by Edward Lee
It was an idealistic concern, to say the least. You’re a metropolitan lawyer, Patricia, she told herself. Don’t pretend to be a sociologist. . . .
She saw no men down among the quiet network of trailers and shacks, but of course she wouldn’t. Most of the male Squatters would be out on the water right now, hauling in today’s take on the crabbing boats Judy provided. Maybe it’s just like anything else, she considered. Give and take. Judy gives them a free place to live, and they work to keep her company profitable. Judy owned the boats, the land, the processing plant and warehouse and delivery trucks—everything. And. the Squatters worked it all for her.
A closer look showed children prancing around their mothers and/or grandmothers, squealing with innocent exuberance as they played tag amid the sheet-flapping labyrinth of clotheslines. Older children emerged from the woods with armfuls of wild berries, edible greens, duck eggs, and even rabbits and squirrels they’d caught in traps handmade by their fathers. Other children returned with stray firewood they’d culled from the forest; though the shacks and trailers all had electricity, the Squatters often preferred to cook their family meals outside in cauldrons braced over communal fires and long barbecue pits. What Patricia was looking at now seemed like a hidden crosshatch commune that gladly let the modern world slide over them without notice. Primitive yet undeniably efficient, tribal yet organized. It was a system that worked.
She traipsed down the hillock toward an outer footpath, and when she turned the corner around the washhouse, several Squatter boys—ten to twelve years old, they appeared—broke off in the opposite direction the instant they noticed her. What was that all about? she wondered without much interest. It was as though she’d surprised them; they ran off the way children did when caught doing something bad. But what? She made her way along the white-painted brick wall that formed the rear of the washhouse. The long, clean wall stood unblemished, except . . .
Hmm . . .
A squint showed her there was a blemish of sorts. She walked up closer. What is that? The wall seemed to bear a single pock; the closer she got, the more she thought she heard something. A steady hiss.
And voices?
Patricia wasn’t sure.
She looked right at the “blemish.” It was a hole, not even a half inch wide, drilled into the mortar between two of the wall’s cinder blocks.
And she realized the hiss was a running shower.
A peephole, she knew. She put her eye to the hole and looked in. Three hardy Squatter girls in their late teens stood in the long shower room, sudsing themselves with soap, and chatting and giggling obliviously. This would explain the fleeing youngsters; Patricia had caught them spying on the older girls inside, and though she didn’t know the boys at all, she was certain they knew who she was: the sister of the woman who gave them a place to live and provided jobs for their parents.
No doubt this peephole had been used for some time for such shenanigans; she couldn’t help but notice what could only be tracks of dried semen streaking the wall beneath the hole. She smiled to herself then, amused. Boys will be boys, she realized.
She walked on, but for some reason felt distracted now. By what? The thrumming cicada trills seemed to wash in and out of her head, and in some strange way urged her to recall the hiss of the shower.
Peepholes. Peeping. Voyeurs.
It was harmless enough, sure—just a few boys about to enter puberty, following their hormonal curiosities. So what was bothering her?
My dream, she remembered then.
Last night she’d dreamed of being spied on herself, hadn’t she? Only slivers of the dream seemed vivid, while most of it had turned to fog by now. I dreamed that someone was watching me from the window, she remembered, while I was touching myself. The more she thought about it, the more clearly it came to mind. She remembered being even more turned on when she’d realized someone was watching; her voyeur remained unidentified, yet the longer she knew he was watching, the more aroused she became, and it hadn’t taken long for her climax to overwhelm her.
The only thing that remained unclear was the sequence of events. Was I masturbating in the dream, she asked herself, or was I masturbating for real, after I woke up from the dream?
Probably the latter, she suspected now. The spate of dirty dreams? Sex with Ernie while her husband watched (more exhibitionism)? Sex with strangers? The sudden flux of heightened sexual moods since she’d arrived ? To the most secret part of herself, she admitted it all now. She couldn’t recall a time when she’d felt so sexually stoked than over the last two days, and it only reminded her of the senselessness of it all. Agan’s Point symbolized her rape—the ugliest and most unarousing thing to ever happen to her. So why don’t I feel unaroused now that I’m back?
Her musings stretched. She couldn’t help it; she couldn’t get it out of her head. Now she imagined herself in the Squatters’ shower room, alone, and somehow knowing she was being watched from the peephole. That knowledge made her desire burn harder. The fantasy cocooned her; she could not only see herself standing naked in the stark-white, brick-walled room, she could feel her hand gliding the bar of soap between and around her breasts, then down her belly and up between her legs. Soon she was dressed in a suit of lather, her pink nipples and the tuft of soft red pubic hair the only things breaking the surface of the soap’s white froth. She stared fast at the hole in the wall; some ethereal force seemed to emanate from it like a wizard’s totem. Now her hands were sliding all over herself—she was no longer washing; she was making love to herself, her nerves winding up, her nipples en-gorging. Then she stepped back into the cool spray, the lather sloughing off her skin down into the drain between her feet.
In the hole she could see the unblinking eye. . . .
Come in here, she panted to the hole. She parted her legs. Her hands splayed her sex. Whoever you are, come in here. . . .
She closed her eyes, waiting, her fingers teasing herself. She was almost there already. Her breasts felt hot, twice their normal size. The bladelike sensations between her legs nearly toppled her over, and then from behind the large calloused hands of her unseen voyeur slipped around under her arms to her breasts, and when they squeezed she began to—
“Howdy, Patricia. You’re sure up early.”
The fantasy snapped like a broomstick across someone’s knee. Patricia spun in place, bristling in stifled shock. Ernie was striding across the grass, jeaned and workbooted, a toolbox in tow.
“Ernie. I didn’t see you coming,” she faltered.
He hoisted the box. “I was just cuttin’ across. Judy wanted me to go to Squatterville to turn the electricity off on a few of the shacks.”
Patricia had barely recovered from her startlement. That was the most vivid daydream of my life! She brought a stray hand to the bottom of her throat. I hope I’m not blushing. . . . The fantasy hadn’t lasted long enough for her to see the face of her imaginary peeping Tom.
Had she hoped it was Ernie?
He chuckled, looking cockeyed at her. “You okay?”
“Daydreaming,” she muttered back. “What were you saying? You had to turn off the electricity?”
“Just to three of the Squatter shacks. No point in electricity going into an empty place.”
“What do you mean?”
He set the toolbox down and crossed his arms. “Well, things ain’t changed much since you moved outta the Point. Back then, a’ course, there weren’t quite as many Squatters. But unlike back then, it seems that a lot of ’em are leavin’.”
“Leaving—as in leaving the Point?” she asked.
Ernie nodded. Somehow the streak of sweat going down the center of his tight T-shirt struck her as sexy, and the way his long hair was slightly disheveled, like he’d just gotten out of bed. “Three of ‘em have left just in the past week, and eight or ten more since the beginning of the month. Kinda strange . . . or maybe not, really. Just ’cos I love livin’ on the Point don’t mean everyone does. Look at you.”
&
nbsp; “But where did these Squatters go?” she asked the logical question.
Ernie shrugged his strong shoulders. “They didn’t leave forwardin’ addresses, if that’s what you mean. Most a’ the folks who left was younger Squats, late teens, early twenties. Growin’ pains and all that, I guess. It ain’t unusual for kids to wanna leave home to check other pastures.”
No, it’s not, she realized.
“But me?” Ernie continued. His long hair gusted in a sudden breeze. “I love it here. Cain’t see myself ever leavin’. The city ain’t for me. I went to Roanoke once, couldn’t believe it. The air stank, the traffic was awful, everything was expensive. I don’t know how you stand it in D.C.”
“It has its ups and downs,” she said. “But I’m actually liking it a lot here this time. I didn’t last time I was back.”
“Oh, yeah. When Judy‘n’ Dwayne got married. Well, that’s all over ‘n’ done with. I’m hopin’ Judy gets out of her funk soon.”
“Me, too.”
“She got drunk as a skunk last night, but you could tell—even as heartbroke as she was—there was a lot of worries and hassles gone from her life.”
That was good to hear.
“You just out for a mornin’ walk?” he asked her.
“Yes. It’s been so long since I’ve had a good look at the Point. It’s much more beautiful than I remember.”
“I gotta head down to the pier to check ‘n’ see if the new crab traps got delivered. Why don’t’cha come with me?”
“Sure,” she said, and followed him down the trail. They went in and out of several stands of pine trees. Around them the fields behind Squatterville blazed green in the sun. The scenery lulled Patricia, but not enough to take away all of that irritating sexual edge left over from the daydream. As she walked behind Ernie, she had to consciously force herself not to look at him: the toned, tan arms, the tapered back, the strong legs. This damn place is becoming an aphrodisiac, she thought, and there’s no reason why. She tried to clear her head, following on.
“I love that smell off the bay,” he observed. “Salty, clean.”
“Mmm,” she replied, taking a breath herself.
“No pollution, like everywhere else on the bay. Christ, most other places think the bay’s just a place to dump their garbage.”
Yeah, like D.C., Patricia had to agree in her thoughts. Now, through breaks in the trees, she could see the mirrorlike shine off the water, and, high in the sky, the finches and crows were replaced by seagulls and pipers. Another few minutes of walking took them down to the town dock, where a dozen piers jutted out into the water. Some wooden buildings stood up front, where several Squatter men looked up, nodded briefly, then resumed their tasks of sorting rigging ropes and stacking bushel baskets. Ernie briefly walked to one of the dock buildings, grabbed a clipboard, and began counting what looked to be several dozen brand-new crab traps that had been stacked there: simple chicken-wire boxes dipped in black latex to prevent rust. A cylindrical compartment inside each trap held the bait, and then each trap was dropped out in the bay, marked by a floating buoy. The boats would all go out as early as four in the morning, drop their traps, then dredge oysters and clams for a few hours, after which they’d haul up their traps, empty them, and size the crabs. Almost all of the boats were gone now, but Patricia did notice a few moored to the piers—long, wide, shallow. dingies with little motors at the back.
She walked over to Ernie, who was still busy counting traps. “I’m always reading in the papers about how bad the crab harvest is in the bay. What’s so special about Agan’s Point?”
Ernie pointed outward, where the bay stretched several miles across. “Out there? The current’s too strong, not many crabs.” Then he pointed to a series of sand berms that could be seen just breaking the surface a mile or so out. “But those berms cut the current way down in the Point, which is ideal for blue crabs. Then there’s the freshwater runoff, keeps the water cooler and lowers the salinity. That’s why Agan’s Point crabs are bigger ‘n’ heavier than crabs anywhere else. The perfect environment.”
“So why don’t the big commercial crabbers come out here?”
“It’s not worth their time or money. They have to come too far, and their boats are too big. Agan’s Point waters are too rocky ‘n’ shallow for their big rigs. So they all go south ‘n’ leave us alone. The Squatters use flatboats to get around these shallow waters, and they always bring in the same number of bushels a day, and not one more than that, ever. The rest of the bay’s been fished out, but not Agan’s Point. The Squatters stick to their daily haul limit and never break it; that way there’ll always be plenty a’ crabs. We only sell our meat to the better restaurants and markets in the county, and that’s it, and because Agan’s Point crabs taste so much better than the other stuff, our buyers pay more per pound.”
“What makes them better?” Patricia asked. Now she was sitting at the edge of the pier, waggling her feet in the cool water.
“The meat’s sweeter ‘cos the salinity’s perfect and the water’s cooler ’n’ cleaner. It’s that simple.” Ernie hung up his clipboard, apparently satisfied with the trap delivery. “And another reason the company’s got a higher profit margin per pound is ’cos of the lower overhead.” He pointed to another pier, where several men sat down at tables next to some large picnic-type coolers. “Most crabbers use chicken necks fer bait, but what ya need to know about the Squatters is that they don’t waste anything.”
Patricia didn’t get his meaning; she leaned up higher from where she sat, squinting at the men. Now she heard a continuous series of thwacking sounds. . . . “What are they doing?”
“Like what I was sayin’,” Ernie went on, leaning against a stack of traps. “The Squatters live off the land like nobody’s business; they don’t spend a dime on food unless they need to.”
Patricia’s bosom jutted as she leaned more urgently to see what the men at the tables were doing. “I still don’t—”
“It ain’t just crabs the Squatters trap; it’s everything. Rabbit, possum, muskrat, squirrel. When they’re done guttin’ and trimmin’ what they catch to eat, they chop up what’s left. Scraps, guts, feet, ‘n’ tails. And that’s what they use fer crab bait.”
Patricia shuddered a moment when she finally realized what the men were doing: chopping up animal scraps and innards with butcher knives and then depositing the portions into plastic jars punctured by holes. Each jar was then put into a cooler.
“Them jars there?” Ernie explained. “When the boats go out tomorrow, they put one a’ them jars in each trap. Best crab bait ya can get. And it’s free.”
It sounded very practical—but grisly. “I can understand rabbits and squirrels—I ate plenty of that when I was growing up,” Patricia noted. “But you said the Squatters even eat muskrat and possum?”
“Oh, sure. I do, too. Muskrat’s tough to dress, but it tastes like ham, and on a possum the only thing ya eat is the back strap. Tastes like the best pork tenderloin ya ever had if ya marinate it right, and the Squatters know how to do it.” He tapped her on the shoulder, looking down. “You’ll be able to try some. This weekend is the Squatters’ celebration feast. You’ll think you walked into the county fair, and they’ll be cookin’ up everything. These people know how to cook.”
Her feet in the water relaxed her. She looked up at him, frowning. “Ernie, I don’t mind eating a little squirrel and rabbit, and crabs are fine too, but now possum and muskrat? That’s roadkill, if you ask me.”
“You’ll try some,” he assured her. “One thing I remember about you from way back is that you were always adventurous.”
“Not that adventurous,” she declared. It occurred to her in the briefest moment that her position—sitting down at the pier’s edge as he stood over her—afforded Ernie a considerable view of her cleavage and possibly even her nipples, given the leeway of her loose ivory blouse. Again, she hadn’t put a bra on, and she’d been oblivious to that fact until just this second. But
when she glanced back up at him to say something, he was looking out at the water, not at her. What the hell is my brain up to now? she asked herself. It’s almost like I want him to be looking at me . . . but if he’s not, I’m disappointed. I’m so screwed-up! Then her original question resurfaced. “You said they’re having a celebration feast?”
“Yeah. Every month—every half-moon, whatever that means. They got some weird ways.”
The Squatters were notoriously superstitious but . . . Half-moons? she wondered. “So what are they celebrating?”
“Life, I guess—in their own way. Nature, the crab harvest, the food they get from the woods. But when ya think about it, it’s the same thing as our Thanksgiving.”
Patricia supposed so. All societies, even today, seemed to have some ritual of giving thanks for the abundance of the land. “What religion are they, though?” she asked next. “I never quite got it.”
“I asked Everd once, and he said they’re worshipers of nature and love, or some such, and left it at that. But then ya see a lot of ‘em wearin’ crosses along with all those knickknacks and stones around their necks. Their own kind of Christianity, I think it is, mixed with other stuff.”
How interesting. Like Cuban Santeria and the obia of the Caribbean, these religions amalgamated old African folk magic with traces of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. Even Haitian voodoo borrowed patron saintdom and idolatry from Christianity. And now that Ernie had mentioned it, she looked back at the men chopping up the crab bait and noticed that one of them wore around his neck what appeared to be a cross made from small animal bones.
“See, right out there,” Ernie said, and pointed out to the bay
Patricia focused out on the water. At the end of the berm, near the inlet’s mouth, she spotted a wide plank sticking up out of the water; on its face someone had painted a cross.
