to think about it at all. Spearing each other and painting their faces and bodies and cooking each other up in fires.”
I sit down in the mud beside him. I try to convince myself I’m taking some kind of spa treatment. It’s not easy to do. There’s nothing pampering about this mucky bottom, and every time I move even a little bit, a cloud of particles rises into the water column. I don’t know what the particles are, other than some tiny plastic beads, but I’m sure there’s nothing that’s going to help my health or clean my skin.
“Native Americans in Georgia were not cannibals,” I say decisively.
“None of the others told me you’d be so sure of things you don’t actually know. What I know for a fact is that monks are supposed to be humble. Now, you’re here to receive transmission and not to argue, yes?”
I put my hands together in prayer and bow in his direction. “Yes,” I say. “I apologize.”
“Not only have I seen that, I’ve met the God of Music, too. I heard him. I met him. He was my friend.”
I consider this for a moment. I know that a few of the legendary Eight Immortals of Daoism are musicians. I figure that since this turtle is an immortal himself, he must be referring to one of those. I ask him if he means the one named Han Xiangzi, because flutists consider him their patron and because he composed the famous piece, Tian Hua Yin.
“Bah,” scoffs the turtle. “An amateur. And he’s an immortal. I’m talking about a god.”
“Lan Caihe then? A flutist also.”
“That one sang ridiculous songs. A mere pretender. And again, one of the eight, not a god.”
“He Xiangu then,” I say hopefully. “She had a flute, too.”
The snapper rises just a little bit onto his limbs. The act of separating his bulk from the riverbed creates eddies of mud. Glinting minnows spiral into the vacuum created by his absence. A large crawfish scuttles away. It has been hiding in the snapper’s shadow too, for no predatory fish would dare venture close to those jaws, no heron or ibis dart would dare dart in. The snapper sees it and swallows it whole.
“Are you thick? I keep saying a god and you keep naming immortals. You think about those eight too much. Gods are to immortals as immortals are to regular creatures. More or less, anyway.”
“Elvis, then?” I ask.
“Very funny. I’m not referring to any mere performer, though you could be forgiven for thinking there might be some holy water running through Elvis’s veins.”
I confess to being fresh out of guesses.
“Can’t blame you for being ignorant,” he says, slowly nodding his enormous head. “So many human beings are. You do know that there were cork trees along this river once. That wood was light as a feather. I used to climb up on broke branches and float along in peace, keeping an eye out for herons of course, and eagles. That’s where I first noticed him casting a fishing line from a dock built out the backside of his father and mother’s place. He was wearing a flat hat with a broad brim and dungarees and a church shirt, white with buttons. His feet were bare and there was a little key dangling from a chain on his neck. It would be a long time before I knew what that key was for.”
“He appeared to you as a human?”
“We live our stories, Monk. All of us. I lived and died in this river. He came to me in the form I wanted him to, even though I didn’t fully understand that at the time. That’s what gods do. He used to roll dice on the dock, and I’d hear the clatter and come up and when he saw me, he’d take out his harmonica and play while he watched me. Later, when he got older, he found him a redhead girl with freckles—married her after a bit—and they’d sit on the dock with their toes in the water, which the girl said was brave on account of the fact that I so love to eat toes. She was right about that, but he knew I loved the music more, loved it so much I wouldn’t risk hurting him or his kin. That girl played the violin like she was a robin and it was her egg. I’d come out for the two of them making music together even in winter when the river was so cold it made it hard for me to move.”
“What kind of music did they play?”
“This was a long time back, Monk. There weren’t so many fancy names for everything then, and the music wasn’t as angry as it is now. Music isn’t meant for anger. Wrong tool for the job, like me trying to bite that sturgeon with my tail.”
“What sturgeon?”
“Are you blind? How can you miss a fish that big?”
I glance where he gestures with his chin, and sure enough there is a big sturgeon there, an impressive-looking river fish two meters long with white lateral markings, whiskers, and a shovel-shaped snout. The sturgeon’s eyes fix on me but without any evident comprehension. A moment later, it disappears into the murk.
“Okay, I see him,” I say.
“We’ve been dancing all these years, that old boy and me. He came up the river from the Gulf before they dammed it, and now he’s trapped here, away from the rest of his kind, and growing bigger and more bitter every day. He has wanted to eat me since I was a baby. He used to chase me clear across the river. I had to search up rocks and hollows and mudholes all the way across so he couldn’t get to me. Oh, how he tried with that great digging nose of his! He would have lifted all the mud off the bottom of this river if he could have done it. Made my days and nights a living hell. All I did for my first ten years was survive him. Of course, if he had gotten me, if I was in his gut and dead, he would rue what he’d done because he’d find himself all alone. Now, maybe a century later, the claw is on the other leg, if you receive my meaning. He comes too close and he’s mine. He could go to another part of the river. He’s a fish, don’t you know, but he stays around.”
“I think he likes you,” I say.
“I think he’s just lonely. I would be too, if it weren’t for the God of Music.”
“So your god appeared to you because of how much you love music just the way you Turtle Immortals appear to me…”
“…because of how much you love turtles,” the snapper finishes, bringing his forelimbs together in an approximation of clapping his hands. “Good for you, Monk.”
“I didn’t realize that in these transmissions I was supposed to figure things out for myself.”
“Why wouldn’t you? Active thinking is better than passive listening. You should know that from your physical practices—your tai chi and all that. If you have to work for something it means more to you, is more likely to have a lasting effect on you, more likely to change you.”
“Now I just feel stupid. Whether we choose our gods or they choose us, it makes perfect sense they should be in a form and context that has meaning for us, that provides succor and solace, that eases our suffering.”
The turtle nods. “See this fishhook in my beak? Never have been able to get rid of it. Hurts me every day. For a long time, I found it easier to deal with because of the God of Music, because I loved him and he loved me. He would come down to the dock, sometimes with his woman, sometimes with his kid, and play on and on for me. I’d float on the surface, not even worrying about the fishhook or the sturgeon or anything else. If I’d been eaten at any of those moments, I wouldn’t have cared at
