Free The Turtle Warrior by Mary Relindes Ellis Page A

woods, the swamp, and the sky of their farm, and lastly, the fragile web of his mother’s world that he had forgotten to be cautious around the beer-reeking presence that he’d been avoiding, it seemed, since he was born. He silently ate a forkful of stuffing before catching his mother’s eye. A small conspiratorial smile passed across her lips. Her dark eyes had lost their dull captive look and shone. Things are gonna get better. He glanced down again to the far end of the table where his father sat and felt an unfamiliar stab of pity. James was thousands of miles away from them in a country that even Bill in his enormous capacity for imagination could not imagine but only carried with him in the word Vietnam. A country of purple mountains, man-made woodchuck holes that stabbed, wriggling barbed-wire bombs, a bird that flew bigger than a Canada goose, and hot metal that flew like a bird. Yet Bill knew it was his father, not his brother, who was in a strange country he’d never get out of, a country where only he thought as he did, and whose borders he broke through occasionally to hit his wife, to despise his sons.
    Still, now that John Lucas was home for the holidays, Bill wondered how he was going to survive without his brother there to shield him, to shield her. But in his small head he knew, survive he must. James would come home. And James would tell the priest that what he preached at the Christmas mass was wrong. The loving brotherhood of man did not exist.
    Sunday
     
    Dear James,
     
    Mom and me prayd for you. I ate alot of choclate at Christmas and got sick. Dad got fird and is home now. Me and Mom went sledding. She lost some of her curlers but did not get mad. She sat in front so I wouldnt get hit by snow. I am back at school. Sister says to look for Janury stars. Do you have stars over there? We saw a big white owl sittng on the fence by the barn. Mom says it is a snowi owl from canada. She says he came to visit us becase he ran out of food in canada. Mom cryd. She says you shoulda went to canada to. I said, mom, if they dont got any food, why should James go there.
    Bill stopped. He could hear his mother shouting in the kitchen and the banging of pots and pans. His father’s deep, rumbling voice answered her. Bill tensed up. Then he heard a heavy thump. His mother shouted some more. Bill sighed.
     
    Can they let you out earli?
     
    Bill raised his pencil from the paper. Now he could hear his mother sobbing.
    Please come home. I am scard. I like your picture. Can I have your helmit when you come home? Mr. Moriso says he will take me and you to show us the crans. He says they fly by lake superier. They say hi. If they let you out earli will you come home? I got to go to bed now.
     
    Love Bill
    He put his notebook down. His mother’s crying was ebbing. Bill crawled back into bed and covered his ears against the muted notes of her sorrow. It was the middle of January, the middle of a freak midwinter thaw. The chickadees had broken into their spring song that day. Bill had opened his window to the unseasonably warm wind, and it blew the ivory curtains into midnight dancers. He felt both elated and ashamed, having betrayed his fear to his brother. But as much as he wanted to destroy what he had written, he also felt sure that it would bring his brother home. Maybe, he thought, listening to the melting ice drip from the eaves, he could even persuade his mother to call the Marines and tell them that James was needed at home. That he had made a mistake by enlisting.
    Bill turned to lie on his right side. He tried not to think of tomorrow. Tomorrow was school. Tomorrow meant Merton. He stared at the dancing curtains. Their fluttering hypnotized his already tired eyes, and combined with the soothing plunk, plunk of the melting ice, his eyes closed. Tomorrow was not now.

    The wings flapped, enclosing Bill for a few seconds and brushing his face and chest. They opened again, lifting upward against the surging wind,