Seagull: A Southern Novel

by Paul, Lawton

  He feinted, I jumped back instinctively and he laughed. "Move! Don't just stand there. Let it out." He slapped me again, harder than before. My hearing left for a few seconds and the red pain shot through me again and now instincts took over. I wasn't worried about my heavy hands anymore. It was just me and the crazy man.

  "She watched you stand there and do nothing," he said. I was sweaty and hot but it felt good, like I'd moved past Jesse and into the animal. I wanted to hit him.

  "She thinks you are a wussy," he said.

  I threw a wild right and it sailed over his head and I lurched forward. He caught me and pushed me back hard and I slammed into the back shelf and a box of stuff marked 1969 Taxes and Receipts hit the floor. The corner broke and little bits of paper spilled out. I came at him again with another right and found nothing but air.

  "Fight!" he yelled and came at me again. His hands were down and he was taunting me, goading me into another swing. "Come on! I'm right here. You gonna back down again! Who are you? Fighter or wussy? Decide now!" I jumped towards him and swung again. He dodged and I reloaded and swung again. I couldn't touch him. Pretty soon I was so tired I couldn't swing anymore. The animal had run around the room until it couldn't run anymore. I laid down on the dirty basement floor and gasped for air. My hair was wet with sweat.

  The old man had both hands on his knees and was gulping in air. He looked down at me with a red, sweaty face. The crazy man was gone, replaced by Uncle Art. "That was good," he said between breaths. "We got a little fight out of you."

  Matty and I walked back to his house after our first lesson. Matty had invited me to dinner. When I told AJ she requested a full report when I got back. She was happy Matty's parents were back together and the house was finally clean.

  "You pissed at the old man?" Matty asked me in front of his nicely manicured lawn.

  "Naw. I know what he was doing." The sun was almost down. It was my favorite time of day, when the light is perfect and everything is orange. I wished I could see the sky from our dock instead of through Matty's trees. "But what I wanna know is where his intel came from. He hit me with the Hailey thing a few times."

  "Did it piss you off?"

  "Yeah."

  "Nice. That was my contribution," he said, smiling proudly.

  "Bastard," I said, which was also an invitation to the one-word insult smackdown.

  "Wussy," he fired back.

  "Fudgepacker."

  "Polesmoker."

  "Asshat."

  "Knuckledragger."

  "Douchenugget."

  "Buttmunch."

  "Turdburglar."

  "Dingleberry."

  It was my turn and I couldn't think of anything so I improvised: "I'm-gonna-tell-Jenny-Swinson-you-want-to-butter-her-muffin."

  "What? I don't wanna butter Jenny's muffin. And you lose 'cause it's gotta be one word."

  "Ha ha. You just said, 'I don't want to butter Jenny's muffin!' That was great. And you're lying," I said.

  "Who's got buttered muffins?" said Matty's mom, standing in the doorway.

  "Uhhh. Yeah, I was just telling Jesse that we've got buttered muffins tonight, right?" Matty said. "You know, the ones in the little tin that you sometimes, accidentally burn. ...that I love." I enjoyed watching Matty flail in front of his mother. If only I had a lawn chair and a nice cool drink like a spectator at a football game. Watching Matty squirm and BS his mother, who, in fact, knew she was getting BSed, was priceless. He had, very un-Mattylike, torpedoed himself by bringing up the burned rolls, then clumsily corrected with the "that I love" bit. But he could afford to be careless. I was there, and she wouldn't challenge him in front of the dinner guest.

  "Matty, have you lost your mind? Those are dinner rolls. Now y'all come eat. Jesse, I'm sorry we don't have any rolls." We walked in and she slapped Matty on the head playfully.

  "That's okay, Mrs. Milton, I'll survive," I said.

  After dinner we went to Matty's clean room. There was a rake leaning against the wall behind his door.

  "Why you got a rake in here?" I asked.

  "That's not a rake. It's a rug rake," Matty said.

  "Wow, you guys have gone over the edge. Major over-correction."

  "Naw, check it out. It's cool," Matty said and started raking his carpet. I could see where'd he'd raked earlier between his bed and the wall. All of the carpet shag was aimed in the same direction.

  "But we're not here about the rug rake. Check this out," he said, holding up the photo of my mother.

  "Okay. What?"

  "Two things. One: you know how we agree something's not right about this pic? Take a good look at the two people."

  "I have, about a million times."

  "Yeah, but you were seeing what AJ told you to see: your mother and father. Check this out. If you are standing there with your wife, the love of your life, are you gonna stand a foot or so away with your arms folded together? No way. She was hot, I'd be--oh, sorry, dude."

  "So what are you saying, perv boy? That ain't my father?"

  "I'm saying why is he standing away from her? It's almost as if this pic was part of a larger picture and just this part was cut out. Look at this," he said, and laid the picture on a pencil drawing. He'd drawn other people on either side of my mother and father and it seemed to fit.

  "Dang." I sat down on Matty's bed. "A fake? I don't get it."

  "We don't know, dude. We're just spit-balling ideas here."

  "Yeah, but it looks right with the other people. What else you got?"

  "Number two is easy. Look at the back."

  I gave it a quick look. "Yeah. It's the back. Tell me what you got!"

  "Dude, it's plain white and it's a little too thick."

  "Get to the point!" But Matty just put on his poker face. I squinted at the back of the photo for a few seconds, then looked up at him and shrugged.

  "It's a sticker!" Matty said triumphantly. "Why put a sticker on the back? What's under it? Can I take it off?"

  "Yeah, I suppose. But can you do it without hurting the photo?"

  "No worries. One more thing, I talked to Standish after school today. He said if you are looking for info about someone, search the public records."

  "Good idea. Let's do a little digging. Tomorrow I'll be on the boat. I'm gonna try to get a good look at the apartments. We'll talk to Standish later."

  It was dark by the time I got back to the old gray house on the hill. My mind was racing. The apartment, the photo, dance lessons, Johnny, Hailey, everything was hitting me at once and I needed a moment to sort through it all. I sat down on the steps inside the screened-in porch, alone and quiet, and took a deep breath. If the photo is a fake, then AJ is lying to me. Why? She doesn't lie. Then there was the apartments, which I couldn't wait to see again from the boat. And the old man's dance lessons: sometimes I didn't know him.

  When the old man made a concrete walkway from the back porch to the garage, his finishing touch was to let me and Tyler put our hands in the wet cement. Two sets of tiny hands and the old man's perfect handwriting. He said his father was a sign maker. Proper spacing between the letters was everything, his father had told him. Underneath our handprints he'd written: "Tyler and Jesse 1974," then below that, "AJ and Art," and "Welcome to Our Home" at the bottom. Our home. But right then, it felt like someone else's home. I was just a guest. And guests don't really know what's going on.

  wave

  The old man woke me up at 6 am. He'd already been to the Clock Cafe down the street, drunk three cups of coffee, downed a plate of pancakes, and filled up two orange fuel tanks for the boat. It was his usual morning routine. He came into the kitchen while I was eating a bowl of cereal. "I got the boat down and ready to go. Bring the tanks. Come on."

  It was unusually peaceful in the kitchen and then I realized why: Tyler wasn't there. His crab wound had healed so he should have gotten up. I asked the old man and he said, "He's gonna meet up with that skinny girl." Tyler had a new girlfriend named Helen Something
. She was skinny as a rail and always said, "Sure, Baby," in a dreamy, far-off voice, to everything Tyler said. I couldn't stand to be around them.

  The old man turned and headed to the boat muttering under his breath. He was disgusted with the Golden Boy. My cereal suddenly tasted better and my crab jeans weren't nearly as smelly. I was going to be number one today. And I was going to get a good, long look at the apartments.

  Some mornings the wind blew strong from the north east, and the surface of the river whitecapped and foamed. Each gust churning the top like a big washing machine. But that morning there wasn't a breath of air and the water was like a giant glass sheet stretching out in all directions. A light fog rolled over the top right as the sun started to rise. When the pelicans flew low next to the water you could see their soft white bellies and the gray underside of their wings reflected in the still, brown water. I felt bad gashing through it with our smelly old crab boat. We headed for the trestle and behind us a giant V of ripples broke the glass.

  When the sun had burned away most of the fog, about half-way through the Eastport line, the apartments came into view. There were more buildings than I imagined, maybe five or six. Each had a big number on the side. From the river I could see number four. The people living in the corner had a great view of the St. Johns. The buildings were all light brown with dark brown balconies. Some people had laundry hanging, some had plants, some were screened-in like our porch to keep out mosquitoes. There was also a dock with two runabouts and one open-hull crab boat: McCready's.

  While the old man pulled a trap I stood in the center of the boat just staring at the brown buildings, waiting for a memory. Anything. The boat would circle around the trap, so I would circle in the opposite direction so I could stay facing the apartments. After a few minutes of this the old man barked, "Stop yer spinnin', Seagull."

  After a few more traps I could only see the tops of the apartments over the trees near the shore. I watched the old man, his back to me, a ring of sweat around the neck of his dirty t-shirt, broad shoulders and long arms. I bet he had good reach.

  "What was it like—boxing?" I said. He just kept pulling. His right hand slowly brought the rope back as the left thumb traced the taut line down to its lowest point, then he'd grab with the left and the right would follow the line back down. It was rhythmic and smooth. Still no answer.

  "I bet you were good," I said. He got the trap up to the edge of the boat and stood there for a moment staring out towards the tree line.

  "I loved it. I was better than some, but not good enough." he said. Then he dumped the bait into the river and put the trap on the boxes, facing me.

  "Why'd you quit?" I said. He sliced a big mullet open and stuffed it in the bait well, tossed the fillet knife into the bait bucket and looked up at me.

  "Sometimes when you want something so bad, but can't have it, you gotta just bury it and move on." The old man sat down on the bucket and tapped his pockets searching for a cigar.

  And that's when I saw something strange.

  The traps were usually about six to eight feet under water, but right then I could see every trap down the line sitting on the bottom. The water was gone. It was like the bottom had come up. There was the last trap we'd pulled, no crabs inside and fresh bait in the bait well. I could see the buoy laying next to it with the "226" the old man had painted on the side with a q-tip. The silty river bottom was muddy and wet and glistened in the sun. Ahead of us there were traps with crabs in them. One crab in the trap closest to us was holding on to the top of the trap but fell down because out of water his body was much heavier. The old man was lighting a cigar. His hands cupped near his face. He flick, flick, flicked the little roller on the side of his Zippo. He hadn't noticed. Then I looked left, towards the channel. A big ship full of cars was barreling through, heading to the port. I could see the flat back end of the ship sucking all the water into the channel.

  And behind it was a wall of water moving back at us. It was bigger than any wave I'd ever seen at the beach. I screamed, "TURN!" and dove for the wheel trying to get the bow pointed towards the channel. If the wave hit us broadside the boat would tip. The old man realized what was happening and hit the gas. His silver lighter bounced off his knee, hit the deck and slid back into the sludge water near the engine. The prop sprayed silt and water but the boat didn't budge. The hull was stuck in the mud. All the weight was in the rear with us. The old man yelled, "Dump that box!" I grabbed the closest box of crabs, about half-full, and heaved it overboard. If there'd have been just a few more crabs in box I couldn't have done it. Then I jumped up to the bow, trying to get as much weight as possible towards the front. The engine growled and the boat lurched to the left, then sputtered, then lurched again as more water got up under the stern. We'd turned about half-way towards the channel but the wave was already on us.

  The old man's boat had been in service for about fifteen years at that point. The stern was clear of junk because that's where we worked. But any square inch of space between the steering console and the bow was full of sun-baked, faded stuff: spools of Stren monofilament line, crabbing gloves, rusty store-bought tongs long-since retired, so much rope that you weren't sure if it was one big length or a bunch of smaller ones all tangled together, a smattering of lost cigars in various lengths, some dried out in the sun, others floating in the muck water at the back of the boat. The old man called the floating, soggy cigars, turds.

  There was also a cubby hole where we kept coils of rope, old life preservers me and Tyler used when we were younger, and an extra anchor, stainless steel and shiny new. A year or so before I reached into the cubby to get a box of cigars for the old man and out jumped a rat. It looked like a small, gray cat with a bare tail. I leaped out of the way and made what Tyler called a "girly noise." The rat ran back behind the crab boxes, then without too much thought jumped over the low stern wall and right into the river--a perfect dive with little splash. The water went quiet, then up popped his head a few feet beyond, swimming along at a fast clip toward shore.

  Just before the wave hit us, the old man yelled, "Grab the anchor line!" It was fantastic advice. The anchor rope was neatly tied to a cleat at the tip of the bow. I wrapped the rope around my right hand. I should have been lying flat, but my head was a few inches off the fiberglass floor. Suddenly I couldn't see the channel anymore, or the trees lining the other shore, just the big wall of water. It was brown at the bottom, but the sun shown through higher up, illuminating the top. It was larger than I expected.

  The bow of the boat shot straight up as the water surged under us. My head and body slammed into the fiberglass as the front of the boat angled upwards pushing hard against me. And then, a second later, my body was light, like I was going to fly away--the same weightless feeling you get right as the roller coaster plummets downward. And everything started falling to the back of the boat: rope, fishing reels, two old crab traps covered in dried moss, the old anchor, escaped crabs that had snuck up to the front, and me. But I clung to the anchor line like I was riding a big, white bull. One of the old crab traps caught my t-shirt on the way down and ripped a hole in my sleeve. I wondered if the bow was going to keep going up, and then just flip over and crush everyone and everything under it.

  Just when I was sure the whole boat was going to tip over, the bow dropped and my body fell back onto the fiberglass. I laid there a moment eyes shut tight. Then I heard the old man yell, "You ok?" I opened my eyes, and amazingly, the bow was as clean and clutter free as the day the old man got the boat. I could see the blue and white fiberglassed surface. It was like I'd cleaned my room and could now actually see the floor and was surprised how big it was.

  The back of the boat was another story. The anchor was sticking out the side of a box of crabs. It shot right through the thin wooden sides, probably taking out a few crabs with it. One of the old crab traps had gotten caught on a cleat and was hanging over the water, all bent and skewed. The fishing rods we used sometimes to catch bait were a tangled me
ss of monofilament line and liter wire near the motor. The old man popped his head up from behind the console. About that time another, smaller wave hit us from the other direction as the water resettled. The boat lurched towards the channel. The motor had shut down and we were like a leaf, floating peacefully on the surface guided by wind and current. We both just stood there for a moment in silence, the boat in a gentle spin, me still holding the anchor line, the old man gripping the steering wheel, both ready for another punch, but happy to be afloat.

  A pelican landed near us. And then a few more. And the gulls started squawking. Finally, I took a good look around in all directions, then let go of the rope. The water had gone calm again, as if the wave had never happened. There was yelling from the apartments. McCready's boat was resting on the shore next to apartment number four as if it had been lifted out of the water by a crane and carefully placed on the grass. The other two boats didn't make out as well. One was sort of sitting on top of another at a strange angle. There were men on the dock, some yelling, some watching. One guy was tugging on a rope connected to the top boat all by himself, but a few people came and stopped him. They were going to need a crane or at least a winch from shore to straighten things out.

  I pulled the anchor out of the box and put it back in the front of the boat. While I cleaned up, the old man tried to get the motor running. After a few minutes he gave up and started cussing. When the wave hit the full weight of the boat had pushed the prop down into the silt. It was bent and useless.

  "Hook up the kicker!" he barked. I was trying to untangle the forty miles of rope that was covering the rear of the boat like a web. "Now!" he yelled.

  "What do you gotta be so loud about?" I said. He was scurrying about like a madman. He stopped at the console and gently raked his big fingers over the mess like an archaeologist at a dig, then he turned and eyed the big mess in the back. "Shit," he said. I unhooked the fuel line from the big motor and connected it to the 5-horse kicker.