of sight. Too high, it was true, for an island family without state aid to contemplate, but low enough for me to dream and work toward. It seemed to me that if I could get off the island, I would be free from hate and guilt and damnation, even, perhaps, from God himself.
I was too clever to pin all my hopes on crabs. Crabs are fickle creatures. They always know when you need them too much and pick precisely that season to make themselves scarce. I must give the impression, therefore, despite my early risings, that I didnât much care how lucky we were. When wewere on the water, poling through the eelgrass, I took pains to say at just about dawn, âThis is the nicest time of day, isnât it, Call? Who cares if the crabs are here or not? Letâs just relax and enjoy ourselves.â
Call would give me a look that indicated that I had lost my mind, but he was smart enough not to think it out loud. I canât swear that I fooled the crabs, but our catches were good that summer. Still, I wasnât going to count too heavily on crabs. I began casting about for other ways to make money.
I found what seemed a sure thing in the back of a Captain Marvel comic book in Kellamâs store. I even squandered a dime of my hard-earned cash to buy the book, which I hid with my other treasures in the underwear drawer.
WANTED : Song Lyrics
Cash for your poems!
Cash. That was a word to make the creative juices flow. The fact that most of the poetry Iâd ever read came off tombstones didnât stop me. I listened to the radio, didnât I?
Thereâll be bluebirds over
The white cliffs of Dover
Tomorrow, just you wait and see.
Thereâll be love and laughter
And peace ever after
Tomorrow, when the world is free.
Any idiot could figure it out. Two rhyming lines, stuffed with romance, a third that neither rhymes nor makes sense right away, two more romantic ones, then the third that also rhymes with the earlier unrhymed one and sort of makes sense.
When the gulls fly over the Bay
They cry that youâre far away.
But we didnât part.
Though youâre far across the sea,
Youâre not far away to me,
Youâre in my heart.
It had all the elementsâromance, sadness, an allusion to the war, and faithful love. I fancied myself the perfect lyricistâromantic, yet knowledgeable.
I tried it out on Call in the boat one day.
âWhatâs that supposed to mean?â
âThe girlâs boyfriend is away at war.â
âThen why are the gulls crying? Why should they care?â
âThey donât really care. In poems you canât say plain out what you mean.â
âWhy not?â
âThen itâs not poetry anymore.â
âYou mean a poemâs supposed to lie?â
âItâs not lying.â
âGo on. Ainât neither gull on this Bay up there boohooing âcause some sailorâs gone to war. If that ainât a plain out lie, I donât know what is.â
âItâs a different way of talking. Makes it prettier.â
âIt ainât pretty to lie, Wheeze.â
âForget about the gulls. How about the rest of it?â
âThe rest of what?â
âThe rest of my poem, Call. How does it sound?â
âI forget.â
I gritted my teeth to keep from yelling at him and then with super patience read it through again.
âI thought youâs going to forget about the gulls.â
âNo, you forget them. How does the rest sound?â
âIt donât make neither sense.â
âWhat do you mean?â
âEither the guyâs away or he ainât. You got to make up your mind.â
âCall. Itâs a poem. In real life he is far away, but she thinks about him all the time, so she feels like heâs real close.â
âI call it dumb.â
âJust wait until you fall in love.â
He looked at me as though Iâd proposed some indecent act.
I sighed.
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