By Kathy Curto

THE BUNKER IS STILL FROZEN which is weird because it’s hot as hell out here and it’s been sitting on the dock for almost 20 minutes now. I go ahead and stab it with my new bait knife. It’s still hard, like a rock. Cold, too, and no stinky smell yet. I’m waiting five more minutes before I cut it in half and put the tail on a line and the head in a trap. Besides, I want Scotty to come down first, before I get my traps all ready. I want him to see me cut the bunker. I want him to see how I don’t even squint or turn my head when I jab the knife inside and cut it into two pieces. No chicken backs for me. That’s what some people use for bait but that’s for sissies. I crab with the ugliest, stinkiest bait there is. And I like it that way.

I want Scotty to think I’m cool and not afraid of things like slimy bunker and rusty crab traps. Or outdoor shower things that happen on hot nights when music is playing all over the place and we could touch the Big Dipper.

But me, sometimes I don’t know what to think anymore. I know he thought it was a weird thing to happen, that kiss in the shower, because he didn’t come calling for me to play for almost a whole week after that. Then when he did, it was weird. Like it was over. Like the kiss, the lemon ice, the grape soda, the Big Dipper and the outdoor shower never even happened.

Things go like that sometimes, I guess.

Then after a whole week, Scotty just ran up our stairs and yelled through the screen door, “Hey, you comin out or what? I got Razzles!” Razzles are the best, so I yelled to my mom who was on the phone with the lady from JC Penney layaway, “Ma, me and Scotty are going down to the dock.”

Which is where I am now. The dock. Some girls in my new class at Ethel Jacobsen Elementary School were going on and on about how they hate crabbing docks because of all the splinters you get and because of the way the water sometimes splashes up and gets you in the eye after boats pass by and make big waves. Then they started talking about how barnacles give them the willies. Not me. Dave told me barnacles and crabs are related, they’re family. Both crustaceans.

I love crabs. I spend my days with them, catching them, measuring them, even teasing them when they sit in piles on top of one another in my basket, making bubbles and holding their little blue claws up when I poke the air above them with my tongs. When it’s time to clean and then kill them I feel bad. So, I usually say a Hail Mary or an Our Father. I’m not just doing it for kicks, the killing part. It’s so my mother can make her crab sauce.

When the girls in my class start getting all weird about splinters and splashes and stinky bunker I just ignore them and think about the water. And the sun. And how good of a crabber I am.

But the dock’s my second favorite place. My first is the beach. The ocean. But I’m still not allowed to go there alone. I mean without a grown up. I love it there, though. It’s where my mom and I go to clear our heads.

Third is the roadside place on 25th where you can get a soft vanilla cone dipped in the kind of chocolate syrup that gets hard in one second. There are picnic tables there, where people sit and eat their ice cream. And there’s a small mini-golf course and pinball machines, too. Sometimes Scotty and me walk there, play mini-golf and Evil Knievel pinball and then buy cones that we eat on the walk home. I’ve only been there with Scotty. Going out for ice cream is not high on the list of favorite things for my family. Besides, I think it makes my mother think about that job at Friendly’s which she hated because people came in wanting too many fancy flavors.

Yesterday, my brother Jack came out to the dock and sat on the bench behind where I pull up my lines and my traps. It’s the one where Scotty carved the words SE and KP (us!) were here. At first Jack just sat there, watching me. He never does that, just sits and watches things. He’s always zooming. Zooming in and out of the front door, the driveway, the station. It was kind of weird seeing him like that. Staring at me and acting all quiet.

“What are you looking at?”

“Nothing.”

He had to be thinking about something. Everybody thinks about something. His eyes were bloodshot, filled to the top with water and red lines. Or maybe what I thought was water wasn’t water. There were no big boats around and the bay was calm, so he didn’t get splashed.

Crying? Was he crying?

“Your eyes look weird,” I said but felt bad right after because maybe he just wanted to sit there. Maybe he just wanted to watch me crab or look at the bay or the line that makes it hard to tell what’s water and what’s sky.

Maybe I hurt his feelings when I said his eyes look weird.

He sucked real hard on his cigarette. It was the first time I saw him do this, and it made him look like a pro. A smoking pro. He mumbled something about being wasted. Then looked at me and said, “I got an old man. And he’s up my ass.” He breathed in all his snot and spit on the ground, just missing my basket.
“That’s gross,” I said, but then laughed. He didn’t.

“Up my ass, every fucking day.”