What Kind of Mother by Clay McLeod Chapman

Author:Clay McLeod Chapman [Chapman, Clay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Quirk Books
Published: 2023-09-12T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

—

Grace and I never had a lot, but we got by. What we had was ours and that was more than enough for us. More than what most folks had around here. We had each other—and you, Skyler. The very belief in you. That hope. You were on your way and that was all that mattered.

It’s simple enough to find odd jobs throughout the Chesapeake. You work off the land, either fishing or logging, or you find yourself on the assembly line.

I wasn’t about to follow in my father’s footsteps. Herring was his work, so crabs were my calling. Our harvest dwindled a little more each year. Too many watermen reaping the same channels. Chicken-neckers clutter up the river, tangling their trotlines in each other.

Me, though—I prefer pots.

I wouldn’t be anywhere without my crab traps. A pot is nothing more than a large square trap fashioned out of galvanized chicken wire. Think of it as a heart with separate ventricles. Every trap has two internal chambers. The lower chamber has an entrance funnel called a throat. Once a crab crawls in, that crab can never crawl back out.

At the very center is the bait box, a smaller chamber of fine-mesh wire, filled to the hilt with fish bait. That’s what lures your crab in. They shimmy through the throat along the pot’s bottom, crawling closer toward that bait box until—gotcha—your heart’s full of crabs. They think they can escape by swimming up to the water’s surface, which leads them to the top ventricle, stranding them in that chamber until you pop open the lid and shake your catch out.

I use eels and bull lips for bait. The fresher, the better. I steer clear of frozen bait. It’s never as flavorful as fresh fish, breaking down and decomposing in the water once it thaws.

I’ve got myself a solid row of pots in the water, anywhere from ten to twenty traps at a time. I’ll toss my pots out every thirty yards along the river. Each one’s marked by a foam buoy with my initials spray-painted across them so folks know whose traps are whose.

Pickings are pretty slim. I’m barely making back the money I spend on gas to go out every morning, but what other choice do I have? I’ll take what the water gives, little as it is.

This river has always provided for our family. So why’s it drying up on me now?

The real money is in peelers. A single soft-shell sells for nearly twice the price of a bushel. When a crab molts, its body absorbs water into its circulatory system, swelling its hard shell to the brink of busting. The river eases between its loose skin. Before long, it’ll break out from the old, flimsy shell. There’s a seam along its rear end where the crab wriggles out from its own skin. Its fresh shell has already formed, but it’s soft. Tender. It needs time to solidify itself. In a couple hours that soft shell will start to harden from the calcium in the water.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.