We grew up in a farmhouse, outside of Smithville. We didn't farm it, though - the land surrounding it was rented out to a cattle farmer, but we were allowed to roam freely on the nearly 400 acres, and we did. We spent our summers fishing and hunting frogs and crawdads, catching tadpoles and being generally awesome.
Justin often roamed alone, armed with his BB gun and slingshot, coming home filthy and stinking and happy. He was a scrawny little kid, all wiry strength and unable to hold still for longer than 2 minutes, and I think he fancied himself as some sort of mix between Daniel Boone and the Karate Kid.
From our kitchen door, you could see out over the yard, beyond the chicken coop (which didn't house any chickens) and past the big pond...the land was parceled into separate pastures, delineated with strands of barbed wire that we had learned early to climb over or shimmy beneath.
And in the distance, we could see Justin, slowly trudging homeward...dragging something unrecognizable behind him. He would stop at each line of barbed wire, hop the fence, then patiently reach beneath it and pull whatever it was underneath it.
"What does he have?" my mother asked, a mixture of despair and resignation in her voice.
"I don't know," one of us said. "But whatever it is, it's big."
Even as he reached the last fence, exhaustion evident as he slowly climbed it, then bent over, seized hold of whatever he had been dragging, and gave it one final, triumphant tug into our backyard, we could see he was also elated.
"GUYS!" he yelled. "COME LOOK! I THINK IT'S FROM DINOSAUR TIMES!"
"Oh my God," Mom said, but the rest of us went running. Dinosaur times? We were in the middle of a childhood, being raised by a father who took us "treasure hunting," who helped us dig in forgotten places and pronounced every rail tie, piece of broken glass, old penny we found as possible treasure. It surprised us not at all that our youngest brother had, perhaps, stumbled upon something prehistoric.
He couldn't drag his bounty in further, so we met him at the fence line...and stopped before we got to close. Whatever it was, it was massive.
"Is it alive?" we asked, before getting any closer.
"I don't think so," he answered. "It hasn't moved."
Cautiously, we moved closer. It was a turtle of some sort, but much bigger than any turtle we had ever seen. It was, in fact, massive - even to kids who had grown up watching snapping turtles. In my child's eyes, it seemed like the biggest turtle ever. In reality, I would guess that it weighed around 80 pounds...nearly as much as the boy who had dragged it home, his skinny, mud-splattered arms still shaking with exhaustion. Along the massive spine of its shell ran rows of spikes, giving it a look that really was distinctly prehistoric.
(Due to my extensive research that I just did in 5 minutes with Google, I'm pretty sure it was an alligator snapping turtle, which has recently been granted the endangered status in our state. Which makes sense, because they are probably dinosaurs.)
"MOM! MOM! JUSTIN FOUND A DINOSAUR!" I screamed...half-exalting, half-tattling. Because finding a dinosaur was cool, but getting my younger brother in trouble for finding said-dinosaur was maybe even cooler.
I honestly don't remember if Mom came to look at it or not...but I do remember her saying that she would let Dad handle it. Not in a threatening way, but more in a "I have 4 kids and one of them just dragged home a gigantic dead turtle" way.
And so we waited for Dad, cautiously poking at the gigantic dinosaur turtle with sticks, because although it was probably dead, we all knew that a snapping turtle could take your fingers clean-off, and that if it bit, it wouldn't let go until it thundered. (Duh.) Eventually Justin dragged it up to the concrete pad behind the chicken house, where we could better appreciate its strangeness and size and possible prehistoric-ness.
When Dad came home, dressed in suit and tie, briefcase in hand, he followed his youngest son to look at his dinosaur. Patiently, he explained that although it was not prehistoric, it was still pretty awesome, and as big as it was, probably very, very old. Casually, he said, "You should keep the shell. It would be neat to have," and then he went inside.
Justin agreed - the shell would be neat to have. And so with one last, loving look at the 80-pound alligator snapping turtle that he had dragged up to the house, he went inside, as well, leaving it on the concrete pad.
For a few days, the turtle was forgotten. It was summer, and there were creeks to play in and ball games to go to, and the library to visit. We were busy.
And then, one evening, there was a smell when we pulled up the driveway. A smell we all knew, because we were country kids. It was a dead smell. But it was faint, and beyond maybe one of us saying "Something stinks," that was it.
And the next day, the smell was stronger. And the day after, stronger still.
Early morning, hot summer, we all ran out the backdoor...and then backed back into the house. The smell hit us full in the face, like a meaty smack. A rotten meaty smack. It had gone from a vague death smell to a stench that induced dry-heaving. "What is that?" we cried...except for Justin. I'm pretty sure Justin knew.
"Justin," Mom said calmly, "what did you do with your dead turtle?" which is one of those questions that sounds strange to ask, unless you have a son. It was like we all suddenly remembered that Justin had dragged an 80 pound turtle carcass up from the pastures...and no one had asked what he had done with it after.
"Dad said I could keep its shell," Justin said.
"What did you do with it?"
"It's behind the chicken coop."
"Oh my God."
Putting our shirts up over our mouths and noses, we made our way to the chicken coop. Even with covering, the smell was overpowering. (Seriously, if we had neighbors, the cops would have been called to investigate the origin of the stench.) And as we got closer, we could hear a buzzing.
And there it was. Belly-up, marinading in its own glory, covered with a thousand flies and emanating a death stench that brought tears to the eyes and our breakfast up our throats. Justin's dinosaur had gone from curiosity to monstrosity, too foul and rotten to now move out of the yard.
"What are we going to do?" Justin asked.
"I don't know. Hose it off, I guess," Mom said.
And so Justin spent several days dutifully pulling his shirt over his nose and dragging the hose behind the chicken coop, where he sprayed his rotten dinosaur. I am not certain that this helped or not, or if just...you know, spread the turtle around.
And he never got to keep the shell, either. After days of serving as the bowl that held 80 pounds of soupy, rotten, frothy turtle carcass, I think the stench somehow permeated the shell. No amount of hosing could rid it of the stink.
When my sister became a mother, we all became aware one evening, sitting on our parents' deck, laughing and talking the same way our own parents did with our aunts and uncles, watching my sister's little ones tumble around and chase after each other, that we were now the adults. It was a heady feeling, a sweet one, too, to think that our children would grow up hearing our laughter in the background as they played. Justin himself became a father just a few months ago, to a beautiful baby boy, whom he named for our father. To no one's surprise, Justin is a great daddy, hands-on and involved and absolutely smitten with his tiny son, and he gave our family one more child to throw into the growing mix of kids to run around playing, while we sit on one of our decks and laugh.
My siblings and I could tell you a thousand stories...which I know makes us exactly like any other set of siblings, because that's what makes the brother-sister bonds so deep. It's not that you have common history, it's that you are each other's actual history. You share a code, a secret language, a blood-deep bond that goes beyond friendship and beyond family and is a mixture of both, and that mixture makes it both stronger than just friendship, and just family. It's the privilege of being able to say something like, "Remember the turtle" and know, at that moment, everyone is briefly assaulted by the memory of that smell, and hearing our small brother's triumphant yell of "I THINK IT'S FROM DINOSAUR TIMES!"
:D
ReplyDelete