Call would give me a look that indicated that I had lost my mind, but he was smart enough not to think it out loud. I can’t swear that I fooled the crabs, but our catches were good that summer. Still, I wasn’t going to count too heavily on crabs. I began casting about for other ways to make money.
I found what seemed a sure thing in the back of a Captain Marvel comic book in Kellam’s store. I even squandered a dime of my hard-earned cash to buy the book, which I hid with my other treasures in the underwear drawer.
WANTED: Song Lyrics
Cash for your poems!
Cash. That was a word to make the creative juices flow. The fact that most of the poetry I’d ever read came off tombstones didn’t stop me. I listened to the radio, didn’t I?
There’ll be bluebirds over
The white cliffs of Dover
Tomorrow, just you wait and see.
There’ll be love and laughter
And peace ever after
Tomorrow, when the world is free.
Any idiot could figure it out. Two rhyming lines, stuffed with romance, a third that neither rhymes nor makes sense right away, two more romantic ones, then the third that also rhymes with the earlier unrhymed one and sort of makes sense.
When the gulls fly over the Bay
They cry that you’re far away.
But we didn’t part.
Though you’re far across the sea,
You’re not far away to me,
You’re in my heart.
It had all the elements—romance, sadness, an allusion to the war, and faithful love. I fancied myself the perfect lyricist—romantic, yet knowledgeable.
I tried it out on Call in the boat one day.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“The girl’s boyfriend is away at war.”
“Then why are the gulls crying? Why should they care?”
“They don’t really care. In poems you can’t say plain out what you mean.”
“Why not?”
“Then it’s not poetry anymore.”
“You mean a poem’s supposed to lie?”
“It’s not lying.”
“Go on. Ain’t neither gull on this Bay up there boohooing ’cause some sailor’s gone to war. If that ain’t a plain out lie, I don’t know what is.”
“It’s a different way of talking. Makes it prettier.”
“It ain’t pretty to lie, Wheeze.”
“Forget about the gulls. How about the rest of it?”
“The rest of what?”
“The rest of my poem, Call. How does it sound?”
“I forget.”
I gritted my teeth to keep from yelling at him and then with super patience read it through again.
“I thought you’s going to forget about the gulls.”
“No, you forget them. How does the rest sound?”
“It don’t make neither sense.”
“What do you mean?”
“Either the guy’s away or he ain’t. You got to make up your mind.”
“Call. It’s a poem. In real life he is far away, but she thinks about him all the time, so she feels like he’s real close.”
“I call it dumb.”
“Just wait until you fall in love.”
He looked at me as though I’d proposed some indecent act.
I sighed. “Did you hear the one about the Australian who wanted to buy a new boomerang but he couldn’t get rid of his old one?”
“No. What about him?”
“Get it? A boomerang. He wanted to buy a new boomerang, but he kept getting the old one back every time he threw it away.”
“Why should he even want a new one? The old one’s still perfectly good, isn’t it?”
“Call. Just forget it.”
He shook his head, the picture of patient disbelief, and I forgot I was pretending not to care about crabs and devoted my full attention to the pesky varmints. I like to recall that we netted two full baskets of rank peelers that day.
No one had told me to turn over all the money I made crabbing. I just always had. When I started, I guess, it hadn’t occurred to me that it was mine to keep. We always lived so close to the edge of being poor. It made me feel proud to be able to present the family with a little something extra to hold on to. While my parents never carried on much over it, I was always thanked. When my grandmother would criticize me, I could remember, even if the laws of respect kept me silent, that I was a contributing member of the household in which she and Caroline were little more than parasites. It was a private comfort.
But no one ever said I had to turn over every penny I made to the stoneware pickle crock in which the household money was kept.
Why then did I feel so guilty? Wasn’t it my right to keep some of my hard-won earnings? But what if Otis should say something to my father about all the crabs he was buying from us? What if Call’s mother should brag to my mother about how much money Call was bringing home these days? I divided my share exactly down the middle. If there was a penny in doubt, the penny went into the crock. I was contributing almost as much as I had during the previous summer, but I wasn’t taking the money proudly to Momma for her to count out and put into the crock. I was slipping it in myself and then saying later, “Oh, by the way, I left a little in the crock.” And my mother would thank me quietly, just as she always had. I never said I was putting everything in. I never lied. But then no one ever asked.
If only there were some other way to make money. Call’s total lack of enthusiasm for my poem had had a dampening effect. I knew perfectly well that he was as qualified to judge poetry as he was to judge jokes, which was not at all, but still, he was the only human being I could risk reading it aloud to. If only he could have said something like, “I don’t know anything about poetry, but it sounds fine to me.” That would have been gracious, almost honest, and would have given me a real boost when I needed it.
As it was, I waited a week or so, then pulled myself together enough to copy the poem out on clean notebook paper and mail it to Lyrics Unlimited. Even before it could have been delivered to the P.O. Box in New York, I began haunting the docks when the ferry (which also served as the mail boat) came in. I didn’t have the nerve to ask Captain Billy directly if there was any mail for me, but I hoped that if I just happened to be standing there, he’d see me and let me know. I didn’t know that he never opened the sack before he took it to Mrs. Kellam, who served as postmistress. But I did know that Mrs. Kellam was a noisy gossip. I dreaded the thought of her asking my grandmother about a mysterious letter arriving from New York addressed to me.
It was about that time that our day-old Baltimore Sun carried huge headlines about the eight German saboteurs. They had been landed by submarine on Long Island and Florida and almost immediately caught. I knew, of course I knew, that the Captain was not a spy, but as I read, it felt as though I were swallowing an icicle. Suppose he had been. Suppose Call and I had caught him and become heroes? It seemed such a near miss that suddenly it was important to me to find out more about the old man. If he was not a spy, if he was indeed Hiram Wallace, why had he come back after all these years to an island where he was hardly remembered except with contempt?
7
Call and I had been so busy crabbing since school let out that we’d hardly been to visit the Captain together. Call, I knew, usually went to see him on Sunday afternoons, but my parents liked me to stay closer by on Sundays. I didn’t mind. The long sleepy afternoon was perfect for writing lyrics. By now I had nearly a shoe box full, just waiting for Lyrics Unlimited to write and demand all that I could deliver.
So Call was surprised when, on a Tuesday, I proposed that we wind up the crabbing an hour early and pay a visit to the Captain.
“I thought you didn’t like him,” Call said.
“Of course I like him. Why shouldn’t I like him?”
“Because he tells good jokes.”
“That’s a stupid reason not to like somebody.”
??
?Yeah. That’s what I thought.”
“What d’you mean?”
“Nothing.”
I decided to ignore the implied insult. “You can learn a lot from someone who comes from the outside. Take Mr. Rice. I guess Mr. Rice taught me more than all my other teachers put together.” All two of them.
“About what?”
I blushed. “About everything—music, life. He was a great man.” I talked and thought about Mr. Rice as though he were dead and gone forever. That’s how far away his Texas army post seemed.
Call was quiet, watching my face. I knew he was fixing to say something but didn’t quite know how to say it. “What’s the matter?” I asked him. As soon as I asked, I knew. He didn’t want me to visit the Captain with him. He wanted the Captain all to himself. Besides, he was suspicious of me. I decided to tackle the matter directly.
“Why don’t you want me to visit the Captain?”
“I never said I didn’t want you to visit the Captain.”
“Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s go.”
He shrugged his shoulders unhappily. “Free country,” he muttered. It didn’t make any sense, but I knew what he meant—that if there had been a way to stop me, he would have.
The Captain was tending crab lines on his broken-down dock. I poled the boat in close before he heard us and looked up.
“Well, if it isn’t Wheeze and Cough,” he said, smiling widely and touching the bill of his cap.
“Wheeze and Cough, get it?” Call yelled back to me from the bow. He shook his head, smiling all over his face. “Wheeze and Cough, that’s really good.”
I tried to smile, but my face had too much basic integrity for me even to pretend I had heard something funny.
Call and the Captain gave each other a “don’t mind her” look, and Call threw the Captain the bowline and he tied us up. I don’t mind admitting I wasn’t too keen to step out on that ramshackle dock, but after Call had jumped onto it, and it had only shuddered a bit, I climbed carefully out and walked off to the shore as quickly as I dared.
“I’m going to fix it.” The Captain hadn’t missed my anxiety. “Just so many things to do around here.” He nodded at Call. “I tried to get your friend here to give me a hand, but—”
Call blushed. “You can’t hammer on a Sunday,” he said defensively.
Hiram Wallace would have known that. Nobody on the island worked on the Sabbath. It was as bad as drinking whiskey and close to cursing and adultery. I racked my brain for the next question—the one that would prove to Call beyond doubt that the Captain was no more Hiram Wallace than I was. “Don’t you recall the Seventh Commandment?” I asked slyly.
He lifted his cap and scratched his hair underneath. “Seventh Commandment?”
I had him. That is, I almost had him. I hadn’t reckoned on Call. Call who snorted and almost yelled, “Seventh? Seventh? Seventh don’t have neither to do with hammering on Sunday. Seventh’s the one,” he stopped, suddenly embarrassed and lowered his voice, “on adultery.”
“Adultery?” The Captain started laughing out loud. “Well, I’m too old to worry about that one. Now there was a time—” He grinned mischievously. I suspect Call wanted him to go on as much as I did, but the old man stopped right there. Like offering candy to a child and then yanking back your hand with some excuse about saving his teeth, I thought.
“Today is Tuesday,” Call said as we started for the house.
“Tuesday! Then—then—” the Captain seemed terribly excited. “Then tomorrow is Wednesday, and after that comes Thursday! Friday! Saturday! Sunday! And Monday!!”
I thought Call would die laughing on the spot, but he managed to control himself enough to gasp, “Get it, Wheeze? Get it?”
If I couldn’t smile at “Wheeze and Cough,” how was I to force a laugh at a recitation of the days of the week?
“Don’t mind her, Captain. She don’t catch on too good.”
“Too well.” At least I could demonstrate proper grammar. “Too well.”
“Too well. Too well,” repeated the Captain chirpily, lifting his hand to his ear. “Hark? Do I hear the mating call of a feathered friend of the marsh-land?”
Call, naturally, collapsed. All I could think of was if we’d netted a spy like this, Franklin D. Roosevelt would have thrown him back. Good heavens.
Eventually, Call recovered from his hysterics enough to explain to the Captain that since it was Tuesday and not yet suppertime, he and I would be glad to lend a hand fixing up the old dock or house or whatever else the Captain might want doing around the place. In fact, Call added, we could come at about this time every afternoon, except Sunday of course, and help out.
“I’d want to pay you something,” the Captain said. My ears stretched practically to the top of my head, and I opened my mouth to utter a humble thanks.
“Oh, no,” said Call. “We couldn’t think of taking money from a neighbor.”
Who couldn’t? But for once in his life Call talked faster than I could think, and the two of them snatched away my time and energy and sold me into slavery before I had breath to hint that I wouldn’t be insulted by a small tip every now and then.
That was how we came to spend two hours every afternoon slaving for the Captain. I noticed grimly that he didn’t mind at all ordering us around, even though we were supposed to be doing him a favor. We didn’t have our tea break after the first week because tin was becoming scarce and the Captain was short on canned milk. And, as he explained, since he could no longer offer Call milk, it would have been mean for the two of us to stop for tea. I would have been glad to stop for any excuse, even that awful tea. When you’re fourteen and your body is changing as mine was that summer, you just plain get tired, but I couldn’t admit it. Both Call and the Captain seemed to regard me as mentally deficient, since I couldn’t appreciate their marvelous humor. I couldn’t let them make fun of me physically as well.
Nothing went right for me that summer, unless you count the fact that when my periods began, almost a year after Caroline’s of course, they began on a Sunday morning before I left the house for church instead of after, but the stain went clear through my pants and slip to my only good dress. Momma let me pretend to be sick. What else could she do? I couldn’t wash and dry my dress in time for Sunday school.
My grandmother kept saying things like “What’s the matter with her? She don’t look sick to me. Just don’t want to worship the Lord.” And “If she was mine, I’d give her a good smack on the rear. That’d perk her up fast enough.”
I was terrified that Momma would betray me and tell Grandma the real reason I was staying home. But she didn’t. Even Caroline tried to shush Grandma up. I don’t know what Grandma told her old friends, but for weeks after that they’d all ask sweetly about my health, both physical and spiritual.
My spiritual health was about on a par with a person who’s been dead three days, but I wasn’t about to admit it and get prayed for out loud on Wednesday night by that bunch of old sooks.
8
I used to try to decide which was the worst month of the year. In the winter I would choose February. I had it figured out that the reason God made February short a few days was because he knew that by the time people came to the end of it they would die if they had to stand one more blasted day. December and January are cold and wet, but, somehow, that’s their right. February is just plain malicious. It knows your defenses are down. Christmas is over and spring seems years away. So February sneaks in a couple of beautiful days early on, and just when you’re stretching out like a cat waking up, bang! February hits you right in the stomach. And not with a lightning strike like a September hurricane, but punch after punch after punch. February is a mean bully. Nothing could be worse—except August.
There were days that August when I felt as though God had lowered a giant glass lid over the whole steaming Bay. All year we had lived in the wind, now we were cut off without a breath of air. On the water the haze was so thick it was like tryin
g to inhale wet cotton. I began to pray for a real blow. I wanted relief that badly.
In February the weather sometimes gave us a vacation; in August, never. We just got up earlier every morning until finally we met ourselves going to bed. Call and I didn’t get up quite as early as my father, who may have never gone to bed between tending to his floats and going out to crab, but we were up well before dawn, trying to sneak a fair catch of crabs from the eelgrass before the sun drove us off the water.
I had a faint hope that the Captain, not being an islander, would take the heat as an excuse to slow down a bit. But Call fixed that.
“We’re coming in from crabbing early these hot mornings,” he blabbed. “We could come on over here and get lots more done of a day.”
“I can’t come before dinner,” I said. “Momma expects me home to eat.”
“Well, fiddle, Wheeze,” Call said. “You all eat by eleven. Don’t take more’n ten minutes to eat.”
“We don’t stuff like scavengers at our house,” I said. “I couldn’t possibly get here that fast. Besides, I got chores.”
“We’ll be here by noon,” he told the Captain cheerily. I could have choked him. That meant at least four and a half hours of gut-ripping work in the heat for nothing. Nothing.
The Captain, of course, was delighted. His one concession to the temperature was that we work indoors and not on the dock in the sun. He began planning out loud all the projects the three of us could complete by the time school opened. I managed, with a lie about my mother needing me, to get away by four-fifteen. I wanted to get to the post office before supper. It would have been better perhaps if I had not, for there it was, my letter from Lyrics Unlimited. I ran with it to the tip of the island, to my driftwood stump, and sat down to open it, my hands shaking so they made a poor job of it.
Dear Miss Bandshaw: