The Crabber Stories
By
Frank Bennett
© 2011 Francis Bennett
All rights reserved.
Published by Francis Bennett at Smashwords
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Cover photo: Author, Jones Beach, New York, 1955
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 - See Ya Tomorrow
Chapter 2 - The Pearls
Chapter 3 - Crooked - Ass Annie
Chapter 4 – Back From Spain
Chapter 5 – The Haunted House
Chapter 6 – O’Grady’s Wake
Chapter 7 – Eight Hundred
Chapter 8 – The Flat Brown Stetson
Sometimes you just have to tell yourself the truth. I don't actually like to do that too often, I admit, because I've developed this bad habit of dreaming about the future, about a lot of stuff that hasn't happened yet, but stuff that will be great when it does happen. I've been doing it since I was a little kid and it's turned into a bad habit. Even after all that's happened, I keep letting it all slip my mind and I go back to making up a past that I like a lot better. I don't lie to myself, actually. I don't let it go that far.
Like, if you asked me did my brother Bobby drown while moving old lady Tessler's boat, I'd say yes, but I'd go back to talking to him when I went to sleep at night just as if he were still in the other bed. I don't make believe that he's there, though. I'm not like that. I just sort of forget that he drowned and go right on talking to him. I know it's a bad habit and all, and my parents remind me daily that I'm a dreamer, but I always talk to him about everything. I like it, so I just keep doing it.
He was a terrific talker, Bobby. He was interested in almost everything, and he had this great enthusiasm. Like in the early spring of the year I was fourteen, I thought we might go to Ebbets Field on the train for opening day and I suggested that one night while we were falling asleep.
“We could sneak into the bleachers,” I whispered, pretty excited. “You know, over on Flatbush Avenue where they have that hole in the back fence they don't know about yet.”
“I think we should save up some money and buy box seats,” Bobby mused quietly in the dark. “We've never sat in the boxes. We could get right up close to Duke Snider. Get his autograph, maybe. We'd be sittin right behind Roy Campanella.”
“We could probably reach out and touch old Roy from those seats,” I added, leaning up on my elbow and peering into the dark in Bobby's direction.
“Don't get carried away, Crab. Those seats are pretty far from home plate. They just look real close on television. But Roy would walk back to the dugout, and then we would get a real close look. That's it, Crab. We'll get seats right behind the dugout. You know, right over the dugout roof,” he said, warming up to the idea.
We both lay there in silence for a minute, looking up at the ceiling and dreaming about opening day at Ebbet’s Field, sitting in box seats.
I did a lot of dreaming. I'd think up exciting stuff to do and start dreaming it even bigger, then Bobby'd stick in the real stuff, but he wouldn't kill the dream or anything. He'd just stick in stuff you had to do to make the dream come true. I think that's why I liked him so much. He didn't kill stuff on ya. He never said, “be realistic” or “grow up” or anything like my father used to. Bobby would dream right along with you and he'd make the dream real.
“We gotta make some money,” he continued that night. “Box seats go for three-fifty each, plus the train fare, plus dogs and cokes. We'll have to make at least ten bucks apiece by the beginning of April. “Yup,” he said to the dark ceiling, “this year we're gunna sit in the boxes. Right behind Snider and Erskine and Pee Wee Reese. We'll be able to look em right in the eye.”
I could only see his outline. He was lying there with his arms folded behind his head, figuring out how to make the money. If he said we were sitting in the boxes, I knew he was already plotting how to get the dough.
“Hey, Bobby, there's a good chance we'll catch a foul ball sitting behind the dugout. We'll come home with an authentic Brooklyn Dodger baseball. Jeez, the kids are gunna go nuts when they see that ball. Can you imagine Rusty Phelan's eyes when he sees us with a Brooklyn Dodger official baseball. He'll flip. We'll keep it here in the bedroom and charge kids to take a look at it. Wait a minute. If we're sitting behind the dugout, we can get Gil Hodges to autograph it. Holy Cow! We'll have an autographed, Gil Hodges, official ball.” By this time I was sitting up in bed talking a mile a minute and getting a little loud.
“Easy, Crab,” Bobby said. “Easy. We might not even get a foul. They don't hit that many over the dugout, and even when they do, ya gotta catch it.” He paused for a minute, continuing to look at the ceiling. “We might get one, though. Ya never know. Plus, if we don't, you can buy one at the concession stand. Those balls are official, too, even though you buy them. You might get Don Newcombe, or somebody, to autograph it. It's possible.”
You see? He was pretty realistic, but he wasn't a dream killer like most people are. He'd get as enthusiastic as the next guy about a good idea. Then he'd sort of work it around in his mind until he had a practical way of getting it done. Bobby was only two years older than me, but he killed me in the maturity department.
* * *
“How about this,” I began the next morning at breakfast with a mouth full of cereal. “How a bout we go in the bike fixin business. Kids are startin to ride their bikes again with the weather getting better, and most bikes are all rusted and screwed up from sittin around all winter. We could charge fifty cents for a chain oiling and tightening – maybe seventy-five for a flat – stuff like that. I'll put a sign up at school. We'll make millions. Kids' bikes are always all screwed up.”
Bobby stared at me for a minute while he munched his cereal and thought out my proposal. “We'll need tools,” he said, “and a shop of some kind. We'll have to ask Pop if we can use the garage. It'll need a good cleaning.” He put another spoonful of cereal into his mouth and stared at the table in front of his bowl. “It could work,” he finally agreed. “ 'No job too small' would be our motto. We'd get girls all over the place. They can't fix anything. We could get ten cents just for straightening their handlebars. Good idea, Crab. Good thinking there.”
“Yeah...we'll make millions, for crying out loud; 'The Bob and Crab Bike Company'. We'll end up issuing stock by the time we're finished. This could be big business.”
“Forget big business, Crab. We just want to get to opening day at Ebbets. Twenty bucks at the end of the month. Don't get carried away.”
The voice of reason, you know what I mean? A pretty mature fellow, I had to admit.
* * *
Bobby borrowed some poster paper from the art room at school, and I got Janet Taylor, an artsy-craftsy girl in my class, to make up some pretty classy posters. She used three colors and did this ornate Roman lettering that almost made them look printed. She wasn't too attractive, or anything, but I have to admit that everything she touched ended up looking pretty good. The poster read:
BIKES FIXED BEFORE THE SUMMER
ONE DAY SERVICE
NO JOB TOO SMALL
BOBBY WHITE'S GARAGE
DAILY
3:30 TO 5:30
SATURDAY
9 TO 5
The next three afternoons after school we hauled old dressers up to the attic, dumped used tires in Murphy's vacant lot, and collected a thousand tools from all over the garage and hung them on the back wall. We organized ice skates, footballs, sleighs, skis, dueling swords, boxing gloves, fishing poles, an old two-man tent, a canoe frame, a camping lantern, four baseball bats and various mitts, two BB guns, and three pairs of football cleats in the old wooden cabinets along the right garage wall. By Friday night the garage was ready for business; by Saturday morning the customers started streaming in.
Bobby fixed Janet Taylor's crooked seat and oiled her chain for nothing because she made the posters. We didn't charge the little kids with tricycles, and some of our friends just borrowed the tools and fixed their own bikes, and then hung around shooting the breeze and helping with the repairs. We were charging seventy-five cents for a flat, but by the time you got the wheel off, found the hole by pumping the tire and sticking it in a tub of water to see where the bubbles were coming from, and then roughed it with the scraper, glued the patch in place, and remounted and inflated the tire, you were at it for about an hour or more. We ended up spending the whole morning fixing flats for two snobby girls from Highland Avenue and pocketed a lousy dollar and fifty cents. By the end of the first day, it was time for a meeting.
“The hell with this,” I said, exasperated, while slumped in a sagging cardboard box at the back of the garage. “This is slavery. We're not getting anywhere. We took in two seventy-five and had to lay out two bucks for the patches and chain oil. What a lousy idea this turned out to be.”
Bobby was finishing tightening up the reflector lights on some little kid's tricycle. The kid was standing there staring at him with a big smile on his face. Bobby was telling the kid to keep peddling when he rounded the corners so he wouldn't keep tipping over every time he made a turn. The kid kept nodding that he understood, but Bobby kept repeating it over and over again. The kid just kept nodding. Somehow I knew he wasn't getting it.
“...if ya come into the corner fast and yer not peddling and just turn the wheel, yer gunna keep tipping over. Ya see what I mean, Tyler?” Bobby asked the kid for the third time.
“Uh-huh,” the kid said, still nodding.
“I don't think yer getting it, Tyler, boy,” Bobby said again. “Even if yer goin pretty slow, just keep peddling around every corner and you'll stop tipping over. I don't want to see ya coastin around the corners anymore, okay, Tyler? Ya get what I mean?”
“Uh-huh,” the little kid said again, smiling.
“Okay...look...,” Bobby began again, doubtful that old Tyler was catching on. “Peddle around here in the garage. I want to see ya peddle. Peddle right here, Tyler. I'll watch ya. Go ahead. Get on there and peddle around.”
Tyler climbed on the little red and blue tricycle, and staring and smiling at Bobby the whole time, peddled slowly in a circle around him.
“Ya see, Tyler? Ya see yer peddling and turning at the same time. Do that all the time. Do that when yer on the sidewalk, then you won't keep falling over when you make your turns too sharp. Okay, Tyler?”
“Okay,” the little kid answered, still looking at Bobby with admiration, like he was the Olympic tri-cycling coach or something.
“Okay, Tyler. Ya better get goin. Ya mother will be lookin for ya. See ya later, okay?” said Bobby as he gave Tyler a little push start out of the garage and down the driveway. Bobby turned back to me. I was still sitting crunched in the collapsed cardboard box. “What are you complaining about?”
“Complaining? I'm not complaining. I'm just lookin at this thing realistically. We're not gunna make any money if we keep running tricycle riding clinics for little kids, and fixin their bikes for nuthin. We gotta get down to business, and this flat fixin is a killer. We're never gunna make it. We're ruined. I'm exhausted and we didn't make any money.”
“Crab, you're not lookin at the right things here. You're not picturin old Jackie Robinson trotting right past your nose into the dugout.” He stood straight up and held his hands tight to his stomach in the pitcher's stance. “You're not thinkin about Newcombe's windup and his lightning-fast release.” He hauled back and pitched an invisible baseball past my head. “You're not thinkin that you'll be so close to the action you'll hear his fastball smack into Campanella's catcher's mit.” He made a fist and punched his open hand, imitating the smack he was talking about. “You're just not thinkin, Crab. You're loosin it already. Stay with opening day; stay with Hodges and Snider and Furillo and Reese. You're gunna be there, Crab; opening day at Ebbets Field. Jesus, what a day that's gunna be.”
He started moving around the garage, picking up invisible grounders and throwing them over to an invisible first base. I lay there in the box, watching him act out Major League Baseball and listening to him announce the invisible game he was playing.
“There's a sharp ground ball to Reese at short-stop,” he was saying. “He's up with it and over to Hodges at first for the easy out.” He caught his own invisible throw like Hodges would, stretching way out and reaching up with one hand high over his head. Then he walked back to the center of the garage and resumed the pitcher's stance. “Newcombe's in his windup,” he announced, “and the pitch...strike one, over the inside corner.”
He sounded a little like Red Barber, the Dodger announcer, and I found myself getting into the spirit of Bobby's invisible game. The truth is I was anxious to see if Newcombe would strike out whoever the batter was.
“There's the windup,” he continued as he wound his arms up over his head. “...and the pitch...outside… ball one.”
“Aahh,” I heard myself say.
Bobby began dusting off his pants and wiping his forehead like Newcombe would between pitches. Then he resumed the pitcher's windup stance and stared off at his imaginary batter. “Newcombe's ready,” he said like Red Barber. “The windup...the pitch...whaack...there's a long fly ball toward the left field wall...it's going...going...gone. It's a home run,” Bobby intoned as he watched the imaginary ball fly over the wall.
I guess I slipped into one of my dream states because it bugged me when Newcombe gave up that homer. I scrambled out of the box and jumped Bobby. “You bum!” I shouted at him. “Nobody's gunna knock a homer off Newcombe.” I was trying to punch him and wrestle him to the ground at the same time. He was laughing while he tried to fend me off.
“Hey, Crab...Crab...cut it out. It's not my fault if some guy hits a homer.” He was laughing so hard he couldn't fend me off and I rolled him onto the garage floor and started mussing up his hair. His laughing made me start to laugh. I kept mussing up his hair and he kept letting me. We horsed around for another couple of minutes and then just stopped, exhausted. I sat there on top of his legs while he just lay there on the garage floor with his arms crossed behind his head and a smile on his face. “Opening day, Crab,” he finally said in a teasing voice. “Let's keep going for it. Let's fix every bike in Bay shore if we have to. We'll make money, Crab. We're going to opening day.”
* * *
The bike repair business isn't what it's cracked up to be. Take my word for it. To this day, every time I pass a bike repair shop, I feel sorry for the poor loser who owns it. The first thing is, kids are cheap. They ask you to fix a hundred things on their crumby bikes then tell you they have only fifty cents. You start screaming that they owe you two-fifty and they promise to pay next time they get their allowance or something.
The other thing is that there's about two million four hundred and fifty thousand different kinds of bikes in the world, and none of the parts from one fit the parts of any other one. Just when you've spent your last two cents on the final nut or bolt on earth, some fancy kid rolls in with an English racer or a bike from France, or something that his big shot father brought back from Europe.
The toughest thing, though, is if your partner keeps helping out every Tom, Dick, or Harry that comes into your shop. After two weeks, we made a cool eight bucks after parts and lunches and cokes were deducted. I was getting discouraged, but Bobby was having the time of his life. If girls came in with a minor job, like crooked handlebars or something, he'd just straighten them at no charge. If a little kid couldn't afford our going rate, Bobby'd just ask him how much he had and charge him that. The tricycle charity didn't slow down, either. Mothers were even coming by to thank us for helping out their darlings. In short, we were getting nowhere.
On Saturday night at the end of the second week, we were lying in bed in the dark and I was sighing up a storm. Every couple of seconds I'd let air out of my lungs, real loud, so Bobby would hear me. I knew it was kid stuff, but I couldn't help myself. I just kept letting out a big old sorrowful sigh, then let a few seconds pass, then hit him with another one.
Finally, after about ninety hours of the saddest sighing you ever heard, he asked me, “What are you doing, Crab? Stop blowing like that, will ya? I'm trying to get some sleep.”
“I'm not blowing, you idiot. I'm discouraged. Don't you know discouragement when you hear it?”
“That's not discouragement. That's blowing. Cut it out.”
“Oh...Okay...fine. I'm only about the most discouraged guy in the whole goddamn country right now and you tell me to stop BLOWING.”
“Okay,” he said in a resigned voice as he sat up on the edge of his bed. “What are you discouraged about?”
“What am I discouraged about? Eight crumby bucks, that's what I'm discouraged about. We've made only eight bucks in two weeks.” I reached over and turned on the light. “We're never gunna make opening day if you keep giving everything away. We gotta start making some money or we're not going to Ebbets Field.”
“Oh...so that's why you've been blowing over there.”
“I'm not blowing. I was sighing.”
He looked up at me quickly, with a slight smile on his face. “Crab,” he said calmly and with great conviction. “We're going. Don't worry about it. If the bike business doesn't do it, we'll think of something else. But we're going to be sitting in the boxes at Ebbets on opening day. I guarantee it. Nothing could keep us away. Now, go back to sleep and stop worrying.”
He was a pretty cool customer, I had to admit.
* * *
The bike shop hours were expanded the next day to nine o'clock every night after school, and we also worked Sunday morning. Word of the shop had spread around the neighborhood by this time, and as a result, we began to, as my father called it, ‘diversify’. We took in little red wagons, shopping carts, roller skates and even a few baby carriages. We were getting pretty good at fixing wheel spokes, replacing ball bearings and straightening bent axles. Bobby was still doing a lot of free work, if you ask me, but he made up for it by working longer hours. The guy was tireless. He was out there till eleven or twelve o'clock every night and all day Saturday and Sunday.
The tricycle brigade of little kids was a fixture at the shop by this time. Little kids in groups of three and four would be circling around the driveway in front of the open garage door whenever Bobby was in there. They would wave to him and smile and show off how well they had learned to ride. He would tighten this or that, and they would jump on their little bikes and ride with renewed confidence and glee. When it would start to get dark, they would head home, stopping every couple of yards in the driveway to wave good-bye to him for the fifth time. Bobby would stop whatever he was doing for every wave and then go back to work without missing a beat.
“Aren't they starting to drive ya nuts?” I asked him one Thursday night as the tricycle brigade finally turned out of sight onto the sidewalk.
“They're just bein friendly. They don't bother me.”
“Jeez...it'd drive me nuts fixin Tyler's seat three times a day when it's not even broken.”
“He thinks it's broken,” Bobby replied without looking up from the wheel he was straightening on an upended red and gold Schwinn.
“But it ain't broken. Ya fixed it the first time. Jeez, that'd drive me nuts.”
“Naah...it wouldn't bother ya. If the kid thinks it's broken, it renews his confidence when I go over and fiddle with it for a minute. He rides away all confident. It makes ya feel good. It helps me keep workin.”
“Jeez...ya keep foolin around with those kids, ya never stop workin out here.”
“Well, maybe...but, how much money we got stashed? I figure we made it,” he said with a big smile on his face.
I walked over to the cigar box we kept under the work bench and counted the money. When I was finished, I turned and made the great announcement. “Ta...ta...ta...ta,” I sounded, holding an imaginary bugle in front of my face. “The grand Ebbets Field, Brooklyn Dodger, bike fixin total is...twenty-seven dollars and fifty-five cents!” I ended this momentous announcement with a deep bow.
“WOW...we made it!” he shouted and leaped up in the air. He ran over to me, gave me the ole bear hug, and we danced around like that for a few minutes. We slapped one another on the back about a hundred times and kept saying, “We made it, brother. We made it. We're going to Ebbets. We're going to Ebbets. Opening day, we're going to Ebbets.”
* * *
“Johnny Podres is my kind of guy,” I said to Bobby in the dark that night. “He's got a better fastball than Newcombe. He can mix em up better. He keeps the batters off balance. Newcombe throws a lot of curve balls and off-speed stuff...don't get me wrong...he's good at it, but they can figure him out. Podres has more power. He can blow it by them better. I'm goin with him this year. I think he's gunna make all the difference.”
“It's defense this year, Crab,” Bobby said in the dark. “The Dodger defense is so strong it's gunna get them all the way to the pennant. I'm lookin at Snider and Reese and Junior Gilliam and guys like that to make it so tight that nothing will ever fall in. Walter Alston's got the greatest defensive team in baseball, if you ask me. Watch that defense, Crab. It's gunna take us all the way to the World Series.”
I lay there in the dark, picturing the Brooklyn Dodgers taking the field after they were announced on opening day. I could see them all scattering to their positions on the field, then standing at attention as they played the National Anthem. I imagined Bobby and me standing there, right behind the dugout.
“Hey,” I said to the darkness. “How do you know we're gunna get the exact seats behind the dugout?”
“Because I called up and reserved the seat numbers we picked off the old layout we had in last year's program. S'long as we buy them at least one hour before game time we're all set. Otherwise, they sell em to somebody else. We gotta be there at least an hour before the game starts. Don't worry about it, Crab. I got us all set.”
“Jeez...that's great, Bobby. We'll be there with the team on opening day, practically sitting in the dugout with them.”
I started picturing Bobby at the game. He gets actively involved in Brooklyn Dodger baseball. Not like most ignorant fans who just holler at the ump when he makes a bad call or cheer when somebody hits a home run. He's more knowledgeable than that. He calls every pitch, for example. He knows whether the pitcher should throw a fastball or a curve or whatever, and he urges them to do the right thing before they even throw the pitch. “Fastball, now,” he'll whisper just as the pitcher goes into the windup. Or, “Now slip em the curve on the inside corner.” Or, “slider now, Clem baby, slider.” If the pitcher follows his orders, he always says the same thing after the pitch. He says, “That-a-baby. That-a-baby.” If the pitcher disregards his orders, Bobby grimaces as the pitch is reaching the batter and always says, “Oh, jeez. Why'd he do that?”
He coaches the base runners and grumbles instructions to the manager throughout the game. I admit, he's pretty intense at a baseball game, but he doesn't ruin your fun. He shares his knowledge with you and discusses baseball strategy and how they ought to get themselves out of the fix they're in. He really gets you into the game and it's over before you know it.
It's a pleasure to attend a baseball game with Bobby and I couldn't stop dreaming about it that night. I pictured us gabbing with Jackie Robinson over the dugout roof and waving to Duke Snider after he hit a home run. I could taste the juicy hot dogs and I couldn't fall asleep because I was starting to get hungry. I lay there dreaming for a couple of hours, dying for a hot dog. It was the middle of the night when I said to Bobby, “Hey Bobby. You awake?”
“Yup,” he answered instantly.
“Whada ya thinkin about?”
“You.”
“Me?”
“Yeah, you. Catching a foul ball tipped off Duke Snider's bat. I was imagining you catching it and getting all exited... Huh...I was picturing how nervous you'd be to ask him to autograph it after the game, but that you'd do it, and you'd be out of your mind coming home on the train with it bulging in your pocket. Stuff like that.”
“No kidding.”
“You're gunna like opening day, Crab. Ya really are,” he said quietly.
“Yeah. To tell ya the truth, I was thinking about how I'm gunna like going with you because you're so knowledgeable and all. The way ya really get into the game and stuff. I'm lookin forward. I really am.”
“Yeah, me too.”
* * *
Bobby never made opening day. He drowned by mistake two days later while moving old lady Tessler's rowboat from one dock to another. What I mean to say is that it was an accident. He must have tripped over a mooring cleat on the dock and banged his head on the side of the boat he was pulling along the dock. He just never came up. That was almost three years ago.
I gave the tickets to little Tyler and his dad. I tried to do what Bobby would have done, but I wasn't always sure of what that would be. Tyler's father didn't want to take them, but I sort of insisted. I told him Bobby was always teaching Tyler stuff and that he would want him to start learning about baseball right away. I put the money and the reservation slip Bobby was saving in an envelope and dropped it off at Tyler's house.
I don't know why I did it, but I kept the bike shop going. Business was pretty brisk, but an awful lot of stuff didn't really need fixing. I noticed this, but didn't say anything. I tightened straight handlebars for girls who had already been in, and I oiled a bunch of oily chains. I opened the shop every night for a month after Bobby drowned, and the customers kept coming.
One day, Tyler came by with the tricycle brigade and handed me a typewritten note. They all sat there on their tricycles and watched me read it. I swear to God, they never took their eyes off me the whole time I was reading it. It read as follows:
Dear John,
Thank you for the trip to the baseball game. I
enjoyed it very much. I am sorry about your
brother. He was my friend, too. I did not have
a chance to thank him for fixing my tricycle all
the time, so I want to thank you instead.
Thank you very much,
Your Friend
Tyler Burroughs
He had printed his signature at the bottom in big squiggly letters. His mother added:
P.S. Tyler can't write yet, so he dictated
this note to me. Mr. Burroughs and
I thank you also and send our
condolences.
It killed me. The little kids were sitting on their tricycles in the driveway staring at me. I turned my back to them and walked into the garage a little to pull myself together. I took a couple of deep breaths and didn't dare look at the note I still held in my hand. I looked up at the back of the garage and noticed the old Brooklyn Dodger baseball pennant hanging over the workbench. I looked down at the crumpled box I had been sitting in when Bobby acted out the ballgame. The little kids were still staring at my back. I could feel them. I started coughing. I don't know why coughing at times like that helps you get a grip on yourself, but it does. I started coughing and hacking like a madman. I was pounding the top of the workbench with my hand and whacking myself on the chest. I kept it up for a couple of minutes until I didn't feel like crying anymore, then I turned around to the little kids and said, “Wheew. I got the old coughing spell there for a minute. Wheew. That's better.” Then I walked back out of the garage and put my hand on top of Tyler's head. “Who won the game, Tyler?”
“Dodgers,” he answered, without looking up at me. I squatted down to eye level in front of him and asked him if he enjoyed it.
“Yup,” he answered.
“Did ya see Duke Snider?”
“Yup.”
“Did ya see Jackie Robinson?”
“Yup.”
“Did ya see Carl Erskine?”
“Nope.”
“Ya didn't? Are ya sure?”
“Nope.”
“Well...okay,” I said, standing up. “Thanks for coming by, you guys. I'll see ya all later. Oh...are ya trikes all okay?” I asked them.
“Yup,” they said in unison as they turned around and headed down the driveway.
“Okay...then. See ya all later,” I said, waving them down the driveway.
“See ya tomorrow,” they replied, all waving at the same time.
Talking to the little kids made me feel better. Bobby was right about that. He was right about a lot of stuff.
Captain Kolonick was blind. Most people don’t know a blind person, but I knew Captain Kolonick. Because I knew him since I was a little kid, I’m not afraid of blind people like most folks are, although folks rarely admit it. They’re probably afraid that blind people will hurt themselves by bumping into stuff or falling down suddenly when they’re around, and that would make them feel guilty or responsible somehow. Maybe they’re afraid they’ll get blind themselves by hanging around blind people. I don’t know.
Captain Kolonick was not scary. He ran his own business all by himself and he was pretty good at it, if you ask me. My father called him the “sole proprietor” of The Fire Island Fisheries. The Captain was a shellfish dealer. He bought clams and oysters from the local diggers around the bay and sold them to the big hotels and restaurants in New York City. The other wholesalers along the canal where his warehouse stood bought “swimmers”, as the Captain called fish, but he stuck to shellfish. He was considered an expert. He could feel an oyster, for example, and tell you how old it was, how long it had been out of the water and where it had been caught. The old diggers told me that he could tell if there was a pearl inside just by running his fingers along the outside front edge of the oyster’s lips. They claimed that’s why you never got a pearl accidently when you opened oysters to eat them. Captain Kolonick felt every oyster that came into his warehouse and stashed the pearls under a loose floorboard upstairs in his apartment for his retirement.
He knew his clams, too. Simply by hefting a clam, he could tell whether it was juicy and succulent or dry and tough. We'd often see him tapping two clams together next to his ear and then sorting them according to some mysterious sound only he could hear. The best clams, he said, made a tonk . . . tonk sound when you knocked them together. If they went tick . . . tick, they wouldn't be the best eatin, he claimed. I've been tappin clams ever since but darned if I can hear the difference.
Clam digging was my first real business. I started when I was twelve. Before that I delivered newspapers and caddied at the local country club. They were just jobs but clam digging was like going into business for yourself. Every kid who could lay his hands on an old boat, raft or plank of wood, floated it out onto the flats along the shore of the bay and started mushing his feel in the muddy bottom on the lookout for clams that grew there. It was pretty simple and didn't call for any special skills; when your foot hit one you just bent down in the water, pulled it out and tossed it into a bushel basket floating alongside you in an inner tube. When the basket was full, you headed to Kolonick's canal and sold them to him for "fair market” prices.
Kolonick's shanty was about the size of four two-car garages laid in a row and he knew every inch of it. He'd roll back the big wooden doors every morning at five-thirty and step out onto the dock that fronted the canal and walk about eight feet, right to the edge of the water, tilt his head back and smell the weather. Swore he could smell the weather.
"Gonna warm up a bit today," he'd say. "Bay's a little choppy, boys, so stay near the shore beds and pick the shallow ones." Then he'd sniff once or twice and turn his face into the wind. “Gonna rain before five, so don't stay out past four. Good heavy rain. Downpour, I'd say. Yup . . . get in around four.” Then he'd turn around, walk right over to the bushel baskets stacked in rows alongside the open doorway, pick up a stack, carry them into the warehouse, and set them on top of the sorting table without a stumble or a miscue.
He was blind, all right, but he wasn't scary, if you know what I mean. We even forgot he was blind after a while because he knew his way around and never tripped or groped around like you think blind guys will. A lot of different people came in and out of his warehouse every day and he knew everyone by their footsteps. If it was a stranger, he knew it was a stranger. But if it was one of the professional diggers, or one of the kids who would dig during the summer, or one of his dealers, he knew exactly who you were before you would even see him.
"Crabber," he said to me one day as I jumped out of my pram up onto his dock with a load of clams to sell, "your boat needs caulking. That little engine of yours is whining too high . . . pushin too much weight . . . you got water in her… you better take her out and caulk her."
Unbelievable! I'd been leakin like a sieve for two weeks. “You’re right, Cap,” I responded as I looked from him to the bottom of my boat and then back to him. "You're right about that. I gotta get some kids to help me drag it up your ramp and give it a good caulking."
"Got plenty of caulking in the shed; help yourself, Crabber. I'll give it a haul with ya after you unload your catch. You don't need no kids," he offered without ever turning away from sorting and bagging oysters at the sorting table.
Amazing, I thought. The guy knows everything.
"Didn't do too good today, heh, Crabber?"
I looked down into my pram at my meager half-bushel catch for the day. I looked at his back as he sorted oysters, down again at my crummy half-bushel, back at him, then back at my half-bushel. Jeez, I had to get to the bottom of this.
"Uuuh, Cap," I began as I walked slowly over to where he was standing, "mind if I ask you a question?"
“How did I know,” he asked me first with a big smile as he turned around. “Well, Crabber, I been listenen to you run that old outboard up the canal for two summers now, and I know your sound pretty good. You went out alone this morning and you’re back early, so I figured you’re not loaded down with clams or passengers; must be water in the boat; flat bay. Boat needs caulking. You see?”
“Jeez, Cap. That’s pretty good. No kidding. You figured that all out just from hearin my engine?”
“I know your engine sound pretty good, Crabber,” he repeated as he walked out of the warehouse and over to the dock where my boat was tied. “Let’s get this thing over to the ramp and I’ll help you yank her out. No time like the present.”
Jeez, he was amazing. How did he know exactly where my boat was tied? Amazing. Sometimes I wondered if maybe he could see.
* * *
With my boat laid up for the caulking to set, I went clamming the next day with Toby Wyman. He had a real sixteen-foot outboard with seats and a fast engine. He was a senior and a smart businessman so he’d take me along and charge me five dollars for my part of fifty cents worth of gas. Not much you could do if your boat was laid up and you wanted to go clamming.
He had a fast boat and secret clamming spots and made three times the money I made every day. I was paying pretty close attention to everything he did, figuring I could learn a little something from this older kid if I kept my eyes open.
“How come Cap Kolonick calls you ‘Crabber’, John?” he asked as we pulled away from his dock.
“Aaw, he heard me complaining one day about not makin enough money, and he asked me if I was a clammer or a crabber. I said ‘clammer’, and he said, ‘You sound like a crabber to me.’ Ever since then, he’s called me ‘The Crabber’.”
“Doesn’t it bug ya?”
“Naah . . . I like the Cap.”
“It’d bug me. That old blind guy gets on my nerves sometimes. He acts like a goddamn wise old owl, like he knows all kinds of wise shit.”
“He’s pretty smart, Toby. You gotta admit it . . . for a blind guy.”
“Yeah . . . well, he ain’t THAT smart. Sittin around that ratty shanty buyin clams from kids and old guys. I’m gonna be a lawyer and make some real money. I’m not gonna sell clams the rest of my life.”
“A lawyer, huh? That’s pretty good . . . Never heard of a blind lawyer, though. Have you?”
“Naah . . . guess not. But I ain’t blind. I’m going to law school soon as I get out of college.”
As we came to the end of his canal and broke out into the open bay, he turned the engine up to full throttle and that sort of put an end to the conversation. He headed directly across the choppy bay toward the flats over at Fire Island, covering the full seven-mile run in about fifteen minutes. I could see the shadows of the island’s beach grass just above the horizon and watched the small dots that were the scrub pines grow bigger by the minute as the powerful engine raced us toward Toby’s secret clamming ground. I figured he was letting me in on his secret because he knew my boat would never make it this far. As I said, Toby was a pretty smart businessman.
About two hundred yards from the shore, he eased back on the throttle and started to circle slowly over the mud flats that surrounded the island.
“John, grab the anchor out of the forward locker and toss it over when I tell ya, will ya?”
“I got it, Toby,” I replied.
He circled around some long memorized navigational marker until he was satisfied, then he gave me the signal.
“Okay, toss it, John.” I threw the anchor to the upwind side of the boat and guided the chain over the gunwale until it paid out to the rope end and then cleated it off at the bow. The boat swung slowly downwind of the anchor until the line was taut and we were ready to go to work.
“Let’s go clamming,” he said as he pried a bushel basket apart from a pile of six we had stowed in the middle of the cockpit and set it in an inflated inner tube. He dropped the tube with the basket inside into the water and jumped in waist-deep beside it. Immediately, he began pumping his feet up and down on the muddy bottom and had a clam in his basket before I followed my tube and basket into the water. This guy was a dynamo.
We treaded clams for two hours, about fifty yards apart. Toby filled a full bushel to my half, and I could see why everyone said this guy was going places. He must have legs of iron. He never stopped. Pump, pump, pump . . . clam. Pump, pump, pump . . . clam. Pump, pump, pump . . . two clams with one foot; a dynamo. He was going to make a great lawyer, I thought. Pump, pump, pump . . . clam. Pump, pump . . . clam. Wheew. Louis Nizer, look out.
I finally filled my bushel after about three hours and headed to the boat, dog-tired. Toby was already working on this second bushel when he saw me heading for the boat and drifted over to join me.
“How ya doin, John? Ya killin em and fillin em?”
“I’m fillin em, but they’re killin me. I’ve gotta give the old legs a rest.” I tied my tube to a cleat on the boat and pulled myself over the gunwale, flopping into the bottom of the boat like a dead sea bass.
“Hand me a sandwich, will ya, kid?” he requested, still standing in the water next to the boat. “I’m gonna keep clamming right here while we eat lunch.” He kept pumping and dropping calms into his bushel with one hand while he ate a soggy peanut butter and jelly sandwich with the other. “Whath are yaa planth for cowage?”
“Jeez, I don’t know, Toby. I’m just starting high school. Guess . . . I don’t know . . . I guess.”
“Welw, yu bebber shtart thinkin abou it,” Gulp. “Now’s the time,” final gulp. “Really, kid. It’s real competitive out there; now’s the time to start planning. What do you think I’m doin out here? This is college tuition you see in this basket. Each one of these little knobs is college tuition,” he continued as he held up a clam to illustrate his point. “No tickie – no shirtie. No dough – no go, little guy. My old man’s a bum, but I’m going to college and then to law school.”
He kept pumpin and clamming and for the first time I started to get nervous about my future. I haven’t saved a dime, I was thinking as I stood up and jumped back into the water. I’m in ninth grade, I realized for the first time, and haven’t even started a savings account.
The rest of the day was misery. The water got colder and the clams scarcer. My legs were like lead and the wind started to pick up and chilled the dampness on the upper half of my body. I kept slumpin along because I didn’t want Toby to see me quit before he did and figure there was one less competitor out there. Toby clammed like a man with a mission, and the more he clammed the more I saw my future slipping away. He had filled three and a half bushels by four o’clock. I had one and a half. I wondered how many guys like Toby there were in the world. Probably a lot, I figured. Guys like me would get steam-rolled by all those Tobys.
Finally, he started back toward the boat. Amen. Aaamen. I dragged myself back and struggled over the gunwale just as he started the engine and headed slowly toward the anchor. I made believe it was effortless but the truth is I almost died pulling it in. I didn’t want to talk to him anymore because I was whipped and depressed by his energy, but he started in immediately.
“Start cullin the clams, will ya, John?” I want them all sorted before we get to Kolonick’s. Just dump em in the bottom of the boat and resort them back into the bushels by size.”
As if I didn’t know how to cull clams, for Christ’s sake. I culled his first into three baskets and an overflow basket. Chowder clams, the largest, brought the lowest price. Cherrystones, the medium size, were worth twice the Chowder price, and Little Necks, the tiny ones about the size of a silver dollar, were clammer’s gold, selling for about fifteen dollars a bushel. By the time we covered the seven miles back to the mainland, I had them all culled into seven baskets; three and a half of his full, three of mine, half full.
As we approached the mainland and had turned down the coast toward Kolonick’s canal, Toby slowed down and brought the boat close to the rocky shore about a half mile up the coast from the canal entrance.
“John, I’m going to hold the boat next to the shore. You jump in and grab some of those small rocks to stick under the clams in each bushel. Cap Kolonick never checks if they’re all culled. He just weighs em and pays by weight. We’ll make about an extra five bucks apiece. Right here is good. Jump in right here and toss in some of those rocks right there.”
I just stared at him.
“Come
on. Come on. Let’s go. It’s getting late.”
“Hey, Toby,
I’m not slippin rocks in on Cap Kolonick. Are you nuts? The guy’s
blind, for Christ’s sake. I’m not gunna do that.”
“Come on. Come on, kid. Everybody does it. What the hell are you, a rookie or something? Come on. Hurry up.”
“I’m not doin it, Toby. Not to a blind guy. Jeez, that stinks. Count me out.”
“Oh for Christ’s sake, John. Hold the goddamn boat steady. I’ll do it myself, for Christ’s sake. Come on. Get back here and hold the boat steady.”
I moved to the back and idled the boat while he hid a half dozen smooth rocks under the clams in each of his baskets.
“You sure you don’t want any, kid?” he asked when he had finished his own.
“Nope,” I answered sullenly. “Not on a blind guy.”
“Suit yourself,” he said nonchalantly as he took over the controls and headed toward Kolonick’s canal.
Cap Kolonick weighed our clams and paid us accordingly for the Chowders, Cherrystones, and Little Necks he felt on the top of each bushel. I was depressed and felt sick. I guess I was disillusioned, as my mother calls it; not by Toby, but I thought Cap Kolonick was smarter than that.
* * *
I put my boat back in and clammed every day for the next two weeks. The weather was hot and humid and the coolest place was out on the bay, clamming. I felt heavy. My mother said I was acting sullen and I guess I was. I felt depressed about that goddamn Toby and, I don’t know, kind of embarrassed around old Cap Kolonick. He was good to me, and I wanted to be proud of him, if you know what I mean. But jeez, those older kids were making a dummy out of him. The whole thing made me feel heavy and slow.
I wondered if I should tell the Cap they were screwin him but I figured that would ruin it for him. He’d lose confidence in himself, being blind and all, and wouldn’t enjoy the clam business or nuthin. I figured I better keep my mouth shut.
“What’s botherin ya, Crabber?’ he asked me one day as I walked up from the dock at the end of a day of clammin. “Ya get skunked or something?”
“What makes you think somethin’s botherin me, Cap? I’m doin fine. Got two and a half bushels today. Whole bushel of Little Necks,” I answered him, trying to sound confident.
“You’re walkin slow, Crab. No spring in ya step. Ya voice sounds out of tune, too low some days, to tight others. Ya sure nuthin’s botherin ya?”
“Jeez, Cap, ya just can’t HEAR all that stuff. Ya can’t hear everything, Cap,” I snapped back at him.
“Nope . . . you’re right, Crabber. I can’t hear everything. But what I can’t hear, I can feel. I can feel the weather changing and the seasons comin. I can feel the wood move under my feet when a truck turns into my yard and I can feel it when my dog is scared or sick. I can just feel it, Crabber. Bein blind ain’t all bad. I feel stuff the average guy misses. You know, I can feel people, too. It’s almost like I know what they’re thinkin as soon as they come near me.”
He was repairing bushel baskets while we talked. He’d remove all the broken slats and reweave the basket with new inch-wide wooden slats that he tacked into the ringed collar circling the top of the basket. His hands were fast and sure and I figured he must a done a million of em by this time. After he weaved in the new slats, he put the basket on the ground, stepped inside and pulled up on the handles, causing the basket to return to its useable shape. He was an expert.
“I can feel you now, Crabber, and if I’m not wrong, you got somethin on your mind, right?”
“Guess I’m reflectin, Cap. Thinkin about stuff. Thoughtful . . . you know?”
“What ya thinkin about, Crabber?”
“Uuuh . . . well . . . just life stuff, Cap. Like . . . people screw people and ya got to keep an eye on them . . . uuh . . . so to speak . . . if ya know what I mean?”
Cap was smiling now. “I know what ya mean, Crabber. Somebody screw ya lately?”
“Naah, not me; nobody. But they do, and ya gotta watch em. Some people, that is.”
“I guess you’re right there. Some people bear watchin; no doubt about it.”
“Like you, Cap. What if people started tryin ta screw ya cause ya was blind and all? I bet some people would even try to screw a blind guy . . . or like a cripple guy or a little kid or something.”
“Some people?”
“Yeah, some people would, Cap. Even you gotta keep an eye out . . . uuh . . . so to speak.”
“Yup, even me.”
“Some people got no respect for nothin.” I was getting pretty worked up, now. “They just don’t give a damn, Cap. That’s what I’m findin out. They just don’t give a damn.”
“Some don’t.”
“More than ya think, Cap. People you’d least suspect. Cryin shame, if ya ask me.”
“Damn shame.”
“Ya just gotta watch em. That’s my new rule. Watch em.”
“How many ya gotta watch?”
“How many? Whatta ya mean, how many?”
“How many ya gonna watch, Crabber? Everybody? Some guys? A couple of guys? How many?”
“uuh . . . Everybody, I guess.”
“Take a lot of time.”
“Well . . . yeah . . . I guess it would. What ya gonna do, though. Ya gotta watch em.”
“A lot of time . . .too much time; ya can’t watch em all.”
“Humph . . .yeah. . . whew.”
I felt sort of deflated. I thought I was getting through to him, kind of without saying anything, if you know what I mean? Somehow, though, I felt like he was suddenly getting through to me. He had a way of doing that. When you’re telling him something, he ends up telling you something, only you don’t realize it until you get home.
I headed home and gave some thought to how much time it would take to keep an eye on all the guys like Toby. It depended, I figured, on how many of them there were. Then I remembered Toby’s energy for clammin and realized how tough it would be just to keep an eye on him.
I woke up the next day with this burning desire to help Cap Kolonick. I figured the hell with Toby and the rest of those wise guys. Somebody had to tell the Captain that they were robbin him. I couldn’t keep hanging around his shanty and doin business with him and letting him be my friend and not tell him those guys were screwin him.
I pulled on my shorts and tee shirt and flat white sneakers and headed over to Kolonick’s without washing. The Captain was already up and washing down the old wooden interior floor of his shanty with a high-powered hose. He was standing in the far corner of the room, facing the opposite wall. He aimed the jet straight along the floor starting at his feet and slowly raised the hose until he could hear the jet hit the far wall. Then he would take one step to the right and reverse directions with the hose until the jet was back at his feet. That way he didn’t miss anything. Stuff like that he figured out carefully.
“Mornin, Cap,” I shouted over the hiss and spray of the hose.
“Crabber, you’re up early,” he shouted back. “Getting an early start on those clams?”
“Nah . . .just thought I’d come by and talk to you before I went out.”
He turned off the hose and threw it on the ground to one side, then walked over to his sorting table and wiped his hands dry on a big terry cloth towel.
“Bout goin clammin with Toby Wyman a few weeks ago, ain’t it, Crabber?”
I was stunned. I hesitated a few seconds before answering.
“Yeah, Cap. I got to tell ya sumpthin. I been worried about it but I figured I had to tell ya.”
He walked slowly over to me with his big hip-wading boots sploshing on the wet floor. He put his hand on my shoulder and stared at me by looking over my head and past me at something only he could see in his mind.
“Ya bin worryin, Crabber. Worryin about old Captain Kolonick. Thanks for that, boy,” he said real quietly, still staring over my head. Then he turned around and slid his hand around my back to the other shoulder. “Come here, Crabber. I want to show you old Captain Kolonick’s secret stash. Ya know all the pearls the diggers figure I got stowed? Well, I got em, all right. I want to show ya.”