Turtle Hunter
“You can’t go with them,” Yanapi’s older sister said.
Yanapi watched his father, uncles and brothers set off for the turtle hunt.
He scuffed the sand with his feet. I’m seven years old and I’m meant to be a turtle hunter,
he breathed. He wished his grandmother was here. She’d understand.
She’d given him the name Yanapi - the name of a great turtle hunter who had lived
in the long ago time.
“You can’t go with them,” Malawa repeated. ‘There are rules about who can hunt turtles
like there are rules about who can drive a car. If you are seven, you are not allowed
to drive a car and here at Galiwin’ku, if you are seven you’re not old enough to hunt turtles.’
Yanapi pushed Malawa away.
She caught and held him. “Let’s go down to the beach while the tide is out and
catch some crabs. We can wrap them in pandanus leaves and cook them in the sand.”
‘Girl stuff,’ Yanapi muttered.
Malawa sighed. Rules are rules, she thought. Only the men and older boys are allowed
to hunt turtles, spear wallaby and wild pigs or go fishing for barramundi.
Women, girls and younger boys dig yams, gather bush fruit, collect oysters and crabs.
Yanapi broke from Malawa’s grasp and stomped over to the craft hut.
He perched on the bottom step and stared at the ground. He waited.
He could hear excited cries from the beach each time one of children caught a crab.
The women and girls sat weaving pandanus mats while they watched them.
Time to go. As he ran through the bushes, Yanapi looked back to make sure no-one
was watching or following.
He skipped along the sandy track that led to the mangrove swamps.
He walked carefully across the rocks at the water’s edge.
“I’ll catch a turtle all by myself. Then, everyone will know I am a turtle hunter.”
He peered between the cracks in the rocks and looked along the sand dunes.
No turtles.
It was hot. The sun hung high in the sky.
Yanapi found a shade under a mangrove bush and went to sleep.
His father and uncles returned home with their hunt.
“Where’s Yanapi?”
His sisters went from house to house looking for him.
They looked down at the beach. Yanapi was missing.
The sun was almost resting on the water. Soon it would send out its
orange colours across the sky. They must find Yanapi before it was dark.
Yanapi’s father and uncles set out to look for him.
“This way! Here are his footprints.”
Yanapi’s small foot marks were stamped in the soft sand.
They followed the tracks. “Yanapi! Yanapi!”
Yanapi woke. He remembered he was on a turtle hunt.
As he walked across the rocks he saw something move - a turtle, a tiny turtle!
He reached his hand down between the rocks and lifted it up.
Yanapi laughed. “I AM a turtle hunter!”
As he put the turtle inside his shirt, he heard his father calling.
“Yanapi! Yanapi!”
“Bapa,” he called back. He ran to meet his father.
“I’ve found one. I’ve found a turtle.”
Yanapi’s father and uncles passed Yanapi’s turtle carefully from one hand to the next.
The turtle did not belong to the big turtle family that hunters caught.
For that Yanapi must wait until he was older. But for now, that did not matter.
The men picked up the little boy and carried him high upon their shoulders as
any hero should be carried and walked home chanting as they went, “Yanapi is coming.
Get the cooking fire ready. Yanapi, the hunter is coming home.”
That night Yanapi sat with the elders, the most important men of their group,
and was given a share of the tastiest food always saved for the best hunter of the day.
© Mabel Kaplan 2009