Chef Figgie resisted killing anything and was opposed, in a religious way, to taking the life from things smaller and less intelligent than him before he cooked them. He preferred food already dead and packaged when it was delivered. Most of all, he was violently against hog farming, and Regina had a passion for pork.
“What happened to ham?” she asked in that rude, loud voice of hers. “Why aren’t we having ham biscuits? That’s a light supper, and you know it, Figgie. You’re just doing this because you don’t like me. Look at those crabs staring at me. Let’s just put them out the back door and they can wander off somewhere.”
“The First Lady wouldn’t be pleased if we let them go,” he said.
“Who gives a shit?”
The crabs heard every word and climbed on top of each other so the one on top was close enough to the faucet to grab at it with a claw. They froze and pretended to be dead when Major Trader strutted into the commercially outfitted kitchen on the lower level, where, during the mansion’s last restoration, archaeologists had discovered thousands of artifacts, including fish bones and crude hooks, along with numerous arrowheads and musket balls.
“Why are the crabs all stacked up like that?” Trader stared into the sink. “Looks to me like they’re already dead, and the First Lady despises dead fresh seafood, Fig.” Trader always called Chef Figgie Fig, for short. “She likes them scuffling about and banging the sides of the pot as they boil alive so they’re very fresh when she eats them. Here.” He set down a small tin box. “The wife made Toll House cookies for the governor. Nobody else gets one.”
Chef Figgie felt sick at the notion of boiling anything alive.
The crabs held their breath, their eyestalks paralyzed in terror as they stared at Trader. Over the centuries, blue crabs had developed highly refined eyesight in order to spot and evade their natural enemies, which included the watermen of Tangier. The Islanders were a horrible people who spent all their time on the bay in little boats stacked with crab pots that they baited with rotten fish and plopped into the water, knowing full well that blue crabs love rotten fish and have nothing else to eat if rotten fish or other dead things are scarce.
It happens like this: An innocent crab is scuttling along through the silt, minding his own business, when this big wire cage descends like an elevator and settles on the bottom in a cloud of murk. The crab smells rotten fish and spies chunks of it floating around inside the crab pot. He calls over several of his friends or family members and says, “Well, I’ll swagger. What do you think?”
“They’s potting,” one of them offers. “Mind your step.”
“God-a-mighty! But I sure has a hunger,” Baby Crab complains.
“Keep quite! Hadn’t I learned you about potting? You’ll get hung up in that thar thing!”
“Look,” Trader said loudly, “these crabs are already dead and the First Lady won’t like it a bit if she finds out when they’re on her plate. She’ll have you fired and then all your nidgettes won’t have a daddy anymore.”
Trader, loathsome racist that he was, thought this was a great idea and laughed blatantly. Seventeen more little black children out there with no father figure. They would all grow up to be drug dealers, hanging out in long lines at the methadone clinics, and then end up in the penitentiary just like their daddy. One day, they would work in the mansion’s kitchen trying to figure out if crabs were dead or not and whether the First Lady would fire them, too–them being the nidgettes, not the crabs, Trader qualified silently, as all of this seeped into his mind like sewage.
Andy had rung the bell three times now as Pony watched through the wavy old glass. It was essential that a butler give the impression he was very busy and that the mansion was sprawling, requiring many moments to pass through gracious rooms and beneath sweeping archways en route to the entrance hall.
“Coming,” Pony said through cupped hands, to make his voice sound far away.