Turtles All The Way Down

It was midnight on a dark beach and three figures, two large and one very small, sat in a row on a piece of ragged driftwood.

"Daddy, do you really think we'll see one?" asked the little boy.

"I dunno Sammy, I sure hope so. What do you think Abel? Is it a good night for it?"

"As good a night as any Señor Johnson."

They sat in silence surrounded by the crashing of waves and the melancholy whipping of the winds. Behind them the jungle encroached on the beach, its palm trees jutted out at unnatural angles and wild brush as thick as a jaguar's coat rended the strip of yellow sand leading down into the water.

"Thirty years ago, when I sat on this beach with my father there would be 10 or 15 leatherback turtles laying eggs, if the season was right," Abel said.

"So where are they all now?"

"People started stealing the eggs."

"Why would someone want to steal turtle eggs?" Sammy asked, bewildered.

"Because these turtles are very special. They hold the entire world on their backs. They're the strongest and wisest animals in the universe. People thought that if they ate the eggs it would also make them wise and strong."

"How can a turtle hold up the whole world?" Sammy asked.

"One turtle cannot. They stand stacked on each other's backs for millions and millions of miles."

Sammy was quiet for a minute and looked out on the limitless ocean, unseparated from the limitless sky. A feeling of horror seized him suddenly, a fear of falling deep into a terrible blackness.

"How many turtles do you think are left?" Sammy whispered.

Johnson snapped out of his reverie. "Plenty, my boy. Abel, stop filling his head with dramatic ideas."

Turning to his son, Johnson said: "There's no real science to back up anything old Abel is saying. He's just a tour guide. People, important people who know better, say there are plenty of turtles and that even if we've lost a few here and there it doesn't matter.  I'll tell you this much. If we see one tonight laying eggs, we're sure as hell grabbing a couple. Those things are worth a fortune! I'm sure Señor Doom and Gloom over here wouldn't mind a few himself."

"Daddy! Daddy! Look! There!"

From the water emerged a colossal creature dragging his crushed shell behind him. The crater in the center of his shell was filled with plastic bottles and bags. He collapsed on the sand.  Sammy  looked into his  sad, space- black eyes until the turtle closed them, sinking into his  final sleep with one last great shuddering breath.

One million miles away the last turtle shifted. A tsunami took out the nation of Indonesia.  She felt her shell crush down upon her aging body. A part of it gave and turned to dust, but its center miraculously held. Not now, but sometime soon, she would find her well- deserved rest.