distaste as I backed away from the table.
“It’s a king crab, silly. Haven’t’ you ever seen a king crab before?” I hadn’t seen a king, queen or jack crab for that matter, and said as much.
“Wow,” said Tom. “Where you guys from anyway?”
After brief introductions by way of a handshake with George and a nod at me, we learned all about the Kodiak king crab heyday, dating back to the 1960s and early ‘70s.
“King crab put Kodiak on the map,” he bellowed in a deep baritone voice that carried through the tiny kitchen and out into the front yard.
“Boats from all over the world came here back then and caught millions and millions of these babies.” I tried to picture millions and millions of these huge spidery creatures and wondered what purpose they had.
“What do you do with them?” asked George, always the curious.
“You eat ’em, what do you think!” answered Tom. George and I looked at each other, blinking. No way was I going to bite on that thing; I didn’t care if other people wanted millions of them. “Here, I’ll show ya,” said Tom as he stepped over to the sink. “Get me the biggest pot you have and fill it up with water.” I pulled out my stewpot and he peered at it, frowning.
“Wait a minute.” Tom walked out the door, found something in his truck and walked back in, the screen door banging shut. He was carrying a stainless-steel pot the size of my mother‘s washtub. Wow. Everything seems so big up here, I thought. He set the pot on the stove, covering all four burners, and filled it with water using the stewpot. He turned each burner on high. Tiny bubbles rose to the surface as the water came to a boil. Tom picked up the now dead crab and carried it over to the sink.
“You’ll need a garbage bag and some newspapers ’cause this is gonna get messy,” said Tom. We covered the counter with newspapers as Tom tied the garbage bag to the drawer handle below the sink. “Now, here’s what we do.” He carefully grabbed the two back legs with one hand, fitting his fingers between the prickly spikes while he grabbed the edge of the main shell with the other hand and peeled it off the body with a crackling snap. He cracked off the front shell next and dropped it into the sink with the back shell. He gripped both sides of the crab, carefully weaving his fingers between the spikes again and broke the body in half. He demonstrated how to pull off the lungs, which are poisonous, and clean out the guts. By that time, the water was boiling hard and Tom dropped both sets of crab legs into the water.
“Twelve minutes,” Tom said. “Not a minute more, not a minute less.” George and I watched as the foamy water boiled around the crab legs and turned them a pale orange. “Now you’ll need a roll of paper towels and melt some butter, if you like. Some people eat crab by dipping it in melted butter, but I prefer the natural taste of the crab,” explained Tom. “You can try it both ways, if you like.”
We liked. In fact, that was the best-tasting thing I could remember ever eating in my life. It was delicious. It took a lot of painful practice trying to grip the legs between the spikes and snap them at each joint just right so the meat came out as a single piece. Much later, we purchased a good pair of crab scissors and cut the shells lengthwise. We used nutcrackers to open the hard-shelled claws and scraped the meat out with a fork or chopstick. Yum!
The next day, we went out with Tom in his eighteen-foot aluminum skiff. “Let’s go check the pots, Georgie, we’ll see what we catch this time.”
Subsistence crab pots measured four feet square, crafted by hand using rebar cut, welded together into a box-shape frame, and then covered on the sides and bottom with fishing net. A plastic ring about four inches tall was fastened to the center inside the top of the pot leaving a two-inch gap all around. A plastic jug with small holes punched in the sides was filled with bait and fastened inside the pot near the bottom. One end of a polypropylene line about one hundred feet long was tied to the top of the pot and a large round buoy was attached to the other end of the line.
We motored out in Tom’s tiny metal skiff to a large orange buoy floating on the water marked with Tom’s name and phone number. Tom handed George a gaff, a three-foot-long metal bar with a hook at one end.
“Grab the line dangling from that buoy as we motor close to it, and pull it to the boat.” George leaned over as we drifted near it and snagged the rope, pulling the buoy next to the boat. I grabbed the buoy and lifted it over the side of the boat. “Good job, Georgie, you guys are real pros already. See that? Now let’s pull the pot up and see what we got.”
Suddenly halted in the water as the men held onto the waterlogged line, the small skiff was encircled by waves spilling over one side of the boat and into the bottom where it swirled hurriedly to the back of the boat and slowly drained out of the tiny hole fixed about two inches above the floor.
I stared in growing alarm as another wave hit the other side, washing up and over and spilling down and backwards again. I sat down and gripped the wooden seat with both hands, trying to steady the rocking motion, watching the water rush up and over and down and back. Then the other side, up and over and down and back.
My stomach began to join in with this lazy, rocking motion, up and over and down and back, first one side then the other, up and over and down and back. I felt the toast and eggs and bacon and orange juice from our hurried breakfast swirl around in my stomach, up and over and down and back, in time with the waves and water and swirling; up and over and down and back until I felt the whole mess rising up to my chest and into my throat. I began to sweat with chills and my hands cramped up as I gripped the rough splintery edges harder, willing the queasiness to stop. My head was pounding, my ears felt stuffed and rang with the swaying and swashing of the watery mess, up, over, down and back. I followed the unending rhythmic motion, unable to tear my eyes away from the bottom of the boat where the salty gray slosh inched up around my boots. I tried to swallow but my tongue was stuck dry to the roof of my mouth, my throat was thick and sickly warm.
“Clare!” shouted Tom, blasting through my sorry state. My head snapped up at my name to see Tom standing on the other seat looking down at me. Tom’s startling yell was enough to divert my queasy thoughts and my stomach dropped back down to its normal place.
“Keep your eyes on the horizon when you‘re in a boat,” he cautioned. “Find a land mass and focus on it every few minutes. And for Pete’s sake, don’t eat such a heavy breakfast next time, and you’ll be okay.” This useful advice I consistently adhered to from that moment on, saving me from any future bouts of seasickness.
Meanwhile, the two men stood at the bow, one in front of the other; they gripped the line and pulled up, then grabbed again. Each time, about a yard of the wet dripping line snaked to the bottom of the boat as they moved hand-over-hand, getting into a rhythm.
“Now you got it, now you got it, Georgie,” said Tom swaying back and forth with his feet apart at shoulder width as he leaned over then pulled back. The boat rocked side to side as they pulled, gripped, and pulled again. On the downside, they grabbed line, on the upside they leaned back and pulled. I watched this almost comical sync with amazement while keeping one eye on the beach and rocks nearby. I found the faraway horizon, where the blue water, glittering in the sun, met the softer blue of sky, and I began to see the beauty of this place. I spotted green-headed mallards bobbing along with the waves, whitewashed seagulls soaring above and calling out their piercing song. I smiled at a brightly colored puffin with his blaze orange beak as he patted awkwardly on top of the water for several yards before lifting off to a rocky cliff nearby.
After what seemed like ages, the salty white line now coiled high like a snake basket, the heavy crab pot broke the surface of the water crowded with crabs. Bonanza!
