All The Bay's Clams And All The Bay's Men

ALL THE BAY’S CLAMS

AND

ALL THE BAY’S MEN

JOHN BAUER

ALL THE BAY’S CLAMS AND ALL THE BAY’S MEN

Copyright © August 2020 John Bauer

Published © August 2020 Lysestrah Press

Cover Art Design By: L. B. Cover Art Designs

Formatted And Edited By: S. H. Books Editing Services

All rights reserved.

The author retains sole copyright to his contributions to this book.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher.

For information and inquiries, please contact: John Bauer, via: john52us@yahoo.com.

This book is a work of fiction and any similarities to any persons, living or dead, or places, events, or locales, is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

AUTHOR’S NOTE/DISCLAIMER

A lot of profanity is spoken by clam diggers. If you are a reader who objects to verbal obscenities, please do not read any further. What is depicted within the manuscript is a fictional representation of what speech was like back then.

This novel contains intentional grammatical, punctuation, and/or stylistic miscues. The narrator is an imperfect human being, as well as a storyteller. I have created him in this manner, and he will not be changed. Please read his words with this admonition in mind.

Per my personal writing style guide, there may be fictional characters who intentionally speak with bad grammar. These are intentional deviations from known grammar rules, as it is part of my writing preferences. Therefore, what some readers or reviewers may deem or perceive as errors or mistakes are not, in fact, either.

We must also take into account that there may be regional dialects that have been modified/used with creative license that do not reflect actual regional dialects. With this is in mind, such dialects within the story are not mistakes or errors. They are intentionally written in such ways to reflect the speech/thinking patterns of certain characters.

Such disclaimer must be added because a good many seem to think that there are grammatical/typographical errors within the story itself when it is, in fact, a certain style of writing I've been using for certain characters.

ALSO BY JOHN BAUER

A HEART ON THE RIVER

A SON’S LOVE

BOATS, KNOTS, OTHER THINGS

THE GRAY TREE

(Contributing author; Initial story written by the author, Donald Kemp.)

THE SALIGA

THEY DROVE ON STREETS PAVED WITH KINDNESS

TROPICAL STORM STALIN HEADS TOWARDS COAST

DEDICATION

This novel is dedicated to my grandchildren.

When each is eighteen or older, I hope Isaac, Johnny, Lily, Vivian, Lucy, and Nolan read this story.

Each of them has so much potential.

I hope each makes good choices in life.

Every minute counts. Critical seconds. Decisions. Actions.

Besides all that, I love every one of them.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

AUTHOR’S NOTE/DISCLAIMER

ALSO BY

DEDICATION

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This final manuscript has been shaped by several individuals over the past seven years. First and foremost, I recognize my editor and publisher, Nancy Medina. Without her professional strokes and suggestions, the novel would be of lesser quality.

Jerry Avolio, early on, and Robert Murray, much later, were volunteer critics who made me re-think the tone and substance of the story.

Margaret and Sid of the Two Step Approach—a paid critiquing service—provided tremendous guidance. They are highly recommended to all writers.

To all my teachers who imbued in me a love of reading and writing, I thank you.

I cannot omit God. He gave me the ability to create purpose-driven fiction.

I

Saturday

July 5, 1969

"YOU DICKS WANNA pop some cherries tonight?"

Wolfie’s left hand gripped his T-handle, and his right cupped a Rheingold bottle. A Marlboro swaggered from mustached lips smeared with creamy sunscreen. Underneath his khaki floppy beach hat, blue eyes brooded. He tugged twice on his bull rake stuck in the muck. My fast-going bald, closest thing to a friend swiveled his head my way.

We’ll ride over in my boat. Leave around eight from the canal, then bar hop the dives on the island. I plan on getting laid against the dunes.

Before I answered, two calloused hands climbed the slippery skin of my twenty-five-foot aluminum extension pole, avoiding its jagged clamps. Ten minutes of sweat-stained forearms wrought up an iron-barred basket packed with prized little necks and worthless shells. After flipping the load onto my cull box, I three-quarters flung the basket and pole like a javelin into the water again to hunt. My rake head’s twenty teeth kissed, then bit into the bay’s soft bosom, which would soon feed my money hunger . . . with clams.

I hesitated to agree to party with him. Three months ago, cops had hauled his butt to jail for underage drinking and driving. His rich old man had gotten all the charges reduced on a prayer for judgment. Didn’t want one ill-conceived escapade with him screwing up my life.

You going to make an ass of yourself? I don’t want to get kicked out of college before I register.

Through the hollow pole, clams began to jingle-jangle in the basket below—music to my big ears. Goals numbered one, two, and three were graduating cum laude in Poly Sci from Cornell, punching through law school, and then moving on up the corporate law ladder.

Pumpkin, try to live a little before you sell your soul to suckers who don’t give a shit. Wolfie snorted smoke like a dragon through both nostrils. You’re the only one who’s going to fuck up your life. Or fuck down your life. Who the fuck knows?

Goals numbered four, five, and six were marrying into wealth (the woman had to have nice legs), successfully campaigning for a State Assembly seat (conservative platform, of course), and then busting my hump to charge into DC and have them balance the budget, once and for all!

Let Stitches pick us up and drive your boat over there and back. Then, I’ll go, I suggested. I’m not taking any chances on you getting wasted.

To my portside, in the garvey between Wolfie and me, our scar-faced, clam-digging compadre had been listening and yanking on his own bull rake.

Fuck yeah. Stitches smiled. "Just tuned up your rig. Again. If the bay’s calm, I’d love to open her up tonight."

A better mechanic than clammer, he’d tinkered with all of our outboards at one time or another, working with his dad at the Clayport Marina.

Wolfie parked his beer on his deck, gripped both hands on his frozen T-handle, and sucked long on the remainder of his smoke. Then, he spit the filter into the water. He glanced sideways at me.

One day, someday, Pumpkin Head, I hope you’re not so screwed up.

Better than ‘fucked up,’ huh? was my grinning come back.

I didn’t think I was fucked up. No fucking way. Ambitious, sure. Nothing wrong with working to make something of myself.

With my head down, I focused on digging clams. Before doing any chick chasing, I still had a full count bag to rake up. I’d lost a valuable summer day.

Monday, Monday.

Attended Mother’s funeral service in the city. Didn’t shed a tear, though.

On my starboard side, Buddy, Hank Smith, and Matt were digging and drifting, about five yards apart from one another. A coquettish breeze kissed our cheeks. The man-in-the-moon pulled the strings of a puppet-like tide, toying with our boats.

Our mini-armada, normally configured as a frayed nautical line, normally disjointed, was anything but normal today.

Our poles jerked in rhythm, like an invisible maestro was conducting a raking symphony. Our boats were aligned in a perfect straight line across the horizon. We all mouthed the words to Crimson and Clover, blaring from Wolfie’s radio.

Shell fishing serendipity.

The Tommy James and the Shondells’ song ended.

Breaking our once-in-a-summertime clam-digging harmony, like a gong clanging at the wrong time during an overture, Wolfgang Amadeus Schmidt wheezed his wish.

"Bring Della along, Buddy, my boy. It’ll be groovy."

Buddy had carried his older sister, Della, out on the bay. Smiling, waving, and dangling her toes in the water, she helped cull and count (not very well) his clams, while leaning over and providing us with a free view of her two God-given physical gifts. She sure as heck deflated our clamming libidos, while inflating another male body part, mine included.

Buddy had his motives for modeling Della. Salacious shellfish seamen loved gawking at her woman’s body, which housed a child’s heart. No professional clammer would threaten him to get the hell away from their buoy-marked clamming hot spots.

He hesitated. I don’t know. I’d have to babysit her there. Couldn’t leave her by herself.

He hoisted up about a dozen clams. In disapproval, he shook his head at his sister.

Weeks before, at our Clayport high school graduation, student body president, Chuck Graham, had encouraged classmates to do the right things, whatever the right things might be. In this hour, his blathering commencement speech and positive words were distant and unheeded.

Was I his sister’s keeper? I enjoyed the views. My hormones had kicked in, too. With my big head and four eyes, I’d have a better chance of digging ten bags out here than ever slow dancing with a chick as stacked as Della.

"We won’t be staying that late. And we can all take turns dancing with her, keeping jerks away, protecting her. Sort of."

My debate team skills proved useful. Worst-case: if other chicks saw the two of us twisting, they’d be more inclined to take a spin with me, when and if I asked them.

That’s the ticket. The one and only almost student body president—the Pumpkin Head—supports her going. Buddy, you can’t argue with the class politico.

Wolfie huffed gray smoke circles toward me.

I stopped jerking on my clam rake for a few seconds, holding the T-handle with my left hand. My rigid right middle finger was unsheathed in Wolfie’s direction.

Buddy shivered. I still don’t think it’s such a good idea.

Hank Smith had been listening, raking, chewing, and spitting. He chimed in on the matter at hand.

"Buddy, I do know. You leave Della at home. She doesn’t need to be over there. She shouldn’t be out here with us, for sure."

He didn’t provide reasons. What he’d left unsaid, we understood—she’d attract more than a few male chowder suds heads.

Della stood on her tiptoes. Her boobs flopped on the roof of the boat’s cabin. She smiled at Hank, and then at her brother.

"Come on. Bring me. I’m all grown up. I graduated with you guys."

We shot sideways glances at each other. What was the Clayport School administration supposed to do? For failing grades, they’d held her back twice. For God’s sake, she was twenty-one.

With her blouse buttoned closer to her cleavage than her throat, and hot pants hiked up to her navel, she was the main reason the school board had instituted a dress code. Fortunate she wasn’t smart enough for my honors classes. I wouldn’t have been able to concentrate and earn good grades if she’d sat nearby.

Your brother’s right. You don’t know the trash over there. It’s not a place for a nice girl like you.

With powerful strokes, Hank kept pounding his rake in the fine sands, not letting the discussion slow him down one bit.

You coming, Hank? You can chaperone.

Buddy was looking for serious help.

Hank pulled up a basket brimming with little necks. Can’t depend on me. Don’t know if my dad will let me go. We’ve got an early Bible study tomorrow. Going to dig some in the afternoon.

You working Sunday, Hank? You can only dig half a bag on Sundays.

Buddy was referring to township clamming regulations.

If it’s clear, I’ll be coming out to poke around and see if I can hit a hot spot to start the week.

Come on, Hank. Come over to the beach. We can dance together.

Buddy’s sister tossed her blonde hair to and fro.

You’re trouble, Della. Good trouble, but trouble.

Hank hurled his rake head back in the water. He winked at her. His non-verbal response ended the debate. His hands blurred as he scraped the bottom without mercy.

Her dancing with me, or not, wasn’t a deal-breaker on my going. After a month of nothing but sun, blisters, and sore forearms, I was primed for a night where I could mingle with members of the opposite sex other than hard-shelled, female quahogs.

For several hours, we dug clams, not resolving the evening’s passengers for Wolfie’s pleasure (seeking) craft across the bay to Fire Island. The sun’s rays (and our labors) weakened our bronzed backs. A light breeze also ceased, giving us an even better excuse to collapse our extension poles and quit. The smooth bay’s blanket guaranteed sleepy boat rides home.

One by one, three shook their cull boxes one last time. They then counted clams, bagged them, tossed the seed and shells back into the bay, swept their boat’s floors, and fired up their outboard motors.

Wolfie was the first to skedaddle.

Stitches followed in his wake.

Before Buddy and Della departed, he sidled his boat behind mine and idled the engine too low. The motor coughed and quit on him.

My mother made a pie for you and your dad, he squeaked like a nine-year-old. I’ll bring it with me.

Really nice of her, I answered over my shoulder, still digging for clams.

I needed another fifty necks to finish off my third five-hundred-count bag. With a few more grabs, I’d be done for the day.

Maybe we could get your dad and my mom together.

Buddy had fuzzy cheeks. I wondered if he’d passed puberty.

I wouldn’t make a very good brother. I frowned. I’d be gone most of the time . . . to college, you know.

Just kidding. But my mom said to let you know, she’d do whatever she could, Buddy offered.

She waitressed at the Egg Head Factory from eight p.m. to eight a.m., supporting Buddy and Della on tips and low pay. Jacques Lenoir had abandoned them when they were ten and twelve, respectively, flying back to France and promising his return after he’d made a flick with Bridgette Bardot. Since they lived in Clayport’s low rent district on Avondale Ave in a four-room cedar shack, I doubted he’d mailed many francs back to help them get by.

Thanks. We’ll be okay. We’ve been okay for a long time. I turned my head away from him and stared straight at my pole. Get on home. I’ll see you tonight.

I doubt my mom’ll let Della go, but she’s got to let me go. I haven’t been all summer.

After he’d pulled the cord several times, his old outboard motor re-started, puffing gray fumes towards the mainland.

I glanced in his direction and muttered under my breath, I didn’t know her very well.

When I’d reached the ripe old age of nine, my old man moved us to the country. The Island. Long Island. He had his reasons. The fall guy in one little Ponzi scheme, he’d done a year in a minimum security pen. With a criminal record, he couldn’t buy himself a white-collar job ever again. So he’d made us a fresh start in Clayport . . . as a butcher.

One frigging mistake. Career over. That life wouldn’t be me!

Mother had remained behind in the city. She’d held a high-paying stockbroker position, didn’t care to commute, and didn’t care to visit. I suppose I was her one frigging mistake, which would have upset her career.

She sent me hundred dollar savings bonds every Christmas and birthday. She hadn’t attended my one and only high school graduation. Mother thoughtfully mailed two hundred dollars inside an oversized card and envelope, costing two dollars and seventy-five cents in postage.

Mother and my old man never divorced. He and I had both held out hope that she would relent, that she would come live with us and commute into Manhattan. Take the LIRR, like Wolfie’s divorced old man, buy expensive gifts for me like Wolfie’s old man, and attend my high school graduation like . . .

Ah, screw it!

Della had been perched on the transom, waving and smiling.

Happy, happy, happy as a . . . clam!

Shoot. Some days, I wished I had oatmeal for brains like her. Without worry, ambition, or goals numbered one to infinity. God had hardwired me different. I blamed God for who I was. Not Mother or my old man.

My nose soaked in the sweet carbon monoxide perfume emitted by Buddy’s outboard. I could better understand why Mother put herself to sleep forever inside her Mercedes in the small garage near her apartment.

My exhausted arms lifted another twenty-five clams. I now needed another ten, which would consist of one more haul. The javelin throw, the teeth bite, the necks collected. Jingle-jangle, hoist them up.

Ten. I had my final ten!

Matt, Hank, and I were the last to leave. Our three boats drifted quietly along from south to north with the tide. We were far enough apart so our boats weren’t going to clunk into one another. Close enough, I overheard Matt telling Hank, Hey, if you can’t make it, I’ll babysit Della. No worries.

Babysit her? Don’t play stupid. I know what you’re up to.

Hank stood with his hands on his hips, grey eyes glaring at Matt.

I turned my radio down a notch, slowed my crawling around on my boat, sweeping the deck with my head bent, tossing sideways glances in their direction, while holding my breath.

First time eavesdropping.

She’s no child. She’s a woman, older than both of us, Matt said.

You could have any girl you want. Don’t be a jerk, Hank retorted.

Hank and Matt were like brothers, good brothers, not like Cain and Abel, where one would kill the other. While not being close to either, I never cared much for Matt. He never had to work at being well-liked, popular. Handsome high school jocks had life by the balls.

Candidate Chuck had put him on his ticket as Student Body Vice-President.

Matt’s popularity had probably cost me the election. The chicks pined for Prom King Matt. He pivoted from one to another faster than seed through a cull box.

"Would you rather someone you didn’t know fooled