Chapter 4: Launching off

Remember what I said about Hubert's "grip on life"? It turns out that Hubert had the spirit of a conqueror, because he wanted to subdue everything in life, everything in his path. The success he'd experienced thus far had emboldened him, made him feel larger than life, larger than people around him. He could control everything his eyes saw and easily manipulate groups of children as he wished.

Pa began to teach him some fiddle, and he picked it up like a charm. How can a turtle play a fiddle? Don't ask me how, but Hubert plays it. Can turtles run, jump, play, sing, and dance too? Because Pa taught him all those things just as well, and although he wasn't especially adept at the former three, he knew nothing of his own limitations. And that's all that matters. (Don't worry, this author won't venture to tell you how Hubert fiddled and danced, because he himself knows nothing of the matter. But who cares??)

Hubert was walking down a dirt path. This dirt path was high up in the mountains. Birds he'd never heard before called out to each other up in the trees, strange (but tasty) creepy crawlers scuttled about, and even the wind whistled a new tune. Little Hubert hobbled along with his walking stick to aid him, because when he stood up, he could see a lot more of the world around him. Standing up was getting easier for him, and he less afraid of it than before. The life-threatening mistake of falling backwards still loomed over him, but he figured he should (and would) learn to find a way to deal with that dilemma.

He even sat down one night and gave it a good thinking. "How would I ever get back up if I fell?" Afraid to experiment, he just drew pictures in the moonlit dust with a twig, thinking through them. Nothing came up.

Another time he found two turtles fighting in a creek. One was apparently the aggressor, the other merely defending itself. The bully wouldn't relent; he finally landed a good bump to the other's shell and flipped him over, rendering him helplessly drowning in the water. Horrified, Hubert rushed to the victim's aid and turned it back over with his walking stick before it was too late. Then he looked at the other indignantly and, picking it up (wanting to fling it downstream, but refraining), carried it far away from its target. He set it down in the grass a good couple of stones' throws off and hoped the two would never meet again. Then he picked his stick back up, wandered through the woods, and resumed his merry journey to who-knows-where for who-knows-why.

This mountain trail was a thousand miles from home. Back at home, frantic Pa had no idea where he disappeared to, and he ordered the police to scour the countryside for him. Being the influential community man that he was, the police complied willingly. The newspapers displayed his face in the "Missing" column. Hubert had not shown up in class for over a month, and even the teachers who couldn't stand him were starting to get very worried. Classmates spread rumors that he'd gotten kidnapped, or that he'd been murdered, but none of these rumors were true. Hubert was alive and well, healthier and happier than he'd ever been in his whole life, and he wasn't kidnapped. Truth be told, he forgot all about his teacher and classmates.

You see, it happened like this:

Hubert had wandered out to the creek after a heavy deluge had swept across the land. He fooled Pa that morning with moans and groans about a fever, and stumbled around feigning dizziness. Babysitter Betty was summoned, and Pa quickly paid her and rushed out the door, late for work.

Betty hauled the TV from the garage (Hubert's bedroom) into the living room to get sapped up on her favorite soap opera. As if soap operas weren't repellent enough for fun-loving turtle boys who were perfectly happy with life… So Hubert went outside and headed for the stream.

The nearer his waddling feet plodded to the stream, the louder the hissing of the rushing waters grew; this thing wasn't a gentle gurgling stream anymore. As he came still nearer, the hiss grew to a roar. Then, as it came to view, Hubert's jaw dropped to the ground.

The place where he and Pa had sat many Saturday mornings was three feet underwater. As he came up to the water's edge, which had risen well above the bank, he wondered at the fearsome display of heavy tree branches drifting down this angry river's path. It had been raining for a week, just raining and raining, and this was the storm's wrathful creation. A bunch of simple little raindrops from the sky got together and started a mob here.

People look at these kinds of things and say, "Oh, that's dangerous!" or "Make sure you don't fall in!" Hubert didn't think any of these things... You see, Hubert is a turtle, and turtles... well, they think differently. Hubert turned around and looked at where he'd come from, his triangle-toed footprints in the mud walking backwards to the tiny dot of the house off in the distance. Way over there, he thought, that pea-brained babysitter's watching her stupid TV show, not getting to see any of God's awesome power out here. But I kinda like seeing it by myself this way.

Then he swiveled back around. Suddenly an impulse took hold of him, and his legs were possessed by a spirit. They began moving forward. Slowly at first. A little faster. Then faster. Then faster, until they were full-out running. His left foot struck the last of the dry ground with a force only heavily burdened turtle legs can have, and hurtling through the air he shrieked with delighted excitement. Shell and all plunged into the torrent, bubbled, and up he resurfaced with sheer thrill coursing through his whole body. "Daggum it, when you get to see the awesome might of a rushing flood, you don't sit there and watch. You get off your boring butt and dive in!" This, anyway, was his turtle logic.

The noise like a rumbling stampede enveloped him; the sound of a million bubbles bloating and bursting and wind blowing-- that's all it sounded like. He looked behind him and imagined the babysitter seeing him floating down the river, going frantic on shore like a furious chicken, screeching things unintelligible to him over the roaring water. He smiled mischievously at this imaginary apparition and turned back ahead. The soaked little brown floater, all fours tucked in and head craning over the water, was enjoying the ride. "How come other people aren't doing this?" He laughed for no reason, full of delight, and his spirits soared as the river stole him away.

Hubert later got bored of the water, especially with there being nobody to share it with. So he wrestled himself out and found himself at an opening in the woods, a parting that revealed a field he had never seen. The same spirit that had taken hold of him before again ordered him to move forward. So he did.

Then he saw a train coming. All of its boxcar doors were open, and the train was slowing down for something, so when he saw an opportunity, he wrestled himself up onto one of the boxcar floors. (Any time Hubert gets out of something, if you were to see it, you would agree that "wrestle" is the only word for it. He was a good wrestler.)

The train sped up just then, as if it had purposely slowed to invite Hubert to hop on, and Hubert looked out the door at the yellow-green blur of the land rushing by. He shrugged and spoke by the spirit of adventure: "Well, that's it. Guess this is goodbye for a while. Goodbye Pa. Goodbye Betty. Goodbye school. Goodbye Miss Gladstone." And he said goodbye to every classmate whose name he could remember, until he could speak no more and was lulled to sleep by the rhythm of the train tracks. Fast things make turtles very tired.

Chapter 3: The Amazing Turtle Rocket

Yes, Hubert made friends.

Hubert made LOTS of friends.

EVERYBODY loved Hubert. In fact, his turtle-domedness gave him status in the world of undiscriminating children, but that was only the start.

Kids lined up at recess to ride on Hubert's back; the teacher, Miss Gladstone, squawked that Hubert didn't want to give rides to others. "Are you kidding?" Hubert said. "I never said that!"

He'd take them on rides; he'd play the part of the friendly dinosaur, horse, or dragon offering safe passage on his back across the kingdom or swamp or lava field.

One day it rained, and this was the best day of Hubert's life.

The playground was as it always is when it's beneath dismal, cloudy skies and on wet, soggy ground: dead. Yes, kids populated it, but they weren't running kids, or smiling kids, or laughing kids. Nobody could do anything! The puddles kept children from playing sports, and the ground was too muddy for tag or hide-and-seek.

There was a hill on the margins. Hubert took two buddies on his back up to this place, with no intentions whatsoever on this dismal day.

It was this way that they accidentally discovered Hubert's most exciting gift: being a self-steering, walking, talking mud-sled. As the two friends blazed down the hill at unprecedented playground speeds, at their shrieks of delight all play stopped, all chatter hushed. Everyone turned. They watched with gaping jaws. As the amazing turtle rocket dragged to a stop, Hubert peered out of his shell and looked casually around, trying to hide his smile, but couldn't. The sun itself also peered, out of the clouds, just then and sent one lone ray on his glistening green head. All eyes were on him. And they blew up, cheering for Hubert, proclaiming him the hero of the day, rushing forward for their turn on the amazing turtle rocket, shouting and clamoring and fighting over him. All the rest of the recess was a long line of impatient, excited boys and girls, waiting their turn as the ones in front hurriedly escorted the royal Hubert up the hill in a wagon. Hubert didn't have to do anything, anything at all, except lean left or right now and then to miss a rock. He thoroughly enjoyed being treated this way.

And as Miss Gladstone's whistle blew, a loud groan went out.

And so his dominion over the elementary school grew and solidified. It was also his grip on life; he had life in a clenched fist, completely in his control, and he felt it too. He was slow both in speed and speech, was a head shorter than the rest standing up and a body shorter when he turtlized his stance. But if he noticed this, he paid it no heed. It was his attitude--as if he were there to lead the children into the Promised Land of fun and laughter-- that made him great, loved, and sometimes even feared, by girls and boys alike.

Pa would warn him not to get too cocky sometimes.

Chapter 2: Growin' On Up

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        Hubert grew like a weed. From the time he was old enough to show recognition of his father entering the room— bouncing up and down wearing a big, bubbly grin emitting squeals of excitement and delight (he loved his daddy!)— to the time he was taught by Pa how, with confusing coordination, to trade four limbs for two like the rest of the human race (Pa saw Hubert as a person and wanted to keep it that way), Hubert exploded in size. The father therefore was seen more and more often stumbling through the door looking like a walking grocery-sack tree to feed this growing stomach.

        Luckily, our wishing well was too dim to know about turtles’ absent jaws. Hubert defied nature and developed two full rows of them, as each poked out of the gum one by one. (Pa, however, not knowing much about the species either, didn’t think anything of it.) Learning to speak therefore didn’t challenge him; in fact, Hubert pronunciated words with impressive clarity, and with, more noticeably, a certain characteristic and easygoing slowness that made him even more likable to Pa. It soothed Pa’s ears—they were always sick of enduring coworkers’ chitchat about the most amazingly boring things—“Look at my new coffee mug my wife bought me,” or “So, how about the game last night? What’d you think of the new quarterback?” (when Pa thought no more about sports than he did of how the economy must be faring in Kazakhstan) or, in worst case scenarios, “So yeah, I got a new shirt.” (Great, let’s talk about your new shirt. There must be a million things I can say about that!) Every evening he escaped from that cave of screeching office bats into a calm, quiet house out in the gorgeous countryside, wherein the air was filled with the soothing little voice of a turtle boy. Each day he returned home from work, handed the babysitter her due, and joyfully watched his son waddle up to him. He could tell too that Hubert had to think painstakingly about things before exerting the drawn-out effort to say them, because he was so slow and didn't want to waste time repeating sentences; just for this he loved him all the more, for he sometimes smiled unconsciously when listening to him.

As years passed by, Hubert’s shell began to require grunts and groans of laborious effort to squeeze through cramped doorways; traversing the household became more and more of a burdensome ordeal to him, until at last all such endeavors skidded to a standstill; one morning he awoke and couldn’t exit his own bedroom! In distress he called out to Pa for help, and so Pa had to call in sick to work that day.

Hours later, Pa was sorry for the gaping hole in the wall where Hubert’s window had been, wrenched completely out with a thundering thud after he’d wrestled Hubert’s bulging frame through, along with debris of plaster and snowing pink fluffs of fiberglass insulation. Hubert was going to be homeless outside for a few days and nights, but being a turtle, this was alright.

So Pa had an idea. The garage door yawned open early one Saturday. Hubert stood by his dad's side, looked up at him, and wondered what he was about to do. Then with an intimidatingly mighty display of zeal and force, Pa took it by storm; he ripped out everything that uglified, tore down the cobwebs, and gassed the pesky spiders, rodents, and roaches into oblivion. Go live in your own habitats! 


This was before he knew Hubert would eat them, making the room all the more suitable for him. Hubert hardly cared whether it was humanly habitable or not; he had not yet picked up the many strange fears and tastes of people, which are usually acquired rather than inherited. Would you care to buy new clothes if people around you didn’t condemn your faded old ones with holes in them—if they themselves wore rags and hand-me-downs? Later on, Pa would walk in on Hubert munching on a handful of squirming roaches, and Hubert, surprised and confused, with his cocked head and inquiring eyes would watch his grimacing, retching father reel in disgust and clamber backwards through the door. A few long minutes passed in suspense Then he sauntered back out apologetically, wiping his mouth with an honest grimace, saying, “You're goin' to take that outside next time, you understand me?” Hubert didn’t understand, but he lied and nodded his head. Pa got scary when he was mad.

Beyond the well-trimmed and mown backyard stretched limitless golden plains, through which the father and son had ambled many a sunrise after breakfast and sunset after dinner, holding hands. Pa each time enlightened curious little Hubert a little further on the mysterious details of life, or enthralled him with charming stories of his own childhood capers and adventures. Hubert knew that someday he himself would go on adventures like these, and even better ones too. It planted a new seed in him.

        Trudging together man and beast down the half-mile path, they'd come to a quiet little stream.

        On weekends here they’d often plop down their lazy Saturday morning bodies there and doze off in the shade of their favorite apple tree, which seemed to exist for the sole purpose of providing a resting place for two friends, the way its inviting trunk was shaped; they’d let go of themselves there, munch on a few handfuls of nature’s juicy red sweets, and inevitably be lulled into a bit of blissful shut-eye by the gentle, serenading song of the stream's gurgling. Nothing in the world was ever wrong in those times, and Hubert sometimes wished they’d never leave. He always hated it when his dad made his habitual loud yawn, which always meant he was about to climb to his feet, stretch, and prompt Hubert awake, though he nearly always already was, only pretending to be asleep, soaking in every moment of it as best as he could. Sometimes as Pa’s hands would reach for the ground to boost himself up, Hubert would reach out and take a hold of him, shake his head, and plead, “No, let's do it longer!” Now and then Pa acquiesced, but most of the time he’d say that it had to end sooner or later. There was a time for everything that made it beautiful, but when that time passed, it just got plain boring. Children, however, when not as used to some things as adults are, have a larger capacity for remaining in those moments than grown-ups do. Hubert didn’t understand this and began to think that people must get more and more boring as they aged. He secretly decided he wouldn’t be this way.

         So went Hubert's early childhood. Pa loved Hubert dearly, and Hubert dearly loved his Pa.