The Voice of the Turtle

A shriek on the other side of the island pierced the pristine stillness and echoed across the water. Esther Allan didn’t see the predator. She didn’t know its victim. The sun climbed through the dense fog shrouding the woods along the Fox River, and glowed down through the mist like a bloodshot eye peering through a frosted window. As the small party shoved off from Devil’s Island, the raft swung out into the channel and drifted lazily with the current. Clad in a faded blue cotton dress and poke bonnet, Esther sat on the small trunk with her hands clenched in her lap, wary blue eyes darting from one side of the river to the other. “When are we gonna get there?” Albert asked. Esther gave her son a sharp glance and laid a warning finger over her lips. The child scowled, then folded his hands over his dangling legs and gazed at the family’s possessions piled in the center of the raft, his mother’s chair perched precariously on top of the heap with its rockers arched against the sky. “There’s got to be some open land here somewhere,” Edmund Allan said. He propped a booted foot on the handle of the steamer trunk and stroked his beard, his hungry dark eyes scanning the distant hills. The sky hugged the ground so low that he couldn’t see what lay over the nearest woods or the shortest hill. In the two days they’d spent on the river, plying every cross stream, he’d seen few adequate sites. A fish jumped close to the raft, snatched a dragonfly and sank back out of sight. Their pilot smiled. “Walleye, most likely. This here’s a lazy river. Can’t support more’n perch and bluegill. Walleye’s about as big as it can handle. Up north is where the good fishin’ is. Don’t need bait or line. Just dip in the fryin’ pan and set it to the fire full of trout.” Esther forced a polite smile. To hear Hank talk, you’d think Wisconsin was the Garden of Eden. That there’s something in the atmosphere that makes things grow and replenish themselves so fast that you never run out of anything. Chop a tree down and three more grow in its place, almost overnight. Kill any game animal and ten more come to the funeral. Plow the soil, scatter your seeds, and then stock up on the bushel baskets. Maybe his stories were true. Ducks and cranes skimmed along the edge of the marsh. White-tailed deer, wearing the red summer coats, leaped through the catttails and bounced into the underbrush. Coons, opossum, fox, and mink scurried out of sight as the raft glided past. Muskrats poked their ugly snub-noses up through the murky water, then dived into the liquid darkness again. None were critters she’d care to share her home with. Edmund was certain they would have fine crops if they settled here. Nothing but green met the eye for as far as one could see—from the lime-green of the new prairie grass and marsh hay to the dark forest green of the oak groves and pines. Even the river was green, marsh grass waving with the current at its edges, its surface layered with lily pads. Hank had told them there was more green in one acre of Wisconsin than in all the far west put together, and he ought to know; he’d been to the Rockies and back. “Can’t figure why a body’d want to go that far just to get sparse,” he’d said over the campfire. “You get out there in, say, Wyomin’ territory and a poor cow has to take a walk for ever’ blade of grass. Here she can stand in one spot and graze all day. You make camp out west and you got to tramp for an hour just to come back with an armful of kindling that ain’t hardly fit for burnin’ nohow. Here you can burn all night with just what you clear off to pitch a tent.” “Hold up, there,” Edmund said to the pilot. He pointed toward the western horizon. “See that over there? Just over those trees. Looks like a big rock sticking up out of the hill.” Albert jumped of the trunk and tugged at his father’s sleeve. “Let me see, too.” Edmund lifted the boy up to his shoulder. “Right up there. From that rock we could see more land. Know what that means?” The boy’s eyes grew wide. “No, Pa.” Edmund laughed and set him back down. “It means we could stake a bigger claim. Now we have to find a way to get up there.” Esther stared at the small pink speck far up the slope. A wide stretch of marsh and red thicket lay between themselves and the hill where the rock stood. Its quiet isolation frightened her. “Shouldn’t we turn back, Edmund?” she pleaded. “We’ve passed flatter land than this with less woods to clear.” “Nonsense!” he scoffed. “This may be just the site we’re looking for.” The raft slid past a large grassy bog, and a new stream opened, leading back into the marsh. “Well, this is luck,” Hank drawled. “Here’s a slough.” “What’s a slough?” Albert asked. “An inland stream. See how the water runs out into the river?” Albert pointed and called, “Look, Ma! It’s a slough!” Cattails and marsh hay hemmed them in on both sides. A dead fish lay washed against a bog, a covey of bluebottles feasting on its bloated white belly. Esther held her nose against the stench, then noticed a clump of wild irises with delicate purple heads just beyond the fish. She glanced up at the strip of blue sky overhead. It doesn’t help, Lord, she thought. You can put all the rare flowers you want in here, but it’s still a stinking swamp. As the raft moved on up the slough, the tall grass and cattails yielded to pussy willow. Here was the red thicket that could be seen from the river, and just ahead, a giant willow leaned over the water from the west bank. Hank pushed the raft through it’s curtain and out into the sunlight. A yellow clay bank stood like a stucco wall beside them, and beyond it was the hill. “Look at it, Esther!” Edmund gasped. June grass covered the hill, rippling like the fur on a cat’s back stroked by the invisible hand of the wind. And at its summit the red granite boulder bulged from the earth, shining like a beacon in the sun. “Tie up the raft and come along,” Edmund said to Hank. “When I stake my claim, you’ll be my witness.” By the time Esther and Albert caught up with him, Edmund was already standing on top of the rock, shouting, “What a claim! Open valleys to the north, south and west, with woods all around. A hundred and fifty acres easy!” “My mind’s made up,” Edmund said. “There’s no better site than this.” He drove his heel into the ground and turned over a lump of sod. “The soil is so soft I could pull the plow through it myself. We’ll have all the burning wood we need, and plenty of game, and there’s building wood in that pine grove to the north. We’ll put the cabin right over there so this rock will sit right in the door yard. And Hank will help us haul our truck to the county seat to file the claim, and then come back with us to clear a road and raise the buildings.” Laughing, he lifted Esther by her thick waist and swung her around until her feet flew off the ground. Esther swallowed her apprehensions and laughed with him. If she objected to this site, he would only turn against her but not against his dream. She would have to end the tug-of-war in her head—the hope that he had chosen wisely, and the fear that he had not. When he set her back on her feet, she folded her hands over her swollen belly and gazed at the spot where the cabin would stand, where this baby would be born, where she would probably have to live for the rest of her life. As the rafted headed back up the Fox River, a bald eagle carrying a struggling rabbit in its talons landed on the rock at the top of the hill.