Turtle

34 the minnesota review Scott Heim Turtle When we saw the turtle crossing the road, my father pulled the car into the shade of the ditch and opened the door. It was a snapper, huge, its legs thick as sausages. It pushed itself along the black band of asphalt as my father laughed and shuffled toward it with his gunny sack open. My mother and I stared at its shell, that plate dark as the flecks of foamy earth I'd find in the back pasture when I dug under cow shit for worms. The heat moved like confetti in the air, visible heat from the summer before my parents' divorce. My father knelt beside the dust-brushed face of the beast. It opened its mouth and hissed, clicking and grinding its ancient jaws, its eyes tiny beads of caviar. He lifted his boot and kicked it, kicked until the body slid into the mouth of the sack, and when he'd trapped it he swung it into the trunk. From the back seat I felt its weight descend against my spine like a lump hidden deep within me. That night, my father showed me the art of the hunter: how to find the prey, how to kill it and eat it. The turtle lay on its back in the grass, and he brought the hatchet down to cut off its hiss. He knifed patterns into its body, shaping steaks from the flesh for dinner. He leaned the trophy of the shell against the kitchen wall, the smell swarming the rooms of the house, the arrival of a new animal in the skillet. When my father ate he smiled at us from the head of the table, almost humming it's good, it's good, his eyes closed. My mother watched the gray island of meat Heim 35 on her plate, floating in its river of gravy. These were the days before she poked her head from the dark of her shell, before she ran from the house screaming into the sheets of rain. These were the days she was trained to wind the clocks, to iron the shirts, to simmer each animal over the stove in its own juices, already killed, ready to eat. ...