The Seawall
Sharon LaCour
She knelt on the scratchy green vinyl seat of the car and leaned out of the window, squinting against the wind which blew her long hair into knots.
“Sit down Cricket. You’ll fall out the window or worse, fly into the front seat and upset my cup of coffee.” She stayed a minute longer like she hadn’t heard him. “Colette. You heard me?”
Leaning back against the seat her legs stopped short and left her feet dangling over the front edge. She scratched a mosquito bite on her left knee. “I can’t see like this.”
“We’re going four-forty, Collie, forty miles an hour, all four windows down,” an excitement in his voice.
“Six windows, Daddy, there’s six.” The smell of fresh baked bread wafted into the car for a moment, and she lifted her nose up toward the window.
“How do you figure that?” He gazed at her in the rear view mirror.
“Those little ones up there, the triangle ones. Can I come sit up there and use the cranks?” Raised up again on her knees, she peered over the seat past her Daddy’s reddened neckline.
“Okay, you are right. Six. No, you can’t.” He raised a plastic cup to his mouth, blew on it, and sucked in a long sip.
When he’d leave her in the car sometimes to stop at the gas station or to talk to somebody, she’d climb in the front and turn the cranks of the vent windows and watch them open and shut. They were the neatest part of the new station wagon, that and the big back area where you could lie down and look out the windows.
Sometimes, he’d let her ride in the front seat and give her sips from his salt-covered icy beer cans. On those days, he’d be whistling or humming a tune real low with a beer in one hand and a Camel in the other. Today he wasn’t whistling or singing. They’d had time for a couple of glazed donuts from the bakery on the way; Mama, still sleeping when they left, would not have approved of the donuts.
“Why does the car say mouth, Daddy?” She felt very proud this spring, finishing up the first grade and able to read so many words. Mrs. Petrie from church had told her mother the other Sunday that Collette had an advanced vocabulary.
“What? Say what?”
“Mouth,” she had to talk above the wind rushing into the car. “M-O-U-T-H. Right there on the steering wheel. I have an advanced vocabulary, you know,” she yelled.
“Not mouth.” He laughed, to her dismay. “Plymouth, it’s the name of the car.”
“Oh, well, it’s still mouth,” she said to herself.
The family had all piled into the wagon when he brought it home from the used car lot, the little kids into the back where they could lie down and look out the sides and the big back window. Mama had seemed happy and not so tired that day. They had driven around by the lakefront, past the beach and the seawall, over that high bridge with the train trestle and past the little airport where you could hear those purring engines, way over to where the camps stretched out into the lake one after the other, with docks lining up like rungs on a huge floating ladder. They had poured out to show Aunt Edith and Uncle Walter the new car. Edith had very red hair. Collette always wanted to touch it to see if it would burn her fingers, she had very red lips too, and fingernails, none of which her Mama, who never wore makeup of any kind, had. Walter liked to pick her up and toss her in the air, which she thought she was getting to be a bit too big for. They all commented on the beautiful seafoam and cream paint job and the tiny stars on the headliner, the nice wings in the back.
She stared at her Daddy’s neck, the smell of the lake getting stronger and stronger. “Can I have another donut?”
“No more donuts. We’re here.” A moment later he pulled up the car and stopped.
She scrambled to her knees and gulped in the lake air, thrilled as usual at the sight of the lake. All sky and water as far as the eye could see, twenty-six miles across of water, the thin silver sliver of the causeway bridge shining in the distance. Behind and on both sides of them the city nestled into its bowl between this lake and the Mississippi River. She was aware of the city being there and yet it felt like another world here by the lake, like a far, away, remote place, only twenty minutes from their door.
She waited for him to open the door, jumped down and ran to the seawall and counted the steps down to the water -- her ritual. When the lake was high, like the day they came down to look at the waves before Hurricane Betsy, you could only see three or four steps. Her mama had objected, but Daddy held her tight that day as her brothers ran around in the grass shrieking into the tropical storm force winds. Waves would travel around the wall, one at a time, licking the steps until a curve stopped it and another wave would follow.
Today the water mirrored the placid sky, flat glassy with few ripples, the color of a green coke bottle, or darker, and murky. Eight steps showed above the surface of the water with more below. She would go down as far as he allowed, the steps being slippery and the lake not safe here for swimming. Then you could see below the surface to the bright green moss swaying on the bottom steps and figure out how many more steps continued under the water.
The light changed suddenly. Huge pillows of cloud lumbered past and the sun opened up. The green moss gleamed and undulated, like a creature or a hundred creatures forever stuck to the disappearing concrete steps. She shivered, remembering the time she went too far, how the moss had felt on her bare feet, the slippery, shiny wetness of it.
She smelled his smoke behind her. “How many steps, Baby?”
“Eight.”
“Eight showing, so how many are below?”
She took out her fingers. “Eight-nine-ten-eleven,” touching each one with the pointer of the other hand. “Four.”
“Four.”
“That makes twelve.” She lifted her hand to shade her eyes and gazed along the length of the seawall until it disappeared from sight. “Why do they call it that?”
“Call it what?” He sat on the top step, unraveling the string of the crab traps. The cigarette hung from his lip.
“The seawall. It’s not a wall at all, it’s a stairway.”
“It’s a wall made of steps, very long steps that go on for miles, way to that lighthouse over there. I guess they call it that because it was built to be a wall to keep out the sea. To keep the lake from flooding the city.” He continued working on the traps, separating them one from the other by holding their metal rings. “Look, that way, at West End, the lighthouse, you see it? The steps go about that far.”
“The lighthouse where Mama went swimming when she was a little girl?” This story she loved to hear as many times as they would tell it. Her mama’s aunt and uncle lived at that very lighthouse, tended it, turned on the light as needed to bring ships to the dock. And when her mama visited, she and her sisters dove from the lighthouse platform into the lake to swim.
He flung a trap to one side, laying them all out in a straight line, and reached into the ice chest for a chicken neck. Behind him, a car of teenagers had parked and leaned against their car smoking and listening to music.
“That’s the one. You have a good memory.” He tied the shiny chicken neck to the string at the bottom middle of the trap, stood up and wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his blue work shirt.
She climbed up to the top ledge of the wall of steps and walked along its edge in the grass, counting the number of footsteps it took for her to get from one section to the next. Each section of concrete steps had a straight crack running all the way down to the water. In these cracks her Daddy would secure the ends of the crab nets before he tossed them into the water. The steps took a curve that jutted out into the lake. As she followed it she heard her Daddy’s voice calling her name. She turned to look back, and had lost him from sight so she ran back around the curve until she could see him again. “You going too far, young lady. Get back here.”
She ran back to him in the grass, his voice reaching her like a faraway echo, and his body looking small next to the oak tree standing on the grassy area between the seawall and Lakeshore Drive. The sun slipped back behind the clouds, giving some respite from the heat and glare. “Stay close, Cricket, where I can see you.”
“Okay.” She watched him tossing the wire and string nets one at a time into the water just a short ways out, where the crabs waited on the bottom of the shallow lake. “How deep is it, Daddy?”
“Deep enough to cover your head. Deep enough to cover mine, too. These nets settle on the bottom where the crabbies hang out, having their crabbie parties.” He smiled at her.
“Crabby parties?” She giggled. “You mean they’re crabby so they have parties to stop feeling crabby?”
“Yep. Crabby, crab parties for crabby crabs.” He pounded another wooden stake into a crack and lifted the net about shoulder level. Collette watched it soar into the air and fall gently.
“You brought your colors?” He set up a lawn chair and pulled a beer out of his cooler.
“Yeah.” She had little enthusiasm in her voice for coloring. What she wanted was to go closer to the bottom steps again, put her feet into the water and look for little fish and shells stuck in the moss.
“I brought you a root beer. You want it now?” He stood over the ice chest.
“Uh......”
“Come on, the ice is melting here.”
“No, I’ll wait.”
“Go to the car and get your colors.” He sat down in his chair and lit another cigarette, took out the newspaper.
She dragged her feet over to the car and opened the back door. Across Lakeshore Drive the teenagers had settled in on top of a picnic table, three guys and one girl, laughing and joking. Colette thought the girl certainly attracted a lot of attention from the boys who seemed to hover around her like yellow jackets in August. The girl seemed a little sad because she didn’t laugh with them, but looked straight down at the ground. The entertainment they provided appealed to her much more than her color crayons and princess coloring book, so she dawdled by the open door of the wagon and stared across the street. She retrieved her red plaid satchel from the back seat and sat down on the curb of the parking area continuing her vigil. The concrete curb scratched at the backs of her knees. Ants crawled anxiously around the barrier of her feet. She squinted up at a loud blue jay screeching at her from the trees beyond the picnic table. All of a sudden some loud music came out of the car, a lady singing in a deep voice.
One of the boys reached into a grocery bag and pulled out a bottle which they all passed around and drank from, all but the girl who shook her head. The boys tried again to offer it to her but she refused. “Collette, time to pull up the nets, come on, where’s my helper.”
She turned back to her daddy for her favorite part of the outing, forgetting the girl and her problems across the way.
“Here, you help pull up this one.” He let her hold the strings and feel some of the weight as he pulled it up. “Pretty light, what do you think?”
“Nothing there.” They tried to guess how many, if any, crabs would be in each net. Then they’d add up all the crabs from all the nets. Daddy would boil them in the backyard when they got home and sometimes her cousins came over to help eat them, depending on the catch. If the catch was big, she got to see her cousins, and to eat the juicy, spicy crabmeat that Daddy cracked open for her.
The net came up empty, the chicken neck waterlogged and tattered. “Let’s go on.” They crossed to the next one. “This one feels more promising, Collie. Here.” She pulled on the string after he’d released it from the bottom of the lake. “Two or three.”
“Females or males?”
“Which ones are the fat ones again?”
“The females.”
“Hunh. One of each then.”
They pulled up the string together, and indeed there were three bright blue crabs in the net. “You are getting good at this,” he said. “Go get the hamper.”
She ran up the steps carefully where the woven reed hamper sat empty next to the lawn chair. Two of the boys across the street were climbing a tree while the third one sat next to the girl, his arm around her shoulders, as she took a sip from the bottle that he held to her lips.
“Collette!”
“Coming!” She had to maneuver the steps slowly going down. “Here, Daddy.” She held the hamper as he dumped out the net, the animals clinging to the string with their claws. He pushed them off with a stick.
“That’s a male, that’s a female. Can’t see underneath the other one, but it’s smaller.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right. Two males, one female. Let’s keep going.” Six crabs came up in all, the chicken necks still intact, for the most part, so he tossed them all back in.
“Can I go down a few steps?”
“You can go down six, no more than six. Okay?”
“Okay.” She made her way slowly down the steps and sat down with her knobby elbows resting on her knees just below the cuff of her red short pants. Her chin rested on one hand, and she squinted down into the water. A mullet jumped right in front of her. “Daddy! A mullet!”
“Count the jumps.”
“One.........two........three.......... Three!” She yelled.
“It’s almost always three. Lucky if you get one that does four. Good luck.” He sat down again the lawn chair and pulled up the paper.
They both heard the scream. Her Daddy turned around in his chair and gazed across the street. Collette ran up to look. “Stay right here.” He set the paper down with his pack of cigarettes to hold it. “Don’t wander off.” After waiting for a car to pass, he started across the street. One of the boys held onto the arms of the girl a little too tightly, Collette thought, while another held the bottle to her mouth. The boys let go when they glimpsed her Daddy marching over there.
Collette heard a sound behind her and turned to see another mullet jump, one...two...three....She wandered down towards it as she counted, three...... It disappeared for a few seconds, then it came up again. She looked over at her Daddy to tell him, but he was talking to the group of kids. Could it be the same mullet, jumping over and over again, she wondered? It stopped and so did she, then again, one.....two....and Collette went down two more steps. Three more times the mullet jumped, this time a further distance out. By the time he disappeared for good, she felt the water splashing her feet in her pink flip-flops. The hairy green steps sat only inches away from her feet; the step she was on being mostly dry and free of moss. Three steps were visible, each one less and less so as they extended underneath the murky lake. The water felt cool on her feet. She glanced up; her Daddy had not returned, and she reached down to remove her flip-flops, dipping her toes onto the green step below, rubbing them in the silky mass. Again she shivered at the touch of it, slimy and forbidden, but cool and soft too. Her bottom touched the step behind her and she leaned against the edge of it with her toes hanging over into the moss.
Another mullet jumped up not two feet away and startled her, making her lose her footing. She felt her feet then her legs slide against the mossy concrete, bumping her head against the top one as she slid down into the dark water. There was nothing to grab onto, although she flailed out her arms in an effort to find anything to keep from sliding. Her whole body bumped along the edges of the three concrete steps, the water not deep enough over them to keep her buoyant or prevent scraping the backs of her heels and legs until her head went under and she felt her body sink to the bottom with the crabs.
The water felt as warm as when the hose has been out in the sun for a little while, very warm at first, until her feet approached the bottom where it became cooler. The backs of her legs burned where the steps had brushed them and as she looked up and saw the light of the sky a long way above her head, she panicked. Her stomach convulsed in fear with the desire to breathe and knowing that she could not do so. Feeling her toes touch the sharp shells and sand, she pushed as hard as she could against the bottom. This propelled her up quickly and allowed her to gasp at the top and take in some air, even to try to say his name, before she sank again. This time the bottom came sooner, and she repeated the process of bouncing up to the top, gasping, and calling, “Daddy,” once more. The third time her legs felt not so strong, but she made it up the last time.
She heard it then, her Daddy’s voice, “Cricket!” but far away sounding, then louder, “Cricket, Jesus!” In moments she felt her body lifted up in his arms; she sucked in as much air as she could, until she began to cough. He carried her to the top of the seawall, set her down on the grass. She sat upright, coughing, dazed, her legs and back aching, breathing in deeply.
“What the hell were you doing? I told you not to go down that close to the water. ” She started crying then, at the anger in his voice, and shivering, felt colder than she ever remembered. He grabbed her up in his arms, rubbing some warmth into her small body. “Honey, I didn’t see you. I couldn’t see you. It scared me to death. Then I saw your head come up. Jesus.” He shivered then himself. “Are you hurt?”
The tears became whimpers as his voice softened and her head fell against his warm chest. She shook her head, no, then nodded yes, pointing behind her to her back and legs.
“You’re all scraped up, aren’t you, poor Cricket. I’ll be right back.” He set her down and jogged to the car. She watched him, missing his warmth. That’s when she noticed the girl standing next to the car at the top of the seawall. The girl from across the street.
He returned with a towel and his raincoat, rubbed her gently, took off her wet t-shirt and quickly draped the coat over her bare skin. “I think you could use that root beer about now, hey kid?”
She shook her head, coughing. He held her again, setting the root beer down.
“That’s the girl from across the street.” She craned her neck to see.
“Yes, we’re going to give her a ride home. I forgot all about her.” Calling up to the girl, “There’s a root beer in the cooler if you want it. You can come on down here if you want.”
“You ready for some now?” He opened the root beer and offered it to her. She nodded and accepted tiny grateful sips of the cold sweet bubbles as he rubbed her back and shoulders. “You had me scared for a minute there, Cricket, but I knew you’d come out of it. Yep, you’re pretty strong for a cricket, aren’t you? Now, let’s get some more crabs so your cousins can come over tonight.”
She sniffed and nodded again and sat on the ledge watching as he pulled up the strings alone one by one, dumping out the crabs, chatting with the crabs and with her, until he’d made a round and came back to sit next to her. The girl stayed up next to the car, her arms folded, looking away down the street.
“Daddy?”
“Yes, honey.” He pulled her dry t-shirt over her head.
“That girl is just standing up there.”
“Yes, she is. We’ll get going soon.”
“Daddy?”
“Yeah?”
“I lost my pink flip-flops. You think Mama’s gonna be mad?”
“No, I think she’ll be just fine. We’ll get you some new ones. Don’t worry.” He started to go up to the ice chest for more necks.
“Daddy?”
“Unh-hunh?” He paused, turned toward her.
“It gets cold at the bottom.” She wiped her nose on his coat.
“Yeah. How about that?” He changed his mind about the necks, sat down and pulled her on his lap.
“Cooler. For the crabs. I think they like it cool.”
“Yeah? Yeah. I bet they do, honey. Today you got to visit where they live. Not everybody gets to do that.”
She nodded.
“Not as much fun for people down there, is it?”
“Nope. I like it better up here in the sun.”
“Me, too, baby, me too.” He held her, a little too tightly, his rough cheek tickling her smooth one, and breathed a warm tune in her ear.
After a moment, “Daddy, I’m worried about that girl.”
He laughed. “Just like your mama, worried about everybody. Okay.” He set her down. “You stay here, we’ll close up shop and go home. We can buy some crabs on the way and your cousins can still come over.”
The ride home was quiet, with the girl sitting in the front seat. “You and your brothers go to St. Alphonse, right?”
“Yes, sir.” She stared out the window.
“Couple of them play football?”
“Yes, sir.” She looked at the nails of one hand.
“I know your daddy. He goes fishing with my brother-in-law. How’s your mom?” He glanced at her.
“Fine.” She sighed and twisted the ends of her hair.
“I have a dog.” Collette piped in a loud voice from the back seat. “She’s as old as the hills.”
“I used to see her at Schwegmann’s but I haven’t seen her in a while.” He turned the corner near the bakery; Collette smelled cake this time.
“She’s been kind of sick.”
“My mama’s sick too.” She spoke louder since no one had responded to her earlier. “She sleeps a lot.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. She seems like a real nice lady,” he slowed the car down to a crawl.
The girl pointed toward the end of the block. “It’s down there on the right.”
He pulled the car over and stopped. “You be careful about who you hang around with. I know one of those boys, he’s up to no good. You don’t want your mama to be worried about you.”
The girl pushed open the car door and turned around to look at him for the first time. “My Mama doesn’t care what I do or where I am. And I don’t know why you would either.” She slammed the door shut.
“Thanks for the ride.”
He watched her walk up to the house. Awnings and dark drapes shrouded the house in shadow. A few scraggly shrubs struggled against the house, the lawn was dry and brown and old newspapers piled up on the steps.
“That’s a sad house, hunh?” Colette sat up on her knees.
He sighed. “A sad house, yeah, baby, it is.”
“At least our house is only sad sometimes, it doesn’t look sad.” She felt pleased that her grass at home was green and trimmed, and she had a swing hanging from the tree in the front yard.
He looked at her in the mirror for a moment as though he couldn’t decide whether to say something or not. “Sit down, Collie. Let’s get on home. Those crabs can’t wait for us to eat ‘em.”
This story appeared in the Xavier Review.
Sharon LaCour
She knelt on the scratchy green vinyl seat of the car and leaned out of the window, squinting against the wind which blew her long hair into knots.
“Sit down Cricket. You’ll fall out the window or worse, fly into the front seat and upset my cup of coffee.” She stayed a minute longer like she hadn’t heard him. “Colette. You heard me?”
Leaning back against the seat her legs stopped short and left her feet dangling over the front edge. She scratched a mosquito bite on her left knee. “I can’t see like this.”
“We’re going four-forty, Collie, forty miles an hour, all four windows down,” an excitement in his voice.
“Six windows, Daddy, there’s six.” The smell of fresh baked bread wafted into the car for a moment, and she lifted her nose up toward the window.
“How do you figure that?” He gazed at her in the rear view mirror.
“Those little ones up there, the triangle ones. Can I come sit up there and use the cranks?” Raised up again on her knees, she peered over the seat past her Daddy’s reddened neckline.
“Okay, you are right. Six. No, you can’t.” He raised a plastic cup to his mouth, blew on it, and sucked in a long sip.
When he’d leave her in the car sometimes to stop at the gas station or to talk to somebody, she’d climb in the front and turn the cranks of the vent windows and watch them open and shut. They were the neatest part of the new station wagon, that and the big back area where you could lie down and look out the windows.
Sometimes, he’d let her ride in the front seat and give her sips from his salt-covered icy beer cans. On those days, he’d be whistling or humming a tune real low with a beer in one hand and a Camel in the other. Today he wasn’t whistling or singing. They’d had time for a couple of glazed donuts from the bakery on the way; Mama, still sleeping when they left, would not have approved of the donuts.
“Why does the car say mouth, Daddy?” She felt very proud this spring, finishing up the first grade and able to read so many words. Mrs. Petrie from church had told her mother the other Sunday that Collette had an advanced vocabulary.
“What? Say what?”
“Mouth,” she had to talk above the wind rushing into the car. “M-O-U-T-H. Right there on the steering wheel. I have an advanced vocabulary, you know,” she yelled.
“Not mouth.” He laughed, to her dismay. “Plymouth, it’s the name of the car.”
“Oh, well, it’s still mouth,” she said to herself.
The family had all piled into the wagon when he brought it home from the used car lot, the little kids into the back where they could lie down and look out the sides and the big back window. Mama had seemed happy and not so tired that day. They had driven around by the lakefront, past the beach and the seawall, over that high bridge with the train trestle and past the little airport where you could hear those purring engines, way over to where the camps stretched out into the lake one after the other, with docks lining up like rungs on a huge floating ladder. They had poured out to show Aunt Edith and Uncle Walter the new car. Edith had very red hair. Collette always wanted to touch it to see if it would burn her fingers, she had very red lips too, and fingernails, none of which her Mama, who never wore makeup of any kind, had. Walter liked to pick her up and toss her in the air, which she thought she was getting to be a bit too big for. They all commented on the beautiful seafoam and cream paint job and the tiny stars on the headliner, the nice wings in the back.
She stared at her Daddy’s neck, the smell of the lake getting stronger and stronger. “Can I have another donut?”
“No more donuts. We’re here.” A moment later he pulled up the car and stopped.
She scrambled to her knees and gulped in the lake air, thrilled as usual at the sight of the lake. All sky and water as far as the eye could see, twenty-six miles across of water, the thin silver sliver of the causeway bridge shining in the distance. Behind and on both sides of them the city nestled into its bowl between this lake and the Mississippi River. She was aware of the city being there and yet it felt like another world here by the lake, like a far, away, remote place, only twenty minutes from their door.
She waited for him to open the door, jumped down and ran to the seawall and counted the steps down to the water -- her ritual. When the lake was high, like the day they came down to look at the waves before Hurricane Betsy, you could only see three or four steps. Her mama had objected, but Daddy held her tight that day as her brothers ran around in the grass shrieking into the tropical storm force winds. Waves would travel around the wall, one at a time, licking the steps until a curve stopped it and another wave would follow.
Today the water mirrored the placid sky, flat glassy with few ripples, the color of a green coke bottle, or darker, and murky. Eight steps showed above the surface of the water with more below. She would go down as far as he allowed, the steps being slippery and the lake not safe here for swimming. Then you could see below the surface to the bright green moss swaying on the bottom steps and figure out how many more steps continued under the water.
The light changed suddenly. Huge pillows of cloud lumbered past and the sun opened up. The green moss gleamed and undulated, like a creature or a hundred creatures forever stuck to the disappearing concrete steps. She shivered, remembering the time she went too far, how the moss had felt on her bare feet, the slippery, shiny wetness of it.
She smelled his smoke behind her. “How many steps, Baby?”
“Eight.”
“Eight showing, so how many are below?”
She took out her fingers. “Eight-nine-ten-eleven,” touching each one with the pointer of the other hand. “Four.”
“Four.”
“That makes twelve.” She lifted her hand to shade her eyes and gazed along the length of the seawall until it disappeared from sight. “Why do they call it that?”
“Call it what?” He sat on the top step, unraveling the string of the crab traps. The cigarette hung from his lip.
“The seawall. It’s not a wall at all, it’s a stairway.”
“It’s a wall made of steps, very long steps that go on for miles, way to that lighthouse over there. I guess they call it that because it was built to be a wall to keep out the sea. To keep the lake from flooding the city.” He continued working on the traps, separating them one from the other by holding their metal rings. “Look, that way, at West End, the lighthouse, you see it? The steps go about that far.”
“The lighthouse where Mama went swimming when she was a little girl?” This story she loved to hear as many times as they would tell it. Her mama’s aunt and uncle lived at that very lighthouse, tended it, turned on the light as needed to bring ships to the dock. And when her mama visited, she and her sisters dove from the lighthouse platform into the lake to swim.
He flung a trap to one side, laying them all out in a straight line, and reached into the ice chest for a chicken neck. Behind him, a car of teenagers had parked and leaned against their car smoking and listening to music.
“That’s the one. You have a good memory.” He tied the shiny chicken neck to the string at the bottom middle of the trap, stood up and wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his blue work shirt.
She climbed up to the top ledge of the wall of steps and walked along its edge in the grass, counting the number of footsteps it took for her to get from one section to the next. Each section of concrete steps had a straight crack running all the way down to the water. In these cracks her Daddy would secure the ends of the crab nets before he tossed them into the water. The steps took a curve that jutted out into the lake. As she followed it she heard her Daddy’s voice calling her name. She turned to look back, and had lost him from sight so she ran back around the curve until she could see him again. “You going too far, young lady. Get back here.”
She ran back to him in the grass, his voice reaching her like a faraway echo, and his body looking small next to the oak tree standing on the grassy area between the seawall and Lakeshore Drive. The sun slipped back behind the clouds, giving some respite from the heat and glare. “Stay close, Cricket, where I can see you.”
“Okay.” She watched him tossing the wire and string nets one at a time into the water just a short ways out, where the crabs waited on the bottom of the shallow lake. “How deep is it, Daddy?”
“Deep enough to cover your head. Deep enough to cover mine, too. These nets settle on the bottom where the crabbies hang out, having their crabbie parties.” He smiled at her.
“Crabby parties?” She giggled. “You mean they’re crabby so they have parties to stop feeling crabby?”
“Yep. Crabby, crab parties for crabby crabs.” He pounded another wooden stake into a crack and lifted the net about shoulder level. Collette watched it soar into the air and fall gently.
“You brought your colors?” He set up a lawn chair and pulled a beer out of his cooler.
“Yeah.” She had little enthusiasm in her voice for coloring. What she wanted was to go closer to the bottom steps again, put her feet into the water and look for little fish and shells stuck in the moss.
“I brought you a root beer. You want it now?” He stood over the ice chest.
“Uh......”
“Come on, the ice is melting here.”
“No, I’ll wait.”
“Go to the car and get your colors.” He sat down in his chair and lit another cigarette, took out the newspaper.
She dragged her feet over to the car and opened the back door. Across Lakeshore Drive the teenagers had settled in on top of a picnic table, three guys and one girl, laughing and joking. Colette thought the girl certainly attracted a lot of attention from the boys who seemed to hover around her like yellow jackets in August. The girl seemed a little sad because she didn’t laugh with them, but looked straight down at the ground. The entertainment they provided appealed to her much more than her color crayons and princess coloring book, so she dawdled by the open door of the wagon and stared across the street. She retrieved her red plaid satchel from the back seat and sat down on the curb of the parking area continuing her vigil. The concrete curb scratched at the backs of her knees. Ants crawled anxiously around the barrier of her feet. She squinted up at a loud blue jay screeching at her from the trees beyond the picnic table. All of a sudden some loud music came out of the car, a lady singing in a deep voice.
One of the boys reached into a grocery bag and pulled out a bottle which they all passed around and drank from, all but the girl who shook her head. The boys tried again to offer it to her but she refused. “Collette, time to pull up the nets, come on, where’s my helper.”
She turned back to her daddy for her favorite part of the outing, forgetting the girl and her problems across the way.
“Here, you help pull up this one.” He let her hold the strings and feel some of the weight as he pulled it up. “Pretty light, what do you think?”
“Nothing there.” They tried to guess how many, if any, crabs would be in each net. Then they’d add up all the crabs from all the nets. Daddy would boil them in the backyard when they got home and sometimes her cousins came over to help eat them, depending on the catch. If the catch was big, she got to see her cousins, and to eat the juicy, spicy crabmeat that Daddy cracked open for her.
The net came up empty, the chicken neck waterlogged and tattered. “Let’s go on.” They crossed to the next one. “This one feels more promising, Collie. Here.” She pulled on the string after he’d released it from the bottom of the lake. “Two or three.”
“Females or males?”
“Which ones are the fat ones again?”
“The females.”
“Hunh. One of each then.”
They pulled up the string together, and indeed there were three bright blue crabs in the net. “You are getting good at this,” he said. “Go get the hamper.”
She ran up the steps carefully where the woven reed hamper sat empty next to the lawn chair. Two of the boys across the street were climbing a tree while the third one sat next to the girl, his arm around her shoulders, as she took a sip from the bottle that he held to her lips.
“Collette!”
“Coming!” She had to maneuver the steps slowly going down. “Here, Daddy.” She held the hamper as he dumped out the net, the animals clinging to the string with their claws. He pushed them off with a stick.
“That’s a male, that’s a female. Can’t see underneath the other one, but it’s smaller.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right. Two males, one female. Let’s keep going.” Six crabs came up in all, the chicken necks still intact, for the most part, so he tossed them all back in.
“Can I go down a few steps?”
“You can go down six, no more than six. Okay?”
“Okay.” She made her way slowly down the steps and sat down with her knobby elbows resting on her knees just below the cuff of her red short pants. Her chin rested on one hand, and she squinted down into the water. A mullet jumped right in front of her. “Daddy! A mullet!”
“Count the jumps.”
“One.........two........three.......... Three!” She yelled.
“It’s almost always three. Lucky if you get one that does four. Good luck.” He sat down again the lawn chair and pulled up the paper.
They both heard the scream. Her Daddy turned around in his chair and gazed across the street. Collette ran up to look. “Stay right here.” He set the paper down with his pack of cigarettes to hold it. “Don’t wander off.” After waiting for a car to pass, he started across the street. One of the boys held onto the arms of the girl a little too tightly, Collette thought, while another held the bottle to her mouth. The boys let go when they glimpsed her Daddy marching over there.
Collette heard a sound behind her and turned to see another mullet jump, one...two...three....She wandered down towards it as she counted, three...... It disappeared for a few seconds, then it came up again. She looked over at her Daddy to tell him, but he was talking to the group of kids. Could it be the same mullet, jumping over and over again, she wondered? It stopped and so did she, then again, one.....two....and Collette went down two more steps. Three more times the mullet jumped, this time a further distance out. By the time he disappeared for good, she felt the water splashing her feet in her pink flip-flops. The hairy green steps sat only inches away from her feet; the step she was on being mostly dry and free of moss. Three steps were visible, each one less and less so as they extended underneath the murky lake. The water felt cool on her feet. She glanced up; her Daddy had not returned, and she reached down to remove her flip-flops, dipping her toes onto the green step below, rubbing them in the silky mass. Again she shivered at the touch of it, slimy and forbidden, but cool and soft too. Her bottom touched the step behind her and she leaned against the edge of it with her toes hanging over into the moss.
Another mullet jumped up not two feet away and startled her, making her lose her footing. She felt her feet then her legs slide against the mossy concrete, bumping her head against the top one as she slid down into the dark water. There was nothing to grab onto, although she flailed out her arms in an effort to find anything to keep from sliding. Her whole body bumped along the edges of the three concrete steps, the water not deep enough over them to keep her buoyant or prevent scraping the backs of her heels and legs until her head went under and she felt her body sink to the bottom with the crabs.
The water felt as warm as when the hose has been out in the sun for a little while, very warm at first, until her feet approached the bottom where it became cooler. The backs of her legs burned where the steps had brushed them and as she looked up and saw the light of the sky a long way above her head, she panicked. Her stomach convulsed in fear with the desire to breathe and knowing that she could not do so. Feeling her toes touch the sharp shells and sand, she pushed as hard as she could against the bottom. This propelled her up quickly and allowed her to gasp at the top and take in some air, even to try to say his name, before she sank again. This time the bottom came sooner, and she repeated the process of bouncing up to the top, gasping, and calling, “Daddy,” once more. The third time her legs felt not so strong, but she made it up the last time.
She heard it then, her Daddy’s voice, “Cricket!” but far away sounding, then louder, “Cricket, Jesus!” In moments she felt her body lifted up in his arms; she sucked in as much air as she could, until she began to cough. He carried her to the top of the seawall, set her down on the grass. She sat upright, coughing, dazed, her legs and back aching, breathing in deeply.
“What the hell were you doing? I told you not to go down that close to the water. ” She started crying then, at the anger in his voice, and shivering, felt colder than she ever remembered. He grabbed her up in his arms, rubbing some warmth into her small body. “Honey, I didn’t see you. I couldn’t see you. It scared me to death. Then I saw your head come up. Jesus.” He shivered then himself. “Are you hurt?”
The tears became whimpers as his voice softened and her head fell against his warm chest. She shook her head, no, then nodded yes, pointing behind her to her back and legs.
“You’re all scraped up, aren’t you, poor Cricket. I’ll be right back.” He set her down and jogged to the car. She watched him, missing his warmth. That’s when she noticed the girl standing next to the car at the top of the seawall. The girl from across the street.
He returned with a towel and his raincoat, rubbed her gently, took off her wet t-shirt and quickly draped the coat over her bare skin. “I think you could use that root beer about now, hey kid?”
She shook her head, coughing. He held her again, setting the root beer down.
“That’s the girl from across the street.” She craned her neck to see.
“Yes, we’re going to give her a ride home. I forgot all about her.” Calling up to the girl, “There’s a root beer in the cooler if you want it. You can come on down here if you want.”
“You ready for some now?” He opened the root beer and offered it to her. She nodded and accepted tiny grateful sips of the cold sweet bubbles as he rubbed her back and shoulders. “You had me scared for a minute there, Cricket, but I knew you’d come out of it. Yep, you’re pretty strong for a cricket, aren’t you? Now, let’s get some more crabs so your cousins can come over tonight.”
She sniffed and nodded again and sat on the ledge watching as he pulled up the strings alone one by one, dumping out the crabs, chatting with the crabs and with her, until he’d made a round and came back to sit next to her. The girl stayed up next to the car, her arms folded, looking away down the street.
“Daddy?”
“Yes, honey.” He pulled her dry t-shirt over her head.
“That girl is just standing up there.”
“Yes, she is. We’ll get going soon.”
“Daddy?”
“Yeah?”
“I lost my pink flip-flops. You think Mama’s gonna be mad?”
“No, I think she’ll be just fine. We’ll get you some new ones. Don’t worry.” He started to go up to the ice chest for more necks.
“Daddy?”
“Unh-hunh?” He paused, turned toward her.
“It gets cold at the bottom.” She wiped her nose on his coat.
“Yeah. How about that?” He changed his mind about the necks, sat down and pulled her on his lap.
“Cooler. For the crabs. I think they like it cool.”
“Yeah? Yeah. I bet they do, honey. Today you got to visit where they live. Not everybody gets to do that.”
She nodded.
“Not as much fun for people down there, is it?”
“Nope. I like it better up here in the sun.”
“Me, too, baby, me too.” He held her, a little too tightly, his rough cheek tickling her smooth one, and breathed a warm tune in her ear.
After a moment, “Daddy, I’m worried about that girl.”
He laughed. “Just like your mama, worried about everybody. Okay.” He set her down. “You stay here, we’ll close up shop and go home. We can buy some crabs on the way and your cousins can still come over.”
The ride home was quiet, with the girl sitting in the front seat. “You and your brothers go to St. Alphonse, right?”
“Yes, sir.” She stared out the window.
“Couple of them play football?”
“Yes, sir.” She looked at the nails of one hand.
“I know your daddy. He goes fishing with my brother-in-law. How’s your mom?” He glanced at her.
“Fine.” She sighed and twisted the ends of her hair.
“I have a dog.” Collette piped in a loud voice from the back seat. “She’s as old as the hills.”
“I used to see her at Schwegmann’s but I haven’t seen her in a while.” He turned the corner near the bakery; Collette smelled cake this time.
“She’s been kind of sick.”
“My mama’s sick too.” She spoke louder since no one had responded to her earlier. “She sleeps a lot.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. She seems like a real nice lady,” he slowed the car down to a crawl.
The girl pointed toward the end of the block. “It’s down there on the right.”
He pulled the car over and stopped. “You be careful about who you hang around with. I know one of those boys, he’s up to no good. You don’t want your mama to be worried about you.”
The girl pushed open the car door and turned around to look at him for the first time. “My Mama doesn’t care what I do or where I am. And I don’t know why you would either.” She slammed the door shut.
“Thanks for the ride.”
He watched her walk up to the house. Awnings and dark drapes shrouded the house in shadow. A few scraggly shrubs struggled against the house, the lawn was dry and brown and old newspapers piled up on the steps.
“That’s a sad house, hunh?” Colette sat up on her knees.
He sighed. “A sad house, yeah, baby, it is.”
“At least our house is only sad sometimes, it doesn’t look sad.” She felt pleased that her grass at home was green and trimmed, and she had a swing hanging from the tree in the front yard.
He looked at her in the mirror for a moment as though he couldn’t decide whether to say something or not. “Sit down, Collie. Let’s get on home. Those crabs can’t wait for us to eat ‘em.”
This story appeared in the Xavier Review.
