The Great Snapping Turtle Adventure (4 page)

“The key word in that last statement, folks”—said Max in his best game show host voice—“is
if!
”

“Well, it will be more a battle of wits if it's me hauling him in than you,” teased Fred. He took the line carefully in his hand and listened. “Uh oh!”

“What?” said Max, hurrying closer to Fred's side.

“We have a customer.”

“We do?”

“Yep.”

“Great,” whispered Max. “Now what?”

“The net.”

“The net?”

“Yep.”

“Oh, gosh.”

“Why, where is it?” said Fred, glancing over at Max.

“It's back at the truck.”

“Well, it's not going to help us bring in blue fins over there,” said Fred. “Hurry up and get it while I try not to spook him away.”

“Sorry, Fred,” called Max over his shoulder as he ran to get the net.

“That's ok, just hurry, there's no telling how long the bait will last.”

Max flew to the truck and back again.

Charles looked up from his underwater exploration just in time to see Max's mad dash.

“What's up?” he called.

“Possibly dinner!” yelled Max.

“Great. Hope it's fatter than the one I hauled in,” quipped Charles.

“That would be nice.”

Max arrived, out of breath. “Is…he…still there?”

“Yep, want to feel?” asked Fred, holding the line out toward Max.

“Think there's still time?”

“Maybe a second, if you're fast.”

Max carefully took the line from Fred. He rested it across his palm, as he had seen Fred do.

“Wow! I can feel him. Boy, is he vicious. He's really going after that chicken bait.”

“Yeah, hungry,” said Fred.

“Kind of like a fish, just like you said.”

“But a fish nibbles politely. A crab pulls and yanks and is much more demanding,” said Fred.

“Now what?”

“Now, the hard part: bringing him up without his knowing it. We have to ease the line ever so gently as if the tide were moving it. Up, up and as soon as we have him where we can see him, then we get the net under and scoop.” Fred continued to slowly pull the line up.

“What's that?” asked Max suddenly as a white-gray-pink jelly mess came up with the line.

“Jellyfish. Have to watch out for them, they sting a little. One of the hazards of crabbing or swimming in these waters.” Fred continued to pull and the jellyfish dribbled off the line like egg white, gooily dripping into the water.

“Yuck!”

“Yep.” Fred pulled on the line. Suddenly he stopped. “Look, can you see?” He tilted his head toward the line.

“The crab! Huge!” whispered Max.

“Actually, two crabs and they're battling over the bait. That may be to our advantage. They'll be so busy trying to keep the chicken away from each other that they won't notice the net—maybe. Here, you hold the line. Don't pull it. I think I can dip them in just the way it stands right how.”

“Think so?”

“We can hope,” said Fred as he shifted the line into Max's hands and took the net.

The net had a long wooden handle, maybe six feet long. At the end, the net itself was a loop of wire about nine or ten inches in diameter with white string tied in two-inch squares. It was heavy and awkward, but Fred handled it as if it were the size of a tennis racket: his movements were quiet and controlled.

Fred slowly eased the net into the water until it was about a foot from the crabs. He was careful to keep his shadow and the shadow of the net away from the crabs. He didn't want to spook them.

“Ready!” said Fred. “Just keep the line as you have it.”

“Ok,” said Max.

Fred quickly scooped the net under the crabs, slicing the water with hardly any splash. Then up, up he lifted them with the chicken caught in their claws. The crabs crawled frantically, their claws attaching themselves to anything that came near them. They grabbed at each other, they held onto the chicken and scrambled to escape, but Fred kept bouncing the net, jerking them back deeper into the snarling mesh of string and farther away from freedom.

“Wow, look how huge they are,” yelled Max.

“Yeah, I think we have two keepers,” said Fred with a slow smile. He carried the net away from the water and up onto the small beach. “Now, the tricky part will be getting them out without losing claws or getting nipped.”

Max looked at the crabs for a minute. They were now firmly grasped to the wires and completed enmeshed in the net. “I'm not putting my hands in there on a bet.”

“No, I'd never suggest that,” said Fred.

“We brought tongs, how about them?”

“We could, but let's try another way. My experience with tongs has always been to end up with their teeth caught up in the mesh net, too.”

“So how…”

“Let's take them up on shore a bit further, safely away from the water. These little guys can really hustle when they want to.”

Fred carried the net and crabs up to where the long, wild grasses grew along the shore.

“Ok, now let's turn the net inside out on them.” He turned the net over as he spoke. The crabs were now free to fall out onto the sand…only they didn't. Like kittens balled up in yarn, they were firmly caught, claws clinging tightly and all their fins sticking out through the holes in the net.

“Caught like flies in a spider's web, aren't they,” said Fred.

“What a mess.” Max shook his head. “How do we get them out?”

“Well, we could take them back to the water. As soon as their little fins feel the salty Bay, they'd plop in, but we'd have a bit of trouble catching them again. Sometimes shaking helps.” Fred shook the net. The crabs clung even tighter. “Then again, sometimes we need to carefully unlace them. Here, hold the handle, while I do the dirty work. If I get nipped, well, my fingers are tougher than yours.”

Max took the handle of the net and slowly, carefully Fred began to pull the string of the net free from each claw and fin. The crabs looked on with wild eyes, their long tentacles moving back and forth. They kept their strong hold on the rim of the net.

“There,” said Fred after a few moments. “Nothing between them and a short free fall down to the ground. All they have to do is let go.”

“But they won't,” said Max, looking at the two fierce warriors.

“So they need a little encouragement,” said Fred. He took the handle of the net from Max and began to shake it.

“Look! He's losing it!” exclaimed Max, as one crab let go, hung claw to claw to the other, dangling free from the net. Still, the other crab held onto the wire rim.

“Boy, what a fighter!” exclaimed Fred. He shook the net with all his 180-pound might and suddenly the crab gave up. Still clinging to the other, both fell. On impact, they immediately let go and started to scurry, in opposite directions but both toward the water. Fred and Max were faster. Their tennis shoes gently coming down on top of the greenish-brown, diamond-shaped shells, and stopping the freedom-fighting crustaceans from obtaining their ultimate goal.

“Wow!” said Max.

“Real sport!” said Fred, breathless from the shaking.

“Now what?” asked Max, looking down to his foot where a crab was slowly continuing to struggle.

“Pick him up, of course,” said Fred, with another one of his slow smiles.

“Sure!”

“Well, you can't stay like that forever.”

“But how do I pick him up?”

“You could try with your hands, but it is safer with the tongs,” said Fred.

“Oh, sure,” said Max. “And how are we supposed to angle down and use the tongs when their handles are almost two feet long?”

“Want to try?” asked Fred.

“For the sake of education, sure, but it's a course I'll flunk,” said Max, taking the tongs which, fortunately, were close by. He tried to open and maneuver them just so between his legs, but as he had suspected, the angle was all off and he couldn't get their open claws anywhere near to his foot and the captured crab.

“Ok, before you crunch him, let me have the tongs,” said Fred.

“Gladly,” said Max, handing them over.

Fred eased the tongs open and reached over to Max's shoe. “Ok, when I say ‘lift,' pick your foot up and I'll nab him,” said Fred.

He positioned the tongs, open like a scoop on a bulldozer and aimed right for Max's foot.

“Ready, set, lift!”

Max lifted his foot and Fred scooped the crab. With legs dangling and claws open, ready to take hold of a new target, the crab was lifted into the air.

“Go get the basket,” said Fred.

Max ran and retrieved the basket. Fred let the tongs open, only a few inches from the bottom of the basket, and the crab fell noisily in. The scrape of shell on worn wood made a soft sound, like autumn leaves when they skip on cement pavement. On impact, the crab scurried to the side of the basket with claws up like a boxer and eyes staring at the enemy.

“You want me to catch the one that's under your foot?” asked Max.

“Do you think you can?” asked Fred.

“I'd like to try,” said Max.

“Then go for it,” encouraged Fred.

Carefully, Max did as Fred had done, positioning the tongs, claws open and ready to scoop. On command, Fred lifted his foot. The free crab began to sashay away, only to be caught in the tongs and held high into the air, then back down, a slight drop, and into the basket. Immediately, the two warrior crustaceans were after each other in a scrambling battle, as if each were blaming the other for “the fine fix you've gotten us into now!”

“Good show!” said Fred, patting Max on the back.

“If I were to say, ‘Oh, it weren't nothing,' that would be a lie,” said Max.

“Bad grammar, too,” quipped Fred.

“Yep!” laughed Max.

“So, that's how it's done when crabbing by the chicken neck and line method,” said Fred.

“Real work, but real sport, too,” said Max.

“Yes, you're up against a very wily creature when attempting to catch a blue fin.”

“Not like a dumb fish who takes a bit of bait and runs with it. With the crab, it's more like a battle of wits.”

“So they say,” said Fred.

“Hey Fred! Hey Max! You got to see what I see!” yelled Charles. “There must be six crabs playing ring-a-around-the-rosy over here, just like the 12 that Ham said he saw! What do I do?”

“Scoop up as many as you can. Zero in. Concentrate!” yelled Fred.

“Here goes!” shouted Charles.

A tremendous splash, down went Charles, up went the net, and clinging, scrambling, falling out came crab after crab.

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” yelled Charles.

“Try to hang on to at least one of them!”

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” yelled Charles. “Darn! Darn! Beaver
dam!
” He came up soaked.

“Get any?” yelled Max.

“Two!” Charles shouted back.

“That's good. Great job!” laughed Fred. “Come on in and take a breather. Drink a Coke and relax. You've just played ring-around-the-rosy with six crabs, and even though you only caught two, you're a winner!”

The wet but smiling Charles waded back to shore, with eel grass hanging from his left ear, down his shoulder and even snarling through the belt loops on his shorts.

It was time for a break. They had caught four hard crabs and a soft one and only an hour had passed!

CHAPTER 7

“F
IVE O'CLOCK,”
yelled Fred. “Quitting time.”

They had managed to catch two dozen hard crabs. They had found another softie and two papershells soft enough to be keepers. The turtle, Cinderella, was still angry and healthy, snapping whenever they looked in on her, lunging at them with all her gray weight. Both boys were as salty as pretzels and nobody wanted to be downwind from a very sweaty Fred.

A successful day.

“Now,” said Fred, after crabs, equipment, Cinderella, and boys were all arranged in their appropriate or chosen spots. “Suppose we tour the island a little bit more, go back to Vienna, check into our night's lodging, then get a bite to eat?”

“Where are we going to stay in Vienna? I didn't see a motel there,” said Max.

“We'll be staying in an inn called the Vienna Inn. It's the best that the town has to offer,” said Fred with a smile. “Your mother and I stayed there while we were on our honeymoon. Great little place, plenty of atmosphere,” he continued in a dreamy sort of voice.

“Romantic and all that stuff, yuck!” cringed Charles.

“Romantic, yes, but I think you guys will like it,” said Fred.

“Ok, but first we explore the island,” said Charles.

“Right,” said Fred.

Back to the main road they pitched and swayed around one pothole and then another, crushing over oyster shell patches and leaving a plume of dust behind.

“Hey, look over there!” yelled Charles suddenly. “There's another street and it looks like it might curve back to another part of the island. Can we try it?”

“Sure!” said Fred, making a right-hand turn at a picket fence, saggy and weathered gray.

The small road was barely wide enough to fit two passing cars. It wove under short pines and around postage-stamp yards, where tiny cottages or rusty trailer homes seemed to sink into the sand and weeds. At each home, a sagging clothesline swayed with the weight of many t-shirts and worn blue jeans. Bushel baskets and stacks of crab pots stood business-like by each back shed. Pulled up in most driveways was a rusting truck or car and in a few, they could see beautifully kept, gleaming wooden boats resting in their steel cradles and waiting to be towed back to the water.

The road finally became a parking lot. Beyond the lot was a pier where many bobbing boats were tied. The air was filled with the smell of bait and motor fuel and rotting crabs. On several of the boats, men were busy with mops and buckets, scrubbing away a day's worth of bait slime, sea lettuce, mud and sand from the white decks.

Fred and the boys stayed in the truck. They didn't want to disturb the watermen. “A waterman has to be a good housekeeper—rather, boat keeper,” Fred said. “They scour their decks, every nook and cranny, making their boats as clean as your mother's kitchen counters.”

“And I was beginning to think I wanted to be a waterman,” joked Max.

“It's a hard life,” said Fred. “Some watermen are up and out on the water as early as 3:30 a.m., searching for a prime crab area by some kind of sixth sense…”

“Crab sense,” said Charles.

“Or magic. Anyway, after they have picked their spot, they begin laying out yards and yards of trot line or they put down their crab pots. All this is done before the crabs have wobbled out from their beds, stretching their back fins and yawning the sleep out of their crusty bodies.”

“I can't imagine having to get up that early just to serve some crabs their breakfast in bed,” said Max.

“Well, a waterman knows that the only way to catch a crab is to be one step ahead of him. And to gather up the most crabs, it helps to try and beat out the other crabbers to the hot spots,” said Fred. “But, of course, a waterman has a lot of respect for another waterman's favorite haunt. They know how to give each other lots of space.”

“It sounds like a really hard life,” said Charles.

“Yes, it is a hard life, but being outside all the time, close to nature, makes it a very special sort of life. The long hours out on the water, that's the good part. The small catches and the ups and downs of the price on the seafood market, that's the hard part. There are good years when the Bay is filled with ‘beautiful swimmers,' as William Warner called them in his wonderful book by the same title. And there are years when the crabs seem to be too smart and nobody is able to catch enough. Hot sun in the summer, and in the winter—when they go after the oyster—cold, snowy days. A hard life, but a worthy one.”

“Not a cushy job for someone who wants real job security and lots of money, huh?” asked Max.

“No. Just look at those driveways we passed. No fancy cars. Mostly trucks that have been around a long time. No limos here. But look at the water glistening like silver. Listen to the sounds of the waterfowl: the geese so loud in winter they wake you every morning, just at light, when they all fly away for breakfast. Smell the air: salty and rich, no smell of downtown here. No exhaust fumes to breathe. No noise of car horns or police sirens, just the ring of the buoy bells and sometimes the low, haunting hum of a fog horn.”

“But the smell of rotting crab and yucky bait,” said Charles, wrinkling up his freshly sunburned nose.

“Sure, there's that, too, but the good smells are what you find the most of,” sighed Fred. He took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “No, it's not a life for those who love lots of fancy store-bought things, but it's a life rich with natural beauty.”

“You like it down here, huh?” asked Max.

“Yep, and someday, it's where I want to live.”

“Me, too,” said Max thoughtfully, after a moment's pause to consider the idea.

“Someday,” said Fred as he slowly switched on the engine of the truck. “Should we go back to town now?”

“Ok, but let's try just one more little road. Over there, that one,” said Max.

“I don't know,” said Fred. “It looks like it might be someone's driveway to me.”

“Still, let's try it anyway. If it's someone's drive, we can always turn around and go back out,” said Max.

“If they don't shoot us first,” said Charles.

“Oh, you watch too much tv!” said Max.

“And look who's talking! The sitcom junkie!” quipped Charles.

Down the little road they slowly crept. Suddenly, a small sign appeared. It was nailed to a huge pine tree at nearly ground level and almost completely hidden behind a large mountain of oyster shells. The sign was made of wood, shaped like an arrow and painted white. “Button Factory” was carefully stenciled on it in faded red letters. The arrow pointed straight up the small road.

“A button factory?” exclaimed Fred. “Here at the End of the World, and what do we find, a button factory?”

“Let's go and see it,” said Max.

“Yes, I've never been to a button factory before,” said Charles.

“Can't say that I've ever been to one either,” said Fred. He turned the wheel of the truck as the road made a sharp bend and slowed as it became a driveway.

The drive was covered with pine needles, pine cones and something pearly white. At the end, Fred and the boys could see a long, narrow gray building. Fred eased the truck to a stop.

“This sure doesn't have the look of a booming, prosperous business,” said Fred.

“Let's go see what it's like,” yelled Max, climbing out of the truck.

Charles was already out on the ground, bent over and examining the driveway. “Hey Fred, check it out!” shouted Charles.

“What?”

“Buttons. Buttons everywhere. The whole driveway is covered in little pieces of button,” said Charles.

“You're right,” said Max, stooping over to look and picking up a few. “Incredible.”

Many of the buttons were broken, some in half, some into little pieces, but there were some beautiful whole ones with two or four holes drilled through them.

“Already, I'm seeing things I never saw even in my wildest imagination,” said Fred. “Let's go in.”

Together the three crabbers-turned-explorers walked up the drive.

“I wonder if they're still open. I don't see any cars,” said Max, juggling a handful of button bits in his hand.

“I can hear a buzzing sound coming from the building,” said Fred. “It sounds like some kind of machinery.”

“I can hear it, too. A whir and a buzz,” said Max. “Must be someone in there.”

“Unless it's the ghost of buttons past,” chirped Charles.

“The Eastern Shore is filled with ghosts, but I never heard tell of one who haunts a button factory,” said Fred.

The building was the same color as the bits of button, a bleached, dusty white. Dust was the key word. On the door sill, the windows, even on the cobwebs, which hung under the eaves of the roof. A fine powder glistened everywhere.

The boys and Fred approached.

“Now what?” asked Max.

They stood in front of the closed door.

“Shall we knock or just walk in?”

“On the Shore, the same as at home, no matter how hospitable the place may appear, you always knock,” said Fred, putting his fist up to the door.

But before Fred's knuckles could touch the gray wood even once, the door slowly squeaked open. There stood a thin, short man whose clothes, hair, face and hands were the same gray white as everything else.

“Can I help you?” creaked his dusty voice.

“Well, we saw the sign, out by the road, and since the boys and I have never been to a button factory before, we thought we'd stop by,” said Fred awkwardly.

“Sure. Come on in. Excuse the mess, but button-making, the way we do it, the right way, is messy.” The man stepped aside and held the door open for them.

Slowly, Max, Charles and Fred entered the wonder world of a button factory.

Inside the old building, dust was everywhere. Each step they took sent little puffs up through the room. Everywhere they looked were buttons. All the same size. Little white, black, and brown buttons.

Dust, buttons, and huge, hulking machines.