Seagull: A Southern Novel Read online

  She let me hold the picture: a woman with thin, white arms in a dress and a man with a suit that was too big standing next to an old 50's looking car with a chrome indian head hood ornament and round fenders. I'd hold it carefully with both hands, like she'd pulled it from some museum display case, and stare at it for a moment. It was an artifact from some other life, a tiny thread that connected me to my real mother. After a few moments I'd carefully place it back into the box. Then AJ would put it back up on the shelf. And that was that.

  One of my first memories was when Aunt Jeannie took us to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington. Tyler said it was pretty soon after our parents died and she and Uncle Art wanted to do something special that would get us thinking about other stuff. I remember being in a hotel for the first time and looking down out of the window. Kids were going to school. It was winter and I could see their breath puffing out in little white clouds, white snow on the ground. Some of the boys had red and yellow knitted caps with red puffy balls on top, REDSKINS written on the side. We rode in a taxi to the Air and Space Museum. The back seat was huge, like our own little room. The man driving had a mustache and talked fast with a funny accent.

  I loved the museum. I remember the planes hanging high up above us, each still and quiet as a snapshot, trapped, mid-flight, by little wires hooked to the ceiling. They were so shiny and colorful. The Spirit of St. Louis, the plane Lindbergh used to cross the Atlantic was there. We went up to the second floor and could see it at eye level, the gold nose and all of the little painted flags near the engine.

  We also saw woolly mammoths and saber-tooth tigers, large and furry with fierce eyes, but still as stone, just like the planes, sort of like pictures in a book. I tried to touch everything, but Aunt Jeannie had to hold me back. There were a bunch of different museums and we'd walk to each one. And that's pretty much where the good memory stopped and the bad memory started.

  We'd been going all day, and I can still see everything in my mind. I remember running into each new museum and just soaking it all in. There were so many things to see I didn't know where to go first. And that's how I ran into the last building. I'd broken free of Aunt Jeannie and was running through a bunch of people, children holding hands with adults, older people, young people, the guys with the walkie-talkies and funny hats who could answer your questions. I was small and quick and it was fun to run through the forest of people because I was faster than Aunt Jeannie and Tyler. I made it about fifty yards in before I even stopped to look up and see where I was. That was the last clear memory I had of that day.

  When I looked up all I could see was blue and gray. Blue and gray for a long way. Then fins. And the eye. Way above that, hanging on the walls were other fish--sharks with all sorts of different shaped fins. I knew it was a whale in front of me. I knew it wasn't real. None of it was real. And I knew it couldn't hurt me. But it didn't matter. It was as if I'd been sleepwalking and had just woken up and realized something was coming for me but I didn't know what. Something pressing down from all sides. It was going to get me and there was nowhere to hide. I put both hands over my head and fell to the ground like an air raid siren had gone off. By this time Tyler had caught up and he knew something was wrong. He said for a few moments I just laid there and he thought it was a joke or I was tired. But I was in a tight little ball. When he touched my back, my shirt was wet with sweat and I was breathing in little short gasps. Then Aunt Jeannie came running up, and one of the museum workers started yelling into his walkie-talkie. Soon I was carried away, knees up near my chin.

  Aunt Jeannie refers to it as "Jesse's Little Episode." I guess that was when Tyler, Jeannie, and the old man sort of knew I was a little warped. The worst part was it happened when I was five, and I didn't even have a say in it. Maybe if I'd been older I could have headed that thing off, could have beaten it. Outside of our family, only Matty knows.

  After that, I started learning how to deal with it. Anything could set me off. Once I was walking through the living room and Tyler was watching Jaws right when the shark came up out of the water onto the boat and it was like I'd been hit in the chest. I yelled at Tyler, but it wasn't his fault. I was the nut job. He loved it, enjoyed seeing me cringe. Even little stuff had to be avoided: the ceiling of the hamburger joint near Dr. Hanson's clinic had an ocean mural with a big school of jack crevalle racing toward the other end of the restaurant. Near the bathroom the ceiling turned darker blue, and lurking in the shadows was a shark. Why did the artist have to go and put in the shark? I love jacks, though. They are a beautiful green, yellow, gold on the top and white on the bottom. Sort of bullet shaped and fight like nobody's business if you hooked one. But all together on a ceiling with a shark hanging out down by the bathrooms and I couldn't handle it.

  School trips to any kind of museum was a minefield. You'd be safe in the bug room, shiny metallic green and blue beetles pinned to the wall, but then turn a corner and suddenly you were in the shark room and a giant video of teeth and meat and little black button eyes. It was like someone had just hit me in the face. Anger at getting slapped, then fear and escape. The urge to put my arms around my head and duck was so strong. Sometimes I pretended I was coughing and just sort of got low and stumbled away.

  But even everyday places got me. Standing in line a the 7-11 during summer and all of a sudden I look up and there's about 20 big killer whale, shark and dolphin pool toys right there above my head. Stupid pool toys. But I hated them. I put my hand over my eyes and pretended I had a headache. My shoulders hunched up, my hand tight around my face, left hand clutching a $10 bill. I'm sure the guy at the register wondered what was bugging this weird kid.

  The worst place for me was the middle of the dock between the boathouse and the big, gray house. During the day I was fine, but in the morning when it was pitch black my mind created 747-sized whales and sharks as big as buses all moving towards me. It was like I was back at the museum again, but this time the lights were off and all of the big fish hanging frozen on the wall had come to life. Eyes and teeth and shadow. Standing on the walkway I got smaller and smaller but the spaces around me kept pushing out until the old dock was just a tiny suspension bridge hanging by dry-rotted crab trap rope across a canyon, the boathouse on one end and land--Aunt Jeannie's home--on the other. All the big fish gliding past: under, above and straight towards me.

  The old man just sort of ignored it, like it would go away in time. Aunt Jeannie just worried. The only one who really tried to help was Matty. He didn't assume I was nuts. Didn't treat me like a freak. He was good at thinking about stuff and coming up with an answer that even the adults couldn't have thought of.

  seagull

  On Sunday morning, still pitch black outside, the old man poked me with his big finger until I woke up. "Sun'll be up soon. Let's go," he said. In the kitchen, Tyler was hunched over a cup of instant coffee staring at the old man's log book. One corner of the yellow lined paper had part of a brown, coffee ring stain on the edge like a big C. The old man wrote in a flowing, beautiful script that older people used, back when a cursive "p" didn't have a closed loop, and sort of looked like a funny "h". Next to August 19th, he'd written: 19 Sat. 245lbs. 55c.

  "Why don't you have on your crab jeans?" I said. We each had a few pair of old jeans that Aunt Jeannie had designated crab jeans. If you wore school jeans on the boat you might as well not come home because when you got back she'd make you scrub down all the baseboards with bleach right before she killed you.

  Tyler studied the yellow paper for a few more seconds, then without looking up held out a bandaged arm and said, "Because you suck." In all the Johnny excitement I'd forgotten: The week before I accidentally hit him with a crab I was trying to throw overboard. My main job on the boat was throwing bumpers out. Bumpers are crabs with eggs that we have to throw back. The sharp point of the crab shell caught him good right in the forearm and he bled like a stuck pig. AJ was worried he'd get an infection if he went on the boat, so he was grounded.

&nbs
p; This was tough for Tyler because he was the #1 striker on the boat and pretty much did everything perfect. I was just happy to make it through the day without messing anything up. Last week I hurt Tyler. The week before I forgot to put the drain plugs back in after we docked at the market and nearly sunk the boat. Aunt Jeannie said I was in my "awkward phase." I don't think Tyler ever had one. His other claim to fame was that he could spot a crab buoy from half a mile away, so the old man called him Eagle Eye. But the Eagle was pissed about being left behind.

  "By the time I'm healed up you'll have killed the old man with a flying bumper and sunk the boat. Accidentally, of course." He sat back, took a sip of his coffee and made a loud slurping noise, followed by an exaggerated "ahhhhh" like the men in the Miller High Life beer commercials on TV. I gasped. Both noises were cardinal sins in the big, gray house. Tyler leaned back in the metal folding chair, the front legs off the ground, and scratched his stomach thoughtfully. Then he started to grin. "I was thinking," he said. "Just how many different ways do you suck? Let's tally it up. This could take some time. But hey, I'm not going anywhere." He rubbed his chin. "Well, you suck at pulling bumpers. You suck at using the dolly. You suck at docking the boat. You suck at pulling traps." He paused, took another sip. "Oh yeah, you can't even walk out onto the dock by yourself in the dark."

  "Yes, I can," I said.

  "With your eyes open?"

  Just then the old man poked his head around the kitchen door and said, "Come on! Boat's already out." He had his crab boots on and didn't dare step into the kitchen. I headed for the door. Then right before I got out Tyler hit me with his parting shot: "Oh, and you're afraid of Johnny McCready."

  "I hope your arm gets all green and infected and just falls right off," I said, and slammed the door. I put on my boots and stomped off, heading for the boathouse. There was a bucket near the steps that led down to the dock so I kicked it as hard as I could and it went spinning off towards the river, then stopped right at the edge, caught by the bulkhead.

  Even though I was angry and distracted, standing at the edge of the dock, the big shadows were still there in the dark, waiting. So I closed my eyes and walked fast, head down, like a beaten dog--afraid of everything: screwing up on the boat, the blackness in the middle of the dock, Johnny.

  In the boathouse the old man pulled down on a long pole above our heads to release the brake. I hit the light and suddenly the blackness was gone, replaced by the large, white hull of a crab boat. It smelled like dead fish and river water and salt but I didn't mind at all. The bottom of the hull was covered with dark green algae and slime that we scraped off once a year when we dry docked. I hit the down switch and the electric motor kicked in. Gears and pulleys started to spin above us in a rhythmic grinding and squealing as the boat slowly came down.

  I squeezed the rubber primer near the gas tanks, then the old man turned the key and the engine fired right away. The old man took good care of his boat. He always said buy a big engine and baby it. When the other crabbers, running around with their 90-horse Johnsons had to replace their engines every five years or so, our 135 Evinrude was going on ten and doing fine. He even had a 5-horse kicker mounted right next to it, just in case.

  The old man pulled back on the stick and the prop spun backwards, churning white water at the stern, some splashing into the boat. From the river, the boathouse looked like a giant dog house: just a roof, three sides and a big hole for a door. Once back far enough, the old man pushed the gear lever forward and we headed for the trestle. The dog house getting smaller and grayer, until it disappeared in the blackness and was gone.

  The morning was still and cool even though it was summer. In the winter you had to wear every piece of clothing you had. He'd buy us extra large boots just in case we fell overboard. He said if your boots were too tight and you fell over you'd sink like a rock. We were heading for a tiny green light on the train trestle. That was the only marker we could see. Across the river on the other shore a tiny rectangle of light appeared, cutting a hole in the blackness. A kitchen window. Probably an early riser making coffee. After a few minutes we made it to the large tar covered logs stacked high on either side that made an entrance large enough for most boats to get through. Then slightly left under the bridge and the huge, towering concrete columns holding up the road high above us. Up until this point we'd been slowly chugging along, but once we got into the "big river," the St. Johns, and the bridge was at our backs, the old man turned on the map light.

  I could see his thick white hair and brown skin in the glow of the lamp. The compass was a small, black ball with little white marks all over it. It floated inside a larger ball made of glass, and turned, bouncing, when the boat changed directions. The old man tapped it with his thick, brown finger. He slowly moved the steering wheel right, all the while staring hard at the little black ball. He never looked up to see where we were going. He knew the exact coordinates to get us to Eastport where our traps were even if it was pitch black or foggy. Then suddenly he said, "Got it. You ready?" I nodded and he pushed the lever forward and the boat slowly built speed. At first the boat sort of fought with the water, chugging along, slowly going faster, the bow so high sometimes it blocked our forward view. But then once we had enough speed the bow of the boat dipped down and the stern raised up and we planed out. It was like we were flying. I loved to hold on to the side of the boat and feel the air blowing through my hair and on my face. Towards the east, the darkness turned purple. Then a tiny dot of orange at the treeline out towards Blount Island. Then pink and red and orange reaching upwards into the dark sky. I looked back and it was still night, the moon still there, low in the sky, but the boat was heading for day.

  When Tyler wasn't there the old man pulled the traps. I could pull maybe ten traps, then I'd get tired out. The old man said I didn't have enough lead in my britches. But I did what I could to help out, tossing bumpers and cutting stink shad. Aunt Jeannie always called me "Good Time Charlie" because I'd usually be sitting in the lawn chair while Tyler was mowing the grass. Or inside playing cards while Tyler was outside helping the old man on something. And that morning was no different. We had a few minutes before we made it to Eastport so I snuck up to the front of the boat, arranged a few old crab boxes around me, rolled up a burlap sack for a pillow, and took a nap. The last thing I remembered hearing was the sound of the engine and the water against the hull of the boat.

  I woke up to the sound of seagulls. The old man was poking me. "Wake up! Wake up!" he said. "The bumpers are back!" I opened my eyes to a light blue, cloudless sky. White gulls flashing in and out. Some high above, some flying low. The seagulls would dive down kamikaze style for bits of rotten crab bait the old man was dumping. We were ten traps or so into the Eastport line.

  "Why didn't you wake me up?"

  "Figured you needed your beauty sleep," he said. "Pull the bumpers and bait the trap." I put on my rubber gloves, grabbed the fillet knife and sliced open a mullet from the top just above the eyes down across the fish to right around the belly. Guts came sliding out. I stuffed it into the bait well and grabbed the stainless steel tongs the old man made and started tossing out bumpers. They were easy to spot because the eggs attached to the underside of the females looked like an orange sponge.

  Floating all around the boat were the white and brown pelicans with their large orange beaks. The bottom of their beaks was like a stretchable pouch that could hold their weight in fish. They were waiting patiently for the mushy old bait that had been marinating in the St. Johns river for days. Their eyes were fixed on the bait as the trap came up. When the old man lifted the trap up to dump the crabs, the pelicans, all 30 or so of them, moved their beaks up in unison. When he moved the trap lower to shake out a stubborn crab that wouldn't come out, their beaks moved low and bobbed up and down with his every move. Most of the rotten bait never even hit the water, it just landed right in the pelicans' mouths.

  Above this little ballet the seagulls circled and screamed. They were beau
tiful, white and daring. They'd spy a tiny piece of fish and dive right into the mad crush of giant pelican beaks and wings and bodies. When the gulls hit the water you'd lose them for a moment in the pelicans, then they'd pop up again and fly up at a sharp angle, a tiny white prize in their beaks. Every once in awhile a pelican would catch a gull in his beak, but the gulls always got away.

  About half way through the Eastport line we came on a trap the old man could barely get to the boat. I figured there would be a ton of crabs and bumpers. I was ready with the tongs so I could get them all overboard before we hit the next one. After much fussing and carrying on, the old man got the trap up out of the water and onto the edge of the boat. Immediately we were nearly knocked over by a terrible smell. It made stinky crab bait seem like a fresh ocean breeze just after a good rain.

  The old man let out about ten yards of rope then half-hitched it to the cleat near the steering wheel. With the boat idling along, the rope went taught, and the trap came up near the surface again a few yards back like a half-submerged water skier. But the smell remained. The old man scratched his head, white shocks of hair between his thick, brown fingers. We stared down at a huge, round dead something in the trap. It looked like an uncooked ham, white and gray, the whole thing rolling around inside the trap with the current. There were no distinguishing features, until finally, the mass of flesh rolled around and suddenly a large bird foot was sticking through the wire mesh.

  "What is that thing?" I said. "A dead turkey?"

  "Nope," the old man said. "It's a muscovy." Muscovy were large, ugly, red-faced ducks that lived all around the river. This reminded me of one Sunday afternoon when AJ was gone and we were watching the Miami Dolphins on TV. Griese had been injured so Strock had to come in and the old man had started to mutter and cuss under his breath. It looked like the Dolphins were going to lose. The old man would fidget in his seat, change positions, then glare out at the big muscovy ducks perched on the roof of the boathouse. Lines of watery, white duck poop were running down his beautiful green roof like someone had dumped a can of paint. Finally, he couldn't stand it any longer. He jumped up, went to the closet and flipped on the light. He came out holding a rifle with a scope. It had a funny thing on the end of the barrel, like a skinny can. When I asked him what it was he said it kept the noise down. He rested the gun gently on a towel in an open window, and took aim at the first duck. He pulled the trigger and the rifle made a muffled thump sound. On the roof of the dock there was a poof of feathers like someone had ripped open a down pillow. Little white feathers were still fluttering in the wind even after the fat, round duck had rolled off the green roof into Trout River with a splash. The old man just looked at us. "Don't say nothing," he said. Then he fiddled with a tiny adjustment knob on the scope and took aim at the next one.