RE Bunch

From the Journal of Leticia Le-Rang-Par-Duex

Of all the critters that come up to my back dock I think it’s the turtles I like most.

You got all manners of snakes, possum, raccoons, other gators, and beasts that I’m not certain if normal folk even have names for living in the By-Blow. Normal folk, the folks from out of town or don’t care to live close to the swamps. Normal folks will never know this place, and even if they did, it only ever be to them some god forsaken mud puddle surrounded by spiny thickets and swarms of mosquitoes. It’s a good home, my unspoiled paradise. 

Of all the critters that come up to my dock it’s the turtle I often take pity on. They’re peaceful, quiet. When things go quiet that’s often when all the trouble starts. Kids can be deathly silent when they start their mischief. You’ll never hear them as they slip away from their watchful parents as they sneak closer to the water’s edge. Gators sinking low into the mud, holding their breathes for the right moment. Not often with turtles. Turtles never start any trouble with their quietness. They hide deep under the mud, looking for little mud bugs and grubs to eat. They come to the surface to take a breath or bask in all of the warm afternoon glory, then back down they go. Simple. Going along to get along. No trouble unless you stir it up for them. They’ll finish it, but not start it up.

Bolin can’t stand them. Mama Paris loves to tell the story of why baby Bolin never has had the time of day to even spit on a turtle. I was a small baby at the time tucked away in my bassinet, so I can’t speak to it. Bolin hardly ever speaks to anything, but boy, does he go red when Mama starts talking about it. You could stop traffic with how bright his face burns when Mama begins to giggle.

So, Mama Paris always starts with a hooting laugh when she brings it up. She had only been caring for Bolin for a little while at that point. Mama Paris, Paris back then, found Bolin basking in the late afternoon sunlight on the edge of the lake by our house. A small boy, no older than five, just kicking his bare feet in the mud. Not an ounce of hesitation in his body as he walked along the banks of the clear water. From Bolin’s account, he had never known another ma before Mama Paris. Never had a pa neither, but figured those details were unimportant. Did not matter to him one bit then. Just Bolin fighting the swamp, and the other critters who live in it. If you were in his way, he was going to get you out of it by any means. Mama Paris said as a child Bolin had more teeth in his mouth than his mind could make sense to do with. You could point at a scar on any of Mama Paris’s limbs, and she could tell you exactly how Bolin clamped down on her. He’s always been feral with a good heart. Mama could always see that in him. She cared for that boy immediately, holding on to him until that storm passed over him.

Bolin has always been the best swimmer. He’s better than fish are at it. He can dive into the murk without making a splash, and come up with five of the largest cat fish. Those poor fish never saw him coming neither. However, the turtles always do. Big or small, like sunken rocks at the bottom, they are watching what you’re doing in their home. Sometimes they got something to say about it. Which is how Bolin got into his trouble.

In July the heat is belligerent around here. There’s no arguing with it, begging it to stop. It beats you to the wooden boards, taking with it the water of the lake. It mocks you by suffocating you by boiling the water on the breeze. Bolin’s trick is to just stay in the water and mud for as long as possible. Its more tolerable to be swimming wet, then to live in the dry stickiness of sweat and humidity.

As Bolin was rooting along the muddy bottom of the lake, he was looking for little mud bugs and other small critters calling the murk its home. Long flat worms shooting further in the ground, and tiny little claws clipping around after them. Bolin was diving down, grabbing the small crawfish up, and bringing them up to the sweltering sunlight. He’d play with them. Using two to click their claws at each other. Beating the poor critters against each other until they lost a leg or tore a claw off. Leaving little brown twitches of legs and claws floating around the water. After it’d stop squirming in his hand, he’d throw the crawfish back into the water to look for a fresh one. Mama Paris says empathy is something you learn over time from with another.

As the crawfish drift down to the silt below, a snapping turtle was watching Bolin. Its large bumpy shell looked like a twisted rock, its head just so out of its shell to witness the massacre happening above him. It was ancient. The turtle had watched things born in the water, to watch a few generations later leave the shallows for good. It watched giants fall. Saw new giants rise up out of the dirt to return back to it a short while later. It was not out of any pity the turtle did what it did, turtles don’t feel like that. It was food, food he did not have to work for. Snapping turtles are not fussy enough to care about how and why, but glad to be there at the right time. As the turtle swam closer it caught the glimmer of the light. A wiggle of something fleshy. Something warm and still alive in the water. It went in to get its reward for being patient.

Mama Paris was in the kitchen, listening to lazy humming of bugs and splashes of water. She had the corner of her eye to the spot where Bolin was playing. Half convinced that Bolin was going to be fine out there, and the other half convinced that if he were to be un-fine that he would never scream to let her know it. She was chopping onions at the time. Lost in the rhythm of the work. The onion stinging her eyes and nose, the oppressive heat seeping into the house, and drool sound of a baby sleeping. Completely convinced that this day would be as unremarkable as the day before it. A day that you lived through but would not be able to account for its passage.

A wail rose up sharply from the swamp, extinguishing all other sound before extinguishing itself entirely. Mama Paris’ heart stopped as she looked out into the clear unbroken water. Like the water that gives us life had taken it back. Capricious. To mama the sound ripped a panic through her, she did not feel the knife slice through her hand as she ran outside.

Mama Paris was screaming for Bolin to come up from the water. Now, Bolin was not a mindful child, but if Mama Paris sounded rattled he would sheepishly crawl up from the lake back to the house. This time was different though. Blood running down her hand onto the boards as she paced along the creaking boards, her voice going hoarse from calling for him. This time was different as pain rocketed from her chest when she saw the dark spot blossom up like a hyacinth. No bubbles, no sound, unbroken water growing darker. Mama Paris jumped right into the silt turned water.

Mama was never much a swimmer, more times than not her swimming was more like half drowning, but she had to find Bolin down there. That boy had already twisted his knife deep into her. She said she could not hear, and hardly see her hands in front of her, but she pushed forward in her awkward dive below. Terror guiding her along the bottom of toppled tree limbs, and decay. Bumping against strange, alien bodies of creatures drifting along the stillness. Unconcerned by her clawing strides and indelicate kicks stirring up more mud around her.

An eternity passed in seconds as a light headedness pulled her to surface. She gulped hot air while spitting the mud from her mouth. Mama Paris screamed for Bolin again, to be meet with her own voice echoing against her waterlogged ears. The darkness was spreading further, almost touching her. She pulled as much of the boiling air into her lungs as she pulled herself back under the water. As she pulled herself closer into the growing cloud of silt stirring up, she heard a soft thumping before her. Her heart racing in the darkness of the cloud as she finally pulled into something warm.

A small fist swung wildly into her face. It stunned her for a moment, the pain being overridden by joy as it violently struck back again. She felt the tiny boy thrash against her as she tried to find hold of his arms. She ripped the small strong boy into her chest, and began to drag him upwards. She felt him try to roll away, trying to drag them both back to the bottom. She grabbed the boy who was now screaming bubbles up to the surface, as she pulled him closer to the surface.

“Let me go!” Bolin broke the surface shouting. “Let me go, you witch!”

Mama Paris was sobbing as she pulled the fighting Bolin closer to her.

“It bit me! Let me kill it! It has to die!” His little milk teeth sinking into her soft wet arm. Her face numbed and vision blurring, as she held onto him tightly. Joy and relief subliming into rage and frustration. Mama was bawling, hyperventilating, with no control of the tiny boy who was trying to go back down beyond her reach again. A child dead set on drowning himself to seek a meaningless revenge.

Her hand, swollen and gushing blood, moved on its own as it came smashing into the boy’s tender cheek. The sharp angle of his cheek cut deeper into her palm, sending a shooting star of grief and pain down her arm into Bolin’s face. It was first time she ever saw Bolin’s hard eyes soften. His lip quivered as the blood in his face ran out. The same silence that terrified a few moments ago, began to fill the space between them. Only broken by the hiccup of Mama’s rattled breathing.

“I’m sorry Mama Paris,” Bolin whispered.

“Don’t you ever scare me like that.” Mama wheezed. Her blood jittering in her body, her head throbbing as she hugged the boy into her. “Don’t ever scare me Bolin.”

Mama Paris said that was the first time he ever called her Mama. Bolin never forgot that day, taking few different things away. That Mama always knows best. Mama would do anything for him, risking her own life to save him from himself. Bolin also took away a deep hole through his foot, and deep hatred for those who hid in mudded bottom. Calling it cowardice, and a lack of skill in survival. He made up his mind that day that they all had to go to be safe from that sort of pollution of integrity. Taking it’s backbone with him to display. There is not a turtle that glides past our dock that doesn’t fear the dark shadow of Bolin.

I’ve always felt it to be foolish. Needlessly spiteful of a little accident. But if he’s going out of his way, why let them go to waste? Waste not, want not. It doesn’t hurt that they are damn tasty too.

Turtle Soup

• 2 1/2 lbs turtle meat – bones add flavor
• 4 bay leaves
• Salt
• 1 c flour
• 8 TBSP lard
• 2 celery stalks, minced
• 1 green bell pepper, minced
• 1 onion, minced
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 4 to 5 crushed tomatoes, canned works too
• Worcestershire sauce to taste, when you got it
• 1 TBSP sweet paprika
• 1/2 tsp cayenne, or to taste
• 1/2 c dry sherry, when you got it
• 1/3 c chopped parsley
• 2 hard-boiled eggs, chopped
• 1 lemon, for zest and juice
• Black pepper, to taste

1. Start by making the turtle stock. Put the turtle meat into a large pot and cover with 8 cups of water. Add the bay leaves and about a tablespoon of salt. Bring to a boil and skim the scum that floats to the top. Drop the heat to a bare simmer and cook until the turtle meat wants to fall off the bone, about 2 to 3 hours.
2. Remove the meat from the pot and pull it off the bones. Chop to desired sizes. Bolin likes big chucks of meat, Mama likes bite sized. I try to please both. Reserve the meat and some broth in a pot set over low heat to keep warm.
3. In a Dutch oven or other soup pot, melt the butter over medium-high heat and stir in the flour. Cook this, stirring constantly, to make a roux the color of peanut butter, which will take about 10 to 15 minutes. Let the roux sit unattended, you’re going to get burnt paste that’s near impossible to scrap off.
4. Add the green pepper, celery and onion and cook for about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook another minute. Add the chopped turtle meat and stir to combine.
5. Stir in a cup of the turtle stock at a time until the soup is the consistency of gravy. Add the tomatoes, Worcestershire sauce, cayenne and paprika. Add more turtle broth until the soup thins a bit. It should be thicker than water, thinner than gravy — like chicken and dumplings. I can only help you so much, you need to experience some stuff to know some stuff. Simmer gently for 15 minutes, or until the vegetables are soft.
6. Finish the soup with the sherry, parsley, lemon zest and hard-boiled eggs. Add them all, stir to combine and simmer for a minute or two. Add salt, black pepper and lemon juice to taste. Serve alone or with rice.