Crab Orchard Review Vol. 12, No. 2, our

52 ◆ Crab Orchard Review
Heather E. Goodman
net, it steams. I hump it back to the board, and while it cools, Will eats
an egg salad sandwich. I pick at the crusts and stare at the swamp. The
blackbirds call and deep frog gulps echo them.
“You aren’t hungry?”
I shake my head. “Think of the money we’re saving.”
“We need you to eat, Lou.”
I pick a splinter of wood from the steps.
“So Jared’s okay with you keeping the place?”
“He certainly doesn’t want it.”
“Do you?”
I turn to Will and wipe a dab of egg salad from the corner of his
mouth. “You know I do.”
“And the baby?”
I suck in my breath. “I don’t know what the baby wants, Will.”
We’re quiet for a while. He follows a bittern with his eyes. Even
after all these years here, the bittern makes me hold my breath too. The
bird points its beak to the sky, and I know if I look away, I won’t be able
to find it again, blending in with the grasses.
“It’s beautiful.” I mean it too. Swamp is an ugly word for the cattails
growing tall and proud and the flycatchers flipping their feathers. It
doesn’t reveal the dragonflies, frogs escaping their trapped tadpole
selves, secret moss, and peepers that sing us to sleep. The word is only
right for the mosquitoes and the pungent, heady smell that mixes with
our breath.
“Let’s do it,” I say and heft myself up. I take the other knife
from the board. The turtle’s skin feels like a toad’s.
I think of Mom, all the times I watched her. I jam the knife in
between the two halves, and twist it just like she did. The shell cracks.
“Jesus, Lou.”
I use the knife like a lever. A tight ripping sound, popping of bone
and tendon.
Will holds the bottom shell, and I turn and twist the carapace as
it pulls from the skin, a tooth barely loose.
“Hold this?” I give the knife to Will and yank on the two frames.
He slices through the sinew still holding top to bottom.
He works the blade back and forth, and we rip the shells from one
another. The smell, before implied and needling, is now immediate
and violent. Sick, bubbled flesh, and I’m only able to run three steps
before gripping a beech tree and retching. They are wracking spasms,