The Turtle Warrior

by Mary Relindes Ellis

  I took a sip from my own cup of coffee. We probably would have heard about it if she had. A man of his size would have killed her for making such an attempt. But on the off chance that she had succeeded, Ernie and I would have defended her all the way to the stake if it had come to that. Any belief I had in redemption was killed in the Philippines along with all the men whose heads I cradled as they died and the pain I saw in the people who lived there. All the Filipinos and the Chamorros, caught between two forces they wanted no part of, who came to us looking for food. They were often shot, and their women raped. Occasionally a Filipino or Chamorro woman, made a refugee because her village had been bombed, gave birth in the hospital. The baby was passed from nurse to nurse. We could not believe the smallness of its hands or the kernels of its toes. The beauty of its crying. The wounded men who were conscious called out to see the baby as well. The men stared at the baby’s face in disbelief. Birth was not in our line of work, so when it happened, it carried more than a sense of the miraculous. It was an act of opposition to what was going on around us. I’d watch the mother nurse, and it broke me to see that small face blissfully pressed into her breast.

  Justice during war takes on a concrete meaning. There are no courts to make fair and judicial decisions, to prosecute the obviously guilty or safeguard the innocent. It is one thing to shoot and kill or be killed in combat. It is entirely something else if you kill and cripple innocent people caught in between. If you torture them, rape them, and keep them prisoner. If you kill children and their mothers. You do that during a time of war, and justice can be immediate. A bullet to the brain is in store for you.

  I could never help thinking whenever I was called out with the ambulance during hunting season that it was a pity that John Lucas hadn’t been dispatched while hunting. It was too hard to sort out those deaths. They were almost always ruled accidents. I know almost for certain that if Jimmy had come home from Vietnam, that might well have happened.

  I put my cup back on the bedside stand. “He’s going to have delirium tremors soon, and he may even have seizures,” I said. “I think he may need to be in the detox center in Cedar Bend. Do you want us to take him there in the morning?”

  She put her own cup next to the heater. “I don’t think,” she said, caressing his face again, “that Bill has insurance any longer. I think he may have lost his job at the Standard station.”

  She looked down at her hands, picked at the cuticles of her nails as though she had lost her job and were ashamed.

  “The county would pay then,” I said.

  “I’m not sure that would be good for Bill. For other people to know.”

  I watched her turn slightly in her chair and stare out the bedroom window at the falling snow. The room was so quiet except for Ernie’s occasional snore and a moan from Bill. For other people to know. Always that fear of other people’s knowing her business that had prevented her from asking for help. I suffer from the sin of pride too, but I’d have taken John Lucas down with me in a fight if I’d had to and not given a crap what the community thought.

  I could tell by the way she stared out the window, the way her lips pursed together, that she was working up something to say. Then she said it, and it struck me as if she had reached across the bed and slapped me.

  “You always had what I wanted. A wonderful husband. A good life.”

  She turned and gazed at Ernie, who was not looking his best at that moment. A bit of drool dribbled onto his shirt. I was used to other women eyeing my husband and in fleeting moments falling in love with him. Ernie was the kind of man you fell in love with within seconds. After all, I fell in love with him in the course of one night. And what a night that had been. He had been gorgeous and even now was still handsome. But more important, he was a good man. He is a good man. Someone who thinks deeply about his actions. At times too deeply. There is no pretense or hostility in his manners. But in being the closest one to him and his wife, I have been hurt by Ernie. Husbands and wives hurt each other in ways that others don’t see.

  I was sure that Ernie saw as little of Claire as I had. It never occurred to me that Claire would desire my husband. Of course. Why wouldn’t she?

  I put my hand on my chest and swallowed.

  “Claire. You had children. We couldn’t have children. Our life has not been golden. I love Ernie,” I said, nodding toward my sleeping husband, “but he’s not perfect either.”

  Claire bit down on her lower lip, and I knew that it was a reflex to keep her lip from trembling. “You did have children,” she said. “You had my children. My boys loved you.”

  She was right. But to hear it said stopped me in my tracks. I had never meant to hurt her. I had thought I was helping her, that the boys wandered over to our place because their mother was too busy or too much in pain. But truthfully, I did love her children. More than that, I coveted them.

  “And I loved them,” I said, finding my voice. “But I was not their mother. Are you saying that I took your children away from you?”

  Claire looked at me straight on then. For a few seconds the two of us just stared across the bed at each other. Despite years of abuse, she still appeared delicate and birdlike. With the contrast of her snowy hair, her brown eyes appeared darker than ever. If her hair had been a smoky gray instead of white, she would have resembled a junco.

  “I would have said that years ago,” she said, trying to stay composed, “but it isn’t the truth. You didn’t even have to try. My boys wanted to come to you. I can’t blame them. I suppose,” she added, clasping her hands in her lap, “that you and Ernie think I’ve been a bad mother all these years. Even now.” She tilted her head toward Bill.

  I stood up and put my knitting on the chair.

  “We have never thought that. Never. In pain, yes. But bad, no,” I answered adamantly. I placed one hand on Bill’s forehead, to feel if it was hot. “Bill is going through a troubled time,” I said. “But not because of you.”

  I reached across the bed. “Give me your cup. I’ll get us some more coffee.”

  Claire spoke just as I was taking the cup from her. “I was relieved when he died. I haven’t missed him at all. I didn’t miss him when he was alive. I often thought ... but I had children,” she said defiantly as though daring me to ask what I had wondered earlier. “I’m sorry about a lot of things, but I’m not sorry about his death.”

  I had always known it. But it strangely lifted my spirits to hear her say it, to know that there was some part of Claire that her husband could not beat down.

  “Nor should you be,” I said.

  As I walked down the stairs to get more coffee, it occurred to me that we had the easy part. We had the treasured role of an aunt and uncle or grandparents. We did not suffer the boys’ tantrums or fights, they did not mouth off to us, we were not responsible for making them do their homework, nor did we have to worry over bad report cards. We did not have the daily discipline of raising a child. We had the gift of their love and their good times. Claire had their love too, but she also had the work and the pain.

  Did anyone, I thought as I poured coffee into our cups, love Claire without asking something from her?

  We offered and Claire accepted our care of Bill.

  ERNIE WOULD REMEMBER THE DAYS and nights spent sitting by Bill’s bed. The muscle spasms that rippled down Bill’s belly and legs. The intermittent gagging and crying from withdrawal although it was not nearly as bad as they had anticipated. Ernie’s hands shook as he tried to weave a plastic straw through Bill’s chapped lips and past his teeth to wet his dry mouth with a little water. When that didn’t work because Bill’s jaws were so locked together, Ernie used a mouth sponge. He parted Bill’s lips with two fingers and pressed the sponge against the clenched teeth so that some of the water trickled into the well of Bill’s gums.

  Rosemary had inserted an IV line into a vein on Bill’s right arm that first night. But Bill ripped it out of his arm repeatedly during his hallucinated thrashings. They finall
y tied his arms to the bed, and Rosemary reinserted the line, taping it down in several places on his arm.

  Ernie had to wait until the next day after the snowstorm passed to go back to the ridge and search for the guns. He had worn snow-shoes to give him better traction on the deep snow, but upon reaching the base of the ridge, he realized with horror that he had left a loaded rifle behind, and it was now buried under snow. He found the old Remington still propped against the tree, appearing as though it were a snow-covered stick. The ridge was not only snow-covered but had a glaze of ice covering it. He did not want to step on a loaded rifle. He squinted against the sun, trying to determine just where he might have put the rifle down. Then he noticed a three-foot-wide ribbon of impacted snow and about halfway down a patch that appeared to be thrashed. He walked up the ridge on the right side of the packed snow until he reached the mangled snow. He ran his hands gingerly over the spot, pressing down just enough to feel for steel. He found the butt end of the rifle first and dug around the entire rifle before lifting it up. The safety was frozen into place, and he warmed it with his bare hands until the ice melted. Then he moved the bolt back and unloaded the rifle.

  He walked back down the slope with a gun in each hand, but when he reached the bottom, he turned to look back up. There wasn’t an animal that made such a distinctive mark, and he had found no footprints. It was exactly how it appeared to be. As though a child had taken out one of those newfangled sleds that looked like a large metal tray but were called saucers and enjoyed a fast and snowy ride down the slope in the night.

  Four days after he’d found Bill, Ernie walked upstairs one afternoon to relieve Claire and Rosemary so that they could get a chance to eat and rest. Half an hour later, while he was wiping down Bill’s face, he heard a loud wail from outside. He dropped the washcloth and ran to the window. The two women were standing in the middle of Rosemary’s vegetable garden in snow up to their knees. His wife had her arms around Claire, holding her up. He stood for a few minutes and listened to the desolate crying. He watched as Claire began to slip, dragging Rosemary with her until both women were kneeling in the snow. He assumed it was delayed grief on Claire’s part, that she had just realized how close she had come to losing another son.

  Claire saw him standing in the window. Shook her head. She did not want him to come down.

  Bill wasn’t silent either. Ernie could not shut out Bill’s cries or the effect they had on him. Those memories from the war roiled up. He thought about all the men he carried on litters to the evacuation hospitals on Leyte. They cried out for their mothers or they cried to God. He remembered how difficult it was to keep the litters steady as they moved down slopes of mud in the rain. Canvas was thrown over the tops of the wounded men to protect them from the rain, but he could still hear them screaming in pain when they were jostled.

  He would never forget the British officer. Red-haired and blue-eyed. Freckles the color of iron-stained soil on his face. The remainder of his body was little more than a head and torso, but he was not dead yet, and he was not unconscious.

  “Look at me,” he commanded. Ernie told his buddy carrying the other end of the litter to stop. He balanced one pole on his knee and lifted back the flap on the canvas.

  “Shoot me,” the officer said with such calmness. Then he added as though his mother had nudged him, “Please.”

  When the tremors ceased, the three of them took turns feeding Bill spoonfuls of cream of rice cereal and Gerber’s baby food. Pureed apricots, peas and carrots, tapioca pudding.

  Ernie would remember the weeks after Bill was up and moving around and eating solid food. His clothes did not fit him, and not even his jutting hipbones could hold up his jeans. Claire’s voice rose above Rosemary’s offer to buy him new clothes. It would be a waste, she said, because he would gain the weight back. And where would they find a belt but in a boy’s size, and what would they do with such a small belt afterward? So his jeans were held up with a piece of twine woven through the belt loops. Bill helped with small chores on the farm. In the afternoons they drove over to the Lucas place, to work on the chores needed to keep the place up there.

  Nothing worthwhile moved in a straight line. After all, Ernie had crawled out of the muck of himself last summer, but it remained in his head as a small patch of quicksand, always threatening to take him down again. It was true of Bill’s recovery too. But that was a misnomer. Bill would never completely recover. He would learn instead to cope.

  Early that spring Bill heisted Ernie’s truck and drove into town to drink at his father’s old haunt, Pete’s Bar. Ernie and Rosemary drove into town in their sedan. Rosemary waited in the car while Ernie, both angry and grateful that Bill was drunk enough that he couldn’t fight back, hauled Bill out of the bar. But it didn’t stop Bill’s mouth. Ernie clenched his teeth against invectives he hadn’t heard in a long time. Bill’s voice punched and echoed through the silence of a small-town night. Ernie considered himself fortunate that it was near midnight and only the few dedicated nightlifers were about. There was one expletive that Bill seemed particularly fond of calling him and that Ernie had to endure hearing the six miles home, with Rosemary following in the sedan.

  “I think you have a new name,” Rosemary said after they’d gotten Bill home and put him to bed. They sat under the yellow light at the kitchen table, too exhausted to even drink their coffee. Ernie tented his hands over his forehead. He was more tired than he ever thought was possible, and his arms ached from wrestling Bill into the truck.

  “Let me guess,” he said, rubbing his hands down his face and looking at Rosemary. “Fuckin’ bastard.”

  His wife smirked.

  “I’ll have to set him straight the next time,” Ernie wisecracked. “It’s fuckin’ half-breed. Not fuckin’ bastard. My folks were married.”

  They laughed then until their lungs burned, until they coughed from lack of air.

  Rosemary and Claire went with Ernie and Bill to the first few weeks of AA meetings in Cedar Bend. Then it was only Ernie and Bill driving to Cedar Bend every Monday night.

  Early in May Bill tipped again. He told them he was going for a walk after dinner. When ten o’clock rolled around, Ernie walked outside and contemplated how far Bill might have gotten on foot and if he had walked the six miles into town.

  Tough love, they preached at the weekly meetings. Tough love.

  Jesus Christ! he fumed. Tough on who?

  He decided to heed the advice. Let Bill fall down wherever he was. But of course Ernie could not sleep. He paced his kitchen floor until he went outside and walked up and down his driveway.

  He remembered on his second time down the driveway. Claire had warned him. The Lucas farm was a veritable liquor store, all of it buried underground. He didn’t have to imagine John Lucas doing it. Ernie could see the tall and slope-shouldered man rooting around in the dark when he could not or did not want to go into town. Combing the ground and then digging with the obsessiveness of a red squirrel looking for a lost stockpile of pinecones. Claire had estimated that the entire field behind their barn held bottles beneath its surface. She had gone through their barn with a hay rake. She found and drained twenty bottles of Ever Ready, buried and insulated by old hay and hay bales. At least the barn was clean. But a whole field? How was he going to find all that booze? He looked down at the dog patrolling beside him. He wondered if he could teach Angel to scent alcohol like the pigs they used in Europe to sniff out truffles.

  He sat down on the porch steps with the dog. He had a hunch and was proved right when he heard Bill before he saw him, coming from the direction of the Lucas farm. Claire was right. High-proof alcohol, it seemed, could be preserved for eternity in a gopher hole, despite the frost line.

  When Bill saw Ernie, he ran into the small patch of cedar swamp just north of the house. Ernie chased and tackled him, and they fell down in the mud, the dog barking wildly from the edge of the barnyard. In an attempt to pin Bill’s arms behind his back, Ernie missed one of Bill
’s flailing fists. It careened off his cheekbone, just missing his left eye. He dragged a howling Bill out of the swamp and into the barnyard, where he could see him under the light. Bill twisted out of Ernie’s grasp, and the two men circled each other underneath the yard light.

  The dog would not stop barking. Ernie was afraid that Rosemary would wake up, if she hadn’t done so already. So he stood still, and finally so did Bill. They eyed each other from ten feet away. Bill was tanked, but he did not wobble or weave. His feet remained solidly planted to the ground. He was shivering, though, his arms wrapped around his chest. Mud was caked over one side of his face, gumming the eyelashes on his left eye together so that he had to squint.

  Bill glanced at the dog. The dog’s barking had diminished to a whining growl, but he remained agitated, walking between the two men.

  “For as drunk as you are, you run pretty fast.”

  Ernie bent over and rested his hands on his thighs, but he kept his head up and his sight pinned on Bill. The twenty-four-year-old certainly looked better than he had six months ago. Although he remained slender, it was not the skeletal look of a crow-picked deer carcass. Food had put enough flesh on his frame so that Bill carried himself with the languidness of a long-limbed cowboy.

  Ernie wiped his brow. He could hear the wind of his own breathing as it struggled to regain its normal rhythm through the pipes of his lungs. He could not figure Bill out. During the day he was deceptively quiet but easygoing and helpful. Occasionally he betrayed that calm by nervously pulling on his thumbs. But if he got a hold of some hard liquor like the bottle of Wild Turkey Ernie had found, he was just that. Wild.