CHAPTER NINE CRABBING
CHAPTER
NINE
Crabbing
Benny drove up the lonely road that ran along the far side of Grasshead Beach half an hour early, then spent the next twenty minutes pacing beside his sleek black Pontiac.
When he saw his old sky-blue Plymouth easing toward him, his heart stuttered and his chest squeezed, and before Cora could park the car, he’d rushed up to the passenger side.
‘Momma.’ The word dripped with longing. It was a plea folded into an apology.
He opened her door and crouched in front of her.
‘My Benny.’ She laid her hand on the side of his face, her eyes softening to pools. ‘My son.’
He helped her out of the car and pulled her into an embrace, his arms wrapped tightly around her, his head buried in her hair. He stayed there, clinging on, lingering in the at-home feel of her.
When Cora came around the car to where they stood, Benny hooked her with one arm, pulling her into the embrace. ‘My two favorite people.’
They held each other for a long time, letting the missing ease out of them and drop from their shoulders, like an unwanted coat.
‘You look good.’ Cora rubbed his hair, cropped too short to show the waves that formed when he let it grow.
‘So do you,’ he said, but what he meant was that it did him a world of good to see her, that seeing her felt like being home. She didn’t actually look good. She looked off. Hardness pinched at her eyes and mouth.
Benny dragged crabbing gear and folding chairs from his trunk, and they trudged toward the shoreline through a beach too deserted to bother labeling colored or white, hidden beside clusters of mangroves.
Grasshead was nowhere you’d normally think to go for a day at the beach. Full of jumping sand flies, it lived up to its name with sand-grass growing thigh-high and thick, but it was a good spot for crabbing.
Benny set up the chairs, and while Momma rested, he and Cora picked their way to a rocky outcropping and fished up the scuttling creatures, dropping them into a deep bucket. It felt good to be doing something familiar with his sister.
Crabbing, like fishing, is done quietly, so Benny and Cora spoke only about where to search and when to quit.
When they’d collected enough, Benny made a fire and set a pot to boiling with seawater.
The easy silence that felt natural while crabbing stiffened into an awkward, brittle stillness as they all waited for the water to boil.
They swatted at sand flies, trying not to be strangers.
‘You comfortable, Momma?’ Benny asked.
‘I’m just fine,’ she said, but her mouth pulled tight, like she was keeping her words in check. ‘Aren’t we just fine, Cora?’
‘Yes, Momma.’ Cora smacked her shins and her calves and rubbed at a small bite.
The soft rustle of the long grass and the rhythmic slap of the waves filled the silence. Benny tapped at the crabs trying to escape the bucket. ‘I’ve missed you,’ he said, even though they all knew that was his own fault.
‘Are you sure this is worth it?’ Cora blurted, coming right to it.
Thank God for Cora. ‘No,’ he told her honestly. ‘And yes.’ He shrugged. This wasn’t the kind of thing you could give a straight answer to.
‘You know, just because you crossed over,’ Momma said, ‘it don’t mean you can’t cross back.’
‘I know, but …’ He looked down at his feet and sighed, swatted at the sand flies.
‘I’ve seen a different kind of world.’ He lifted his head and looked at them.
‘Not just a different life, a whole different world. Going on four and a half years now.’ His voice rose and strengthened.
‘I learned to take up space in the world and own my manhood. I can’t go back to boy and coon and the back of the bus. ’
Momma bit her lip and looked out at the ocean.
‘We know why you did it,’ Cora said. ‘It’s no secret why. We just …’
She reached out and touched Momma’s hand. ‘We’re your family, is all. How are we gonna still be your family?’
Benny looked down to his feet burrowing into the sand. ‘Nothing has to change between us.’
‘Stop that now,’ Momma said, sharp and fierce. ‘Don’t be talking foolishness. You got to be careful now.’
‘I am, Momma.’
‘I mean it, Benny. This, right here,’ she waved her hand at the three of them, ‘is not careful. Someone could walk by anytime.’
‘They wouldn’t come way out here.’
‘You don’t know that. You’re playing with fire and you’re not even wearing gloves.’
With a long stick, Benny poked the wood scraps under the pot, making the flames lick higher. Then he dropped the crabs into the hot seawater.
‘I didn’t try to pass,’ he said, watching the crabs claw at the sides as they cooked. ‘They looked at me and assumed. And then it was too late to change it. The only time anyone knew anything was when …’ He looked at Cora. ‘Did Lee tell you he saw me?’
Cora’s eyes went wide. ‘Lee saw you?’
‘On the battlefield. I couldn’t believe my eyes when he got out of that tank.’
‘He knew all this time?’ Her voice was air, weak with disbelief.
‘Now calm down. I appreciate that he didn’t say anything, that he let me build up to doing it myself, and you should too.’
‘Except we thought you were dead!’
Benny flinched. ‘I wanted to tell you.’ He looked from Cora to Momma.
‘But you didn’t,’ Momma said.
‘I’m sorry, Momma.’
‘Benny,’ Momma said, ‘you found a way to claim a little piece of something for yourself, and that’s fine.
That’s nothing to feel bad about.’ She leaned forward, put her hands on his knees.
‘But there’s more to this life than getting yours.
They can always take that away, but they can’t take who you are, unless you let them. You remember that.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘And who you are is my son.’ She reached for his hand and pulled it to her lap. ‘No matter what you seem like on the outside.’
Benny squeezed her hand, choking up. ‘Thank you, Momma.’ He blinked hard as Cora tipped the pot with the long stick and let the water drain out.
While the crabs cooled, Cora told him about Lee’s whiskey business, and about Patsy coming back from her army posting to work at the Negro Hospital, and how Momma Mae was getting on without Jasper, and about Roscoe being sad and angry all the time.
‘He didn’t want to come see you,’ she said. ‘He says you made your choice, and we should leave you to it.’
Benny felt a prickle of shame rise in his throat and disappointment gripped his chest.
‘And when Lee offered him a job, he turned it down to keep picking oranges over on the Eastman farm.’
‘The Eastman farm?’ Benny frowned. ‘If he doesn’t want to work for Lee, can’t the GI people help him find something better?’
Cora shook her head. ‘That’s what they found for him.’
Benny’s heart sank with understanding. Maybe it was better that Roscoe hadn’t come. It would be hard to face him knowing he had a future full of opportunities while Roscoe picked oranges.
He reached for a crab and broke the legs off at the joints, sucking out the sweet white meat, seasoned with salt from the sea.
‘They helped me a lot,’ he said, and explained about his job and his free training, because he wanted them to know just how much this choice had made possible.
That the stakes were so much higher than whether he could or could not get a burger at a lunch counter. ‘I even bought a house with GI help.’
Cora’s eyes went wide, and she covered her mouth with her hand.
‘You bought a house?’ Momma said, barely a whisper.
Momma talked about their Rosewood house like a dream from another life.
It had been two stories high with a wide staircase and a wrap-around porch built with Daddy’s own two hands and the help of the community.
They lost it in that terrible massacre in 1923 that took Daddy and so many others, with Momma barely managing to escape with five-year-old Benny and three-year-old Cora.
Daddy’s death had filled every part of her till there was nothing left in her to mourn a house, but Benny knew how that burned-down house haunted her, like a restless ghost.
‘They’ve got a good deal for vets,’ Benny said. ‘You don’t need a down-payment, and the mortgage works out less than my rent.’
‘Must be nice,’ Cora said, with a bite to her words. She flushed and shook her head. ‘Sorry. I’m happy for you. It’s just …’ She shook her head. ‘I’m happy for you.’
‘Roscoe could try for one,’ he said.
Cora rolled her eyes.
‘The law says it’s for all vets. Isn’t it worth a try? All you have to do is find a house.’
When the sun inched west, they brushed the crab shells from their laps and collected their things, traipsing through the sand and tall grass back to the cars up on the road.
Benny packed away the folding chairs and supplies at snail speed, adjusting and readjusting the positioning in the trunk, dragging out their time together.
‘Did I tell you Lee’s renting a barn out by Turner Creek?’
‘No.’ He closed the trunk and the heavy thud of it sounded much too final.
‘Have you ever been out Turner Creek way?’
He looked up at her from the trunk. ‘No,’ he said, drawing out the word, a question hanging in the length of it.
‘It’s pretty isolated out there,’ she said.
‘The kind of place where someone could drive up and no one would even see them.’ He straightened and turned to face her.
‘And if someone did see, well, they’d probably just figure that person, white or colored, was ordering some whiskey. It’s good whiskey.’
A smile spread across his face as he pulled her into a hug. Thank God for Cora. ‘Come to think of it, I’ve got a powerful taste for some whiskey.’
‘Well then, you know where to find us.’
His chest squeezed and he laid his forehead against hers.
Momma draped her arms around them both. ‘I wish your father could see you.’
Benny tensed, the shame building in his chest again, but Momma cupped his cheeks in both hands.
‘He would have loved to see you beating them at their own game. Clayton North’s son, right up under their lily-white noses.
My God, he would have laughed.’ She kissed his cheek and said, ‘I’ll be seeing you, son,’ like she was delivering a prophecy.
‘I’ll be seeing you,’ he said, his heart lighter than it had been in years. He wanted to say something more, but didn’t have the words, so Momma and Cora climbed into his old blue Plymouth, and he watched them drive off, his hand raised in a frozen wave.