Tucked within the protected confines of Nantucket Sound, Quohog Beach is a beach for young children. As if attempting to make things pleasant for its primary patrons, everything about Quohog Beach is small, from its wee crescent of sand to the pint-size jetty jutting like a blunt thumb into the Sound.
At the moment we are consumed with the beach. We scour the sand, buckets swinging, poking through a tangle of seaweed, broken bits of whelk and moon snail, searching beneath a cloudless blue July sky for pieces of horseshoe crab. These prehistoric creatures once littered Cape Cod in such numbers that they were ground up and used as fertilizer by farmers. From what we observe on the sand their numbers haven’t decreased much, though each crab appears to have been placed atop a firecracker and then scattered by a schizophrenic wind.
No matter. Our plan remains straightforward. We will piece together a horseshoe crab, whole and complete. Cullen and Graham raptly pluck cracker-thin crab bits, placing them gently in their bucket. I follow their example, but with slightly less enthusiasm. I understand the odds. I glance at other parents, flat on their backs in the hot sun.
At six, Cullen runs things. He waves a magisterial hand at his four-year-old brother.
“If we don’t get enough pieces to put together the crab now,” he decrees, “we’ll get the rest later.”
“Uh-huh,” grunts Graham, possibly because he mildly resents being bossed around, possibly because he is sorely bent to one side under the weight of a bucket spilling over with pretty much everything he could pick up.
Cullen strides over to his brother’s bucket, peers in and scowls.
“Crabs aren’t made out of beer cans!”
I wish the beer can was full. My head has been cocked to the sand for two hours. The back of my neck feels like it’s been kicked by a Clydesdale.
Perhaps I slip into sudsy daydream. Cullen looks at us both and harrumphs.
“Am I going to have to do this all by myself?”
We collect jigsaw pieces for another thirty minutes. Not thirty-one minutes, not thirty-two. Any parent of small children understands exactitude. I can’t go a minute longer. I find an excuse called lunch.
The three of us walk up the path to the cottage where we are staying for the week, buckets bumping.
“I think we have the pieces we need,” says Cullen.
“Right,” says Graham.
He is too young for sarcasm.
We march through the front door and continue, as quickly as possible, on through the kitchen, where Kathy is fixing everyone lunch. We are not quick enough.
“You’d better wash whatever that is off their hands,” says Kathy.
I stand in the bathroom, watching Cullen turn a white hand towel black. I may be less attentive the second son around. Eating lunch I notice Graham has something shiny and snail-like on his index finger. I say a silent prayer and he answers it by licking it off.
That night Kathy and I lay in bed. Our sliding screen door opens to the porch. Occasionally a puff of wind brings a smell that makes me wonder if Stephen King is cooking something just outside. Beneath the stars dark shells lay methodically sorted, according to what I don’t know.
“Phew,” I say.
“Maybe you could put them in the yard,” Kathy says, but I know she doesn’t really mean it because she’s smiling as if we’re lying downwind from a potpourri factory.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “Another six months and it’ll be a wrap.”
“Anything is possible,” my beautiful bride says to me, and I know why I married her.
The following morning we redirect slightly.
“I want to crab,” says Graham.
Cullen gives a magisterial nod.
“Let’s,” he says.
We have become fascinated with crabbing because frankly nothing, with the possible exception of King Henry VIII, eats with more gusto than crabs do. Also live crabs do more interesting things than dead ones. The small jetty pronging off Quohog Beach is loaded with crabs. We know this because on this, the fourth day of our vacation, we have already been crabbing roughly two thousand times.
We retrieve our buckets from the porch. Before we go, Cullen crouches to arrange a few promising horseshoe pieces.
“Hmmm,” he says, moving the pieces in circles like a centrifugal chess master.
“Hmmm,” says his brother, who at this juncture in time still admires him greatly.
Cullen finishes placing the bits in their proper places. There is something resembling a horseshoe crab body, but there are still great gaps occupied by cedar composite decking.
“There,” says Cullen.
What I see resembles a horse dropping after the Kentucky Derby field has run through it.
Cullen looks to Graham.
“Just a few more pieces,” he says.
“Hmmmm,” says Graham.
Small children wake well before the most conscientious rooster and even earlier on vacation. The world is gray. The light isn’t even up yet. The air is still damp with sea. The beach is empty.
We each carry our own bucket, chicken bits and string inside. I step gingerly along the jetty. The enormous rocks, sectioned in some distant quarry, are liberally colonized by barnacles that jab at the soles of my feet.
Cullen and Graham walk as if strolling across shag carpet. When I reach the end of the jetty Cullen is already crouched, peering into his chosen crevice.
“Breakfast time,” says Cullen, “but not for us.”
Graham is flat on his stomach, his face and the majority of his torso in his crevice of choice.
“What do you see?” I ask.
“I dropped my string.”
After I retrieve it, I tie a chicken piece to each string. The boys accept their strings, solemnly lowering the sacrificial chicken into the dark rift. I spread out the newspaper I brought, and put the remaining chicken pieces on it. Past experience has shown us we’ll quickly need room in our buckets for crabs.
When I finish I squat and watch our sons. They peer into the dark, brows furrowed.
“Come awwwwwwwn,” says Cullen.
Graham’s string jerks.
“Whaaaaaat!” he shrieks. “Caught one! Caught one!”
I have coached them thoroughly in the craft of crabbing. Wait for the crab to latch firmly to the chicken. Bring the string up slowly so the crab doesn’t know it’s being reeled in.
Graham stands straight up. The crab swings to and fro in front of his belly button, a dark pendulum oblivious to its change in circumstance. One claw affixed to the chicken bit, the other claw greedily spoons meat into its wet maw.
Reaching behind the crab, I pinch its body between my thumb and forefinger and pry it, with considerable force, from the now shredded chicken wing. I put it in Graham’s bucket where it makes a mad scrabbling.
“I was careful,” says Graham proudly.
Cullen pretends to ignore all this. His string is limp.
“I caught a crab,” says Graham, who is not yet schooled in subterfuge either.
“You pick up beer cans,” says Cullen.
Just when I start believing that the crabs in Cullen’s crevice have evolved into something wiser, they start leaping at his string as if they’ve suddenly realized they’re aboard the Titanic. They rise from their dark places furiously stuffing down chicken bits, exhibiting not a whiff of self-preservation.
There’s always opportunity for imparting parental wisdom.
“Crabs are called crustaceans,” I say. “Even though their shells are hard, you still need to be really careful. If you break off their claws they won’t be able to eat.”
“If their claw breaks off, a new one grows on,” says Cullen.
“It does?”
“I dropped my string,” says Graham.
The crabs now pour from the jetty like a locust horde, striking wantonly at the chicken bits and each other with harsh clicks. There is a parable here, the downfall wrought by selfishness and greed, but the boys are too young for that. Crabs are also distantly related to insects, but I keep this to myself too because I’m afraid Cullen will correct me.
In short order all three buckets are brimming with clacking crabs.
“We need to empty the buckets,” I say.
“I’ll do it,” says Cullen.
“Pour them out in the water,” I tell him. “You don’t want them cracking their shells on the rocks. You’ll have to lean out a little. Take one bucket at a time, and be careful.”
Perhaps I should be reported to Childhood Protective Services, but the water here is only a few feet deep and I want our boys to stretch.
Cullen inches carefully down the side of the jetty feet first, crab-like himself. When they are young, they follow your directions to the letter. He settles easily on a broad rock washed with a thin skein of surge. The spilling crabs make a sound like a fistful of rocks flung into the water.
I know what to look for next. I grab Graham before he can slide down.
“Your job is to get the buckets when Cullen passes them up,” I say.
His solemn nod assures me this is responsibility enough. But something in his eyes tells me he’s solemn for a different reason.
He looks toward the beach.
“We’re not going to find enough horseshoe crab pieces,” he says.
“We might,” I say.
“Maybe not,” he says.
I want them to believe anything is possible, but I want them to prepare for disappointment too.
“We might not find enough pieces,” I say and I feel something stick in my throat.
We return to crabbing. Cullen stays where he is, but Graham wordlessly moves close to me, sharing my crevice. It is quiet. I hear his small breaths. I feel the butterfly press of his hand on my thigh.
The sun breaks through the dawn clouds, striking the water in three gauzy silver shafts. Together we breathe.
Sometimes life’s pieces fit together in ways you don’t expect.
