My uncle was, at that time, an activist priest, and was either returning to Oklahoma from, or going to his black voter registration efforts in Mississippi. He also met Martin Luther King, conversed with him, and marched from Selma to Montgomery. As you can imagine, his civil injustice sensibilities were at their peak. He walked into the backyard to say hello, and asked what we were doing.

We told him.

I shall reconstruct what followed from a combination of memory, and, having known him these many years, what he might have said. Because it doesn’t matter which kid said what, I will represent us in one voice. 

“You’re torturing animals? How can you be so cruel?” 

“It’s not cruel, they live through it and we feed them.” 

This would be the last assertive statement we made. Yes, he was our uncle, but the black shirt and slacks, and Roman collar represented a moral authority that easily overcame any lack of intimidation familial familiarity might allow. 

“Would you like to live your life locked in a closet? Would it be acceptable if I did that to you, even if I fed you?”

A plaintive “no,” fearing we were going to be punished.   

“These are God’s creatures, not yours. Do you think you are their masters, and they your slaves? Does He provide us these animals for your amusement? Do they not have a right to live their lives as God sees fit?" 

By now we’re just shaking our heads and looking at the ground.  

“These animals, like you, like the Negroes and all of mankind deserve to live in freedom! Free them now! Do that, and never again think you are entitled to use another of God’s creatures so cruelly!" 

And we did - post haste, finding them places we thought turtles would enjoy.  

I look back with some amusement at the thought of this great man freeing the turtles. Speaking to his congregation of three in that same voice that could fill a church, he echoes King as he put the care into carapace.  Always the teacher, here he extended our previous lessons on racial equality into a respect for all living things. I will forever appreciate these lessons of life, equality and freedom he and my Mother, his sister, taught us. We never had to expel the poison of racial prejudice from our minds because they kept it from harming us. 

Mom died last year. My uncle – who I sometimes refer to as the Schindler of turtles - is a retired priest living in Oklahoma City. 

One day he too shall pass on and be buried. In my imagination I see a graveyard worker looking at uncle’s stone marker, puzzled as to why there are tiny tracks leading to and away from it, and small pebbles sitting on top next to his name.

But we will know. We will know.