Where the Crawfish Scream

Where the Crawfish Scream

“Well think about it. If you were dragged out of your home, bagged in a croaker sack, hosed down and thrown into a big pot with all your family and friends to be boiled alive just so some Cajun or Cajun Wannabe could further vilify your existence by ripping you apart before emptying your shell and eating you. Would you be singing? No way in hell. You’d be screaming to the top of your lungs.”

“So? Tell us how you really feel about the book. The rest of us liked it.”

“Well. I’m mostly indifferent about it. While reading it I kept thinking that there were an awful lot of people who have never seen a crawfish, much less having eaten any. My mother called them mudbugs. I grew up calling them crawdads. Others called them crayfish. In south Louisiana people called them dinner. The only way I like them is the tail breaded fried, and in a PoBoy in the French Quarter in New Orleans. My Acadian friends prefer them boiled by the bushel, whole, and spicy hot.”

As book club meetings go, this one went as most of our meetings went. Barbara and Jason hadn’t had time to read the book, despite our group only meeting every other month. Frances not only had read the book. She had also researched the author and the locales mentioned in the story. Sylvia had skimmed through the book and generally knew the story line, but was really there for the wine and socializing. Bill was there because Sylvia insisted he be there. Me, I was there because I like to read, and because Bea was there. If it were a quilting bee, her presence would still be sufficient motivation to ensure my attendance.

It was Sylvia’s turn to pick our next book. As was her practice, she spent at least two minutes glancing at Oprah’s recommended list and selected another Holocaust oriented book, of which in recent years there have been many.

When the meeting broke up, I stayed back to help Bea finish off the open bottle of wine.

“Say," I said. "Did you see the Netflix documentary on the Gardner Museum robbery? It is amazing that not one of the stolen paintings has ever turned up.”

“No, I missed it, but I enjoy visiting the museum. Because of a restriction in Gardner’s will, they just have empty frames hanging where the stolen paintings used to hang. Wasn’t one of the stolen paintings a Rembrandt of the ocean with a ship sailing off over the horizon?”

“I don’t think so . There was one by Rembrandt of Jesus calming the waters on the Sea of Galilee that had a boat filled with people in some very dangerous water, but it wasn’t a painting of a distant ship on the horizon. And I am pretty sure that that is the only boat and water picture ascribed to him.”

“Didn’t you tell me once that your uncle was one of the two guards at the Gardner when it was robbed. What ever happened to him?”

“He had a pretty miserable life. Since no one was ever arrested, like you would expect, he lived the rest of his life under suspicion. He deserved better. The only thing he did wrong was to believe that two guys dressed like cops really were cops and let them in the museum. You have to wonder why the Gardner hired part time guys as guards like they did, instead of hiring retired professional cops like the Boston Museum did. It’s sort’a like they wanted to get ripped off.”

“It’s a mystery all right. They lost some really great paintings. I wonder if they will ever turn up?”

“I doubt it. Though I guess stranger things have happened.”

Much later I bade Bea goodnight, and drove west on Massachusetts Avenue past Harvard, through Cambridge into Sommerville to the home near Davis Square that I had inherited from my aunt. Upstairs, in my bedroom, I paused before a locked closet door, unlocked it, turned on the closet light and admired the painting of a small ship in dire straits, laden with passengers as Jesus becalmed the waters.

“Uncle, what in the hell did you think you were doing? And what am I to do with this?”