Wild Fell by Michael Rowe Page A

dirty nature was. As gently as I could, I placed the turtle into my pocket and hurried out of the swamp.
    Behind the counter in the mess hall, I found a paper sack. I transferred the turtle from my pocket to the sack, carrying it carefully by the bottom with the lip of the bag open to the air so it wouldn’t suffocate. The turtle tried frantically to scramble up the sides of the bag. Its head moved from side to side, as though trying to comprehend how one minute it had been basking in the late-July sunlight on a rock in the middle of an eastern Ontario marsh and the next, a prisoner in a brown paper cell.
    I felt a flutter of pity. “Shhhhh, little turtle,” I murmured. I caressed its drying shell with my index finger, hoping it would feel reassured. “Shhhhh. It’ll be okay. You’re safe with me. You’re coming home with me, to live in my room. We’re going to be best friends, you and I. You’ll see. I’ll feed you and give you water. In the basement, we have a terrarium. I’ll wash it out and it can be your new home. I’ll watch you grow up. It’ll be great. Don’t worry.”
    The turtle’s legs kicked more weakly, as though it had finally realized there was no escape. Then they stopped moving, and its head retracted inside its shell again.
    In my mind, I had already named the turtle Manitou, after the camp. Even if I had endured three weeks away from everything familiar and comforting, something good would come out of it. My new friend would carry the camp’s name. I enjoyed the perversity of that as only a nine-year-old boy can.
    For as long as I could, I avoided the counsellors and the other boys. It was fairly easy to do. I’d packed my green canvas duffel bag the night before and delivered it to the dining room where it would then be loaded onto the bus.
    I knew that if any of the counsellors saw me, they would confiscate the turtle and let it loose in the marsh. It was expressly forbidden to take wildlife away from the woods and marshes here, even into the camp. At Manitou, we’d done our nature study
in nature
. No snakes, frogs, birds, or turtles were to be captured. The camp organizers were deeply committed to the notion that wild things were wild, and belonged in the wild as their birthright. But what I wanted at that moment more than anything else was to bring the turtle home with me.
    I’d received a few sideways glances from boys that had passed me where I sat behind our cabin, and one of them even asked me what I was doing there. The question as usual wasn’t really a question at all. It was challenge. But this was the last day of camp, and the challenger was bored enough to accept my stock offering of
nuthin’
without it being a prelude to something that would make me cry out in pain.
    When the time came, I climbed aboard the bus and secured the seat two rows behind the driver, Olivier having claimed the seat directly behind him, which was the safest seat of all. Since no one wanted to sit with me, I had both seats to myself—correction;
we
had both seats to
ourselves
, Manitou and I. When I looked into the paper bag to see how he was doing, he appeared to have given up trying to climb out. He looked like he was resting. As quietly as I could, I whispered to him that we were almost home and that I’d let him out of the bag.
    The counsellors and the other boys must have assumed I had a snack in the paper bag because no one asked what was inside, at least not until the bus was just outside of Ottawa. Then I felt a rough tap on my shoulder.
    “Whatcha got in the bag, Brown Nose?” John Prince had lumbered down the aisle of the bus from the very back where he’d been sitting with his buddies. I’d heard them shouting and laughing almost since we’d left Camp Manitou. He smacked me on the back on my head. “You got food in that bag, Brown Nose? Huh? You got candy?”
    I closed the bag and put it to my side and used my body to block access to it. “No,” I said. “Nothing. I don’t