Snapper by Felicia Zekauskas, Peter Maloney Page B

frustrated the turtle so much. If he was going to die, he at least wanted to take one of us with him.”
    “But then what happened to your leg, Grandpa?”
    “Your Daddy had pushed the boulders to the edge of the platform. Ten seconds more and that turtle would be gone forever. But then, I did myself in. You remember how I told you I’d covered my leg with grease so I could pull it out quickly when the turtle struck? Well, I slipped on that damn grease. It was like slipping on a bar of soap in the tub. My luck was bad. My foot slipped right back into the hole I’d just pulled it out of. It all happened at once. Your father pushed the boulders off, I slipped, the turtle snapped. We sent him to his grave, but he had one last supper on his way.”
    “How come you didn’t bleed to death, Grandpa?”
    “I would have, August, if it wasn’t for your father. I went into shock. It was days before I was aware of anything. I was in a hospital bed, still dopey from morphine. I only know what happened from what your Daddy told me later.”
    Owen Andersen nodded toward his son.
    “Go ahead, Isaac,” he said. “Tell Augie what happened next.”
    “I pulled Grandpa up onto the platform. Then I ripped off my shirt and tore it into long strips, which I used to make a tourniquet. I tried to row the platform back to shore, but the oarlocks were too far apart for one boy. I couldn’t do it. So I climbed into the water and dragged Grandpa with me. I put an arm across his chest and side-stroked all the way back to shore. I don’t know how I made it, but I did. Then I dragged Grandpa to the car and laid him across the backseat. I sped off in search of the nearest hospital I could find. I was driving so fast, a policeman pulled me over. Before he could even start in about me driving, he saw Grandpa in the backseat. ‘What’s happened to him?’ he asked. ‘Lost his leg,’ I said. Then the two of us lifted Grandpa into the backseat of the police car. He put on his siren and flashers and we sped off even faster than I’d been driving.”
    “So you and Grandpa killed the turtle?” August asked his father.
    Isaac Andersen nodded.
    “We sent him to his grave.”
    But for the rest of Grandpa Owen’s life, from the night he lost his foot till the day he finally died, he was plagued by doubt. He and Isaac had sent the beast to the bottom of the lake, of that he was sure. Yet he never felt that his own lost limbs were fully at rest. He had a troubling sense that they were in motion – sometimes far away, sometimes near, sometimes down deep, sometimes rising toward the surface.

Chapter 20
    TURTLEBACK LAKE OCTOBER 2006
    Those who paint on private or public property may think their graffiti is art – a form of creative expression to which they are somehow entitled. Yet I’d like to see these same “artists” should they someday become property owners themselves. Then let us hear how they feel when their property has served as the canvas for someone else’s creative expression. Let’s hear then what they have to say about ‘creative freedom.’ I think the song they would sing then would be very much in harmony with the one being sung in this column today.
    So began the editorial Marc Bozian was working on for Thursday’s Turtleback Gazette. Marc already had written an account of the incident for the paper’s front page. This editorial, Marc’s first op-ed piece, was a chance to spread his journalistic wings and fly beyond the constraints of who, what, when, where, and why.
    Marc was articulating a rage he felt sure every resident of Turtleback Lake shared. As Marc wrote, he felt that he was speaking for the people.
    For time immemorial, long before even the first braves of the noble Lenape Indians hunted in these woods and fished these waters – our lake has been distinguished by a single distinctive landmark: The white isle of rock that gives our lake and community their names. The Lenape, legend tells us, considered this rock