{"id":208,"date":"2018-07-15T12:01:54","date_gmt":"2018-07-15T12:01:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/?p=208"},"modified":"2018-07-11T19:42:09","modified_gmt":"2018-07-11T19:42:09","slug":"the-crab-by-henry-frigon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/2018\/07\/15\/the-crab-by-henry-frigon\/","title":{"rendered":"The Crab by Henry Frigon"},"content":{"rendered":"
Henry Frigon lives in California with his daughter who is nearly one year old.\u00a0 He writes short fiction, poetry, and prose.<\/em><\/h6>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Crab<\/h3>\n

Crab sat atop a rock on the misty moon-lit beach and click-clack, clickity-clack<\/em>\u2019d a little song to himself.\u00a0 The waves washed ashore bringing with them great green seaweed clumps and shells which were worn smooth by the rolling of the sea.\u00a0 Crab\u2019s rock was under a grand pier which was home to many restaurants, game stands, carousels, binoculars which cost a coin to use, and one great Ferris wheel, covered with and lit by multi-colored lights.\u00a0 But Crab, who sat on his damp rock, only saw the lights of the festivities reflected in shallow pools in the sand.\u00a0 He gazed at the reflections, and the light of the full moon emerged from behind a puff of wispy mist and pooled around him.<\/p>\n

A glistening shape, somersaulting on the sea-breeze currents, and reflecting the silver moonlight, landed with a thud some four feet away from Crab.\u00a0 He skittered over to it, leaving small tracks in the pillowy sand. A silver coin, polished by many excited hands, lay face up in the shining moonlight.\u00a0 Crab grasped it tightly in his claw and scuttled back to his rock.\u00a0 He held it up to the moon and gazed at it, for never had he been so interested in such a small thing.\u00a0 He tilted his claw so the coin lay on its side and let it roll down the smooth surface of his rock.\u00a0 So delighted was he by the way it glided from his stoney seat into the soft sand that he crawled to it and repeated the motions.\u00a0 Three times he rolled it, and three times he retrieved it. The barnacles who clung to the pier\u2019s posts like shavings of iron on a magnet wondered what he was doing.\u00a0 The lights from the festival above glimmered in the sea, and caught his eye.\u00a0 Crab left his rocky perch and crawled up a cement path, coin in claw.<\/p>\n

When he reached the sun-bleached and salt-weathered slats of the boardwalk, he stopped, dazed, at the sight of the people. He checked to make sure the coin was still in his claw and began the trek to the end of the pier.<\/p>\n

Many times he was nearly crushed by the giant stomping feet of tourists and party goers. Carnival music blasted his shell as he skittered between feet and trash cans, the smell of fried foods bombarding him. He came at last to a restaurant, The Mariner\u2019s Grill<\/em>, whose sign featured a crab holding a spy glass. Two warm brown hands picked Crab up from behind and turned him around.<\/p>\n

A little girl, maybe 6 years old, with dark eyes and a wide toothy grin, smiled with delight as she eyed Crab up and down.\u00a0 \u201cOl\u00e1, Caranguejo senhor,\u201d she giggled. \u201cPosso ajud\u00e1-lo?\u201d<\/p>\n

Click-clack, clickity-clack<\/em> Crab snapped, pointing his empty claw at one of the binocular stands, and showing the girl the coin in his other claw.<\/p>\n

\u201cSim!\u201d she exclaimed, and together they dashed to the binoculars.\u00a0 The girl opened her hand. Crab gingerly placed the coin in her palm.\u00a0 She rubbed her thumb over it for good luck, and pushed it into the coin contraption. The binoculars unlocked themselves and she looked through to make sure they worked.\u00a0 She pointed them at the full moon and stared at it lovingly.\u00a0 \u201cEu amo a lua. O que voc\u00ea quer ver, senhor Caranguejo?\u201d\u00a0 He pointed with his claw at the small beach-side village, the houses filled with happy families and warm hearths. The girl pointed the binoculars toward the houses and held Crab up to them. He drank in the sight of the town and was content.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Henry Frigon lives in California with his daughter who is nearly one year old.\u00a0 He writes short fiction, poetry, and prose.   The Crab Crab sat atop a rock on the misty moon-lit beach and click-clack, clickity-clack\u2019d a little song to himself.\u00a0 The waves washed ashore bringing with them great green seaweed clumps and shells … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa867U-3m","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":211,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208\/revisions\/211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}