Read Online So Brave, Young, and Handsome by Leif Enger - Free Book Online Page B

poked its head up, sighted the river, and made three or four inches of getaway before Glendon stepped on its tail. He said, “Where do you think you’re going, uncle?”
    That’s how we ended up sharing our slight johnboat with a snapper as broad as a barrel. Glendon heaved him up front and barricaded him there with half a dozen melon-sized stones. The turtle slewed around and tried getting up the sides, finally backing his tail into the bow and watching us resentfully.
    “I’ll row,” said Glendon.
    It was good of him to spare my hands, but the new arrangement wasn’t comfortable. The snapper forward meant I had to share the stern of the boat with Glendon’s pack and bedroll. Also there was a small leak; I had to keep repositioning the gear to keep it dry. By moonrise I was sitting in an inch of brown water, despite dedicated bailing with a tin cup.
    I said, “We are not getting quickly to Mexico this way.”
    “I was thinking that,” Glendon replied.
    “At the next town we might find a car,” I suggested.
    “That’s enticing, but I don’t drive, Becket. I never learned.”
    “Why, driving’s a pleasure,” I said. “Everyone should drive.” Susannah had taught herself; she had an instinctive feel for the shifting mechanism and loved to accelerate through gut-tickling lifts and hollows.
    I said, “I could teach you in ten minutes—think how impressed Blue will be when we show up and there you are, behind the wheel of a car.”
    “I don’t imagine that would impress Blue,” he replied. “No, I don’t imagine she’d be too much impressed if I landed a Curtiss airplane in her yard.”
    It was hard to hear his voice so downcast. “How long were you with her, Glendon?”
    “Two years, a little more.”
    “You never told me why you left.”
    “I wasn’t a very good citizen down in Mexico—not till I met Blue, at least. After we married I built her a swift dory. That girl loved water. Then a neighbor liked the boat and wanted one too, so I made another and traded him for a couple of cows. That’s how it went. Two happy years, Becket.”
    He’d been sculling steadily along but now missed the water with his right sweep and stopped a moment to recover. He said, “One day a man rode up and looked at our little casita. He sat on his horse a long time, looking. Then he rode away. Next day he was back knocking on the door. I stayed in the hall. He told Blue he had a job for me, but she said I wasn’t home. When the man left, I told her he worked forthe provincial or even the central government and when he came back the conversation would not be about a job.”
    “So you took off? You just left?”
    He said, “I was afraid.”
    “I bet she’d have gone with you.”
    “Yes, she would’ve,” he agreed. “She wanted to go—we had quite a battle over it. Of course I couldn’t jeopardize her that way.”
    “Didn’t you jeopardize her by leaving?”
    “Either course was evil. I judged things would go easier for an abandoned wife than a complicit one.” Glendon picked up his pace with the oars. “I promised I’d send for her. She let me take her little dory, and I left in the middle of the night.”
    “Was that the last time you saw her?”
    He didn’t answer for a moment, then said, “Now you bring it up, Becket, it seems I am still in the jeopardizing business. Witness yourself, innocent as a tot, yet fleeing the law with me.”
    He had a point, though I was somewhat affronted by his
tot
comparison. I was about to take issue when there came a forceful scraping sound. Glendon flailed and we heeled badly—my neck hit the transom and my feet were in the stars.
    “Did we hit bottom?” I cried.
    “No, it’s the turtle.” It had managed to crawl up over its rock fence and had tumbled into the midsection of the boat, where it scuffed about as if to bash the planks loose. “Where is he? I can’t see him!”
    “Put him over the side and be done with him,” I shouted, over the thumping