Bartleby of the Big Bad Bayou (13 page)

“Look—that turtle is moonwalking!” a boy cried. The brown fur on his head was as spiky as a hedgehog's. The other human hatchlings squealed with delight.

“Here, Princess,” called a girl with curly black fur on her head. She tossed a large crumb of bread into the water. Lucky paddled over and snapped it up.

A small boy with the same tight black curls tugged at the girl's hand. “Throw one for the other turtle,” he begged.

“All right.” The girl tossed another crumb toward Bartleby.

Bartleby had tasted bread before, but usually it was bland and boring. To be polite, he nibbled at it anyway. “This is pretty good,” he whispered to Lucky.

“Yes, it is. Every morning, Chef Jerry tosses out the day-old bread for the birds. They fly from all over to eat it.”

The human hatchlings began throwing more crumbs. Lucky and Bartleby gobbled them up. But the smallest boys and girls couldn't throw very far. They just dropped their pieces over the side of the fountain.

Lucky Gal stayed near the center of the big, stone bowl. But Bartleby wanted more bread, so he paddled closer to the edge where the pieces were floating. As he did, he noticed a yellow-furred boy who looked like Davy.

“Look, I can almost reach him!” The little boy leaned over and splashed his hand in the water.

Bartleby backpaddled away from the wiggling fingers. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Bertha rise from under a lilac bush and trot toward the fountain. With a gentle nudge of her big head, she lifted the hatchling's hand out of the water.

The boy laughed. He reached into the fountain again. Once more, Bertha lifted it out with a toss of her head.

RrrruFF MrruFF!
she barked, but not too loudly. It meant, “Please don't touch the turtle. But you can pet me if you want to.” She licked the boy's sticky cheek.

Yuck! Bartleby swam away before she licked him, too.

At the sound of Bertha's bark, Chef Jerry came out of the kitchen. He grinned at the hatchlings surrounding the fountain.

“What's the new turtle's name?” asked the girl with the yellow tail on her head.

“That's Rocky,” Chef Jerry told her. “Looks like he's pretty happy in his new home, doesn't he?”

Bartleby felt a gentle warmth on his carapace. He poked his head out. Morning sunlight was streaming through the water. He looked around for Lucky Gal, but she wasn't on the bottom. Then he stretched his neck up and saw her yolk-yellow plastron floating at the surface. She was paddling slowly with her head down low as if she were stalking something.

Quietly, he swam up and scanned the surface. A fat moth was beating its clear wings against the water. Bartleby's webs tensed as he watched its fuzzy black-and-brown body bob up and down. He held his breath as the creature twitched its antennae, alert for danger.

Suddenly Lucky popped up behind the insect. Bartleby's heart pounced with her. “Yes!” he whispered as she grabbed the moth between her jaws. The sight of Lucky with wings protruding from either side of her mouth made him chuckle.

“Good catch!” he called as he paddled toward her. Lucky Gal swallowed the rest of the moth. “I try to keep my hunting skills sharp—just in case.”

Bartleby blinked at her. “I thought Chef Jerry feeds you more than you can eat.”

“So what?” Lucky flicked her short, slender tail. “I'm still a bayou turtle. I still have bayou ways.”

“Then let's go home!” Bartleby couldn't keep his webs from splashing the water. “We'll leave as soon as I see a route in my dreams. That's how Seezer and I began our journey from New York.”

Lucky Gal bumped his carapace sharply. “Forget it. I'm not going anywhere.”

“But why?”

Instead of answering, she turned and swam away. When she did, Bartleby could see her ruined rear web.

“What a beetlebrain I am,” he moaned. “Lucky is so capable in the water, I forgot about her missing toes. She could never crawl all the way home from here.”

 

In the afternoon, Bartleby saw the red truck roll into the driveway that ran along the side of the restaurant. Bertha jumped out and came running up to the fountain.
Prrruh! Prrruh!
came a rumble from deep in her throat. It meant, “Princess!”

Lucky swam to the edge. “Hi, Bertha. What's the news?”

Mrrruff, rrruff!
Bertha barked. It meant, “Yummy rabbit stew for dinner tonight.”

“Rabbit! Yuck!” Bartleby whispered under his breath.

Bertha's dark eyes widened until the whites showed. Her hearing was better than Bartleby realized.
RrrrrRrrrr-
Rrrr, she crooned. It meant, “Don't worry. Plenty of fish and veggies, too.”

“Thanks,” Bartleby replied. He hadn't meant to hurt her feelings.

“Let's all bask,” Lucky Gal said. She hauled herself up onto the wide stone rim of the fountain, right next to Bertha. The dog leaned over and licked Lucky's carapace.

“C'mon up, Rrrocky!” Lucky called. The teasing tone was back in her voice.

A tiny sigh escaped from Bartleby's throat. He still didn't like dogs much. But he was relieved that Lucky wasn't upset with him anymore. He dug his claws into the stone and climbed onto the ledge. Once more, Bertha leaned over. When he saw her pink tongue coming, Bartleby squinched his eyes shut—but this time he stifled his yuck!

Side by side, Bartleby and Lucky Gal settled onto their plastrons and basked on the edge. Bertha lay down in the grass beside the fountain and soaked up the sun, too. The dog didn't say much as Bartleby and Lucky discussed their memories of swamp life. But Bartleby could tell by the way she kept her ears cocked that Bertha was listening.

Later, when the dinner guests arrived, Bartleby didn't hide. He followed Lucky Gal to the center of the fountain and crawled onto the pedestal that held the spouting fish. There seemed to be even more human hatchlings at the tables than there'd been the night before.

Eagerly, Bartleby watched the diners. The mothers and fathers ate hungrily from their plates, but the boys and girls only seemed to pick at the food. Some of them stuffed bread in their pockets when they thought no one was looking. Others bounced up and down in their chairs as if they couldn't hold still. Bartleby felt like bouncing, too. Inside his shell, his body twitched as he waited on the platform for them to finish eating.

A skinny boy was the first to jump off his chair and run to the fountain. “Princess! Rocky!” he called. He held up a piece of bread and pulled off a crumb. The other human hatchlings in the garden turned in their chairs and stared.

On the platform, Bartleby and Lucky Gal rose on their webs and stretched their heads forward. The boy pulled back his arm and threw the crumb in a wide arc. Before it even landed, Lucky dove in.

She'd already begun swimming when Bartleby started after her. He lowered his head in the water and paddled hard. He didn't care about the bread, but he did want to win. He didn't take a breath till he was nearly side by side with her. But when she saw him, Lucky began stroking even more furiously toward the bobbing crumb.

“C'mon, Princess, hurry!” Bartleby heard the boy call.

“C'mon, Rocky, you can beat her!” another one shouted.

“Awesome! It's a turtle race!” a third voice piped.

Bartleby glanced up for a moment. It looked like all the human hatchlings had gathered at the fountain. Some of the mothers and fathers were right behind them. Bertha was wedged in between a boy and a girl, barking,
Wufff; wufff, wufff.
It meant, “Go, go, go!”

But Bartleby didn't really mind the noisy crowd of humans. In fact, he liked them. And they all seemed to like him, too. They admired how strong he was, how handsome, and how fast he could swim. He felt...
important.

Lucky Gal didn't pay attention to the cheers. She kept on swimming without letting her attention slip from the prize for a single moment. To catch up, Bartleby had to pull harder with his webs.

Neck and neck, the two turtles streaked through the water. When the crumb was just a few strokes away, Bartleby took a breath and dove beneath the surface. He wanted to snatch the bread from underneath the water. But when he got there, Lucky had already snapped up the morsel. She held it between her jaws for a moment before she gulped it down.

The humans began clapping their hands.

“Princess rocks!” a boy shouted.

“Turtles rock!” another hatchling added.

Bertha was still barking,
Wufff, wufff, wufff!

Chef Jerry came into the garden and joined the crowd. “What's all this ruckus?” he asked.

“Princess and Rocky just raced for a bread crumb—and Princess won,” a girl replied.

Chef Jerry got a broad grin on his face. “Well, then Rocky needs a rematch.”

Bartleby perked up his head. He did need another chance. He'd been foolish to let himself be distracted by the humans. In the bayou, a slip like that could have cost him his life.

“I'll throw another crumb,” a boy shouted as he ran around to the opposite side.

“Bartleby, come on—get ready!” Lucky Gal's webs were patting the water and her tail was wriggling.

“All right.” Bartleby swam up beside her. Seeing Lucky so excited and happy, he found he didn't mind losing the first match to her. But the next time, he was planning to win!

Each night it seemed to Bartleby that Chef Jerry's restaurant got busier. The human hatchlings jostled for places to stand around the fountain and argued over who would throw the first crumb. Chef Jerry had to keep the restaurant open later to serve all the diners. And Bartleby and Lucky Gal began having not just two crumb races, but six, or eight, or ten—until finally, all the humans went home.

Bartleby was no longer frightened when Chef Jerry came to the fountain with a pot in his hands. The man called Bartleby and Lucky his “star athletes”—whatever those were. And the pot held the choicest pieces of fish and the freshest greens from the man's kitchen. There was always more than the turtles could eat, so they saved their leftovers for Bertha. Even though Chef Jerry fed her big bowls of food, she always had room for one more mouthful.

Afterward, Bartleby and Lucky Gal would bask on the ledge of the fountain while Bertha stretched out on the grass below. They talked less and less of the swamp, and more about which of the boys and girls who came regularly were their favorites, or whether crawdad or trout was tastier.

But when Bartleby napped, he still dreamed of bayou country. He would see flashes of a small, clear pond surrounded by finger-leaved ferns and purple-flowering vines. He glimpsed a funny palmetto tree with leaves that looked like a turkey's tail, and a slender young willow that reminded him of the one at his old swamp. Sometimes he saw Seezer and Grub lying together on a sunny mud bank—with just enough room for him to fit in between them. But the dream always ended suddenly with a streak of red that blurred everything else. Then Bartleby would awaken with his heart pounding against his plastron.

One morning, he was dozing on the warm, wide fountain rim when he thought he heard something.

Bartleby opened his eyes and looked up. All he saw was a fast-moving cloud.

Quag-quog! Quag-quog!

Could it be? Bartleby stood on his webs and stretched up his neck. As the cloud came closer, he could see it was actually a great white bird. His throat began to quiver. “Billy?”

“Quag-quog! Quag-quog! Bartleby! I've been searching everywhere for you.”

The bird began gliding down toward the fountain. Suddenly Bertha jumped up and pushed Bartleby into the water.

Gruff, ruff, ruff, mrrrrrrUFF! she barked in her deepest voice. It meant, “Stay away from my turtle, big bird, or I'll turn you into a pile of feathers!”

The bird flapped its wings, and rose out of reach.

“Bertha, wait! That bird is my friend,” Bartleby grunted loudly.

But Bertha continued to growl. The whites of her eyes were showing. Grrrrrrrr, errrrrrr. It meant, “That skinny-legged bird has an awfully sharp beak.”

Lucky swam up beside Bartleby. “Don't worry, Bertha. It won't harm us.” She poked her snout in the air. “Billy! Welcome!” she grunted.

Under Bertha's watchful gaze, the egret landed on the high, white fence that surrounded the garden. He twisted his long, graceful neck and cocked his head.

“Quag-quog! Quag-quog!
You don't know how glad I am to see you! Though I never expected to find you both together.”