white trash grace: chapter five
by sally duryea

After Blue left the mountains things slowed to a turtles pace for Sonny.
It was the time of year when the snapping turtles returned to lay their eggs. Sonny had been saying for years now that turtle soup was on the way, but that turtle soup still migrates back from the end of the road where Sonny faithfully puts it out of reach for the summer.

The deal with the turtle goes back to the day it hatched out in the pond. Sonny had been asleep on the dock, her hand just tracing the surface of the water, when the hatchling made a clumsy pass and landed in the middle of her palm. When she lifted the little guy out of the water, it reached its neck out so far trying to get back that it flipped itself right over. Sonny was reluctant to let the snapper go, knowing the ducks would be in peril as it grew into its aggressive appetite.

Well, Sonny cut a deal with that turtle right there. Setting the baby back into the water, she said straight out that someday she was going to have her one good turtle soup. That was the deal, a life free in the pond in exchange for some soup in the end. Thing is there was no end in sight. That is one big, old turtle now, with barnacles and leathery legs that have, every year, hiked the six miles back to the pond.

Sonny will not admit that she is soft on the turtle. She still claims he is soup. The old guy shows up every spring, his britches stained with berries and dandelions, his eyes focused on one spot. Like a great dance floor, the pond smoothes out before him and as the sun sets and the cell tower light comes on, he sees his lady in red. They roll together for hours, churning the water at the edges of the pond. Sonny can get real close when they are like this. In fact, they are so oblivious she could just scoop them up. That is what the children want her to do. They yell “Turtle Soup!” when they hear the splashing. Everyone would like the turtle soup and just look to Sonny wondering if this will be the year she will take the turtle up on the deal and cook it. Sonny just looks at those two sommersaulting with abandon, splashing water a foot in the air, “They ARE cooking,“ she mumbles.

She is right of course. Those turtles are being all the things Sonny would want to find in her soup. Dishes like that can take a long time. It was when the turtles kept coming that Sonny started having real soup thoughts. Not just the few regulars had shown up, but from all along the mountain ridge there was a movement making slow and steady progress to the grassy shores of the pond. Their shells were covered with mosses, some trailing vines that had taken root. It was hard to tell where the earth stood still. By the time they reached the water they had emerged from their earthen blankets, shaken off the long winter hibernation, and were gleaming and gathering. By the time the sun went down they were rocking and rolling with such an abundance of energy that Sonny swore she could see them sweat.

When Sonny looked to abundance it made her a little nervous. While she had comfortably adapted God's voice to be that of the Beatles, she had always visualized God's eyes to reflect abundance. Lots of everything. It was the easiest way to think of the life, looking to God and finding abundance looking back at her. All the life served up like a bountiful soup kitchen, right there in a glance, free and easy. Somehow the masses before her now did not make her feel so easy. She had made a deal with one turtle, not hundreds. She went to sleep that night wondering what Blue would do.
By morning she was busy with the answer. After a day of sawing and hammering, a great sign appeared at the entrance to the pond, ready for the spotlight. Sonny flipped the switch and officially opened the “Leatherback Bar”. That is what was painted on the entrance side of the sign. At the end of the evening when the turtles headed back into the woods, the sign would cast a shadow on them, the words on the back of the sign predicting a darker future. Sonny had painted there in big letters “AND GRILL” A deal was a deal.

The dip in the valley, being the path of least resistance, became the natural migration route for the turtles headed south. The only sound they made was the clacking of their shells as they bumped by the thousands, and the scratching of their claws as they turned the earth through the five states between the Leatherback Bar and their southernmost destination in none other than the land of gumbo.

The bar became a rest stop along the way and was doing a hopping business. As Sonny waited for the opening show, she thought Blue would be proud. Each evening just as the sun set, there would be a few moments when the pond was pitched in its natural darkness... then the red light beams in and VOILA! there appears, spinning on the surface, sending trails to the outer banks, the lady in red.

The ducks and frogs shift to higher ground. The lady is moving to the music of the spheres, which Sonny had rigged to an outdoor speaker. The music was a real hit with the Bar and Grill; it got the dance going good. In fact the dance got going all the way down the strip. Like a world record line dance, the turtles swayed and sashayed in the heat of the road, cast in red lights bouncing off of their shells. The brake lights were consistent as the truckers slowed down to allow for the merging of the line into the filling roadways. The trucks were now moving to the beat of a different drummer, with no way to change course. They were clearly outnumbered as the turtle mass made slow progress to the southern tip of the sunset strip, destination...New Orleans.
By the time the turtles had made it to New Orleans they were all polish and shine, having scraped off years of accumulated debris from their shells. They were cleaned up good for one of the biggest gatherings ever to be had in the most famous of party towns. They had walked a thousand miles for this one.

This time it was Blue who had them in her lights. At first she hardly noticed the turtles, they were a familiar sight along the roadways there. This time, however, there was so many she had to return from town at a snails pace to avoid hitting them.
It was the Lady in Red who brought Blue to a complete stop. Had the evening one night out, one party to throw, it would be dressed just like the Lady who stood in the middle of the road scooping turtles into a laundry basket. She and her two little girls were in their Sunday best, all matching red dresses, the little ones singing “Turtle Soup”. Blue helped them fill the basket and watched as they got back into the line of traffic. When she got back to her car she noticed the girls had left her a bunch of roadside azaleas on her seat. All she could see of the family was their brake lights as the car merged into the slow traffic lane.

The moment erased as quickly as it had happened, and left Blue feeling like she had witnessed something very important but she could not put her finger on it. She had seen some real cooking getting going, that is for sure. Blue was glad to know that turtle soup actually happened in this country. She thought to send Sonny a postcard about the event. It was a card with bright red azaleas on it. She wrote of the day she had come to call Azalea Sunday. Sonny added the postcard to her collection. More to sleep on. She hoped Skippy was picking up enough in the quarter to put the events to some tapping music.