J

POETRY John Muellner

When I was seven I could not be myself. I could not be John because all j’s were huddled under my tongue. I didn’t know how to pull them out. Lost children themselves, the j’s couldn’t rope or coax the fat pink slab away and climb out from my lips. Z’s were easier to find. They jumped for roll call, taking the place of my underdeveloped j’s. In adulthood, my vulnerability leaps for attention, but has gotten me nowhere. Not to New York or the windy city. Not even across the street or to the speakeasy I like in Stillwater. My vulnerability can’t even start the car. What does my vulnerability lack? The fuel? An electric current? The motor itself, or even a pair of running shoes as substitute? Once I was offered the opportunity for a hawk to fly toward me from its trainer’s hand and land on my own, and I declined. The beach was crowded, and I was shy. The falconer spoke Spanish and I was anything but fluent. My friend would have to translate, though from watching others

I already knew: wear the glove, stand a certain distance away, be still. On the school bus, a boy jumped at the chance to shame me. He turned around in his seat to tower over me. What’s your name, he asked. He asked often, sometimes I remained silent. The space shrunk until I was no bigger than a field mouse. What does vulnerability do when stagnant? Does it cover itself with moss to ignore its own existence?

My own feels more like mold than moss, not so much hiding as it is igniting.

My friend asked if I wanted to host the hawk as we walked near the coast, but I didn’t want to be part of the spectacle. I didn’t want the audience to watch the bird of prey land on an arm that belonged to me.

My arm was no more special than any of the previous volunteers, and yet, I couldn’t cope. Kids ravaged their ice cream, couples admired the ocean, and if I’d said yes, my arm would have been their competition. The boy knew I’d say Zohn, sitting there on the bus, and I knew I’d say it wrong too, a self-awareness that surprised the school’s speech coach. I knew who I was, but couldn’t speak it, so I let the boy hover. Mold, like my vulnerability, loves nothing more than to latch on to a home. It begins in a basement behind boxes of holiday garland and used cans of primer, but it climbs up the wall like a fury of jumping kids blurring the scene with their needs. If I would have volunteered, let the bird perch on my protected hand, I could have been eye-level with the pulsing chest of the winged beast, the red-flecked feathers rising and settling. All of that natural power, that life, talons gripping me for stability until the next order was called, and I didn’t want to be seen.

The boy would say, that’s not your name, and in my quiet I would acknowledge that it was true because I didn’t yet know how to raise my tongue.

Crabsticks FICTION

Thomas Lawrance

Colin Knebworth watched the instructional video a third time. He’d never quite got the hang of knotting a tie. He sidled into his specially tailored suit and slipped on eight velcro shoes. He’d experimented with laces for a time, but invariably snipped them to pieces by accident. He gave himself a once-over in the mirror, removed a couple of stubborn barnacles from the wide orange dome of his head (it was nearly time to shed again), and scuttled out for the train.

As a five-foot-tall Macrocheira kaempferi (his friends knew him by the more colloquial—and easier to pronounce—Japanese spider crab), Knebworth was quite used to the occasional glance of intrigue or disgust. His immediate neighbors had grown used to him, and he counted some of them as friends (even if they couldn’t pronounce Macrocheira kaempferi). He raised a claw to one of these friends, a smiley greengrocer stepping out of an apartment block down the street. He lowered his eyes as more hostile elements passed by; certain members of the local church had never warmed to his knobbly presence. Two old women crossed the street to avoid his circumference, and he did his best to appear non-threatening. He hadn’t chosen this place, but he made daily efforts to fit in. Invisible efforts that the nervous church ladies wouldn’t even notice. He tried to walk like the people here, to wave like them, to speak like them. His strange, clicky voice was tempered with a cinematic New Yorker’s lilt.

“Hey, I’m walkin’ here,” he joked to a friendly taxi driver, parked up by the sidewalk. He’d known the driver for years, but had never been able to fit in his cab. The driver smiled and rustled his newspaper.

On account of his spindly width, Knebworth was limited to the more liberal corridors of the subway. He was headed there now, passing, as he did every morning, the seafood place on Water Street. Unfortunately, there were no shortcuts — it was necessary to scuttle past the restaurant every day, to endure that ceaseless waft of calamari and crab sticks. It was a smell that used to give him nightmares, lingering on his clothes and waking him at 4:00 a.m. in a panic, dreaming that his own legs had been baked into meter-long sticks of salty aquameat. He looked away from the gaze of the cook, who was leaning in the doorway with a worrying expression on his face. Knebworth couldn’t help but wonder how profitable his own innards might be.

He alighted the rickety steps to the platform. Strangers stayed well out of his way, but a few familiar faces wished him good morning. A train came rattling in, and Knebworth boarded, heading south. He’d never been north of Brooklyn. He had a job in a back office at the aquarium overlooking Coney Island Beach. He suspected he’d only been given the job because his employers assumed he knew what he was doing. They never outright said, ‘because you’re a crab,’ but there was nothing on his CV to imply that he was capable of administering an aquarium. Nevertheless, he did his best, for the sake of the animals in the tanks. He’d only visited the exhibits once, on his first day. The look in the octopus’s eye told him that the dynamic was off. He stuck to his office after that.

He clamped his claw onto a metal pole; he was too cumbersome to sit down. The train lurched on, and Knebworth teetered, careful not to bump into any of his fellow passengers. People tended to wince at contact with his pebbly exoskeleton.

He spent the day scrolling through spreadsheets. At hometime, he went as usual to the staff stairwell—only to find it closed for repair. The diversion would take him alongside the touchpool, where lobsters and rays and small sharks resided.

He approached the room quietly, and flicked off the lights before entering. Only the glow of the underwater bulbs remained. Inhabitants of the pool cast surreal shadows on the ceiling. Knebworth, briefcase tucked close to his shell, crept along the wall, out of sight. He reached the exit and was ready to leave when he heard a tap on glass. Turning, he realized that a bright blue lobster had been watching him the entire time. It said nothing, but condemned him with its glare. Knebworth left without a word.

He took the subway home, extra dour, and passed the bustling seafood place. Gulls fought over indeterminate marine scraps on the sidewalk. Knebworth averted his tiny eyes.

He had his nightmare again. He woke up and climbed out of the bath, water sloshing on the tiles. He stretched; his shell was getting tight. He’d need to set aside a day for shedding, if he could book one off. But not today. He set out as usual, thinking about the millions of liters of saltwater he needed to order for the aquarium (he always smuggled a bucket home for his bath; the equivalent, he reasoned, of a human taking somebody else’s sandwich from the refrigerator). He scuttled with haste past the seafood place—and then paused, and went back.

He could barely believe his eyestalks. In the window, on display in a grubby tank, was a beautiful Macrocheira kaempferi. She was dozing in the corner. Knebworth looked up and down the street, and then tapped gently on the window. She stirred, and stared back at him with bleary eyes. When she realized that she was not, in fact, looking at her own reflection, but rather a fully clothed spider crab standing on the sidewalk, she jolted upright, banging her dome on the locked lid of the tank.

How did you get out there? she clicked.

“I’ve always been out here,” he said. She stared back at him, dumbstruck. After a moment he understood: she didn’t speak English. He had to remind himself of his language of clicks. I live out here. That must be nice.

Two church ladies crossed the street, whispering to each other. It is.

And then Knebworth glimpsed the seafood cook, moving through the gloom of the restaurant, carrying a rack of shining knives into the kitchen. He looked into the eyes of the imprisoned spider crab.

What’s your name?

She communicated her name (it would be impossible to transcribe in English; an approximation would be Click-Click).

Knebworth thought for a few moments. An idea was growing in his dome—as were its potential consequences. He teetered nervously on his legs. Click-Click stared at him, a vision of hopelessness, and he made a decision. Or rather, some persuasive wraith deep in his conscience made it for him, and he was clicking before he knew what he was saying.

I’m Colin, he said. We’re going to get you out of there.

I was hoping you’d say that.

Give me five minutes, Knebworth clicked. Looking down the street, he saw his subway train pulling in at the platform. He’d never skipped a day before. But then, he’d never met another spider crab before.

As the train disappeared down the line, Knebworth turned and scuttled back in the direction of home. Loosening his tie and kicking off his eight shoes, he stopped at the door of the friendly greengrocer.

“Good morning, Colin,” said the grocer. “What do you need today?”

Knebworth removed his jacket. He looked over the crates of fruit and vegetables, and then up into the face of the grocer. “Your help.”

Click-Click waited in her tank. She faced the street, and was horribly aware of the muffled sounds behind her. A sharpening of blades, the occasional burst of machinery. Only two weeks had passed since her introduction to the universe of machinery. She had been scooped out of Tokyo Bay and packaged away in the dark, lit again only by the smoggy Brooklyn sunrise a fortnight later. Not that she knew any of these place names. To her, it was all just a lot of clicking. She watched the cabs and trucks rumbling back and forth, the humans rushing along the sidewalks, repeatedly kissing their styrofoam cups (presumably objects of worship)—and then she saw one particular human running in her direction, bearing a crate of onions with some urgency. He reached the door and knocked a dozen times. Eventually the cook emerged from the dark, one knife still in his hand.

“What do you want? I didn’t order anything for today.”

“Special offer on onions! Goes very well with crab.” The cheerful visitor gestured in Click-Click’s direction; she shrunk into her corner.

“No, I didn’t order any onions.” The cook began to close the door, but the onion man wedged his foot in the gap. With his crate like a battering ram, he forced the door open.

“Just let me show you,” he insisted, barging into the restaurant. ‘Where is the kitchen? This way?”

The cook, seething, pursued the onion man out of the room. All was silent for a moment.

And then Knebworth was sneaking in through the open door. He was dragging something behind him; Click-Click couldn’t make out what.

“Just stay quiet,” Colin said. He unfastened the lid of her tank and extended a claw, helping her out. She saw now what he’d brought with him: it was an entire exoskeleton, very recently shed. Before resealing the tank, Colin dropped the hollow shell into the water. Sitting there in the murky water, it almost resembled a live crab. The cook might not notice her absence for hours.

Was that yours? Click-Click said, as Colin guided her out into the street. She looked at him closely; there was an uncomfortable, raw squishiness to his body.

Yes, he said, wincing in the sunlight. Come on, hurry. They heard the remonstrations of the greengrocer behind them; the distraction was outliving its welcome. This way. He led Click-Click down an alleyway.

Are you alright?

I’m fine, Colin said.

Click-Click pulled an abandoned coat and pair of overalls from a dumpster. Together they fashioned a garment that covered most of Colin’s body.

He looked up and down the dank alleyway.

Which way is the sea? She seemed to read his mind.

He could have taken them to Coney Island Beach, but that would’ve meant passing within sight of the aquarium. Instead, for the first time, Colin ventured north. He and Click-Click sat together on a small beach in the shade of Manhattan Bridge, which led, like an imposing timeline, into the angular heart of life and chaos, the great city across the East River.

What are you doing here, then? Click-Click asked. She skipped a pebble out over the water, and it sank in a single splosh.

Colin tossed a stone, and it skimmed in several graceful hops, seeming to travel all the way to the opposite shore. I was brought here, I think. As a pet. I got too big, they released me, and now . . . Well, you saw my tie.

You live here, then. That is to say, you live and work here. This is your home.

I suppose it is, he said. He glanced at her, saw her eight graceful legs trailed in the sand. It’s nice, it really is. Look at this view. An enormous tanker was sailing by, a shotgun blast of gulls hovering in its wake.

I think I must have been taken on one of those, Click-Click said, watching the ship pass by, the distaste evident in her clicks. Is there one that will take me back?

Colin hesitated. I don’t know. In actual fact he did know, from his work at the aquarium. He knew of a regular passage between Manhattan and Tokyo. We can have a look later, but first I was thinking we might . . . make a day of it?

Click-Click shifted in the sand, and, without looking at her, Colin detected in her countenance the unique smile of the spider crab.

He would never have clicked up the courage to do this alone. They scuttled together through Central Park, ice creams in their claws, ignoring the stares of passers-by. They tried to get tickets for the Empire State Building, but it was booked out. After much teasing and coaxing, Colin eventually managed to get Click-Click onboard a boat for a tour of the bay. They reclined in their plastic seats as the little ferry buzzed past the Statue of Liberty. Colin felt Click-Click latch onto his claw.

Evening encroached as the ferry pulled up to shore. Colin and ClickClick alighted, and drank in a final view of the reddening bay. Ships and tugboats rocked and swayed along the dock. Colin took a deep breath.

Click-Click? he said, clicks wavering. That ship, there. It goes to Tokyo. There are tanks onboard, for transporting marine life.

Really? She was clearly so pleased that she didn’t think to question Colin’s sudden knowledge. He felt the acid of shame in his belly. How big are the tanks?

Big enough, why? She looked at him hopefully. Oh . . . Colin gazed out across the bay at the bright bustle of Manhattan.

Click-Click followed his gaze, and then put a claw on his knee. I understand, she said. You live here.

He managed a watery smile, and nodded softly. Activity was increasing at the gangway of the Japan-bound vessel. Sailors bounded up the steps. Colin approached, claw-in-claw with Click-Click, and negotiated with the crew. It was a research ship, visiting the aquarium on scientific business, and they were happy to return a stolen spider crab to Japan.

“And what about you?” the captain said to Colin. “Are you going home as well?”

Colin watched Click-Click ascend the gangplank, and then thought of the greengrocer who had assisted in her escape, of his little apartment, of the friends who couldn’t pronounce Macrocheira kaempferi. The ship shrank toward the horizon, and Colin watched from the dock until all he could see was a microscopic green light.

It was perhaps a month later that the seafood place on Water Street was shut down. An anonymous complainant identified a host of violations in the kitchen, and the inspectors came down hard. At the same time, animals began to disappear from the aquarium at Coney Island. For weeks the mystery tantalized readers of the New York Post, and theories multiplied after the sighting of a bright blue lobster family out in the bay. Shortly after this spate of disappearances, it was reported that aquarium employee Colin Knebworth resigned by mutual agreement, but walked straight into a new role at a greengrocer’s shop just down the street from his home.

A Softer Side