A Turtle's World

I pulled up to the stop sign at the four lane highway, maneuvering my pickup truck into position for the right turn heading into town. I was about to go when I noticed a tortoise laboring on the road directly in my right of way. I stopped short to let him cross. Turtles on the move are a regular feature of Texas country life in springtime, and the people try to be respectfully accomodating.

A woman in a GMC Arcadia approaching down the opposite side of the highway pulled off suddenly onto the road shoulder, directly across from where I sat in my truck. As the woman struggled out of her seat belt to rescue the turtle her car was rear-ended by a white Ford Fiesta. The Ford never slowed. The crash pushed the GMC another five feet up the roadway. The driver of the Ford had swerved hard right to avoid hitting the turtle, and had lost control of her vehicle in the process.

When I unlocked my fingers from the wheel they were sore from gripping too tightly. Instinctively, I reached for my phone then ran across the highway.

The woman in the GMC had released her seat buckle just before impact. I leaned in and felt her wrist for a pulse. Her unseeing eyes transmuted the future. I let go her hand as if death were catching and ran back to the Ford, whose front end was accordianed into the rear bumper of the larger automobile.

The second driver's head lay against the steering column, twisted oddly out the side window, as if waiting for someone to come up and explain just what in hell had happened to her. Sulphur from the exploded airbag had burned little speckles of blackheads into her face.

She'd had striking brown eyes that stare back at me now like a carp in the fish market.

I called 911 from deep somewhere in a very darkened woods.

= Don't hurry. There's no need to hurry, at all.

I said to the dispatcher, trying to be helpful for some reason.

I leaned against the trunk of the Ford and waited, fidgeting the cell phone in my sweating fingers. The days were already warming up. Another summer loomed long, hot and stormy.

I looked down just as the tortoise reached the edge of the pavement in front of me. He had continued to plod diligently onward with unwavering determination. For all I knew, the roughest part of his journey was yet to come.