The Crab

Here is the complete first draft.

Jason Conde
The Crab
1.
When Joel, Tito Ching and Aunt Daisy stopped over to offer my parents a cleaned halibut wrapped in parchment, Joel told me about their trip fishing deep-sea. We were sitting on the stoop in the alley, speaking in hushed tones because voices moved easily through our thin-walled duplex. Our fathers were in the garage, nursing cold bottles of San Miguel, my father on his homemade bench and Tito Ching in the rattan rocker. Aunt Daisy was with my mother in the kitchen shredding papaya flesh. It was evening, my father and I had just finished preparing dinner - jasmine rice and a sour tamarind stew of milkfish and string-beans - in the garage on portable propane stoves. The air was moist with tangy steam.
Joel told me about beer-drinking before noon with his father and men he didn't know, about the captain's daughter who made bacon for breakfast and burgers for lunch, and then about the beach he found on their way back. "It's by the bridge," Joel said. His long limbs jutted over the whole set of stairs, his feet longer than each step. His pale cheeks budded whiteheads ripe for popping, and chin hairs grew as full, dark patch. I sat with my stubby legs bent, my small feet perched on the step in front of me, my round face cradled in a chubby hand. We were both fifteen but I know we didn't look it.
I knew of beaches like this. I read about them in Playboy. There was even a picture. A lone brunette stretched out on shore, sand sprinkled and surf turning over her nude body, her thick hair wet, the sky clear, the ocean dark and glassy, cliffs in the background.
"There were two," Joel said, his eyebrows skyward. "One black, one white, just lying there butt naked."
We made the plan after dinner. The following Saturday I'd take the BART and meet Joel outside of the Civic Center station. Then we'd go the the beach.

The night before I thought about a story my father told me. "When I was a boy I dreamt once that I caught a crab," my father said. "In my dream it was night and I was at the beach down the road from our farm. I was crabbing where the stream emptied out into the ocean, and all I caught was that one crab. On the walk home, the crab said, 'You don't want to eat me,' but I kept towards home and then I woke up. That day your Uncle Nino started shitting worms, his nuts grew to the size of persimmons and a week later he was gone." I tried not to think of my father's story, but images of beaches at night, of my father's contorted face imitating the crab, and of worms riling in feces roamed wild in the darkness of my room.

The next morning I woke up alone in the house. My parents left early on Saturdays to work. A plate garlic fried rice, raw onions and tomatoes, corned beef and yolky fried eggs was Saran-wrapped on the kitchen table. I ate, packed a Gatorade and a siopao bun from the garage fridge, then left for the BART station.

At that hour Richmond was quiet. Most sound was the drone of traffic on the freeway. It was still too early for peel-out chirrups and sirens. The hills along the eastern end shaded our town until an hour after sunrise, our pocket of the bay kept cool for the commuters and the homeless emerging from the landfill jetty to collect cans. Some took its stench with them. Once the sun rises from the hills the air heats up but the breezes keep blowing in gusts. I never felt warm. It always seemed chilly and hot at the same time. It was all I knew.
We lived east of the freeway just along the base of the hill. From my window I could see the tip of Berkeley's clock tower, but we were too far to hear its bell sound. From the front door you could see the city, its piers, its skyscrapers, its towers and bridges. When I looked at the city from our front window, I thought that I could be anywhere there and it would never feel residential. There would always be some shop, a theater, a bar. Nothing like Richmond, where I walked by house after house on my way to the BART, which never seemed to get any closer until I was actually there.

From the station platform I could see all of the clock tower standing tall in the hills amongst low buildings. I tried to tell the time but the clock hands were too far away to read.
I waited on a bench under a long, low awning. Someone had written "Snitchmond" on the bench with a neon blue paint pen. Heavy breezes blew through the station like water through pipe. Shaded from the sunny, cloud-free sky I felt cold.
I wondered what we'd do at the beach. Would we have to undress? I had acne on my chest and shoulders.

The BART arrived on time and I walked into an empty car. I sat facing west towards the city. Soon the sun warmed my neck too hot so I moved where there were no windows behind me.
At the El Cerrito station a tall man with a book entered the car. He found a seat facing east and opened his book, which he held all the way to his face as he read. At each subsequent station, more and more people filed into the cars. A man with red, leathery skin, a woman with two little girls and an empty rolling basket, and a group of kids with tough faces who spoke out-loud about the passengers in the car. "Y'all pretending," one of them said.
The rest stood firm.
The tall man reading never brought the book away from his face. Not even after one of the kids, walking by to another car, knocked a sharp knuckle on its hardback cover.

Outside Oakland the BART dipped under the bay as it charged towards the city. Inside the car lights flickered as the train bobbed along the rails and for a moment I felt suspended in air.
When the car doors slid open at Embarcadero, the air flowing in felt different. It was cooler, tingled the skin on the back of my hands. It was easier to breathe, smelled as if it had been cleaned. The posters along the station walls were for movies I hadn't heard of yet. There was a greater sense of focus in the car. People checked their watches and pagers often, reading books and newspapers as they walked in and out of the cars without ever looking up. I didn't notice anyone looking up.
Once at the Civic Center station I walked out of the car and found a narrow staircase leading to the streets. I ran up and out into a courtyard. People walked in all directions and angles, pigeons fluttered, and leafy trees planted in circular patches of soil casted dappled shadows on the concrete. The solid shadows of the buildings diffused much of the the light, and their shade looked cold. The buildings themselves bloomed into the sky and the wind blew steady around them in erratic currents. A bushy man dressed in ragged layers pushed his can cart along the sidewalk. His hair locked in a stiff, flat dread that hung passed his waist and waved behind him like a beaver's tail.
Across the street I found Joel waiting at the bus stop. I looked for traffic to thin out before crossing, thinking of the beach as I waited. I looked for the beaver tail man to point him out to Joel, but he'd disappeared.

2.
The bus stop was at a corner of a six-way intersection. I'd lost my sense of direction since getting off the BART. There were so many angles and reflections and changing sounds. I became hungry. "Want some siopao?" I asked Joel.
"I just ate."
"When?" I asked.
"At home."
A few times Joel stood up from the bench and looked downed the street. Finally he said, "Alright, that's us."
The bus approached fast and passed the bench a length before stopping. As it did I saw my reflection walking with Joel's in the bus windows. Joel stood tall, almost extended, taking long strides, while I seemed square like a wobbly block.
We got on and sat at the furthest row back. The space above the windows posted ads for drug addiction clinics, recycling centers and abuse hotlines. There were few people on the bus. A hefty old man with a some shopping bags sat across three neatly-bearded men. The bearded men played a game with three green plastic bottle-caps and a dry cherry seed. The man in the middle missing a his right canine shuffled the bottle-caps, one of which concealed the seed.
The shuffler sat with his knees together shuffling on a piece of cardboard with a torn edge on his lap, saying in a voice that echoed through the bus, "Real easy ladies and gentleman. Just pick the right one. Just find the seed. Go ahead. Pick a cap, find your money." One of the other young men picked a cap.
The shuffler turned the cap over and revealed the cherry seed. The shuffler gave up a dollar and said, "You lose, you win." Then he turned to a woman sitting by herself with a rolling basket fill with bagged groceries. "You could win too, Missy," the shuffler said to the woman. She was wearing a long blue skirt that went down to her feet and a loose grey sweater. Her black hair was both thin and patchy. "Just like this young man. But you gotta play."
"Don't believe him," the hefty old man said. He had his arms crossed and scanned the ads above. "They're all in on it."
"Motherfucker," the shuffler mouthed. The other two exchanged looks. The bus came to a red light. There was quiet in the bus, the engine droned on at the halt.
When the bus got on the move again someone pulled the "Stop Requested" cord and a bell rang. The bus passed through the intersection then pulled to the sidewalk. The hefty old man climbed out of his seat, grabbed his shopping bags then exited through the backdoor. The shuffler threw his set-up on the floor, looked at the other two, then all three left through the same exit and followed the old hefty man down the street, whispering into one another's ears, punching ready fists into skin-cracked hands. The bus drove on, made a left, and all four men disappeared out of sight.
I looked at Joel, but he had his eye on the street signs. I wondered if he noticed any of it. After passing a few streets, Joel pulled the cord and I followed him out as soon as the bus stopped, keeping my arms close as I passed towards the exit.

We got off the bus at a playground in Chinatown where Joel and I had played years before. Children pendulated on swings and teetered on seesaws. Thick islands of soft foam replaced the sandboxes. Under my feet the foam felt bouncy. Old men gathered around the stone tables to play and watch chess. Parents and grandparents supervised children under the shade awning around the playground perimeter. The awning's perches were lined with spikes. "So dirty pigeons don't roost," my father once told me.
"Remember this park?" Joel asked. I remembered going down the tube-slide as a child after someone peed in it. On the drive back to Richmond my father called me Sponge. "That guy's hand in his pants," Joel said. I remembered that. A man lying on the bleachers at the back end of the playground, the sun in the sky, his hand pumping away until a few fathers approached him kicking.

We made moves up a hill, passing stands of local produce. There were bruises on tomatoes and the air smelled heavy like farms. A few stores showcased pink and purple tubs of water filled with turtles and frogs, piled on top of one another. A thin tube taped to the tub rim blew air into the water. Bubbles formed, surfaced, popped slowly.
Across the street a girl with her head down ran into a lumpy man picking debris off a dead chicken I saw him find in a trash can nearby. The chicken still had its feathers.
Plump, happy-looking women handed out paper menus and tried to convince us into their restaurants for congee and dim sum. A woman with small teeth smiled at me and I glanced back after passing. By then she already was smiling up some guy in a suit who kept his cell phone to his ear as he passed.
We went into a few medicinal stores looking for virility roots. We wandered among barrels of root bits and powders. Joel bagged ground starfish and I found tea containing catnip.
The cashier was plump and thick. Soft flesh filled her faced where wrinkles otherwise would. Her grey hair was held bundled in an orange hankerchief. A black-haired girl emerged from the back door. She carried a box with her chest pressed against the cardboard. I watched for a moment when the cashier said, "Okay, Okay. Goodbye."

3.
After passing a bright row of florists Joel said, "We make a right here, then another right at the end of this street, then the first left after that." Right, right, left. Simple.
After that first right all we walked by was house after house. There were gas stations, but then I realized, So? I thought of the sidewalks of Richmond, of the ivy islands along the sidewalks that seemed to have another world contained underneath its leaves, which were perpetually green. I thought of the shuffling I sometimes heard when I passed them, of the rats that lived beneath the low canopy.
I began to feel the weight of my clothes as we walked. They clung to my moist skin, soaking up my sweat. "Can't we get on another bus?"
Joel shook his head. "We'll just get lost."
"What?"
"We will. Trust me." So I did.
After an hour I began counting each street we passed, and after another hour I stopped. The sun was passed halfway above us. "You know where you're going, right?"
"No," Joel said, squinting his eyes. "I've never been there. I just want to take the simplest route."
"This is it?"
"We won't get lost."
"Can we take a break? I'm getting tired."
"We're almost there."
"Are we?"
"Yes. Let's just keep moving." At some point, we reached an unshaded stretch of sidewalk. There were no trees or buildings tall enough to block the sun. The cement beneath my feet felt as if it were pulling me down. A breeze blew but did nothing to cool me.
I don't remember making it back to the shade.
There was only sidewalk beneath each step when Joel said, "Make a right." After turning the corner we saw the first left a some hundred yards away, just before a long bend in the road. The bridge stood beyond, jutting over the bay's mouth.

The road to the beach curved at the end; it ran behind the hill and we couldn't see what it turned to. Trees lined the road that grew slanted out of the hills. Grey clouds rolled in, but the sun was still up, hidden in the overcast.
We could see the parking lot at the end of the road. The lot was filled with cars and as we approached I began to notice all the children. "This is it?"
"I don't know," Joel said.
"Were there a lot of kids there?"
"When?"
"When you saw it from the water."
"I don't think so. All I saw were those girls."
We continued on. Before entering the parking lot we passed a restroom building where, under outside shower spigots, mothers and fathers washed sand off their children. A bean-shaped lady took the diaper off her baby and washed him naked at the outside showers. She held him in the air away from her, her thick arms outstretched as the round baby writhed crying under the cold spray. A bald man monitored his sons washing. The man's head shined as he pointed at spots on his boys' legs. He pressed the shower button, and they'd wash off some more.

4.
I spotted shards of broken glass in the sand so I kept my shoes on. I told Joel but he took his shoes and socks off anyways. "I'll keep an eye out," he said.
People were beginning to leave. The sun was still out but a cold breeze blew in from the ocean. We headed north where the bridge was rooted to the city. There were no naked women. Most were in sweaters. One girl, thin and brown with long hair and big sunglasses wore a big sweater over her bikini. As she walked alone along shore I saw the the top tied around the back of her neck and the bottom fringe of the sweater hiked up her thighs. The cheek clefts of her ass poked out with each step. But that was it. "Where are the women?" I asked.
"Don't ask me," Joel said. "I never said anything was for sure."
I stopped. Joel kept walking, his arms, with a shoe in each hand, swinging at his side, his gaze at the sand. Around the beach people walked along the surf, dogs ran back and forth fetching Frisbees and tennis balls. Seagulls ran along the white water. The sand in my shoes seeped through my socks and mixed with my toe sweat. When I started again towards the rocks I couldn't spot Joel.

Before reaching the rocks I saw a big-bellied man wearing only feathered armbands, silver bracelets and sharp-edged sunglasses. His hair ran down to his waist and curled in coils at the ends, his long beard grew out in scraggles. In his hand he had a walking stick standing taller than himself and behind was a makeshift shelter of sticks and blankets. His skin was roasted orange and he looked at out to the ocean as if he were searching for something. I looked out and noticed the tide rising. A boat flashing light loomed distant in the water.
I kept watch for Joel but found him nowhere. I told myself he was there, somewhere near. My belly hurt and and the back of my head pulsed heavy. At the rocks I crawled up beyond the climbing surf and had some siopao and Gatorade. The siopao was cold but good. It was easy to eat; I still burn my tongue when they're hot.
The sun descended. The tide rose higher. The boat in the distance seemed further than before, smaller, but its light still shined bright. The aches were gone. My belly and my head felt fine. I could see more of the beach from my rock. I looked down at it all but still never found Joel.

When the surf neared my toes I started back for the parking lot. The sun, large in its bright dive, was half gone. The boat in the distance sat to the right of the sun, just a speck by the horizon line, its flash of light no longer visible. The naked man, now poncho-clad, sat under his shelter beating a drum. The sand was footprint-pocked, choppy, like the ocean's surface. Deep footprints, small footprints, dog prints, bird prints, even the prints of a long, tight spiral whorled in the sand, more and more catching the wash of night's climbing tide.

There was something rolling in the tide's fringe. It was a crab. It struggled on its back as the tide crept below softly. When I came close I saw that its claws were two different sizes. Its left was too small for his size but the right was even smaller. I could see it's soft newness in its translucency. The crab was a decent size, as big as my hand's palm. I thought it looked funny on its back. I was amused at its awkward position. I watched the crab struggle until dark then wrapped it in siopao paper, placed it in my pack then continued on to the parking lot. As I plowed through the sand the crab's shuffling tickled my back. I never found Joel.

5.
The night deepened as I climbed up the road. Trees outside the grasp of streetlights disappeared. I peed under the cover of shadows, afraid of the sterile gloom of the parking lot restrooms. Windows along cliffside mansions lit up. I couldn't see my feet. I trusted the concrete below.
I sat on a bench under a streetlight to clean the sand from my shoes and socks. Darkness encompassed the light. I set my pack beside me and as I shook out my shoes and whipped my socks against one another I watched the crab moving inside. As I slid on my socks and laced my shoes I wondered where Joel was, if he was still on foot, still at the beach, or somewhere in the city.

I hopped on the first bus that passed. I told the driver I needed to get on the BART. She pointed at the seat beside the stairway and said, "Sit there. I tell you where to get off."
The bus was empty. Sitting so close to the driver I wonder if she heard the crab rustling. As the bus moved on, I was lulled by purring acceleration, the brakes' steaming hiss and the drone of flickering lights. I watched my reflection in the window until my eyes sealed in sleep.

There are occasions when I'm almost fully conscious in my dreams, sometimes to where I have actual control over my actions. On the bus I don't remember falling asleep. One moment I was in the bus staring at myself in the mirror, the next moment I was sitting next to my father as he drove along an empty road that slashed past skyscraping tract homes. I had no control in this dream, it seemed unnecessary. We just drove in silence as more homes appeared before us, reaching higher and higher higher, their long shadows grouped in one, keeping away the sun.
I not never fond taking conscious control in my dreams, making things happen as I think they should. I enjoy my dreams more when I have no control. Those dreams have more meaning, and I don't wake up afraid.

I woke to the driver saying, "Wake up, this is you." For a moment I didn't know where I was. I thought I'd stumbled into a dream. "Cross the street here and wait for the 46. Then get off at Embarcadero."
I stood up. "Thank you."
"What's in the bag? Dinner?"
"It's a pet."
"A pet? What kind?"
"A crab."
"You get that crab at the beach?"
"Yeah."
"You gonna end up killing that crab. Unless it's a hermit. Where you gonna keep it."
"In a bucket."
"Is it a hermit?"
"I don't know."
"Is it small?"
"No."
"You gonna kill that crab," the driver said, then the doors hissed shut and the bus went off.

While waiting for the 46 I opened my pack to let the crab breathe. I was sitting by myself at a bench across the street from where I got off the bus. The crab had worked itself out of its wrapping and sat above the crumpled paper like it was a nest. The tiny claw had broken off, probably during his skirmish in the pack. It lay beside the crab, slowly opening.
I closed my pack as a bus approached. Its number posted 29. The bus stopped, its door opened, nobody got on or off. As it drove on I thought I saw Joel sitting in the back, asleep.

After sitting for some time my eyes had adjusted to the dark. Everything under streetlights I could see clearly. I could read the graffiti on the bench across the street, look into the shadows and make out lurking cats rooting through trash.
Few cars passed. Fewer than what I expected, anyways. This was the city. I thought there would be more cars on the roads. In the city I was keen on traffic, on the stop and go. I watched a white wagon coast through a series of green lights without another car around, its red taillight ribbon diffused by streetlights overhead.
A group of guys turned the corner and stood near the bench. They weren't boys, or teenagers or men. They were guys. They wore white shirts. We were quiet.
Soon the 46 arrived and they got on, each claiming a bench. I followed and sat behind the driver.

Three other passengers came onboard. First, a crouching, tiny woman who wore her grey hair in a handkerchief, then a boney man whose leathery skin looked pulled tight around his neck and face, and last the shuffler.
I couldn't see outside the bus windows. All I saw were reflections. Through his reflection I saw the shuffler digging through the pockets of his bomber. He looked at me through my reflection and I turned, keeping my eyes on my feet. Then I heard the clipping of fingernails. We all were quiet. I kept my head down.

The three other passengers were gone before the Embarcadero stop. The old woman and the boney man exited first, together. The shuffler exited a bit further. I watched him walk down the front steps, turn right, then disappear behind window reflections.
When the bus arrived at the Embarcadero station. The guys on the bus exited through the back stairs. I asked the driver where the Richmond-bound station was. "Follow those fellows," he said, pointing at the guys from the bus descending a sidewalk stairway. "Hurry," the bus driver said. "The last train is coming soon."

Just as I entered the empty stairway I felt vibrations beneath my feet. The walls hummed. A train approached but there were no indications it was slowing. I was at the platform when the train charged through the station in a blur. The air shook my body and the vibrations below massaged my achy feet.
I felt the crab turn over in the pack. It turned slow, first in feeble fidgets that finished as soon as they began, then in one swooping shift the crab rolled onto its other side and my pack flattened some. I felt the sudden desire to hurry home and get the crab in a bucket of water. I tried to remember where my father stored the fish tank air pump, which I planned to use in the bucket so the crab would have oxygen, like the turtles and frogs in Chinatown. The crab could die but I didn't want it to be at my hands as the bus driver prophesied.

When the train arrived I walked through its sliding door into an empty car. The smell wasn't like the one earlier in the day, which was fresher, not so human. The car's scent now was definitely of people: the flowery hints of women, of dust and cardboard from workers, of sweat, musk. The doors closed and the train started again on the tracks. There was a sudden dip, the air tightened and I knew we were under water.
The lights flickered as they had earlier, staying off for several seconds at a time. In the strobe I sat silent and unmoving, the crab at my back's small creeping in the pack. While the lights were off I heard a quick sliding sound followed by another. When the lights began strobing again I noticed the guys from the bus were at the other end of the car.

Each one was younger than I thought. On the bus I never really got to really look at them, but now, under lights dancing in flickers, I took them in.
The four of them looked younger than I first assumed. Pimpled, awkward in lank, the hairs on their faces sparse and splotched, having yet to bulk thick and cover the sinews of their necks and jaws. The short two looked identical. Twins perhaps, brothers at least. Filipinos for sure. I saw the Spanish in the pointedness of their shiny, brown noses, like Joel. The tallest one had a dense, inchoate afro mossed over his head. The last was a kid with red freckles and shaved hair, growing orange and stubby. He sat next to the tall kid conversing in whispers as he pounded a fist in an open hand.
They looked to be my age, the age of Joel, of the kids at school. If any older, not by much. They spoke of girls, of teachers, of classes. "We're never going to need any of it," I heard one say.
By Berkeley I'd been acknowledged by the kid with the afro. His hands were pocketed when he looked at me and nodded. There was no smile nor hostility, so when they approached I wasn't as nervous.

"What's in the bag?" the skinny brother asked, standing above me, his oily forehead reflecting beams of fluorescent light. The other sat slouched in a seat behind, looking off to his left were no one was. The red one stood by the nearest door to another car and the tall one stood by the sliding exits. Both made like the seated brother; red stared at the floor's dirt-trailed carpet, tall stared at the closed door in front of him.
I kept my gaze at my hands, fingers interlocked tight and resting on my lap. I felt the crab move. "Nothing," I said.
"Give me the bag," the skinny brother asked. I stayed still.
"Give him the bag," said the brother, keeping his stare left. I didn't move. The crab did.
I did nothing as the skinny brother removed the straps from my shoulders with frustrated strength. I feigned dead arms as he stripped the pack from me with one swift pull, jerking me forward with force. Before he could open my pack, the train slowed, so the skinny brother sat next to me while we stopped at Ashby where no one entered the car.

I'd once watched an eighty year old parrot named Salty snap a cleaned chicken leg bone in half. It sought fatty poultry marrow, which it picked out with its strong, sharp beak. One Sunday after lunch I tried holding him because of the enthusiastic insistence of an ex-girlfriend's peppy aunt. "Old Salty. He's just a tired bird," she said.
When Salty bit into the finger I'd held perched before him, I swung my hand back and forth with a certain violence that had no regard for the parrot. The bird was more than four times my age, but if Salty hadn't lost his grip so soon, I would have punched my fist through a fucking window. All I thought about was that chicken bone snapping, about its similarity in length to my finger.
I imagine the skinny brother felt the same way as he pulled his hand out of my pack with the crab's one claw clutched across his middle finger. His voice cracked in his shriek. Then he ripped the crab off and threw it against the window. The claw held tight to his finger, bending at its joints. Where the crab smacked against a window was a splatter wet with tiny guts, shell bits and sea water. Below laid the crab on its feet unmoving, its shell cracked clean in two.
The trained slowed again shortly, in El Cerrito, where the guys left with my pack.

There wasn't much time to think before Richmond. I sat alone for a while until I heard over the intercom: "LAST STOP." I thought about the dead crab while watching it tremble with the train's vibrations. I glanced at it as the train slowed towards the station. As I walked out of the car, I thought about my father's crab, how it wasn't real. Then I thought about the difference between dreams and life, fearful of the following day.