The snapping turtle was dying on Lakeside Drive,
webbed feet paddling the concrete—visceral instinct.
Weed clotted embankment littered with cans, condoms
and cigarettes, now impossibly out of reach—
so, too, the lake beyond, Canada geese, wood ducks,
lone heron trolling shallows, and three fishermen
perched on upside-down, plastic buckets with poles, worms,
and their empty Fireball nips tossed in the grass.
The turtle’s brown armor: smeared with algae and mud,
fractured into pieces, ragged guts leaking through.
A careless driver or driver who did not care.
We did and drove home for the shovel and the maul.
You hoisted the shovel, improvised guillotine,
struck, missed, struck, missed, metal clanging road, flinty toll.
The turtle’s head retracted. Reflex. Hard to kill
this turtle, any living thing, except roaches.
I flipped the turtle belly up, clawed feet scrabbled
the air. Heavy creature, the weight of fifteen years,
longer than we had lived in this small Georgia town—
barred owls, gun shots, squealy tires peeling into night
and trouble. We were clumsy executioners,
poets after all—line, meter, pause, beat. This killing
demanded murderous, unmerciful intent.
No euphemisms: put it out of misery.
The turtle feared our shadow, not the speeding cars.
We looked at each other. Please please die already,
I prayed to nothing and no one. You got the maul
from the truck, primitive, blunt, the kinder way–then–
scooped the turtle in your hands, awful offering.
Ivan the Terrible and his Son: the father
cradles his bloody son—skull fractured with his cane.
Repin wrote, I painted in tears and in torment.
We walked to the lake’s edge. Fish food, you said, and flung
the turtle into the sky, creature of mud now
bird in flight. We dunked the spade and maul in the lake,
wiped our hands clean on sticky, green weeds, and drove home.
Kerry Neville is the author of the memoir Momma May Be Mad, and two collections of stories, Necessary Lies and Remember to Forget Me. Her work has appeared in publications such as The Gettysburg Review, Epoch, TriQuarterly, Brevity, The Washington Post, The Irish Times, and elsewhere. Her fiction and nonfiction have been named Notables in Best American Short Stories and Best American Essays. She received her Ph.D. in creative writing and literature from University of Houston. She was a Fulbright Fellow at University of Limerick in Ireland, where she was visiting faculty in the M.A. Creative Writing Program. She lives in Milledgeville, Georgia, and teaches at Georgia College and State University.
