She-Crab Soup

by Matt Fisher

The ripe waves were like hair in curlers, anticipating their grand release.  Paul sat on the shoreline, packing damp shell-encrusted sand into a hill.  Sally traipsed up.  “Can I help?” 

“Yes.  But don’t get too attached.”

Like the Lord Jesus, his castle was born to die.  When he told her, Sally rolled with laughter in the shallows. 

“Can I help you destroy it?”

“Maybe.”

Then a revision— “Of course.  You can help with anything I do.”

Sally was slapping the moistened sand and it waggled like a pudgy thigh.  Paul pressed his mortar firm.  They stacked the central edifice as highly as their interest would allow, fashioned little outliers—barbershops or cafés, dug a moat, and cursorily scraped roadways with their index fingers.  They walked back to the ocean when the city was complete enough.

“Go underwater,” said Paul.  “When you come up you’re not Sally anymore.  You’re the monster.”

“Godzilla?”

“If you want.  It could be radioactivity that did it to you.  Or maybe you are a dinosaur that’s been awakened after a billion years.”

“Oh.”

“Or—or why not something else.  Why not something never discovered before.  Something that couldn’t even have a name, and no one knows how old it is or where it came from.  It lives in the blackest part of the sea, deeper than a submarine could go without imploding.”  Paul stared at a gray cloud as he spoke. “That’s what I’ll be.”

“That’s what I’ll be, too.”

Seawater stung Paul’s eyes as he crouched, but his transfigured perspective made the pains bearable:  his position, just above water’s surface, was no longer that of a squatting sixteen-year-old but a nameless ancient’s whose head jutted from the depths.  He rose not five feet but five hundred, towering over his metropolis condemned.  Sally made guttural noises as they stomped forward as slowly as they could—relishing the moments before cataclysm.

When all was naught, Sally was laughing again, rolling in the rubble.  “Can we do it again?  Let’s get mine!”

“No,” Paul said sweetly.  For some reason his heart wanted her castle to remain. 

“Come on!”  Sally said.  Her voice was endearingly high-pitched, even more so than an average nine-year-old’s.

“Come on!”  Paul heard again, but this time it was from Sally’s older brother.  His name was Tim.  “Paul, get in here!  The waves are big again.”  Tim was his best friend.  Paul had gone as a guest with their family on vacation.  As he stepped over the waves, he could sense Sally in his wake.  From behind them Sally’s mother called.

“Sally, don’t go out to where those boys are.”

Sally protested, of course, and her mother, Karen, began asking her if she remembered things.  Did she remember getting knocked over and swallowing saltwater, or getting it up her nose, or the time the sharp shell bits scraped her bottom just on the swimsuit line?  Sally cried, perhaps because she could not confute such sound logic.

Tim didn’t seem to notice the struggle.  Periodically he would point at a wave garnering momentum and prepare himself.  “That’s the one,” he’d say.  Almost always it would falter underfed and pass through them like ghosts, crashing weakly and much too late to ride. 

Then, as if a divine reward for patience, one kingly wave would arise for them.  Paul could feel its tug, could see its mighty hunching shoulders and the shadow underneath.  Tim made a noise and stared at it, dedicated.  They both moved in agreement with it, pushing forward to dive in at the pivotal moment. 

Then Paul became the wave.  He felt it pressing on and into him, and his hands outstretched were the white foam.  It shook him and he shook it, and for a moment both their courses could not be discerned from one another.  When it released him, and his flesh was flesh again, Paul held his breath as long as he could and floated.  He dug his hands into the soft sand and held himself there.  As another wave passed over, his body bobbed slightly as a shipwreck’s flotsam.

“That was the best one yet!”  shouted Tim, and he ran back out to meet the next wave, hopping over with exuberance and disappearing.  The water grew tired and flat, though, and a good ride didn’t come for a long time.  Paul retired to the shallower parts, hoping for another, if shorter, experience.  He lay nearly submerged, a floating head on the surface, waiting.  Tim was different.  He had no interest in a child’s wave when he had been the master of a man’s. 

For a while Paul wondered on this.  Who had a greater passion for living a few moments in the surf?  He was willing to scuttle the shallows, settle for the minute joys of a lesser wave.  Did this tell more love than Tim’s defiant insistence for the grand ride? 

Sally was permitted to join Paul.  As she missed a wave completely, she fluttered her hands furtively, hoping to make her distance more impressive.  Paul laughed.  “Did you see it?” she squeaked.

Overhead the clouds had gone darker than gray.  A throaty rumble issued distantly.  Karen began expressing concern.  Thom, her husband, said nah not to worry about it.  He said to look over at the other folks—they hadn’t moved.  But Karen had seen a flash of lightning, and it wasn’t intelligent to stay out when lightning was a factor.  Karen had seen on television that a person shouldn’t even be outside when lightning was a factor, that it could reach over from far off and kill you.  More deaths from lightning strikes than hurricanes or tornadoes combined, she’d heard on TV.  Thom reclined in his beach chair. 

“There!  Did you see it?  Do you believe me now?”  Karen said.  She was standing up.  Thom pointed off to the beach’s other end.

“Look, it’s clear over there.  This’ll pass us by.”

Karen started walking back to the condo.  She called for Sally, then Tim, and Paul as an afterthought.  The thought occurred to Paul that, if real danger showed itself, he would be her last priority.

“Don’t call them, don’t put that fear on them.”

Once again Paul wondered if he was included.  Did Thom care if she put fear upon him?

“I don’t want to go in, either.  I’m trying to be intelligent.  Come on, Sally.”

She kept calling Sally.  But she didn’t know what to do and neither did Tim; Paul didn’t know what to do most of all.  He stood an equal distance from both parents, trying not to exist.  He used his left foot to bury his right in sand.  The clouds got darker.

“Sally.  Come on, sweetie.  Let’s go inside.”

Thom stared at Karen, expressionless.  Sally tucked herself into Paul.  “I’m going to do what you do.”

Paul said something that even he couldn’t make out.  The five of them stood like that for ten minutes as the winds picked up.  Paul looked over at Tim, who just shrugged.  It occurred to Paul that this argument had nothing to do with the storm.  Cold hard raindrops began pelting them.  Paul saw Thom curse under his breath, stand up, and snap shut his beach chair. 

The men were left to bring in the towels, toys, and chairs.  Down the beach where the sky was blackening, Paul saw what looked like the wisps of foregone spirits travel along the ground.  They furled as intertwining strands and moved to possess him, but only produced a light sting about his shins.  As they walked back to the condo in silence, Paul thought of offering to carry one of the three chairs Thom had pressed to his side.  But he didn’t know what to call him.  “Thom” felt presumptuous, “Mr. Bordwell” seemed too formal.  In their limited conversations Paul simply spoke, forgoing address altogether.  He thought these things as they trudged back, hoping to get his mind off the whipping winds.

Back inside the condo, Thom extended himself on the couch watching television, his socked feet not swishing like usual, conducting their symphony.  Karen was in the master bedroom with the door closed.  Despite the tension, this was not an abnormal situation considering their sleeping arrangements:  Paul and Tim had a room with two single beds, Karen slept in the master with Sally, and Thom took the couch.  Paul offered to take the couch the second night, but Thom said he didn’t mind.

Outside the rain tried to get in.  It was a most wrathful storm.  Paul was lying on the bed, looking upside down out the window.  The drops fell steadily from the gutters like the strings of a vast harp.  Tim had the door locked to their bedroom so Sally couldn’t intrude.  He was immersed in a handheld video game.  Paul sat up and glanced around the room.  The curtain rods were oars, the light switch had a lighthouse frame, and a great conch rested upon the white dresser:  the room really had no choice but to be a beach room.  Paul thought of a child born into a family of doctors.  A feverish pecking of buttons sounded from Tim’s bed. 

Nothing really interested Paul about the room until he looked at a painting on the wall just over the side of Tim’s bed.  It was yet another beach scene, but something about it disconcerted him.  A silhouetted figure stood, his back to Paul, gazing into the distance—not toward the water, but on down the shoreline.  The sand was white and it went on to meet the sky, which was also white.  The way they met and conflated made Paul feel as though the man was staring into infinity.  He had no choice but to go and meet it, for to turn around would mean to fall out of the picture frame.  His existence was the painting and the only direction was forward into nothingness.

“I’m bored,” said Tim.  He was finished with the game.  “Let’s go back out.” 

“I don’t think your mom will want us to.”

“Come on.  Let’s go see.”

     Back in the commons area, things had changed. Thom’s feet had returned to normalcy, bobbing side to side; The door was opened to the master bedroom.  Paul followed Tim until he went inside, at which point he stood and felt irreparably obtrusive.  He didn’t want to make eye contact with Thom, for this would make him feel obligated to say something.  Paul strove to maintain the silence by mimicking a tree on a day of gentle breeze: still, but not so perfectly to attract notice.

     Karen’s voice was not pleased. Her children had formed an alliance against her, and Paul could only guessed what her husband had said when he and Tim had been away.  She sniffed between sentences, sometimes between words.

     “Please?” he heard Tim say, followed by an incredulous “Please!”  It wasn’t every day he asked nicely, after all.

     “Please, mom?”  Sally added.  “It’s barely even raining anymore.”

     “Not yet,” Karen said.

     “This is so unfair,” Tim said.  “Why did you even bring us to the beach if we were just going to sit inside all day?”

     No response was made to this.  Paul imagined Karen putting her hand to her head.  There was a broad stretch of silence.  Thom was satisfied not to contribute.  The newsman muttered about politics and occasionally Karen sniffed.

     “Please?” Tim said. 

     “If you ask me again, Tim, you won’t go out even when the weather’s cleared.”

     Another silence.  Oh God, Tim—don’t. 

     “Mom,” he said.  “Please.”

     After the sun had chiseled through the clouds, Paul sat on the uncomfortable chair, careful not to inconveniently take a good seat from one of the trip’s sponsors. 

     “I’ll stay in with Tim,” he said.

     “No that’s okay, Paul.  You’re not the one being punished.”  When Karen said that, what she really meant was, “His punishment won’t mean anything if you stay here with him.”  From the couch Tim whispered poisonous curses when her back was turned, his eyes splotched angry red.

     Outside Thom was standing shirtless.  He looked at the water’s stain on the sand.  “The tide must have moved up twenty yards!”  Paul admired his practical intelligence—he had no clue what twenty yards looked like.

     He felt comfortably dry.  The idea of getting in the water again seemed wanton.  It swept about his ankles—the rain made it colder than before.  “Come on,” Sally said.  She ran by, splashing him.  Beyond her, fish sprung up and glinted like flipped nickels.

     A pelican floated regally and perched on the surface.  From where Paul stood it was black.  It shifted some, but mostly it stood still.  Not a moment passed when it wasn’t making a plan.  In moments the bird took off, swooped, and trapped something in its beak.  It was a fish, and briefly it slipped from the pelican’s grip as it flew.  The fish dropped back toward safety but the bird deftly caught it again.  In the snapshot of time this took to occur, Paul felt an intense hope for the fish.  He imagined it within the deep gullet of the bird, closed with darkness and a little water, though not enough to feed its gills.

He wanted to forget it.  “Hey Paul,” said the high and winsome voice.  “Watch this!”  She held her nose and jumped over a wave.  When she resurfaced he was already in the midst of applause.  Then Karen called her back again, this time for proper sunscreen application. 

Paul floated alone.  The waves moves softly under him.  He pushed his legs as if kicking at a sibling, traveling back to the waves’ crashing point.  Propped on his knees, he let one smack him; certainly he could’ve stayed up, but he went back as if felled by a blow.  He gave an exaggerated groan, now on his hands and knees, and waited for another wave.  He let himself be knocked down again, and then once more.  Now it was time for the triumphant return.

Paul got up, breathing heavily.  He struck a wave as it came by.  Then he drove both fists down on the surface.  Something about opposing a force as indomitable as the ocean pleased his sense of importance—yet he knew he could not win against it, even as an act of imagination.  He shot himself headfirst into the next wave, which created a deep foggy hurt.  The wave swirled him and sent him scraping upon the shells.  These were not unpleasant pains, but realistic ones, justified.  They weren’t like the pain of his bicycle accident a year ago.  That was carelessness, perhaps a bit of pride, knocking him on the pavement and in an instant leaving a clustery, permanent spot on his knee.

Paul smiled back in his defeat and saw two girls in bathing suits.  He never welcomed these occurrences.  Attractive girls were toys in the shop window, ones too expensive for his family to afford.  Other boys would talk about playing with them, and he would remain quiet in those conversations.  He walked past the glass always.  Sometimes Paul wondered if what he saw beyond it was even real, even part of the world he lived in.  Time and time would pass until he was too old to play with toys anymore.  He watched the girls from the water.  The sun pressed down on his shoulders, and so did God.  His own fingers gripped the sand tight and he breathed out indignation.  Sally was off with her mother.  He would walk into the store and make a deal with the clerk.  Or he would take something when no one was looking.

No.  The sun was hot on him, and he had plenty of reasons to stay.  He went underwater.  When he came up he bit his cheeks:  the girls had stretched themselves upon the sand only a ways down from where he stood—some amount of yards, he thought, but he had no idea how many.  He swam in their direction.

Consciously Paul crafted discretion as an art.  He spun or kicked his feet, bobbed, did handstands.  The bulk of his time, though, was spent watching within the brown veil of the sea.  Within it, he began to disappear, and nothing else around him—the umbrellas, the condos, the parking lot—nothing save the girls existed.

And so the gleeful splash of a little girl sounded more like something valuable shattering.  Until that moment, Paul never knew how much he could detest genuine mirth.  Sally asked him what he was doing.  Nothing.  She kept asking questions, and the high voice was grating now.  She was a pest.  Had Karen sent her after him?  What a lazy mother.  What a wretch.

“What are you looking at?”  she asked.  He was looking at her, of course, but occasionally he’d glance back.  She saw the girls.  “Do you like them?”

“No.  Let’s go.”

“You’re in love with them!”

Sally had a child’s sense of humor.

“Hey!”  she half-shouted.  “Are you Paul’s girlfriends?”

Paul wasn’t sure if it was the attention she called to him with her words, or their painful distance from the truth, but he was compelled to push her under the water for a moment.  It did not feel like a decision he had made.  When she came back up, her eyes were pressed from all sides by grief.  Her cry was low, irrevocable.  He had heard her cry before many times, and this was a new sound. 

He tried to act like it was a joke.  He said he was starting a new game. Somewhere underwater, Sally had already been convinced otherwise.  He asked her why she was crying.  She moved out of the water and ran from him, leaving him alone again.  His mouth felt numb.  He looked back over at the girls:  a bland and hateful sight.

Under water, Paul held his breath until he could hear his heartbeats pounding hollow in his chest.  He opened his eyes and let the saltwater scrape against them.  He opened them wider, as wide as he could, allowing the water to seep back further through the small gaps of his eyelids.  He gulped a mouthful halfway down and then vomited it back up with bile. 

As Paul walked back to the Bordwells’ beach site, he looked at the sky.  He thought of the man in the painting trudging toward ubiquity, and envied him.  Upon arrival at the towels and coolers and bug sprays of a family not his own, Paul saw Sally sitting in Karen’s lap.  Her eyes were pressing firmly on her mother’s collarbone.  Paul thought it must hurt and smell like tears and suntan lotion.  But the sun was behind a cloud now.  Karen’s downcast eyes seemed to be upon him, but her expression was fearsomely empty.  Alone, he felt himself floundering somehow and it was difficult to breathe.