“Now hold on,” said Shiner, but he was stumped. Just then Bodean Gazzer came stomping out of the mangroves. He sat near the fire and began wiping dew from his rifle. Shiner called him over.
“Colonel, can you do a swatch ticker?”
“No problem.” Bode saw an opportunity to impress Amber at the kid’s expense. He put down the gun and joined them under the tarp. With a sweep of a hand he erased Shiner’s chicken-scratch swastika. In broad, sure strokes he sketched his own.
Amber briefly scrutinized the design before declaring it had “too many thingies.” She was referring to the tiny stems that Bode had drawn on the ends of the secondary legs.
“You’re wrong, sweetheart,” he told her. “That’s exactly how the Nasties done it.”
Amber didn’t argue, but she thought: Any serious white supremacist and Jew-hater would know how to make a swastika. Bode and Shiner’s confusion on the topic reaffirmed her suspicions that the White Clarion Aryans were a pretty lame operation.
“OK, you’re the expert,” she said to Bode, and began reheating the point of the fishhook with a cigaret lighter.
Shiner felt his stomach jump. He had a hunch Amber was right—the colonel’s swastika was odd-looking; too many angles, and the lines seemed to point in the wrong directions. The damn thing was either upside down or inside out, Shiner couldn’t tell which.
“Where you gone put it?” Bode asked.
“Under the bird.” Amber tapped the designated location on Shiner’s left biceps.
Bode said, “Perfect.”
Shiner didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want to offend his commanding officer but he sure as hell didn’t want another defective tattoo. And a fucked-up swastika would be difficult to fix, Shiner knew; difficult and painful.
Amber pressed a fresh batch of ice cubes against his arm. “Let me know when you can’t feel the cold.”
Bode Gazzer edged closer. “I wanna watch.”
Shiner fixed his gaze on the blackened barb of the fishhook and instantly became dizzy.
“Ready?” asked Amber.
Shiner sucked in a deep breath—he’d made up his mind. He’d do it for the brotherhood.
“Anytime,” he said thickly, and locked his eyes shut.
At first he believed the screams he heard were his own. Then, as the animal howling tapered to a stream of profanity, Shiner recognized the timbre of Chub’s voice.
Then Amber saying: “Oh my God.”
And Bodean Gazzer: “What the hell!”
Shiner looked up to see Chub, nude except for Amber’s orange shorts, which he wore upon his head. The shorts were pulled down as snugly as a skullcap, fitted at an angle to hide Chub’s eye patch.
But that’s not what made the others stare.
It was fastened to the end of Chub’s right arm, which hung limp and heavy at his side. Where once there was only a pair of dead crab pincers there was now a complete live crab; one of the largest crabs Amber had ever seen, outside the Seaquarium.
“What do I do?” Chub pleaded. “Jesus Willy, what the fuck do I do?” Gummy-eyed from either sleep or glue, he displayed his other hand—his functional hand—for them to see. The knuckles were bloody knobs, from beating on the crustacean.
Amber cast her eyes at Shiner, who had not much experience with marine life and, thus, no counterstrategy. Despite his white brother’s awful predicament, he couldn’t help feeling a sense of reprieve. While the others stood transfixed by the sight of Chub, Shiner discreetly scuffed his feet across the dirt until he’d obscured Bode Gazzer’s dubious swastika sketch.
“The crab!” Chub was bellowing. “The crab, it’s after that g-g-god-damn claw!”
Gravely Bode surmised: “It’s either trying to eat it or fuck it.”
In its bloated and discolored state, Chub’s hand could have been mistaken by a farsighted crab for another member of its species; that was Bode’s hypothesis. Amber had nothing more plausible to offer.
Shiner asked, “How come he got your pants on his head?”
“God only knows,” she said with a sigh.
Chub bolted toward the water. When the others caught up, they found him madly slinging his lifeless crab arm against the stump of an ancient buttonwood.
Shiner stepped forward. “I’ll take care a that goddamn thing.”