A Crack in the Wall

By Gutbloom

Two boys carefully made their way out along the rocks of a jetty. Around them, on all sides, the ocean breathed with a calm swell. The morning fog still lingered in the distance and above them. A lighthouse, not a quarter mile away, looked hazy. The sun was blandly occluded. There was only a slight breeze, but it was this lack of wind, spray and large waves that lured the boys out onto the distant rocks of the breakwater. They knew that slack tide on a day like this made calm pools among the boulders. The pools were good for fishing, so they picked their way from stone to stone, one carrying a plastic bag filled with old clams, the other a pair of drop lines. Their movements were odd and strangely syncopated in an effort to avoid cutting their bare feet on barnacles or sharp rocks. Their shoelessness and white tennis clothes marked them as natives of this shoreline. Their sneakers had been left with their bicycles back at the club, and part of the slowness of their locomotion over the rocks was an effort to avoid soiling their whites on the sea-stained slime of the breakwater before them.

They both set up in different low pools separated from one another by a single rock. Once ensconced in the hollow, the sea boiled up from below, the gull-traced sky loomed above, and the sounds of the beach receded. Here they were protected from both the gawking eyes of the people on the public strand and the lifeguard of the private beach from which they had come.

They cracked open the quahogs and baited their hooks. Their limbs were brown from seven weeks of sun. The larger boy, Cricket, was blue-eyed and angular. His blond hair had been dirtier in the spring but now was bleached and stiff from a summer of salt. The smaller boy, Anthony, was brown haired and rounder. His lighter skin contrasted with the dirty rope bracelet on his wrist. His whites didn’t fit him well.

The sea swelled rhythmically around them, in a lazy morning roll. There was an occasional crash of a wave against the rocks. They could hear the gentle gong of a buoy off the jetty. They knew the sound of gongs, and the difference between a can and a nun. They knew the pattern of the lighthouse signal and the interval of the fog horns. They could hear some of the people on the beach and an occasional boat motor.

In no time they were tugging fish out of the briney. A jerk, a brief fight with a frantic muscle on the end of a line, and then acquiescence, as the animal succumbed to the strength of a boy transitioning it from one world to the next.

“What is it?” Cricket asked.

“Cunner,” Anthony replied.

“Fucking cunner,” said Cricket.

Anthony pulled the flipping, frantic fish onto the rock. He handled it carefully to avoid the spikes of its dorsal fin, grabbing it close to the head and then sliding his hand backwards along its body. The fish had the same look all fish do when wrenched from the sea. Its wide unblinking eyes watched without understanding the initiation of its own demise. White teeth jutted out at malicious angles, its horrible, monstrous mouth gulping plaintively at the mid-morning air. The boy wrenched the clam covered hook out of the fish’s mouth and then, in one quick, determined motion, slammed it against a rock. Stunned and defeated, the fish did nothing more but gulp and feebly twitch. Careful not to wipe his now slimy hand on his shorts or shirt, Anthony leaned down into the tide pool, wetted his hand, and scraped it against a rock.

After re-baiting his hook and dropping it back down into the pool, he sat on the edge of the rock, his drop line framed by dangling bare feet. Between swells the pool would grow still, and its surface, when calm, became a lens to a transparent, moving, underwater scene. He could see the mussels, periwinkles, and dog whelks. He knew the names of some of the plants. One, he knew, was called rockweed, and another Irish moss. The movement of the water sometimes concealed other happenings, but as he watched intently for fish at his bait, he became aware of a large blue crab. It was arrayed defensively on the bottom of the pool, its claws up and opened as a warning to a similar sized green crab that stood in front of it. The blue crab retreated behind a small wall of rock, into a nook well nestled into the side of the pool. The green crab approached with menace, only to be rushed and scared off. The blue crab held it’s spot for now.

There was sudden movement on Cricket’s side of the rock.

Anthony stood up to see what was happening, and saw his friend standing and pulling hurriedly on his line. When Cricket had exhausted the slack, the line pulsed in irregular motions and angles.

“An eel.” Cricket said, with excited nonchalance, “It’s a fucking eel.”

“No way!” said Anthony, pulling up his drop line and abandoning it as he made his way toward Cricket. By the time he got over the rock between them, the eel was thrashing itself against the surface of the breakwater, hopelessly tangled in a nest of line, hook, leader, and clam.

“Grab it,” Cricket ordered. “Get that fucking thing.”

“It might bite me,” Anthony said.

“It won’t fucking bite you,” Cricket said, holding the line up above his head, “I don’t want to let it get off the hook”.

Anthony tried to grab the eel whose strong, cylindrical body was now strangled in the coarse twine of the drop line. Compelled to act out fear of weakness, Anthony latched on to the fish with one hand. It quickly slid through his fist with speed and slime, and continued in its spasmodic twisting.

Cricket said, “Come on”, then stepped hard on the eel with his bare foot. The creature continued to squirm. The boy applied more force. There was an awful squishing sound and the eel’s movements slowed. Its head could now be clearly seen, gasping and disoriented, gills flared, eyes staring, mouth pulsing in silent terror.

Cricket reached down and, foot still firmly in place, removed the hook.

“Aw,” he said, “This fucking thing ruined my drop line.”

The boys abandoned the breakwater, leaving the fish and eel on the jetty as an offering to seagulls. The morning fog was now entirely gone. The dampness had been burned from the sand and dune grass. They hustled past incoming tourists slogging towards the public beach and, retrieving their shoes from a thicket of beach rose, mounted their bicycles and headed into town.

They rode over macadam and old tar roads past cabanas, parking lots, and a neatly trimmed seaside park. Winding their way up and away from the bustle of the too quaint seaside village, they made several quick turns and entered a warren of privet lined small streets. Their journey took them past stone walls made of rocks worn round by the ocean, beneath lampposts with exposed bulbs, and over broken roads that residents didn’t want fixed because well maintained roads encouraged Sunday onlookers. They made their way down into a cove and then out onto a peninsula, finally turning into a circular driveway covered in pea-gravel and flanked by two granite entrance posts marked with the name “Seacleft”.

The large, cottage-style house was a complicated mass of roof-lines, wings, and bay windows. They turned towards a side entrance, avoiding a commanding porch overlooking the cove and bay beyond it. The sun now bright and full, the crabgrass beneath their feet was already desiccated by the day’s dryness, and crunched beneath their feet as they walked. They slipped through a pen where the laundry was hanging in the sun, and stepped onto a small porch off the back of the kitchen.

Inside the old kitchen was cool and dark. There was a refrigerator in a back hallway, near a utility room, and from it they fetched sodas. Drinking them on the back porch so as not to invite scrutiny, they didn’t speak to one another until Cricket said, “Let’s go see if the new girl is in her room. It’s her day off.”

The boys put down their soda bottles, and entered the back door again but even more quietly this time. After a sharp turn, they began ascending a steep set of wooden stairs. The stairway was dark. Its wainscoting was deeply varnished. There was a rosewood banister worn smooth by generations of use that they gripped as they made their silent way aloft.

The air was still and warm, laced with dust and the scent of linseed oil. When they got to the second floor there was a landing with an open door. It revealed an upstairs hallway that was carpeted, bright, and full of fresh air. The conversation of maids and Mrs. Shattuck talking somewhere bounced in the depths of the house. They could feel the activity but slipped past it, climbing further up the stairs to the third floor.

When they came to the spot near the top of the stair, Cricket signaled Anthony to stop by holding his palm out behind him.

Anthony stood motionless, his body concatenating pulses of excitement, terror, and queasiness in chains of subtle disassociation. The air was now hot and dry. The relative darkness of the stairwell was illuminated by a small porthole high on the landing wall. Its weak light illuminated a symphony of dust they had stirred in their expedition up the back stairs.

Cricket returned silently and motioned for Anthony to follow. They emerged from the landing transom and quickly slipped through a hallway of six doors. The four doorways at the far end of the floor were closed tight, the two at their end ajar. The sound of a radio, muted by one of the closed doors, could be heard, and when they slipped into an unused bedroom beneath the roof, the sound of the radio grew clearer.

The room where they now stood was open and bare. A single large, curtain-less window looked down upon the water of the cove below. There was a wicker sitting chair in one corner, a porcelain sink with a mirror in the other. White plaster walls devoid of decoration betrayed the architectural entropy of decades. There was a brass bed pressed against the far wall with a table and lamp next to it, and it was to the bed that Cricket crept, motioning Anthony to follow.

The wall in the corner was damaged, the horsehair plaster spilling onto the floor and bedcover. A water stain stretched from the roofline in the corner above them to the area now directly before them. The lath was exposed like ribs, and as they moved their heads closer to the crack in the wall they could feel the rush of air coming from the next room, for Marian, the new girl, had her window open.

The air smelled fresh and feminine, carrying the beauty of the day outside laced with citrus and salt. The girl sat in a chair almost out of view. They could see one smooth brown leg, apparently tucked under her, and make out some of the blue patterning of her blouse. There was a magazine in her lap, and while it felt like they could see more of her torso and shoulders, they could not. They couldn’t even make out whether she wore shorts or a dress. There was just one limb of exposed skin, almost disembodied, but connected, intimately connected, to everything they could imagine.

For a long time they lay on the bed in panting expectation of something more, but nothing more happened. After five or six minutes of watching the magazine on Marian’s lap, the desire for more grew so strong that Cricket whispered, “I hope she spreads her legs.” The comment should have easily been covered by the patter of a DJ on the radio, but their psychic energy had leaked through the crack, and Marian stirred. She stood up and turned down the radio. Fear didn’t permit them to marvel at the now perfectly framed vision of her legs. Terrified, Anthony turned away, closing his eyes and holding his breath. Cricket continued to look through the crack, so it was his face Marian saw when she bent over at the waist, looked through the crack and started yelling.

“Who is in there?” She demanded, in a full voice unsoftened by her Jamaican accent. “Cricket Shattuck, is that you in there?” She yelled. “You dirty boys spying on me? I will tell your mother.” The last line was shouted at the increased volume of a voice that had walked up the register of indignation toward total fury. The boys exploded off the bed and ran for the stairs, the door of Marian’s room flung open as they escaped the landing. As they pounded down the stairs she yelled from the top, “You can’t run away. Your mother is going to give you wacks, wacks, wacks!”

Their frantic escape breezed past the second floor landing and back down the stairs to the hallway behind the kitchen, and there, blocking their path was Berta, the senior member of the household staff. She stood like a constable at the aperture of freedom, stock still and imperious in her white uniform. She held up one arm to stop the boys, and said, “You stop right where you are, Mr. Cricket.” The boys stopped still, and when Cricket began to speak, Berta held a finger to her mouth and said, “Quiet, you.” Then she called up to Marian.

“What is the fuss about, Marian. Why all this shouting?” Berta asked.

“Those boys were spying on me from the next room,” Marian called down. She had descended the stairs past the second floor landing, but did not come down to their level.

Berta’s face expanded with disbelief and anger. Her eyes grew large and intense. “Is that true?” She demanded, staring the boys in the face, “Were you peeking in on her?” Her incredulous look was held for a long, dramatic pause. Neither boy answered. The standoff was broken by the sound of Marian.

“I don’t need this, Berta. I can go to Newport tomorrow. I had five job offers this summer. I don’t need those nasty little boys bothering me. I make one phone call and I’ll have another job in a house where nobody bothers me.”

Berta’s face remained set and serious. She called up the stairs in a loud calm voice, “I will take care of it, Marian. These boys are in deep, deep trouble.” Then lowering her head to once again look at the boys, she said in a voice loud enough to carry up the stairs, “Let’s go, you dirty dogs. Mrs. Shattuck will hear about this.”

She then stepped back, motioning the boys into the kitchen. Above Marian could be heard reascending the stairs and saying, “Those boys better be in trouble. I didn’t take this job so some boys could peep in on me.”

The boys stopped in the kitchen and looked back at Berta, hoping that the parade would not continue into the main house. She swept her hand forward saying, “Go ahead, we are going to find your mother and talk to her.” Then suddenly, as an addendum, Berta shook her finger at them and said in a forceful scold, “That is wicked! Why are you peeking in on that girl? God sees what you are doing, and I hope he has mercy on you.” Then she motioned for them to keep moving with a gesture both impatient and dismissive.

They walked though the dining room, past fine furniture, paintings, and silver. They crossed over the oriental carpets of the front hall, and kept walking, well aware of where Mrs. Shattuck would be found, Berta tight behind them, urging them forward with the determined pace of her movement. They walked through a living room with a large stone fireplace, and a sunroom outfitted with bamboo furniture and chart lampshades, out onto the porch where the sea breeze and sunshine conspired to create a perfect microclimate of tranquility beneath the shade of the roof. It was here, on a wicker chair, that Mrs. Shattuck sat reading a magazine. She looked up when the sunporch door opened.

The boys spilled onto the porch, Berta behind them. When they stopped, she grabbed both by an ear to keep them in place, her strong hands removing all movement from their bodies.

“Mrs. Shattuck,” she said in a voice that was measured and clear, “these boys were upstairs on the third floor peeking in on Marian. There is a crack in the wall between her room and the Yellow Room, and they were in there spying on her. I caught them coming down the back stairs when I heard Marian’s fuss.”

Mrs. Shattuck flushed and said a quiet “oh, no” to herself. She stood up, a stricken look spreading across her face. Her head nodded back and forth slightly in subtle reproachment before the first hint of anger started to flush from the neckline of her sweater through her face. “You boys were spying?” she asked.

Cricket blurted out, “Not for long, and we didn’t see anything.”

“Cricket!” Mrs. Shattuck said forcefully, “You should be ashamed of yourself! This is awful! What were you boys thinking?”

Neither boy said a word.

“Marian is very upset, Mrs. Shattuck,” said Berta. “She has threatened to quit.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Shattuck putting a hand to her chest. “That would be awful.” She looked at Berta. “I will speak with her. Should I talk to her today, or wait until after her day off?”

“I will see,” said Berta.

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Shattuck, “Thank you for your help. I will handle it from here.”

“These boys have caused a lot of trouble, Ma’am.”

“Yes, they have,” said Mrs. Shattuck. Berta let them go, and walked back to the sun porch door. Mrs. Shattuck stood stock still. When Berta had left the porch, Mrs. Shattuck looked at Anthony and said, “Ant, you should go home now. I will call your mother.”

“Yes, Mrs. Shattuck,” said the young boy. He turned around and walked calmly off the porch. As soon as he was around the corner he broke into a run. From the windows he imagined Berta and Marian’s stares as he ran to his bicycle, picked it up, jumped on, and peddled furiously back out of the pea-gravel driveway.

Anthony’s bicycle made quick work of the ride home. He lived higher up, on a ridge further from the ocean but with a view. His house was not as grand as Seacleft, and if you looked at it closely you could see that it was missing shingles, the stain faded, and the front lawn spotted with brown patches.

He rode his bicycle into a garage filled with summer detritus. Older bicycles, beach umbrellas, chairs, and fishing tackle. There was a mildewed sunfish sail standing in the corner. He dumped his bike next to three others and walked into the kitchen.

There was no sign of his mother, so he attempted to escape to his room. He almost walked right past her. She was sitting in a breakfast nook of the butler’s pantry, and when he put his hand on the swinging door to enter the dining room she called out to him.

He walked back to where his mother was sitting, illuminated by sunlight dappled from overgrown hemlock bushes occluding the window next to her. She was wearing jeans and old tennis sneakers, which he knew meant that she had been spot painting.

“I got a call from Mrs. Shattuck,” she said. “She said that you and Cricket were spying on one of their maids. Is that true?”

The boy stood still and began to cry.

“Oh, Ant,” she said, “that’s an awful thing. That’s an awful thing to do to one of their girls.” She made no move to comfort him. Her voice remained hard but calm. “You don’t do that. You don’t go into the maid’s quarters. When I was your age I wasn’t even allowed in the kitchen without permission. That’s their space,” she said, looking impassively at his tears. “Those maids have one room where they won’t be bothered. You shouldn’t bother them.”

“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“Well,” she said, “I don’t want you going to Cricket’s house anymore. I want you to come straight home after tennis clinic.”

“OK,” he said.

“And,” she said, “We’re not the Shattucks, Anthony. You could end up on the other side of that wall one day. How would you like it if someone was spying on you? Cricket doesn’t have to worry about that, but maybe you should.”

He said he understood as he turned and walked through the swinging door into the rest of the house.

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