right,” she said. “Then you can save me.”

  90

  THE DOG IS FAST. SONNY IS FAST, TOO. BUT NOT AS FAST AS the dog.

  Slow down, doggy.

  The dog runs ahead and waits, runs ahead and waits, runs ahead and waits.

  Slow down.

  By the time he gets to the beach, Sonny is out of breath. But the dog doesn’t wait. He runs on ahead, and every so often he runs back to make sure Sonny is still following and has not become discouraged and given up.

  Now there is no doubt. The dog is trying to show him something.

  Wait for Sonny.

  Sonny checks the ocean. The night was brighter when the moon was up, but even in the early-morning darkness, Sonny can see that it is low tide, and Sonny doesn’t like low tide.

  There is too much land at low tide. The world is strange and frightening at low tide. Low tides are sneaky. It is easy to get lost in a low tide.

  Today the tide is very low and very sneaky, and as Sonny follows the shore, he makes sure he keeps both feet on dry sand.

  Sonny is no fool.

  Low tide, he shouts after the dog. Be careful like Sonny.

  Suddenly the dog breaks away from the ocean and the low tide, and runs up into the soft sand and the grass.

  Good listening, doggy, Sonny shouts. Good listening.

  Suddenly, there is a low flicker in the gloom, and now Sonny knows where the dog is taking him.

  The tower.

  The dog is taking Sonny to Sonny’s tower.

  The flame is weak. That’s the problem. The dog is trying to warn Sonny that the beacon is about to go out.

  Sonny pumps his arms and charges through the sand.

  Clear the way. Clear the way.