Tuffy Turtle's Arc

Chapter 10 of 10

Tuffy walked back toward the swamp with the chief's dust still hanging in the air behind him. The wind had passed days ago, but the forest was not done breaking. Trees leaned wrong. Paths had washed out. Families were scattered across the ridges and hollows, and Tuffy did not know who was hurt and who was only hungry. He tried to list them in his head. The hedgehog under the leaning rocks. The raccoons in the western groves. The old turtle by his cabin. The chipmunks up the slope. He got to seven names before he stopped. He could not walk to all of them. Not before dark. Not before another storm. His shell felt heavier than it had that morning. He stopped at the edge of the water. Mist sat low over the lily pads. He put one foot in the mud and could not lift it again for a moment. His eyes burned. He sat down on the bank. "You look like a fellow who's carrying the whole map." The voice came from a stump across the water. A beaver sat on it in a scout's hat and a red kerchief, a walking stick across his knees and a pack at his feet. He hopped off the stump and waded across, brisk and unbothered by the mud. He stuck out a paw. "Baxter. Traveling scout. I do routes." He looked Tuffy over the way a doctor looks at a patient. "Been watching you walk since the ridge. You're about done, friend." Tuffy opened his mouth to say he was fine. Nothing came out. Baxter nodded like that was the answer he expected. "Tell me who needs checking," Baxter said. He pulled a folded paper from his pack and a stub of pencil. "Names. Where they were last. What they might be short of." Tuffy hesitated. His whole body wanted to stand up and go himself. But his legs would not carry him past the swamp tonight, and he knew it. He gave Baxter the names. The hedgehog. The raccoons. The old turtle. The chipmunks on the slope. The robin's fledglings in the fallen log. Baxter wrote fast. He asked good questions. He knew the western trails already. "I can hit six by tomorrow noon," Baxter said. "I'll come back through here and tell you who's standing and who needs you." He slung the pack. "You sleep. That's the job tonight." "I don't know how to do that part," Tuffy said. Baxter grinned around his front teeth. "Practice." He walked off into the mist along the safe path, whistling. Tuffy stayed on the bank a long time. Someone else was walking his rounds now. The families would get word. Not from him. Through him. He lay down in the moss and closed his eyes, and for the first time in many days, he let himself wait.