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A Wonder of Nature, In Need of Killing

By Virginia Campen

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Aunt Pearl saw the creature first, through the kitchen window. “Snapping turtle,” she said, “a big one, headed toward the cow pond.” She stripped off her rubber dishwashing gloves and shut down the hot water, twisting the busted faucet stem with an old pair of pliers. “I’ll make turtle soup, if anyone has a mind to catch it.”

My Uncle Darnell didn’t respond, busy with his plate of eggs, busy sopping up yellow yolk with crumbling biscuit. On the shelf behind him the radio nattered on about swine flu, unemployment, Michael Jackson’s death.

“Bella’s going after it,” Auntie added, as frenzied barking reached us. This roused Uncle. Many a hound in the valley had lost blood or bone to a snapper, and Bella was heavily pregnant with pups that would sell for fifty bucks each. Uncle had promised me one for my 14th birthday. Not the pick of the litter, which was fine with me. I didn’t care if it was the runt.

“Campbell,” Uncle said, “run catch that dog before she gets bit. I’ll be out directly.” He poured himself a fresh cup of coffee and lit a cigarette. He’d been drinking more and more coffee lately, lingering over breakfast until the need to piss or the fumes of Auntie’s disapproval forced him up. Morning chores had become my responsibility, but it took two people to kill a snapper. One to provoke the creature with a branch or a broom handle until it bit down and refused to let go, until its soft wrinkled neck stretched out all naked and exposed. A second person to swing the axe.

I dutifully pushed away from the table and went to retrieve Bella. Outside, a cloudless pewter sky promised another day of heat. Most of the farm lay fallow, the fields invaded by seedling pines and knotweed. Uncle still worked the hayfields, raised a small herd of beef cattle, and grew pumpkins for the Halloween trade. Made enough to pay taxes and keep us fed and clothed, though the clothed part was thanks to the thrift shop and the fed part was mostly due to Aunt Pearl’s garden and chicken coop.

Out in the pasture the yearling steers huddled together, watching a humped gray shape lurch across the ground. A swath of flattened grass marked its journey up from the river. Wandering snapping turtles weren’t an unusual sight in the summer. Every year a few pulled free from the bottom mud and struck out in search of new water, though if Auntie Pearl saw them, that new water would be bubbling at the bottom of a soup pot.

Except this creature wasn’t any kind of turtle. Bella prowled stiff-legged and growling around what looked like an upside-down laundry basket, one of those round plastic tubs from the Dollar Store with holes in the sides so your dirty clothes get some air and don’t go all to mold. A puff of dark leathery skin bulged through each hole. The legs were the most turtle-like part of it, scaly and clawed, propping the body a few inches above the grass. There was no head to speak of, but as Bella circled, it swiveled to follow her movements, tracking her with a half-dozen glittering eyes arranged like those of a wolf spider.

I wasn’t yet afraid, not quite believing what was plain in front of my face. I grabbed at Bella’s collar which set her to running. She rushed at the creature, only to yelp and leap sideways when a mess of appendages exploded through the holes in the shell, jointed legs and slender tentacles, reddened crab-claws and wiry feelers all waving and lashing and colliding in an uncoordinated frenzy. The sight was both frightful and comical, an ill-made patchwork monster at war with itself. Two crawdad-sized claws grappled until one tore the other free and dashed it to the ground.

“Campbell! Grab the dog!” Uncle approached, an axe in one hand and a stout hickory branch in the other. He stopped dead when he caught full sight of the creature. After a moment of stunned silence he tossed the branch at it, landing a blow in the middle of its spidery eyes. The appendages jerked back into the shell, snick-snick-snick. In the grass the amputated claw clicked open and shut twice, then went quiet.

“Lock Bella in the barn,” Uncle said, his voice low and level. “Be quick. Bring back a couple of hoes or shovels.”

“You plan to kill it?” I matched his tone. He was a man of few words and did not take kindly to questions.

A slow grin spread across his face, yellowed teeth making a rare appearance against the dark of his beard and mustache. He looked as happy as a kid who’d found a two-headed garter snake. “Kill it? Hell no. I aim to keep it. I can make money off a freak like that.”

We hazed the creature toward the old boar pen, Uncle armed with a pitchfork and the axe, me with a hoe. On the threshold of the sty it stopped. Two whip-thin tentacles emerged from under the lip of the shell and twined firmly about the gateposts. Uncle chewed his moustache for a moment before poking at the creature with the pitchfork, lightly at first, then pushing with his full weight. The beast dropped to the earth, clawed feet disappearing. From a hole at the peak of the shell a thick tentacle arose, purple-black and ropy as a burn scar, tipped with a spiky knob the size of a cocklebur. It made quick questing motions, like a hound nosing about for a scent.

Uncle lashed out with the axe, cleaving one of the tentacles tethered to the gatepost. The cocklebur tentacle snapped back into the shell and the beast scuttled into the pen, careening off timbers and wire mesh in a frantic search for escape.

I joined Uncle in pushing the heavy gate shut. A piercing shriek startled us both. Auntie, come to assess our turtle-catching progress, stood at the far side of the pen, her eyes wide. “What in the name of Jehovah is that?” she demanded. The creature paused and swiveled toward her voice, returning her glare with its multiplicity of eyes.

“It’s a goddamn wonder of nature,” Uncle said.

“It’s an abomination, in need of killing.”

Uncle shook his head. “It’ll make us money. I’ll put it on display at the county fair, in the freak show, right next to the World’s Largest Sewer Rat and the Living Head in a Jar. Hell, folks paid a dollar last year to see Daniel Whitaker’s six-legged calf.”

I suspected Aunt Pearl had never visited a freak show, never seen Electro Boy or the Snake Woman, but mention of the Whitaker’s six-legged calf gave her pause. She’d witnessed Daniel and Doris Whitaker rolling up to church last November in a new used Chevy Blazer, with Doris bragging about how they’d paid cash thanks to the six-legged calf who, alas, died the day after the fair, victim of too much noise, too many hours under hot electric lights, and too much poking and prodding by kids eager to see its flailing walk.

“I guess,” Auntie said, giving the beast another look-over, “I guess I could talk to Doris next Sunday. Ask how they got a place at the fair, find out what permits and permission they needed.”

My heart sank. It went without saying that I’d be caring for the creature and, come October, I’d be at the fair, helping exhibit it. My classmates would come to gawk, and there’d be tourists from Allegheny, the far city that I’d never seen, tourists visiting the fair in between apple-picking and antiquing.

In the boar pen our creature resumed its examination of the fence, tentacles and claws tugging and tapping on wire and wood. Auntie moved away as it neared her, walking backwards.

“Don’t mention what we found,” Uncle cautioned. “Not a word, to the Whitakers or anyone else, neighbor or stranger.”

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That evening Bella whelped her pups. I found her nestled in her box on the front porch with six warm wriggling bodies blindly nudging her teats. She lay on her side, panting and proud. I checked each pup, counting legs and eyes and tails. They were perfect.

Here’s what I remembered of life with my mother: a trailer park next to a muddy lake, the smell of cigarettes, a mobile home filled with stacks and stacks of books. On her good days she’d take me fishing in a leaky rowboat, baiting my hook so I didn’t have to touch the worms. On her bad days she’d hide in bed and read for hours, forgetting I was by her side. When the social service lady came to take me, mom roused herself enough to pack my bag, tucking a small lacy pillow that smelled of lavender and cigarettes in with my tee shirts and tube socks. I spent a month in a foster home before being delivered to the farm.

“She went to Allegheny,” Auntie said when I asked about my mother. “I doubt she’s ever coming back. But you’ll always have a place with us. Blood is blood.”

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Uncle named the creature Cooter, which was what the old folks called red-bellied river turtles. Aunt Pearl didn’t approve of the name—she thought it sounded dirty—and vowed to never speak it. She began collecting table scraps and garden refuse in a slop bucket, just like when they had proper pigs. Every evening I lugged the bucket out to Cooter, who would scuttle to where I leaned over the fence and dumped out the slop. He’d settle on the pile of rotting vegetables and moldy leftovers like a broody hen on her nest and commence slurping and gurgling, consuming every bit.

All in all, Cooter proved easy to take care of. His scat was dry and dense, like the pellets of a great horned owl. He scratched out a depression in the dirt, a nest where he sat motionless for hours. His appendages emerged only when feeding, a few at a time, a pale display compared to that first chaotic day. This worried Uncle. “People pay a dollar to look at a freak, they expect it to move around. We need to liven him up before the fair.”

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Auntie and Uncle began sitting together at the kitchen table after breakfast. They poured each other coffee and planned how to exhibit Cooter: a portable pen, the kind that can hold a bull, or perhaps keep him locked in a slat-sided livestock trailer. They discussed whether, after the fair, they could lease Cooter to a traveling show for the winter carnivals in Florida and Texas. They considered how to spend their profits. Not on a vehicle, not like the Whitakers, but on the farm.

“We can fence in the old orchard,” Uncle said. “Turn it into a pig yard, buy a dozen shoats next spring.” Aunt Pearl smiled, jotting down notes in a spiral-bound notebook, and I realized these dour, exhausted people might have once felt joy. Uncle tipped his chair back and looked at me. “How old you gotta be before you can quit school, Campbell? We’ll need more help around the farm soon.”

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Uncle stood outside Cooter’s pen, pondering how to make him move, make him show a few crab-claws or tentacles. He’d tried loud noises – a bell, a horn – and tossing cans at the creature, which only made it hunker down.

“Open the gate,” he said, and entered armed with the pitchfork. Cooter turned to watch him. From the top of the shell, the thick ropy tentacle tipped with a cocklebur began to rise. “Move, dammit,” Uncle yelled, and stabbed Cooter with the pitchfork, sinking a tine into a scaly leg. The creature erupted into a lashing, snapping, twirling fury. Uncle jumped back but the tentacle was faster, lashing out, catching him in the belly and pulling taut, binding man and beast together for a heartbeat before the tentacle snapped and Uncle fell to the ground, his face a mask of pain. Cooter scrambled away as Uncle staggered upright, staring at a bloody hole in his shirt. A fleshy strand hung from the wound, coiling and thrashing like an earthworm tugged from the loam.

“Damn thing stung me,” he said, pinching the writhing tentacle between thumb and forefinger and stretching until the spiky knob came free with a soft wet plop. Uncle held it up for a closer look, sneered, and flung it away.

By late afternoon Uncle laid flat in bed, slick with fever from whatever poison Cooter pumped into him. He refused to tell Auntie what caused the hole in the purpling meat of his belly, refused to consider the hospital out of pride and embarrassment and for certain a fear of the bills. Auntie doctored him as best she could, cleaning the wound, laying cool cloths on his forehead, ignoring his fever-fueled rants. She pulled bills from the cookie jar where she kept her egg money and told me to watch over him while she drove to the crossroads, to buy oxycontin from the low men who gathered behind the Pick-n-Pay at all hours.

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Uncle visited the creature as soon as his fever broke, though he was still jaundiced and weak. He began spending hours leaning against the barn, smoking and gazing at Cooter.

“Are you mad at it?” I asked one afternoon, and Uncle gave me a puzzled look, as though he’d forgotten about the pain, the bloody wound.

“We need another name for him,” he said, ignoring my question. “A name to put on a big banner at the fair, to show how special he is.”

“How about Alien River Monster?”

Uncle frowned. “Cooter isn’t an alien. He crawled out of our river.”

“Mutant,” I said. “Mutant River Monster.”

Uncle smiled. He knew about mutants from the movies: X-men, Godzilla, Spiderman. “Good one, Campbell,” he said, and chucked me lightly on the shoulder.

His unexpected praise made me reckless. “We should have my science teacher come over. Bet she could figure out what Cooter is.”

Quick as lightning, Uncle turned angry. “What did I say about keeping Cooter a secret?” He raised his chin and stared me down. “We don’t need strangers looking at him, bothering him.”

“Everyone in the county will be looking at him come fair-time,” I snapped, tired of guessing Uncle’s moods and doing his bidding. I turned and walked away.

The next evening I arrived at the pen with the slop bucket to find Cooter already feeding, the iridescent tail feathers of Auntie’s prize rooster disappearing under his shell. Uncle leaned on the fence and watched as random claws and tentacles popped in and out like a nightmare game of whack-a-mole. After a scant minute, no trace of the bird remained—not a bone, beak, or feather. Only a damp stain on the ground. I kept quiet the next morning when Auntie blamed coyotes for the rooster’s disappearance.

Uncle started scouting for roadkill, using a square-bladed shovel to scrape up the remains of varmints too dumb or slow to stay out of the two-lane highway that ran past the farm. Cooter eagerly consumed every mangled piece of fur and flesh no matter how rank, showing his pleasure with an exuberant display of claws, feelers, and tentacles.

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By September all but one of Bella’s pups had sold. The runt remained, small but lively, with four white paws and a dark patch over one eye. I decided not to name her, not until my birthday in November when she would officially be mine.

Cooter was thriving. His shell reached to my hip and gleamed with a pearly luster. The rest of the farm was struggling. The pumpkin vines held more gourds than I ever thought possible, but they were small mean-looking fruits, knotted like clenched fists and pitted with rot. The steers battled a lung infection that left them gasping. Ropes of yellow-green snot dangled from their muzzles. I was walking among them, with Bella and her pup ranging nearby, when I heard the blare of the pickup truck’s horn and Uncle calling for me.

“Drive us upriver to Nate Sim’s place,” he said, tossing the keys to me. “Nate has an old livestock trailer he wants to get rid of. We can use it at the fair, for Cooter.” I was eager to drive on the highway and knew it galled Uncle to ask me. The wound in his belly had closed but the area was still tender and inflamed. Working the truck’s clutch pained him.

At Nate’s, a rutted driveway led through a scrim of Judas trees into a bare dirt yard. The ramshackle house and barn were near to collapse, held together by creeper vines and fervent prayer. Instead of cattle or horses, two RVs stood in the river pasture, connected to the house by a tangle of thick orange extension cords. Nate’s son and daughter-in-law lived there. Plastic jugs and blue 50-gallon drums littered the ground nearby.

“Stay away from that mess,” Uncle told me, though he needn’t. Everyone knew they were cooking meth. A raw chemical smell wafted from the pasture, a combination of ammonia and cat piss, and a trickle of brown sludge snaked from one trailer to the river—sewage or worse, I didn’t intend to find out. “Even lard-headed old Nate shouldn’t have to deal with that,” allowed my uncle.

Nate, beaming at the prospect of company, shouted from his porch swing as we climbed down from the truck. “Hey Darnell, Campbell, before we do business, I got something to show you. My son found it last week on the riverbank. Looks like a turtle crossed with a damn Swiss Army knife.”

Another Cooter. Uncle’s face went stony quiet. Nate didn’t notice, busy maneuvering down the porch ramp with the aid of two canes. He’d been on disability for years, after a tractor flipped on a muddy slope and crushed his pelvis. He had a legit scrip for oxy but lived in pain, selling his pills for extra money. We followed Nate into the barn, to a cobwebbed horse stall containing a dinner-plate-sized version of Cooter. It was motionless, the spider eyes dulled, claws and tentacles splayed out limply on the dirt.

“Damn,” Nate said, prodding the small corpse with his cane. “The kids promised to take care of it.” He sighed. “I sure wish you could’a seen him—he was special.”

“Yes,” Uncle agreed. “Rare and special. Not everyone appreciates such a wonder.”

His somber tone surprised me – he should have been happy the thing was dead. He wouldn’t have much of a freak show if Nate Sims had a little Cooter, if little Cooters started crawling into every barnyard in the valley. To my shock, Uncle appeared close to tears. He draped his arm around Nate’s shoulder. “Want us to bury the remains? Maybe down by the river?”

When we returned from the riverbank Uncle told me to get in the truck. He sat on the porch swing with Nate for a few minutes, then we left without the livestock trailer we came for. Uncle offered no explanation.

“You think there are other Cooters out there?” I asked as we drove home, trying to provoke conversation. Uncle remained silent, sucking on the draggled ends of his mustache.

At suppertime Uncle cleared his throat and said he had two announcements. First, he was giving Bella’s last pup to Nate Sims, to keep him company.

I gaped at him. “She’s mine, you promised.”

“Nate needs her more. End of discussion.” He picked up a drumstick and ripped off a hunk of meat, chewed and swallowed. “Second thing, we will not exhibit Cooter at the county fair – or anywhere else, not now, not ever.”

Auntie slapped her hand on the table, making silverware jump. She spoke in a clipped, tight voice. “We have planned for months to exhibit that monster. We have already paid for a place at the fair.”

“I’ve made a decision. Cooter is from our land. It’s not right to give him over to strangers, treat him like a freak.”

“It is a freak. And for the right price I’d sell it to any stranger who asked. I’d sell this entire godforsaken farm.”

Uncle shot to his feet and stomped outside. Auntie stared after him, then turned to me. “We can manage at the fair without him. Can’t we, Campbell, just the two of us?”

I didn’t know how to respond. I wanted to tell her how Uncle cried as I buried Nate’s little Cooter alongside the stinking river. That when we got home he went straight to Cooter’s pen, picking daisies along the way, then stood throwing flowers to the creature who caught the stems in his crawdad-claws and waved them about like a June bride.

“Cooter’s … dangerous,” is all I managed to say. Truth be told, I was afraid. The creature was not some frail malformed calf; its cocklebur tentacle did more than punch a hole in Uncle’s belly, it changed him. For better or worse, I didn’t yet know.

Auntie sat in silence for a full minute before she, too, exited the kitchen. Her bedroom door slammed. I cleared the table and headed out with the slop bucket. The gate to the pen hung open. Uncle sat inside, on the dirt next to Cooter, a thin green tentacle twined around his wrist.

“Come on over,” Uncle said, smiling. I put down the bucket and left.

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The sun was well up by the time I stumbled into the kitchen. Auntie had not woken me and there was no breakfast, no coffee or frying eggs. On the table a ceramic rooster held down a note. “Gone to Allegheny,” it read in Auntie’s tiny, rounded handwriting. “Won’t be back. Take care of my chickens.”

A violent ache seized my throat. I crumpled the note and let it drop to the floor. Through the window I saw Uncle striding toward the highway in search of roadkill, whistling, the square-bladed shovel resting on his shoulder. I had been abandoned to monsters. In a rage I slammed out the door and went to the woodshed for the axe, to the chicken coop for eggs.

At the pen I threw the eggs down on the hard-packed earth, close to the fence. Cooter roused from his nest and scuttled over to investigate. I figured the hole at the top of the shell was the weakest spot. My first hit had to count. It didn’t have to be a killing blow, just enough to incapacitate it, to give me a chance.

I’ll do this, then head to Allegheny and search for my mother.

I raised the axe. Cooter stopped slurping and lifted himself up on his legs. We stared at each other. A thin green tendril spiraled out from under his shell, stretching toward me.

I’d never find her, I realized. I’d end up back in foster care. And killing Cooter, what would that do to Uncle? What would he do to me? I lowered the axe.

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With Auntie gone, the farmhouse became smaller and dirtier. Sunlight fought to pierce grimy windowpanes. Grit and dead insects crunched underfoot. Outside, Cooter roamed free, trailing Uncle around the farm like a dog while Bella stuck close by me.

In a burst of energy one day, Uncle tore down the front steps and used the boards to build a ramp. It was sturdy and well made, easily supporting Cooter’s weight as he clambered up to settle next to the porch swing. That night I brought Bella inside. We curled together in my narrow bed. I held my mother’s heart-shaped pillow to my face, trying and failing to find any remaining trace of lavender.

The next morning I set out with Bella to go walking. We roamed along the river and through the empty cow pasture. In the pumpkin field, beside a mound of decaying vines, a gray mass lurched and swayed. It took a moment to puzzle out the image: Cooter, perched on the edge of a freshly dug hole. A leathery tube extended from underneath the shell, convulsing as it deposited pale yellow eggs into the nest. I watched a dozen, two dozen, tumble into the pit. Uncle appeared at my side. He laughed and draped his arm around my shoulder, pulling me close. “Just think,” he said. “So many little ones next spring. We’ll give a couple to Nate Sims.”

I pulled free and stumbled back toward the house, with no thought but to get away. The farm looked unfamiliar, unreal, the colors too bright, the angles askew. Uncle followed me, whistling, and in the front room he grabbed me in a bear hug. “Stay with us,” he said, as Cooter’s claws went tippy-tapping across the porch. The creature loomed in the open doorway, bumping against the frame, shell too wide to enter. Bella howled from somewhere outside.

“This is your home,” Uncle said. “You belong.” The words washed over me like a narcotic; Bella’s howling faded away. Uncle tightened his grasp and together we shuffled toward the door, where Cooter scrabbled at the threshold. Together, we watched the cocklebur tentacle rise into the air. A bolt of fire lanced through my belly. Uncle tightened his grip and whispered in my ear: “It will all stop hurting soon.”