luck's tor

        In late afternoon when the tide was right stone crabs living in Dutchman's Jetty began to dance a merry marimba along the craggy deck. Waving arms, strutting hind legs. Mating season, Johnny Luck figured. Soon he would be creeping along the slippery razor-sharp barnicle-studded rockpile, being careful not to fall as he had when he was ten, most memorably gashing his knee and tearing off part of a toe.
         The Dutchman was alive then and had laughed: "Ach so, mein schatzies love the taste of schvartzer meat. Be sure and leave some. Ha ha ha!"
          Very funny.
          Over the years Johnny Luck developed an artful legerdemain. He would wisk a swift hand to the rear of the crab and pluck it up by its unguarded bohunkis. Then he would carry barehanded the angry devil and plop him into a zinc bucket. Most people were held in abeyance by its claws.
           He checked his Bulova. Four o'clock. Time to go crabbing.
        

                                                                                          *


          Standing upon the crest of a high dune was the woman called Pirate Jenny. In silent solitude, thinking, brooding. An island breeze rich-scented with mangrove, fecundity and rot, ruffled her bobcut blond hair like so many down feathers. Tear salt in the corner of her eye.
          Islanders had given her the name Pirate Jenny because she wore an eyepatch. The Skipper called her so because she flew his old seaplane and reminded him of the comic strip "Terry and the Pirates."  She abided the nickname because she loved "The Three-penny Opera."
          Along the horizon a train of pink clouds raced in a serene regatta. Shaped like conch shells, floating upon an azure sea beneath a cerulean sky.
          Vacantly gazing afar, she thought of ways she could have arranged a successful return of her prodigal dad. Everyone called Powys Rhys-Jones The Skipper, whether they were praising him or cursing him. A schemer and a dreamer, dissipated through drink into a simple-minded fool no longer able to manage himself.
           Once he had chartered a seaplane shuttle and a deepsea fishing boat.
           Now he was just a rummy. Just like Albert in Hemingway's "To Have And Have Not."
           Ironically he had once fancied himself as Harry Morgan, the obdurant existential hero of that book.