Grasshopper Bridge, Chapter 9: Of Turtles and Men

John Marks started talking to himself as soon as he saw it. He had his reasons. The lead fish, the one in front, was at least 20 pounds. Maybe a bit more. Long and thickly bodied with heavy shoulders and a large curling tail, it moved easily through the warm tidal currents with its nostrils flared and its bright eyes pointed down toward the small muddy hills and furrowed white sand where it was swimming and feeding.

Marks inhaled softly and started whispering to the fish, urging it to come closer. Could it hear him? Sometimes he thought so. Other times it just seemed stupid. When the shadowy form moved again, it changed direction and turned once more toward John, as if to see who was talking to it. Marks wondered what it would feel like to hold a fish like that in his hands. He started talking again and told the fish that it should turn to the left because the water was deeper there, and that would be a good place to find something good to eat–shrimp, or a small crab.

The fish turn slowly around, floating in an elliptical pirouette as if he wanted to see the place the fisherman was talking about or perhaps to measure the falling tide. Or maybe he just wants me to see how big he really is, John thought. Now only 60 feet away, the fish answered, and an immense tail suddenly broke to the surface, waving back and forth in the wind like a silver flag. There it was. A new world record. All 22 pounds of it.

“Now or never,” John said softly. As the rod drifted back into position for the forward delivery, he could see the immense white mouth opening, the red flaring gills, and the No. 6 fly going straight down the throat of the biggest bonefish he would ever see. But at that precise moment, everything went to hell, and for some reason all three fish bolted and disappeared. Suddenly it was all gone. The open, hungry mouth, the waving silvertail, imagined yellow eye, and the black shadow of the immense fish crawling over the white sand simply evaporated in amber light and the curling blue tide.

The tip of Mark’s rod dropped and a profanity came hissing through his teeth. “Jeezus Keehrist,” he said out loud, slurring the words. “What in the hell is this? What happened?” He paused, closed his eyes and shook his head. Maybe a bird overhead, he thought. Or the shadow of a cloud. That almost always scares them. Or a shark or barracuda, he thought. But none of these were there because if they were, he would have seen them. He looked at the horizon so far away. It was fading into the light. He looked at his watch. It was almost 6, it had been a long day with a lot of fish, and his guide and companion would soon be returning to pick him up. It is time to quit.

He looked down at the floating line of his aborted cast coiled at his feet and the shiny bead-chain eyes of the fly sitting quietly in the shallow water the fly was looking up at him. “It was close, buddy,” he told it with a smile. “You almost had the ride of your life.”

Immediately, something else caught his eye, something far in the distance, an odd sort of shape just to the left of a bulging clump of red coral. Without taking his eyes off the strange sight, he dropped his rod tip slowly and carefully into the water and stared at the object. Whatever it was, it seemed to be moving in a straight line over 100 yards away, a small indistinguishable point which was traveling at an angle which could have taken it too close to the three feeding bonefish. Whatever it was, John thought, those fish knew it was coming and that’s what spooked them.

The air seemed to thicken as he watched the apparition coming toward him, moment by moment growing larger and then larger still, turning from a single point of darkness into a bright elliptical light with two curving knife-like appendages radiating from its epicenter. As he strained to see, the curving appendages turned into a pair of wings and they raised simultaneously from the water and rotated the air in a perfectly coordinated rhythm. At their zenith, water drained from the edges of the wings as drops of jeweled light. When the wings descended, they fell quickly and sharply, cutting back into the water like a pair of blades, chopping hard against the strong push of a falling tide.

For a moment, he thought it might be a wounded bird of some kind, maybe an albatross or a pelican. But what was that strange and unearthly sound it was making? “Birds don’t do that,” he said softly. They can’t. Not anymore.

As he watched and listened carefully, the sound magnified growing stronger and more pervasive until it dominated all other sensory information. Everything else had stopped. The only thing moving was that single ghostly apparition and it raised its wings again, pointing them toward the sky as if to signal something. Then it turned slightly toward the east, floating on the surface, coming directly toward him. And suddenly there it was 50 feet away–the answer. I should have known, John said to himself. I should have known.

Marks could now see the curving bird-like beak, scalloped and cracked, the wrinkled neck and throat, the ragged scars and patchwork patterns of a domed and worn shell laced with the black calligraphy of geometric lines, not unlike a hieroglyph or perhaps a map of some kind.

And the sound? It too was now obvious and as John listened, the turtle’s breathing intensified, and it seemed as if the breath of all life had somehow gathered inside of that turtle’s. It was indeed an odd moment, one difficult to define. John felt strange and his heart was beating hard. He looked around quickly at the incredible silence of everything else. Maybe there isn’t anything else, he thought. Maybe it all comes down to this.

When the turtle finally stopped, it was less than 20 feet in front of John and he could see its heart beating in its eyes. With each pulse, the black pupils widened, then withdrew, then expand again in a hypnotic rhythm impossible to ignore. And as John looked, he could see the absolute perfection and timeless strength of the animal as it stared back at him. How odd, John thought as he remembered another encounter many years ago, not unlike this one. There seemed to be a connection with that event, but he wasn’t sure just what it was. The turtle looked up into the open eyes of the man standing in front of her.

“Never mind about that,” she said softly, “It doesn’t matter. Not anymore. It’s too late and you can’t erase the past.” As John stood there frozen in the moment, the turtle continued. “You were wrong that day. You were wrong because you thought I was finished, didn’t you?”

John looked back at her and swallowed. He hadn’t thought about it for years. “Yes, I did,” he finally whispered. “Yes, I did think that because Sydney said you were. When he flipped you over on your back, he told me you would die like that because your kind can’t get back to your feet once you are turned over. He said you would die upside down, drowning in your own phlegm and mucous.”

The turtle blinked again and moved its head slightly to one side as if it was considering something. Then it turned again, looking back at John. “Keep going,” she said. “I know you’d like to finish it. Men like you always do. You always need answers. Maybe it’s in your blood.”

“Well,” John stammered, “Well… I... don’t... don’t know. I just asked Sydney why he wanted to kill you and then he looked at me like I was crazy. He asked me if I liked turtle soup or turtle eggs. I told him I’d never tried them before, but if he was going to kill you for that, why didn’t he just cut your throat? Why wouldn’t he just get it over with? Sydney just looked back at me and asked what difference does it make in the way the turtle dies? And why did I care? Before I could answer, he said that it would be too bloody to cut your throat and he wanted to keep his pants and shirt clean.”

“Then I asked him how long it would take you to die and he said maybe three or four hours. He said after we were done fishing, we would come back and you would be dead by then and that he knew where you had laid your eggs. He would take them home. He also said that he could sell your shell for a lot of money.”

John paused, looking into her unflinching eyes. In that moment, he could see the Bahamian turtle over on her back once again, the tangled forest of red mangroves behind her, the blue sky and the white clouds far above. Her waving, wing-like flippers. He could see her head moving desperately from side to side, the thrust of her neck as she began her dying, one gasping breath at a time. He could see it all, the gargling and phlegm, and the emotionless way Sydney stood there looking down at her.

More than anything else, John could remember the sound of her tortured breathing as they left her lying on her back on the hot sand. My God, he thought as they drove away in Sydney’s boat. There has to be a better way. Is there something more than simple hunger in us? What purpose does it serve? John wasn’t sure.

“Well, as you can see, I’m not dead,” the turtle replied. “That was me even if you can’t understand how or why that could be, or how the past and future are connected.” She looked up at the darkening sky and moved her head to one side and then back again as she continued. “Look at the sky,” she said. “Look at the clouds and the water. Look at yourself. Look at what’s happening. Look at all of it. Do you think Sydney could change any of that? Do you really think you can?”

She blinked again and John looked at her hard and scalloped shell, her burning eyes, and the four amazing winged flippers, the thin black calligraphy of her olive shell and the way the water seemed to hold and suspend her. He could see the way the water ran along the sides of her body in a silver curl of light. He could see her strength, her perfect belonging.

He looked down at his own human hands and fingers, his knuckle grip curling around the cork handle of his fishing rod. His own skin suddenly looked like tissue, vulnerable and weak, some kind of membrane stretching as it tried to hold something together, something which was slowly seeping from his life, from the entire civilized world. Maybe we don’t have what it takes, he thought, and at that moment, he imagined himself and all human beings disappearing. What would that be like? Could that happen?

“Not all of them will go,” she answered. “The ones who know will remain. Those who do not will perish.” She looked up at John and the way he was looking at his reflection in the water, then her eyes sharpened and she blinked once more as she turned her neck, looking north at the horizon. “I need to go,” she said softly. “It’s almost dark and I have to go now and reach the drop off before nightfall. I can hear your friends coming and I don’t want them to see us like this. And neither should you. But I have one question for you before I go.”

“And what is that?” John replied.

“Well, my last question is this, and this one which perhaps matters most about you. Why do you care about these kinds of things and why do you always talk about them so much? Why do you have so many questions?”

John thought about it and as he pondered her question, he could see a thin line of black smoke rising in the sky and the dark silhouette of a passing ship far away on the horizon. It seemed like a mirage setting on the edge of some other world, coming from someplace he couldn’t see and going somewhere he couldn’t see. But he could see those aboard the ship, their arms and legs sticking out in so many directions, and their eyes floating in an ocean of immeasurable time and distance, all of them deep within their own thoughts and reality. Separate from him and far away. Unconnected.

He looked back at the turtle. “I guess I care and talk about those kinds of things because it makes me feel less alone,” he said softly. Nothing else was said. John simply stood and watched as the turtle looked at him carefully. Then she nodded her head, blinked, and turned slowly away from him and from the place in the world where John knew he had to stay and he watched quietly as the turtle started swimming.

John could hear her breathing as she left him. He could see the focused intent of her stroke, the timeless rise and fall of her flippers as she looked straight ahead toward the darkening horizon. He wondered where she was going, what she was thinking. Nine hundred miles to the west and straight ahead, the labyrinthine shelf of east Africa lifted in a gathering mist.

He looked down at his feet. Who would ever believe this? He thought again. I’ve been stopped. By a turtle. He thought about it. Something really had been lost, somewhere and somehow, but it seemed impossible to see just what could be done to get it back again.

Moments later, the metallic drone of a roaring engine came whining in the air, cutting through the tropical air like a knife. Seconds later, John could see the blowing spray of the white boat. His partner and guide saw John standing in the water too shallow for the fiberglass craft to navigate, so they stopped to wait for him. John walked toward them and climbed into the boat. He paused and looked back over his shoulder, but it was useless. The door had closed. The reverie was broken. He slid his rod quietly in the boat and sat down.

“Any luck here?” the guide asked.

John thought about it for a moment, “No, no luck at all here,” he replied, “but I saw a very large fish, one about 20 pounds, probably a couple pounds more. It would have been a new record on the fly. There were two smaller fish with it, but they all spooked before I could get a cast in.” He paused as his companions looked at him. What else should he say? What else could he say? Then, because he thought he had to, he simply added that he had seen a large sea turtle. “I’ve never seen one that big in water this shallow,” he said, “and I don’t know what it was doing there. It came so close I could have touched it with my rod.”

Without expression, John continued. “It was really interesting. It stopped when it saw me and it just looked at me for what seemed like a long time, and then it went on its way. It didn’t seem afraid. It seemed almost interested in what I was doing. I enjoyed it. A nice connection. I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

“Impossible,” the guide replied, conveniently ignoring feelings and ideas for which he had no answer and no real interest. “Bonefish don’t get that big here. I’ve been here all my life and I haven’t seen one over 9 pounds.”

“Yeah, I know,” John replied, “I’ve heard others say that too, but I’m sure this one had the length, shoulders, and tail for it. I got a good look at him. I watched him feeding.” He said nothing more about the turtle. He knew it would be useless.

“John, listen to me,” the guide shot back. “Listen to what I am saying. I said it couldn’t be a bonefish. Not that big,” he added. “It was a milkfish, nothing more. They come on the flats sometimes and swim with the bonefish.” The guide continued with the kind of predictable naivete some men use when they think they know everything. “And as far as turtles go,” the guide said, “you don’t see many of them here anymore and who in the hell cares? The old-timers say they lay their eggs around here, and there used to be lots of them, but who knows? Some say it’s overfishing or the oil rigs. And even if it is, who really cares? The natives have the right to take and eat all they can catch, or else they sell the shells to the Chinese. They cut and grind up the shells and use them as an aphrodisiac, or they make ashtrays out of them. There’s no law against that, and besides, we need oil and money more than we need the frigging turtles.”

John paused as he looked at the guide, the lines around his eyes, the calligraphy of his life and years, then at the Mercury 200 and the 18-foot glass skiff. The guide was a decent man, John thought. And Sydney was one of the best guides John had ever met, and over time they had become good friends. He looked briefly again to the west. The ship was gone and only the sun remained, burning on the edge of a world that was changing so fast it seemed impossible to slow down. Or change it.

Three hundred years ago, it would have taken me almost nine months just to get to where I fished today. I did it in three days. He understood that this, too, was fantastic, but something had been lost along the way. Maybe that’s why we like to be in places like this, he thought as he looked across the ocean currents. To get some of it back again.

He said nothing more and opened the blue and white plastic cooler and withdrew a cold beer. The guide looked at him and went on, using the abbreviated sentences people sometimes like to use when they are in a hurry or think time is running out. “Time to go. Long way home. Low on gas. Have to leave now. Don’t want to try and find my way in the dark. Too dangerous.”

That night after dinner, everyone at camp was watching the Lakers game against the Celtics. Magic Johnson had scored almost 30 points by halftime with 15 assists and seven rebounds. It was, as they say, one hell of a game. Then, during the break, and more than a few drinks, things got a little messy. One of the guests pushed his tongue against the side of his mouth, moved his eyebrows up and down, and poked the guy sitting next to him, as he loudly asked John about the new world record bonefish he had seen.

“Just how big was it?” he asked smiling in an ugly and offensive way.

John looked back at him. For five days at breakfast and dinner, the guy never shut up. His jokes were stupid and so were his ideas. John thought of the man’s mind as a stagnant pool of useless crap.

“Too many black guys on that frigging Laker team,” the man remarked. “Too many. They’re taking over everything. And I know this, too. They’re up to no good. They even want our women. They can’t bullshit me.”

That did it. The conversation froze. Someone cleared their throat. Someone else got up and went to the bathroom. No one knew just what to do or say, so they said nothing and just looked at John, hoping he might say something that would erase the other angler’s ideas and words. John looked around the room and thought about what he should do, then smiled, and winked back at the man, at all of them, his favorite way of getting out of a senseless circumstance by saying nothing and inferring everything, or at least some interminable possibility beyond anyone’s ability to interpret or understand. What else should I say? He thought. What he really wanted to do was kick the shit out of the guy.

After the last bucket of the game–a three-pointer made by Magic, which sailed out of bounds without touching the rim–John stood up, excused himself, and said he had to get going. “My guide wants to start right at dawn and I have to be ready. The incoming tide will be strong then and he wants to hit it just right.” John nodded goodnight, then turn without saying anything more and went to his cabin.

When the generator finally stopped and darkness fell, he pulled the covers over his shoulders, closed his eyes, and listened carefully to his breathing and thought again of the turtle. He could still see her flippers rising from the sea, then lowering again, silently, and with a tireless and unstoppable purpose. He watched her until she disappeared and then he rolled over on his back and closed his eyes.

He slept without thought for an indeterminable length of time, and he couldn’t be sure just what time it was when he first heard the sudden screeching cry of birds–both seagulls and white terns–piercing the glass windows of his dark cabin. That’s odd, he thought. Something is happening. Those kinds of birds are normally not nocturnal. They don’t come out at night.

He arose from his bed and went to the window. The light outside looked on, almost green in a way, and as he looked up, he could see the Southern Cross still stretching across the sky in a blaze of twinkling light.

Then suddenly, he saw something else–the dark silhouette of a tall man moving along the sand–and as John watched, the man seemed to be dancing as he held his arms out in an oddly twisted gestural expression John had never seen before. What in the hell is he doing? Who in the hell is he? Without warning, and as if to answer, the man suddenly stopped and turned to look at John as he stood inside the cabin. The man’s eyes were bright red and seemed electrified. His hands were incredible with long thin fingers some six inches long. His hair was short and white but gave off an eerie glow of shimmering light.

As John stood by his cabin window, the man continued to stare at him and then turned his wrist over and pointed a curling finger toward John in a gesture for him to leave his cabin and come out onto the beach. When John looked, he could see the man had something in his hand, a long tool of some kind, perhaps a shovel, John thought, but when he looked closer he could see it was a long-handled straw broom.

John had no idea of just what was going on, but there was no going back. Something was pulling on him. As he walked toward the man, it finally hit him. The man was trying to hit the terns and seagulls as they spiraled around him in a circle, driving down to Earth then skyward again, then down again. John’s eyes widen. So that was it, he thought. Jesus, why didn’t I think of that?

The sandy slope of beach in front of John’s cabin was almost covered by a swarm of hatching baby sea turtles. They had dug their way up through their sandy nest and were trying to find the water’s edge and reach that sanctuary before being killed and eaten by the diving seabirds. Suddenly it was obvious. The man was trying to protect the newly hatched turtles and give them time to reach the safety of the incoming tidal waves.

As Marks stumbled half-asleep up to the dark-skinned man, it seemed impossible. Jesus, John said to himself. Maybe I am mad. Or is this just a dream? It was Sidney. John came up to the guide and stood speechless in front of him and the two men looked carefully at one another. Sydney was smiling. His short hair was snow-white now, his face wrinkled and scarred his eyes were still bright, but his back was badly bent, and most of his front teeth were missing.

Sydney spoke first. “Well, well, look at who I see,” he said, smiling. “Look at who’s here. It’s John Marks. It’s about time you showed up, man. I’ve been waiting for a long time. I told you I knew all the places where they lay their eggs. And I wasn’t kidding. And I always know when they are going to hatch. The birds tell me as they gather for the feast. So when I see them like this, I know I found the turtles. So listen to me, Mr. John Marks,” he whispered, “I’ve got two brooms. One for you and one for me. So what in the hell are you going to do now? Just stand there like an idiot, or help me save them? Most of them will never make it without us, and we have to be quick, or they won’t make it. I’ve seen it too many times. The birds get almost every one of them.”

John looked back at Sydney. Here it was. His chance at last. Twenty-five years later. “Well, Sydney,” John said. “Did you do that kind of thing back then, when we were doing all that fishing together? All those years? Were you doing it that time I came down and you killed that one by flipping her over on her back and letting her die by suffocating?” Sydney nodded. “Well, why in the hell didn’t you tell me?” John asked. “It might have made a difference. At least to me. In a lot of ways. For a lot of reasons.”

Sydney’s smile widened as he looked at John for a long time. “Because you never asked,” he finally said softly. “And because men like you are all alike. You think you know what is best and that your way is the only way. I figured that enough time had gone by for you to calm down, and I’d just pay you a visit tonight and set the record straight. So, here’s your broom John Marks. Start swinging and stop talking and thinking about everything. You always did that and it’s time to stop. We don’t have a lot of time and we’ve got a lot to do. It’ll be dawn before you know it.”

They worked and talked for the next three hours without stopping. All the stories of so many fishing trips together, their friendship, all the cold beer, hard-boiled eggs, dancing and drinking at the local bistro, the ladies at the bar, the damned mosquitoes and all those fish they caught. But nothing more was said about the turtle Sydney had killed that day or why Sydney had returned tonight.

When the last baby turtle was safely in the water and the birds were gone, John and Sidney could feel the water running around their ankles. The tide was running out. So was the time, and they both knew it. John knew what would happen next and he watched as Sydney straightened up as best he could and look directly into John’s eyes. John returned his gaze and both men had a sadness in them. “Don’t try so hard,” Sydney said quietly. “You and I are what we are, and our lives cannot be changed. It’s too late for that.”

He turned away from John and slipped quietly into the dark waters. My God! Mark said to himself. He can still swim like a fish, as he watched Sidney swimming away. And he always could outfish me. No matter how hard I tried. He was always the best. As John watched, Sydney grew smaller and smaller until he finally disappeared into the rolling darkness of the open sea.

John turned and walked slowly back to his cabin, pulled the covers over his tired shoulders, and went to sleep as a Southern Cross spread across the diamond skies in ten million points of perfect light. He never saw Sydney or the turtles again.

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