The Back of the Turtle Read Online Free PDF Page A

she’s built, she figures to stay put. A trailer’s more compliant. Ye doesn’t likes where ye have come ashore? Well, just drop the hitch on the ball and away ye go. Trailer’s the better companion. Happy on the road or off. All love for ye and your caprices, and no complaining.”
    Through the quartering fog, Gabriel could see a blue glow twinkling in the distance.
    “Ocean Star Motel,” said Crisp. “The boy’s poorly lit, but a sweet neighbour.”
    He waved a hand over the water, as though he expected the sea to part.
    “The Apostles is good exercise at low tide, if ye have no aversion to climbing about on carcasses and bones. But watch your back. The sea’s a shifty slut. She’ll tide in behind and suck ye up in a salty slurp.”
    “I’m not sure how long I’ll stay.”
    “There’s wisdom enough in that for shirts and pants to fit us all.” Crisp ran a hand through his beard, and it crackled and flashed in the pale light. “Will ye be needing a chair?”
    “Chair?”
    “For the deck,” said Crisp. “So ye can sit and imagine to have some say in creation. Would ye object to such an assembly?”
    “No, a chair would be nice.”
    “And what will it be?” Crisp clapped his hands together. “One for solitude, two for friendship, or three for society?”
    Gabriel tried to remember if Thoreau had had a preference. “One should be enough,” he said.
    “Then I’ll do that. Nothing illustrious or imposing. Won’t charge for the improvement, and I’ll still give ye the fugitive rate.”
    “Fugitive rate?”
    Crisp stepped in close and lowered his voice. It came with the smell of garlic and wet wool.
    “Folks used to come to the Bay for all manner of reason. Vacations, festivities, family, friends. All that before The Ruin, of course. Now, most of what gets washed up on this parcel of purgatory were a fugitive. Broadsided, blistered, and beached.”
    “It’s a fine trailer.”
    “Course it’s impolite to ask a man what’s disturbing his shadow, and sometimes a man don’t know precisely what set him on the hurry. But when he gets here, when he gets here, he’s clean out of run. For here be the land as we stand, and there be the water as we see.”
    “I’ll take it.”
    “Birds,” said Crisp, holding his arms out so that his coat caught the wind. “We might have prospects for an escape, if we be birds.”
    CRISP came by the next morning.
    “If ye must have a chair, a rocker is what’s required,” he said, as he dropped the tailgate of his pickup. “Like riding an ocean swell or resting safe in your mother’s arms.”
    “You made this?”
    “We used to sit on the ground,” said Crisp. “And we used to walk on all fours.
    “This is a nice chair.”
    “And for all the good truth will do us, we were happier then.” Crisp walked to the edge of the deck. “Have ye a name somewhere about your person?”
    Gabriel nodded. “Several.”
    “A name for every occasion,” said Crisp. “The Indians do such a thing, I’m told. Collect names as they’re earned or as they appear. In that, I’m a poor man with but one name to drag about.”
    “Nicholas is a fine name.”
    “It covers a territory, it does. St. Nick. Old Nick. Christmas and hell. And all the bleeding nicks of life in between.”
    “Gabriel. Mostly, I’m called Gabriel.”
    “Gabriel!” Crisp’s voice rushed through the trees like a truck in a tunnel. “Now there’s thunder and storm. The best-loved of the four angels. The one chosen to announce the birth of John the Baptist and to reveal the Qur’an to Muhammad. It’s Gabriel what tells Mary about the road ahead.”
    Nicholas shook his head with delight.
    “Dante made Gabriel the chief of the angelic guards placed at the entrance to paradise. Did ye know that? And if the creative artsare your butter and jam, there’s a movie called
Constantine
what has a Gabriel who betrays heaven and joins forces with the Dark Lord.” Crisp’s eyes flashed in the fading light