The universe works in threes, and while at home alone on a Saturday I was triangulated into an act of violence. I did not act alone, but some burden of responsibility falls to me. As they say, “It takes three to triangle.”
My wife’s sister had been staying all week with her three daughters. She was going through a painful divorce. She needed the support and her daughters, our nieces, needed a get-away.
“While the nieces would love to see you get a pedicure,” my wife said after breakfast, “they think you might get bored.” I helped load the five of them into the car and off they went. The smallest niece, Olivia, left behind her palm-sized turtle, “Puppy,” so I was not entirely alone. I started the dishwasher and opened all the curtains. I laid on top of the bed doing snow angels from the waist down while reading a book from the waist up, as one does who is not accustomed to having the house all to themselves.
I watched the birds lining the wire outside the window. One, two, four, eight, ten. I had never seen so many. The wire sagged into a smile. I was not sure the line could hold them. And what were they staring at? Something in the yard. I traced the line of their stare, but the walls got in my eyes.
Just as I nodded off for a nap, the birds got to chirping and wouldn’t stop. I heard the neighbor children playing in our yard. That must be it. I might have gone to the window and stared the kids back into their own yard, but the nieces had given me a renewed appreciation for the spirit of youth. I lay there with my eyes open. One of the birds turned her head and looked at me. After we held eye contact for a moment, she rolled forward off the wire. I heard her hit the pavement, and flap her broken wings against the house.
I sat up and went outside, only to find that I had forgotten to turn off the hose. Water and potting soil cascaded from the planter to the porch, down the walk, and into the yard, where it had had turned our new garden into a pond. Then I saw it.
Puppy the turtle must have gotten out while I wasn’t paying attention. The neighbor kids had found her, flipped her onto her back, and placed a heavy rock on her belly. The rock was holding her underwater in the now flooded garden. As it turns out, a turtle can drown faster than dry out.
I brought the dead turtle inside and set her body on a washcloth on the center of my bed. I began searching for words inside of me that might begin to explain death to a four-year old. Was I so shallow as to pretend this wasn’t my fault?
I heard the girls pull up in the driveway. As they got out, they began to shriek. I had forgotten about the bird. I wondered if the bird had taken a nosedive to call my attention to the turtle. Little good that did, I thought. As the girls came inside, I felt that I should be the one laid out on a burial cloth. I looked to Puppy, but the washcloth was empty.
David Drury lives in Seattle, Washington. His fiction has been broadcast on National Public Radio, twice published in Best American Nonrequired Reading, and appears in ZYZZYVA, Paper Darts, Jellyfish Review, Cheap Pop, and elsewhere. He has a Master’s degree in Christian Studies from Regent College, University of British Columbia. Visit Daviddruryauthor.com.
Lost Balloon 