— a semi-regular humor column by Maurice Austin —
Was just minding my own, on the ferry the other day, headphones in and plowing through the last pages of Jose Saramago’s The Stone Raft, when a green crab scurried into the seat opposite me, unfolded a map of the San Juan Islands, spread it out on the table, and began tracing lines on it with its front legs.
I think it tried to make eye contact, but I was into the last few pages of a novel, and focused my attention on the words in the lines on the pages, hoping the crab would go away, can’t you see I’m reading, go away, leave me alone, there’s another world I care about more than this one, right now, please don’t invade my space.
Alas, the ending was nowhere near as satisfactory as the telling of the journey that led to the ending, maybe that’s the flaw of magic realism as a genre, the magic runs out and then the realism falls flat, at its best leaves the reader with some sort of enlightened suspension of disbelief, at its less-than-best leaves the reader wondering well, what what what was that all about then, if you can’t even offer some denouement, some moral, easily decipherable, some lesson, easily learned.
I sighed, hit pause on The Squeeze as they sang “Pulling Mussels from a Shell”, and took out the headphones.
The green crab looked up, expectantly, its right claw extended. “Hi!” it said. “I’m Tony!”
I stuck out a paw and shook his or her claw, I don’t know, was too embarrassed to peek under the table to get a look at the abdominal plates. “Maurice,” I said.
“This place is beautiful!” the crab said, pointing with a second or third leg at the map, at the west side of Waldron Island. “Look at this bay here, bet there’s plenty of eel grass there, and probably mussels, too!”
I shrugged. “Wish I knew how to catch a salmon there, all I get is sand dabs and lingcod.”
The crab shuddered. “…lingcod? How deep?”
“Oh, you don’t need to worry,” I said. “You’re a shore sort, right?”
“Guilty as charged,” the crab nodded, bowed, even, “but if this place is too rough to raise a family, Puget Sound looks promising as heck.” The eyes swiveled a little, as if scanning for overhearing ears. “Is the pollution down there really as bad as they say?”
I couldn’t really fathom who the “they” were that s/he referred to, what, crab have scouts, pioneering families, real-estate agents? Heck, it’s been thirty years since I paddled the waterways of the Port of Tacoma in a canoe, amazed at the effluent, most of it multi-colored, some of it steaming, who knows how much they’ve been able to clean up their act since, do those suspended heavy metals really flush, or do they bio accumulate, certainly wouldn’t eat anything out of there then, not sure I would now. Driving by, inhaling nauseously the fumes, pop used to feign a deep, satisfying breath, and loving proclaim, “Ah! The aroma of Tacoma! Smell that, kids? That’s the smell of money!”
“It’s not really a family-friendly environment,” I suggested, then pointed at the map. “Anything along the Straits of Georgia, though, should flush enough to make for some degree of biologic purity, depending on the local point sources of industrial pollution, like here and here.” I pointed. “Maybe get a map that shows major inshore industrial installations, use that as a guide, this is just a tourist’s map, after all.”
The crab clicked audibly a couple times—mandibles? Or just a leg sweeping along the five spines of its carapace?—and nodded. “I see. North might be better.”
Was my turn to make a visual scan for nearby ears, and I lowered my head a bit, as if clandestinely imparting wisdom. “Vancouver Island is wonderful this time of year,” I said, voice low. “Look, I get that there has been talk of building a wall, or walls, to protect the Puget Sound bivalve industry from green crab immigration, mesh nets and whatnot, but really what is that sort of thinking based upon, I mean really, build a wall around it, to keep it as it is, or as we wish it was, our memories being actually rather fallible and selective, nostalgia for what wasn’t, wasn’t Eden great before that pesky snake, wasn’t Orcas great before those pesky tourists, for ‘invasive’ is very much in the footprint of the beholder, which of us aren’t, after all? Invasive, I mean, not just voracious feeders upon shellfish.”
The green crab waved an arm. “North, then?” it clicked, questioningly.
“Best for all of us,” I nodded.
Our mileage may vary.
Satirical magical realism leaves the reader with enlightened and amused suspension of disbelief.