Both boys were covered in cornfield dust up to their armpits from gathering the turtles, and the turtles themselves were white with it, like they’d been shook up in a bag of frying flour Fish’s mom used to batter chicken halves. It was a dry spring. The tractors that dragged the soil smooth last week raised dust clouds that hung in the air for hours. A frigid winter with too much snow, and now a spring without rain. The winter was hard on the wildlife. When what snow there was first melted, the boys found three deer lying dead in the woods beneath a cedar tree, eyes milky and open. It looked as if the animals had grown too tired of the cold and decided to lie down for a while, amazed that a winter so cold could exist even this far north. “Poor damn things,” Fish had said, after hesitantly prodding one with a stick to prove death didn’t bother him.
On the opposite side of the asphalt road, the ditch met marsh water. The water was cold and dark with silt, and the wet bank seeped into the toes of the boys’ shoes as they squatted down to free the snappers. As they lowered each leathery creature into the water, the turtles seemed awakened by it. The way the dust washed away. The suddenness of submersion. The turtles craned their little heads forward and waved their legs and swam away into the silt and water. They were like pigeons taking flight in pairs from the roof of Fish’s grandpa’s barn, aimless and erratic, surprised.
“Last one,” said Fish, holding a kicking turtle over the water. Bread had already emptied his shirt and now washed his hands in the marsh. He sat back on his heels looking very satisfied as Fish freed the baby snapper. If Fish could pray the way his mom prayed, which was without ceasing and for everything, he would say a prayer for these turtles. He felt happy for them, or at least happy with himself, but he worried too. They were so small to be out in the marsh. They were each of them alone out there. Fish couldn’t decide whether to admire or mourn them.
“Good luck,” he said in a whisper, rubbing his palms together in the water and then looking up at the position of the sun. It was about to sink toward the treetops of Claypot. His smile faded as he saw the town again, saw the rusted tin roof of Bread’s old man’s house.
“What are you going to say?” asked Fish.
“To the turtles?” Bread asked. The boys watched the surface of the marsh water as if waiting for the tiny heads to pop back up. They never came. After their dry march through the unplanted field, they wanted to stay buried in the silt for a good long while.
“To your dad, I meant,” said Fish, and then regretted saying it at all.
Bread looked up from the water. His neck tightened. “Oh,” he said, and looked back at the marsh.
The water’s surface was filled with light. On the banks, last year’s grass lay brown and matted, but a good six inches of new growth poked through. Fish picked a flat blade of marsh grass, ran his fingers against its coarse grain, pretended to be interested in it. Then inspiration struck. There was a chance.
“My grandpa has more work for me to do tomorrow,” said Fish. “You could help again if you want.” He paused and gauged Bread’s reaction, and then he purposefully brightened his voice as if he just came up with what he was really trying to say. “Why don’t you not go home at all? You can come spend the night again. My grandpa can call.”
Bread shook his head. “My old man said to get home,” he said, standing up and swatting dust from the knees of his jeans. “He meant yesterday.”
SOME DAYS THE BOYS MADE A GAME OF DREAMING UP WAYS TO RID Bread of his old man. They sunk the man in the marsh once. Another time they tied him up in raspberry bushes and let black bears get him. They ran him down with countless trucks and tractors, and they once buried him up to his neck in an anthill they found behind the barn. The game was a way of deadening the blows of Bread’s real life. Bread would come out to Fish’s grandpa’s for a few days at a time. He’d arrive with stories about falling down steps or crashing his bike, and his face and neck would get so red with shame that the bruises seemed to fade. Always, though, by the time he left the farm the bruises had more or less yellowed. It wasn’t every time. But it happened.
One evening when Bread spent the night, Fish overheard his grandpa talking with Bread on the porch, asking him how bad it was at home. Bread hardly answered him, until Grandpa offered to go and talk to his old man, which Bread quickly refused. Fish overheard the talk from inside the kitchen where he filled a glass with water. He tiptoed to the porch door and leaned close to the screen.
“He just gets mad,” said Bread. “He’s usually always mad.”
“He drink every night?” asked Grandpa, and after a pause, “He ever mess with them guns when he’s drunk? Hmm.”
Fish could smell the dust in the screen and felt a bad sort of envy about his friend. Fish’s grandpa spoke to Bread as if he were an equal. Fish hadn’t experienced that. Ever since Fish started spending summers at his grandpa’s farm, he sensed his grandpa was somehow ill at ease around him. His grandpa was strong and gentle and good, but there was a certain distance between them that never allowed them to talk about real things, big things. They could talk easily about baseball players, or truck tires, or what needed doing around
