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spotted it and Eddie who had hoisted it up by the tail before we knew what he was doing. He would have made a superb photograph: handsome teenage boy holding aloft a vanquished, prehistoric monster.
    Standard procedure when you are an unsupervised adolescent in possession of a snapping turtle is to bait it with a branch the width of a broom handle, in the hope that it will snap the branch in half. In my experience the turtle never does, regardless how you prod it. Somewhere in that ancient brain it knows that you are an idiot with a stick, to be endured, and that tomorrow there will be fish to catch. It can’t, like other turtles, withdraw into its shell, but, serious and adult, it will not rise to your childish taunts.
    This turtle, held upside down in Eddie’s grasp, was remarkably composed. There was nothing he could do, and he knew it, so he held still.
    Eddie’s voice shot up an octave as he shouted to us.
    “My old man shot one of these things twice with a twelve gauge! Didn’t even leave a scratch!”
    I grabbed a branch and held it near the turtle’s head, but he didn’t strike.
    “Let’s take him home,” I said. I had never heard of anyone keeping a snapping turtle as a pet. It would be like having a cross between a Sherman tank and a dinosaur in your backyard, much better and more original than a snake or a tarantula in a terrarium.
    “Yeah, cool,” said Eddie.
    “You got a lake?” said Shane.
    Eddie pulled a face.
    “Seriously,” he said. “Let’s take it home. Maybe let him loose at the mall.”
    “How are you going to feed him?” said Shane.
    “We’ll turn it loose after. Maybe find a swimming pool.”
    It had been my idea, but I could see that Shane was right. Even if we just took the turtle to show off for the afternoon there was nowhere to release him unless we drove all the way back to the pits. Eddie wouldn’t care about a thing like that, though.
    “I got this twine,” said Eddie. “I’m gonna make him a harness.”
    In no time Eddie got the twine looped around each leg and tied in a neat square over the shell, with twenty feet of lead in his hand.
    “How you gonna get that off?” said Shane.
    “I ain’t got it on yet,” said Eddie. He was making a decorative loop around the turtle’s tail.
    “If it catches on something he’s gonna be one slow turtle. Watch the legs,” said Shane. “Make sure the twine doesn’t cut in.”
    “Shit,” said Eddie. “You couldn’t cut this mother with a chainsaw.”
    “Yeah, well,” said Shane, “don’t do that either.”
    The turtle had barely moved. We thought he might even be dead, but every ten minutes or so he craned his neck a fraction of an inch to watch one of us. Eddie christened him Slo-Mo, which turned shortly into just Moe.
    I am not sure exactly why we went out in the boat. I think Eddie wanted to see if Moe could pull us along or even catch us a fish. The commonest fish in those waters were mournful catfish three and four feet long with faceplates like steel. They’re delicious deep-fried.
    Once Eddie had him trussed, we walked a half mile around the lake’s edge to where the boat lay, with Eddie lightly swinging Moe at arm’s length in the harness at one point and Shane wincing every time Moe bounced off a tree.
    “Didn’t your mom ever buy you a yo-yo, man?”
    Eddie laughed, but Shane was serious.
    We got in and shoved off, but by that time we had stopped talking about turtles. The whole thing was turning into work. I was rowing, facing Shane in the stern with Moe on the floor between us. Eddie was in the bow issuing occasional orders. He seemed to think he knew where the lake was deepest and he wanted to try Moe there. In between his orders there was no sound but the creak of the oarlocks and the swish of the oars.
    “Your dads is both professors, huh?” said Eddie.
    “They share the same office,” said Shane.
    “Cool,” said Eddie.
    There was a lull.
Creak
,
swish
.
    “My dad makes