Free So Brave, Young, and Handsome by Leif Enger Page A

without a word between us we turned the boat upside down and crawled under. The turtle was in there too, and together the three of us watched the rain turn to hail. It beganas fingertips but changed to knuckles and fists. Amid this deafening rumpus the turtle decided to escape. Forward he plowed—the gunwale lifted against his ridged back, hailstones thumped his mossy shell plates. I caught Glendon’s eye as the snapper moved out into the storm. Neither of us tried to stop him.

6
    Luckily for the boat, it only hailed about ten minutes. Not many vessels could’ve stood up to more than that—some of those hailstones were as broad as my hand, and they fell in bunches. Peering out from under, all the land we could see turned white in a hurry. Even the river was lathered in the churn inflicted by that storm; the turtle left a dirty track through the ice as it shambled away, but that was quickly covered.
    When the hail ended the rain resumed, a soothing noise after that unseemly pounding. I actually dozed awhile. When I crept out later, the smaller hailstones had all melted and the large ones lay shrinking in their craters.
    Glendon sat under the cottonwood on the only dry patch in sight. Pale smoke drifted up from the mound where he had covered the fire. I could smell the squash cooking in the earth—my stomach lurched with desire.
    “Look here, Becket,” said my friend.
    Next to the mound, almost on top of it, lay the snapper. His feet were withdrawn but his head was extended and he looked curious and stately.
    “What’s he still doing here?”
    “I guess he likes the warmth,” Glendon replied. He took his knife and uncovered the two squash. They were ruddy from cooking and steamed when he pierced their skins. We still had a little butter and Glendon produced the salt in a milk-glass shaker. He said grace in an apologetic voice, given he had stolen the entire meal; my fingers shook while I ate, and my eyes watered, and it was a remarkablesupper right down to the seeds and the ropy core. I even considered eating the rind, but noticed Glendon laying his rind on the earth in front of the turtle. Instantly its beak flashed out—it wasn’t faster than sight, as people will say, but it was certainly quick as a flinch, and the report of that beak popping was impressive. In seconds our snapper bolted the squash rind, then retracted his head as if to contemplate its effects.
    “Goodness,” Glendon said—we were both a little shaken. “What do you suppose he’s thinking about in there?”
    “Fingers.”
    “I had the same theory,” he replied. “Look at him, he’s disenchanted. Well, go on and feed him that rind, Becket—let’s see if he’ll do it again.”
    Glendon changed my bandages before we left and was pleased to see no infection; my fever had disappeared as well, and I didn’t protest when he suggested I take a short stint at the oars. The only protest I did make was on behalf of the turtle, who, I argued, had earned a reprieve. Also, I confessed to a growing feeling it might be ill luck to kill the brute, even if I proved clever enough to do the job. But Glendon only laughed, saying, “Nonsense, he was lucky today. We’ll eat him tomorrow.” So we made a bed of sand in the bow for the turtle to sit on and poured water on the sand so he would be cool and content. At dusk we shoved off under emerging stars.
    Rowing went better this time. I’d gotten used to the motion of the johnboat and the length of the oars, and the bandages guarded my palms from further damage; after an hour or so Glendon said I’d done enough and we switched places. I straightaway fell asleep in the stern.
    I woke to Glendon’s voice. He was talking—praying, it turned out, though I couldn’t tell at first since he didn’t speak in the fraught inflections common to prayers, at least my own. It was more as if he were relating to a good listener the details of his day. He told in brief about the farmhouse he had robbed for our