Thinking About the Immortality of the Crab Part 1

Agnes’s bow was anchored away from the, ‘Yes Dear 2.’ Charlie had tied her stern to the disabled boat with plenty of slack in the lines. It pissed me off at the time; as soon as he came back to me with another armload of brass or stainless steel, I had to lean the gun on the engine cover, pull and secure the stern lines as close to him as possible, take the booty from him, and let the lines out again. Let Agnes drift in the current.
When I anxiously shouted:

“Why do I have to keep letting the line out?” He said:

“Jesus H. Christ! Is that all you have to do, is sit around and dream up questions to ask me?” I stood my ground.

“This ship weighs as much as four Agnes’s. It’s on the sand, if it shifts and rolls it could take Agnes down with it, along with you, though I don‘t know why that would bother me ... Are you satisfied? Now, get back on that watch! We don’t have much time left.” He took a couple of steps, then shouted over his shoulder:

“Get mmm toolbox mmmmmmm the sock mmmrive ... mmm.” His words were gray, muted by the hard drizzle, and he was too far away now to hear me shout back. This was a set up. He was always trying to catch and berate me on my limited mechanical knowledge ... I’ll just have to look into the toolbox and guess ... sock?... a green metal box marked ‘sockets,‘ that pretty much solved that mystery... I could hear them clanking around in there, but there was a tiny lock. So, I took my position and waited for him. Charlie was being ornerier than usual, but ever since Fat Al told him there was a million dollar schooner aground six hundred yards SE from buoy 31, he’d had a wild look in those orange eyes.
Al was leaning between me and Charlie, talking in a loud whisper, though everybody in the room was part of the conspiracy. He smelled like dead jellyfish and bird poop. His fat ass nearly shoved me out of my chair. I’d better eat my oatmeal quickly, I could hear the anticipation rise in Jimmy’s voice.
“We figure you are the only one crazy enough to do it.”
“How come you aren’t taking it yourself?”
“Me! You know I’m on three years probation for shooting that tourist, Cat. They’ll dream up a couple felonies; they pack me away for good, man. Like sardines in a can, man. You can drop me a couple a bills for supplying the info.”
Charlie ignored Al when he heard “drop me a couple of bills.“ He pushed his chair back from the table, emphasizing he was the guy who was running the show. He said loudly:
“Anybody else? We can’t have two boats out there.” Al was still leaning over on the table blocking my vision, but there were lots of “Not me’s” and “No way’s,” around the room. One of the guys said:
“You’re the man, Cat!”
He turned to me and said:
“Grab your stuff out of the truck and meet me at the boat.”
In the spring I wasn’t thinking too much about where I would be working during the summer. After all, my buddy Harold and I were going to be graduates and we were going to travel the globe; or at least go to Manhattan, Harold’s Grandmama lived there and said she would love to have us for company for as long as we wanted to stay.
It was then, though, Dad started hinting around that his scuba diving buddy Charlie, who ran a crabbing boat on the Bay, was looking for a young man to help for the summer.
When I talked about summer employment I was talking about the pizza joint at the mall, where I could hang out with friends, find out where the next party was being held, not some superhuman extension of energy on some dirty boat.
Ok. Harold and I weren’t invited to too many parties and I was too scrawny for that kind of workload.
Then, on May 02, Mom died. I had been in the apartment when Dad came home from work, after my phone call, and took her to the hospital for the last time.
She had gone to the hospital plenty of times, so I didn’t go to see her, Harold and I went to New York for the weekend, and found a bar close to his Grandmama’s place that didn’t care how old we were and our weekend turned into nearly a week.
When I came in Monday afternoon Dad was sitting on the couch kind of bent over. He said:
“Your Mother has passed away.” That’s all he said, he got up and went into the bedroom.
Her funeral had been the day before, I missed it, and from then on he treated me with loathing. His temper was to watch out for, few of the employees of his company had much respect for him, just fear, but he had never touched me in anger. He wanted to then, though; when he spoke to me he had his arms to his side and his hands balled up into fists.
Who was he to be upset at me? I’m the one who spent the most time with her, when she yanked me out of bed to watch Johnny Carson, going on walks with her while he was off on diving trips, my many days home sick (or not, she called in for me plenty of times when she wanted the company) ...
They told me she died of diabetes, but I knew it was because of her drinking.
Well, it was over and the next day Dad, didn’t ask, he told me, get up
for work at three am the next day, Friday. Charley was swinging by at four am to pick me up.