I’m still slogging Sam’s surfboard across the sand when the boys race off to see what the commotion up the beach is all about, and by the time I get close they’ve run back to report, a sea turtle, a leatherback, the biggest of them all, we’ve never seen one before, but there’s a problem, it’s injured, they’ve already loaded it into the back of the Fish & Game Department pickup truck as the local cops pointlessly holler to stand back, stand back, and it is truly huge, like an old sequoia log, like the barnacled hull of an overturned rowboat, one of the rangers says it is probably eighty years old, and the boys say its fins are all chopped up by a boat, but the ranger says no, a knife, and now I can see sinewy stumps where the flippers should be, gray flesh marbled with milk-white fluid, sickening, I turn away, it must have washed here from some place where turtles are still a food source, the Bahamas are less than a hundred miles east, there’s a strong wind blowing Portuguese men-o’-war up on the beach, sea turtles eat jellyfish, the tentacles blind them as they age, these waves have brought us all here today, some surfers already out, others in the crowd talking about the turtle, I’m turning to head back when I see the bad look on Elizabeth’s face, some of the white-haired retirees from the next building are telling her the full story, it crawled from the ocean at dawn, it didn’t lay eggs, it didn’t swim away, they thought it was old, maybe sick, they called the police, the fishermen from the jetty wandered over to look, one man rode it like a horse, before it’s clear what’s happened, or why, a fishing knife emerges to saw through the rubbery, elephant-thick skin, three flippers gone before anyone stops him, the senior citizens are shouting out, hey, no!, accosting him, what are you doing? why did you do this? and he: for soup, some of the old people are crying, they chase him away, get lost!, you’re crazy, how would you feel if we cut your arm off like that?, some of the fishermen laughed, some shook their heads, the police arriving helpless, uninformed, it’s more than I can handle, honestly, I turn away, I am trembling not with anger but with shame, the ranger truck spins its wheels and bogs down in soft sand having traveled perhaps fifty feet, it takes an hour before a tractor comes to tow them clear, the giant turtle is that heavy, what is there to say?, eighty years old, for soup, that milky extrusion—was it blood?, as I dive into the water I am thinking how generous the ocean is in its forgiveness, I am thinking at least I never looked into its eyes.