Lambsquarters (15 page)

A slight dip of the lower body and the egg emerges, glistening, shimmering, wet with chicken dew, pointing down into the straw. The egg tumbles and lands, graciously and safely, on its side. I pick it up while it’s still wet and watch the moisture evaporate gradually but with purpose, from one end to the other. Hot in my hand, the egg is primeval, live, comforting to the body and nurturing to the soul.

First there had to be a chicken to create such a hot egg. It couldn’t possibly have started without a hen.

SWIMMING BUS

THE SUMMER MY DAUGHTER
was four, she took her first swimming lessons in town. The Alderney recreation committee provided a bus. Each morning for a couple of weeks I made her a snack, packed it in a lunch box, walked her down to the end of the lane, heaved her up to the first step of the big bright school bus and waved her off.

What I never realized at the time was that there was no particular supervision once she was out of sight. She swam only part of the mornings she was away and spent the rest of the time in the playground with the other kids, a few mothers, and other citizens of a village prepared to watch out for its children, care for its young, protect whoever was in their sight. The bus driver kept her eye out. Everyone did. And I am forever grateful.

TURTLE

THE RIVER IN MURPHY’S MILL
is muddy, a brown body gently undulating with current, rocky riverbed and crosswinds. It cuts through the landscape languidly, like an old woman rewalking a worn path. Stony outcroppings in one bend disappear past another in a steady flat stream. It is not a river for boaters or swimmers or children to paddle and plash in. Dogs nose the water with their doggy maws, river rats ride the runlets.

I approached the bank just to park myself. To put in time, spend a calm few moments between pressures. Golden moments, valuable for their scarcity, when my children were occupied, were elsewhere, under another’s watch. Stolen moments, rare as winter butterflies, and guilty moments, blissful to be alone, anonymous, childless. We seldom disclose to other mothers our powerful need to separate from our beloved babies; we
seldom even realize anyone else feels the same way. I asked nothing more of the water than to share its enduring momentum, its sameness, despite Heraclitus and his dictum that one cannot step twice into the same river. I wanted only the soothing qualities of its metronome movement, its ancient heartbeat pace.

Lost in my thoughts, I looked through a reflecting lens, focusing back on myself, not inviting the waterscape in. But the creature must have moved and caught my attention, twigged my peripheral vision.

There it was midstream, sunning itself on a lone rock, a beacon, a talisman. A turtle. Most ancient reptile with its prehistoric green skin, its rigid carapace. It capped the rock like a mushroom. Its feet draped down, head stretched out, tail … well … its tail was short and pointed like a puppy’s, but it flicked rather than wagged.

Why was it there, this buoy, this sentinel in the middle of the river? It lay still, then suddenly lurched forward, its clawed toes spread, and I thought it would disappear into the murk. But it only seemed to be settling into a more comfortable position, adjusting a soft underbelly to the contours of the stone. For this was a snapping turtle, whose ferocious jaws compensate for its vulnerable middle. By choosing a rock for a rest camp, the creature was protecting its belly from prey, sandwiching itself with artificial mail.

I remembered back to my first snapper. It was in the
barnyard at dusk, when the farm was young and the spring was fresh. There were no sheep then to graze and keep the yard weeds down, no children yet to bathe or rock or read to in that time before dark. The grass was long, lush and pure camouflage. I sensed the movement, the swish or the rustle. It was a warm evening, carefree; I wore sandals.

The snapper was only a hand-span away and was picking up a foot, higher than seemed necessary, deliberately, progressing forward and planting it with conviction. Startled and amazed, I jumped back before the next footfall, intrigued by the spread toes, the wrinkled skin, the steel-drum back. Until then I had seen only tiny turtles, named creatures that lived in glass houses, hid under plastic palms, fed on dried pellets. Sad creatures, who walked around their patios in circular boredom.

Here was a wild reptile. A master of the terrain. A force. A monster on a mission. I had no idea that it might be dangerous; I worried rather about its safety. Why was it up from the swamp? Would the dogs do it harm? What could I do to help?

Should I divert it? Perhaps lure it towards a waterward track. Large stick in hand, I directed an end at the beast: no no, not this way, consider an about-face.

SNAP!

The turtle tore at the stick with one vicious lunge of extended neck and jaws. A neck on a pole, telescoping to its mark, severing the wood in a bite. Right. This is
not my farm, but yours. My European ancestors go back only years on this continent whereas yours predate the dinosaurs. I shall show respect. I acknowledge your right of way. Pick your trail; just let me be your guest.

It made its point, that snapping turtle, that evening in the barnyard. I am cautious now in long grass; I continue to respect its right over the land, and I have taught my children to beware. But our paths have not crossed since.

I SEE TURTLES
on the road occasionally; sometimes I see them too late, after someone has senselessly mowed them down. They’re not so hard to avoid, these dinner-plate Methuselahs, and it’s not as if they race out on the gravel. Not like hares that zig and zag and choose the rubber rather than the ditch, or foxes or coons, which come out of nowhere at speed into the lights. Turtles plod. Their feet are not in tune with their jaws. They have the wisdom of age to ponder life; they feel no need to rush. They do not climb trees, but I have seen them dead and mysteriously placed on fence posts, legs lax with unopposed gravity.

Once, in the northland, I watched a snapping turtle lay her eggs. She dug in the sandy hollow of a huge granite boulder (a boulder as big as a bus) with her great paddles of feet shaped like serrated table-tennis bats. She worked furiously, scooping the grains with fervour, sending sand showers into the water, making her nest.
When finally she pulled in her pinking-shear paws, the hole was deep, untidy, exposed. She turned, stretched out her ovipositor and started to lay. Masses of round eggs—ping pong balls from antiquity. It took her the entire morning to spawn, after which she paused, inanimate, before sliding back into the water and disappearing, leaving her issue to its hatch or hazard.

I thought of turtles and culture. The importance of the Turtle Clan to the Mohawks. The Chinese bronzes I once saw in a Sherbrooke Street gallery: two small rigid beasts, one in the process of climbing onto the back of the other. To breed? To ride? To be carried like a new loon? They struck me as illicit lovers, heavy as clandestine hotel rooms, plodding slowly, getting nowhere, like the progress of a love that stalls on restrictions. Or perhaps they were crafted on a whim to confront star-crossed thinkers, looking for answers to unformed questions. Certainly they spoke of time and endlessness and the unknown.

Lillian Hellman writes of a turtle caught for soup, decapitated and left for the next day’s chores. The trail of turtle gore in the morning led out of the kitchen, down the steps, back to the wild, sans teeth, sans head, sans life, but moving.

THE RIVER TURTLE,
the snapper, was intact. Quietly enjoying the sun. It slowly moved its neck, extended to the warmth, exposed Triassic flesh draped
loosely over cold blood to the heating rays. I waited for something more. For it to detain me in my reverie, keep me from my role as adult, as mother. For it to turn, expose derrière, slide, swim away. Nothing happened. The turtle had its own time, its own agenda. It did not hurry, had no children to collect, no animals to feed. It may be there still, sunning in the summer sun. Oblivious to the snuffling dogs, the bank combers, the odd aircraft overhead. The turtle’s movements are considered, pondered, careful, conserved. But don’t test them. Snappers have jaws of steel, and if you believe Lillian Hellman, they can walk without heads.