Turtle Skull Rocks

By Valentin Isaac Abducens 

It was a cool cobalt morning and all the mosquitos were still in bed.  But the heat descended on them like an electric blanket.

-It’s going to get hot as fuck, said Bill.

Greg was busy tying the kayaks down to the roof of the car, rocking them back and forth and yanking on the straps to ensure stability.  The percolator flicked bubbles angrily on the propane burner and Bill took it off and poured two cups.  Greg stood back in the black eyed susans to admire his handiwork, a blue one and an orange one, upside down on the roof, giving the car a sleek 23^rd century haircut.  His sandy brown head titled to the side, in a brown plaid unbuttoned shirt, pointy Hitchcock nose, and neon green swim trunks like a graffitied statue.

-I’m going to throw some shit in the dry box, said Greg, flinching out of his trance. 

Bill settled into his lawn chair and looked off to the Illinois horizon, legs extended in the direction of his vision.  Over his flip flops, the earth was like the end of a flame, as the wavy fuzzy heat tickled the corn.  He sipped his coffee while the vapor rose up around his unkempt beard out of his nose and mingled with the steam.  Then Greg’s smoke withered its tentacles over to his friends and joined the congregation.  Greg poured out a cup of old water filled with grass and clover from yesterday and a toad appeared.  It was a magical toad conjuring potion.  Bill watched it hop through the grass like a deer though the trees over his cup, it scrambled and stopped and winked.  The cool mud in the tiger lilies was an air conditioned refrigerator, and the toad chilled his skin in the alcove. 

Bill walked around the house to look out over the pond and across the fields from the vantage point of the high hill at Hamilton Grove.  His bright blue shirt and orange trunks matched the kayaks and flipped in the breeze.  Somewhere out there the Rock River relaxed and napped.  Last year it flexed its full muscles and and throbbed out of the beans and corn, thrashing across roads and into yards.  He heard one of the car doors and rolled back between the house, passed an empty Lagunitas bottle with its label removed to store homebrew, the green bottle cap marked with a sharpie near the chicken eggs.  MSCS.  Moose Spit Coffee Stout.  A chicken scattered and the black lab looked up with his icy eyes, deciding whether to act on the situation, before he thought of the coming heat and settled his chin back on his paws. 

Bill tossed the dregs into the weeds, and hopped in the car while Greg set the poles in the back seat with a tackle filled with spinners and jigs.  They pulled out of the lane, past the silo to make the run to Mt. Carroll. 

Greg peered out his sunglasses by the old drive-in theater, thinking of the pastels of the Kickapoo, the state park ranger smoking a cigar and waving from the shore, camping against the rock bluff with a raging fire.  Hawks gliding above, understanding and showing their beige feathers, a cloak as smooth as ice.  Bill kayaking with force and fear as a first timer for a mile, before relaxing his mind knot chilling as an angry back paddler pounded by to retrieve something her niece mistakenly left at the last sand bar.  Her face contorted in strain like a wringed towel and Bill laughing despite himself, while waiting for Greg to glide up and say, wow, the Kickapoo is like a comfortable pillow.

And the fluorescence of the Brule, the sand bar inlet, sluicing into the waves, and Superior like an ancient sea imposing its untamed will, rougher and more formidable than any saline Asian behemoth.  The rock and roll to their pop music.  Johnny Cash to their modern country.  Faulkner to their Chekhov.  A scofflaw, wild.  The way those storms blew past was like being in Colorado.  Kayaking into Lake Superior after it flattened out, rolling down level IIs, and the two storms, each quicker than a dog’s shake, revealing the sun and sky the rest of the time.  They portaged and drank New Glarus while in the brief shower, sharing jokes with a couple kids from Michigan.

The Waukarusa winds through the southern reaches of the Driftless.  And the road off the flat bluff up through Morrison began to hit peaks and valleys.  They took a side road down the gravel, kicking up dust over the fields and then silence - like the sound when you hit a tunnel as they glided over the watered down quarter mile in front of a farm house.  An 8 year old in a cubs cap on a tractor, with dad in the wagon loading hay, and past the dairy cows clustered like casino dwellers at the buffet. 

They came into Mt Carroll on the back end, through a potholed street and up to the deserted college.  The abandoned brick buildings always came to life, and they could see the students in the 50s, 60s and 70s laughing and learning and they would wonder what the college was, and whether they could buy it and start their own.  And then the students disappeared like apparitions, except a woman in a window, behind a green space on the second floor of a red brick building in the affectionate shade of a friendly maple.

-Greg.

He looked up and saw her too.  Her eyes weren’t harsh.  They were bright, and her hair was long and dark gray, scraggled off to one side.  It was sandy brown when she was younger, and it was evident.  Her face like the smooth bluff rock in the river.  She didn’t wave, she didn’t lift an arm, but her eyes moved, following their car to the stoplight.  Then she was out of sight. 

-My mom’s old college friend is going to meet us, said Greg, breaking the tension. 

They pulled into park past the Frisbee golf holes and a mom fishing with her son to a woman leaning against her car back by a small gazebo.   Large oaks kept a comfortable distance from each other on the mowed lawn.  She threw down a cigarette, flicked her brown hair back as she pulled her angular frame in a sky blue t-shirt and jeans off her car, smiled and waved.  Greg lifted his arm off the side of the car to wave back and turned the wheel to pull up alongside her. 

-Greg!

-How’s it goin Lucy.

After coming out of the hug, she hurried to grab something from her car.

-I brought you something. 

She presented him with two thick orange, brown tumbler glasses, colored like the swirl of a smoothie infused with chocolate syrup and held them up in the sun.  The shadow on the ground looked like someone spilled Tang.  A hummingbird zipped over it as if to wonder what type of ghostly nectar had spilled, but zipped quickly away and found a flower next to the trees. 

-Holy shit. 

-I thought you might like them. 

-Bill, this is my mom’s friend Lucy.  She blows glass – these must be one of your latest creations. 

-Oh yes, I’ve been getting into glasses and cups lately, I was trying to make them the same, but you can see they are both a little different.

-I have to put these in the car.

 -So Bill, how do you know Greg?

-We met in college, he was in my hall freshman year. 

-That’s how I met your mom.  We used to date a couple guys that looked just like you two.

-Jesus Lucy, come on, I don’t want to hear about that, said Greg shaking his head and smiling up at her.

-Ha ha, oh relax.

-Bill’s from Iowa Lucy, said Greg over his shoulder as he began to unstrap the kayaks.  Don’t hold that against him.

-Ha, I won’t.

-We gave him Illinois sweetcorn last night.

-Yeah, I ate it but I didn’t like it. 

Lucy laughed and jumped into the driver’s seat as Bill helped Greg set the Kayaks down in the grass.  Greg pulled out the dry boxes, coolers and fishing poles and then hopped in the driver’s seat of his car.   

-All right man, I’ll be back.

-See you in a minute, said Lucy as she slapped the side of her car and drove off with Greg following.

Bill lit a smoke and set about organizing the Kayaks and pulling them over to the water.  Once everything was ordered he watched he water ripple over the pebbles by the shore.  Here the Waukarusa is well-groomed for the park, like a European brook after centuries of human contact, but somehow younger, more vigorous, less perfect.  The park dwellers are dirtier, more robust, more rambunctious, but as quiet and placid as it can be in the Midwest.  Bill knew that the corner, less than 100 yards away, after that turn, a couple horses lived and drank from the Waukarusa, and you could rub their noses as you stopped to kick off the trip with a beer and a smoke.  And after that it was untouched – as if people and horses had never been there and the park is just a memory. 

Lucy pulled back into the park with Greg shotgun, and down the road to the edge where Bill was waiting.

-Thanks Lucy, said Bill, nice to meet you.

-No problem, have fun today, hope you catch something.  She got out and gave Greg another hug before leaving them. 

The squish of the Kayaks slurped into the river. Bill settled down and back, his cooler between his legs holding five Busch lights and a citrus IPA as strong as they make them.  His dry bag behind the seat, and his dry box keychain with the smokes on the front bungee.  They made the turn by the horses and cracked the Busch lights while Greg cast out a couple times and explained the rise and fall of the river with the rain of the last two weeks. 

-Is it low or high then?

-Just right man. 

Greg lit an old school joint this time, as he cast a couple more times, then handed it to Bill.  Bill turned at the sound of a huff, and a horse had made its way to the river upstream about 20 feet, its sides rippled as it drank and stomped in the steam.  The horse left the heat up on the ridge, and on the river the temperature and humidity fell to California. 

They pushed off again, finding the Vs, the triangles, the prisms, the pyramids at each rapid, the place to send the kayak down the chute.  They are where the confluence of water takes the best path between the rocks, and you navigate accordingly, interspersed with slow meanders to talk and float and fish.  Greg cast from his Kayak, and the clear water revealed bass reaching up for the lure, but not biting in the sun.  They were playing a game of chase, and had no intention of eating.  Breakfast was over, and dinner was a long way away.  It was like a game of tag, the lure a child that you pretend to run after, but let them get away.

-Do it again, said Bill, cast it over by my kayak.

And he was mesmerized by the large fish stalking the lure at arms length. 

-They definitely aren’t biting. 

-I know, but it is cool.  Here, I’ll cast by you.

-Oh wow, said Greg watching the fish, camouflaged by a rock, emerge and flip towards the lure, only to back off and settle back down into obscurity.

It was more fun than the catch.

Greg played music low: jam bands, Donovan, Floyd, and after a while they put the poles away and paddled around in circles in the slow area.

-Her name is Stacy, said Greg, I think she gets it.

-When did you meet her?

-It was strange, I had a bonfire last month, and a lot of people showed up.  Which might happen tonight actually.  She’ll be there anyway.  And she was sitting there on that swing on the hill, looking at the pond, and I came around to the wood pile to wheel barrow some more over.  So I see her in the dark, because the moon is fairly full.  And the stars were unreal. 

-The stars are always unreal out there.

-Yeah, but trust me, the first thing she says is that she saw like five shooting stars in like the last minute.  So I liked her from the first thing she said to me.  And the planets were out – Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Mars, all in a line low in the sky.  So I watch them with her for a while.  And we never went back to the bonfire.  Johansson ended up coming to get wood.  At least I think it was him, but by then we were already down at the bottom of the hill sitting in chairs.  She stayed that night, and then the next night we went to dinner in Prophetstown.  I’ve seen her every day since. 

-Stacy?

-Stacy.

-Did you ever have Professor Vine?

-Oh yeah.

-Really?  I never knew that.  She once said that in class, a moment in time that sparks an idea is the only thing worth being human, said Bill, mimicking the backwoods southern drawl of the Kentucky born Vine. That’s like Stacy with the shooting stars at that moment.

-Oh yeah.  Vine was great.  Called on me all the time.  Greg, I think it would be best if you could elucidate the difference between the real and the surreal as described by the text, he said imitating her.

Bill laughed.

-Holy shit I learned a lot in that class.  It’s hilarious she picked on you in your class.  In mine it was this guy Jackson, she used him as a tool almost.  The guy was hilarious.  You were the Jackson of your class.

-Oh yeah, definitely.

They winded around a bend in the river and came to a cliff face with protruding rock escarpments.

-Greg, look at this one, it’s like a turtle head coming out of its shell. 

-The next one is too.

-Oh man, look at the last one, it’s a massive one, with the head barely sticking out.  King of the turtle rocks. 

They saw them everywhere along the rock line, little ones, midsized, and then the last giant on the cliff face edge looming over the legions of turtle skulls.  They were turning, observing and ruminating about the kayakers as they weaved around the bluff.  Greg reversed paddled on one side and forward on the other to turn around so he could kayak back into an eddy and they could stop and observe.  A pebble fell off the cliff, shocking in its interruption – the crackle down the cliff and glub into the water, a sound that would be unnoticed anywhere else on the planet.  From the wedge between two turtle skulls a weathered hand reached a hold on the edge and then a white leg appeared and a woman stood on the top of another turtle head above them.  They didn’t know what to say, Greg was opening a beer and Bill had opened his dry box to grab the lighter. 

-Hello, she said.

She was naked, with long gray hair, her youthful limbs spread away from her aged breasts.  She didn’t bother to hide her body behind a rock or with her hands.  The eyes looked familiar, wise and happy.  And Bill realized that it was the same woman they saw in the abandoned building on the way into Mt. Carrol. 

-Hi, they said simultaneously, which made her smile and they felt awkward.

-How’s the water?

-Nice, said Greg. Then, not knowing what to say, he asked, are you going swimming?

She looked at Bill, then back to Greg.

-Maybe.

Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi came on the speaker.  And she disappeared, reemerging on the side of the bluff, stepping into the water.  Bill and Greg paddled back slightly as she submerged into the eddy, coming back up with her head back, water streaming off her hair and glinting in the sun like glossy minnows.  She cupped some water in her hands and splashed her face, recessing into the shadow of a turtle skull.

-Do you ever think, she said, that the path this river takes, changes much from year to year.  Maybe in inches, because the flood plain, out in the fields once held a larger stream, bounding through boulders at the recess of the glaciers?

-I had heard that.

-It’s true, she said, putting her body down into the water up to her chin.  Her hair floating around her like molten silver.  Her neck turning slightly red due to the joy of the chill. 

-Are you from here? asked Bill, not sure what to say.

She smiled again.  The smile was happy and warm, like someone filled with delight when understanding a complex joke.

-Yes, I’ve been coming to this river since I was young.  I live in the old college.  I was thinking about love, and I saw you drive through.  What do you think about love?

Bill lit a smoke.

-You mean is it real?

-It is very real.

-But it’s a feeling, said Greg to contradict to stimulate her thoughts, not as real as the rock.

-What do you see in the rock?

-Turtles.

She smiled again.

-Are they real?

-Yes, the rocks are real, but the turtles are not.

-The turtles are very real, she said, looking up to them.  They would be real if only you had seen them, and everyone sees them.  Like love, she said, everyone feels it.

-Some people don’t, said Bill, turning the paddle over to stay in place.

-No, they don’t.  Do you feel it now?

-Yes, said Bill. 

She nodded.

-That will spread, and collapse back to you again, before it bounces off stronger or weaker, depending on how much you have.  It will always rebound and gather with great force off one filled with it.  You will never lose it, but it can hide.   

A sand crane landed on a limb to regard the soiree.  The woman breathed in blissfully as she saw it, and they all felt it.

-Love isn’t conjured by anyone as a real idea, it just is…, said Greg, deeply, leaning on the side of the kayak.

-I think it’s the basis for all that’s conjured that helps, she said.

-What if it’s wrong, what if it’s a misunderstood feeling, asked Bill, playing devil’s advocate.

-Would you rather be wrong in anger or wrong in love?  Would you rather be right in anger or right in love?

-Would you rather be dead or alive? 

She laughed at that, a full hearty laugh, it was also contagious and Bill and Greg couldn’t help but join in. 

-Hey, said Bill, I’m having a party tonight, would you like to go?

-Just remember the feeling we had while you have fun tonight, she said, and thanked them, then walked back up behind the bluff as the sand crane lifted off the limb and flew up the river.  They stayed there for a while, wondering if she would come back.  But she didn’t, so they moved on down the river, hitting the Vs through a stretch of ripples.  And before it was time to get out, Greg cast one more time and caught a bass as soon as the spinner hit the water, it jumped out and flipped in the sun before he reeled it close. He filled his bag with water with one hand and held the pole, tugging and pulling at his other arm.  He set the bag between his legs, and then focused on the fish.  When he pulled it out, he plucked off the lure and slid the fish in the bag. 

-All right man, let’s go home and pick some vegetables to put on the grill with the fish.    

That night they poured mint infused bourbon over ice into the blown glass tumblers.  The grill smoked in the dusk, while Bill stacked dry clunks of ash wood into the fire pit.  It lit with a force of warmth as the night dropped.  Greg slipped the fish onto a white plastic cutting board, its mouth opening and closing like a child singing Christmas carols.  Then he chopped off the head and it rolled by the fire and opened one more time in a howl.  He set down the butcher knife and took out the shape blade to slide off the side meat from gill to tail, and placed them carefully among carrots, peppers and asparagus like a jenga stack on a tinfoil bed, and steamed it on the grill. 

Stacy showed up with friends, gave Bill a hug, and she was what Greg said she was. Everyone ate a bit of fish like a delicacy or appetizer, savoring it like a hiker seeing a view for the first time from a mountaintop.  People gathered around the fire, while some wandered behind the chickens and the fields, and others walked around the pond by the cornfield.  The music penetrated the summer darkness like a blue jay flying over the snow in winter.  Bill flitted in and out of conversations about what it was like where he lived and other conversations concerning aspects of the town that Bill found just as interesting. 

Towards the end, they laughed and talked by the remaining cars with beers on hoods and trunks.  A girl from Lyndon that Bill talked with by the pond, approached him then, in the end.  She put her arm on his shoulder and looked him in the eyes with a glare.  Her dark black hair matted on her freckled cheeks, and he could have kissed her, but it wasn’t a feeling from the Waukarusa.  It was a good feeling, but he bounced it back to her, and she caught it, and it didn’t diminish.  She looked down and then back up in to his eyes, questioning herself, and then in an instant, repressing that thought and rebuffing him.  She was like a skyscraper, like a tree on fire, like a volcano – but she caught him on the wrong day, and turned away, then jumped in the backseat of a car with a guy who fired up with her and an argument.  They pulled down the lane and into the dark country road. 

Greg closed down the bonfire with Stacy and they slept on the grass.  Bill watched Mars burn a hole in the sky from the sunroom couch, and slipped to sleep on secret thoughts of the woman from turtle skull rocks.