‘You can do anything with a conch shell, you know,’ Wilson repeated his father’s words to his younger brother, who held a skin-coloured conch shell in his tiny white fingers. ‘You can hear the ocean or crack open periwinkles or make noises like a trumpet! You can do anything with a conch shell, Joe.’
Sam would be Greenland, he thought. Sam would be
A forest of beach grass surrounded the boys. The large, lank stalks of the sharp grass quivered in the wind and mirrored the black tide which churned and bubbled in the distance. The sand was a dirty tan colour and housed clams that the boys dug up in the summer, and mussels that they collected in the spring. Sometimes the smaller boys would climb to the summit of beach rocks and throw smooth, eroded stones at the resting seagulls. The pungent smell of sea salt pervaded the air, and the kelp and seaweed that littered the beach made for a decorative gang ‘headquarters.’
‘We heard this a million times,
All the boys nodded their heads in unanimous agreement, and
‘You can’t do nothin’ with a conch shell,
‘Don’t you cry, Wil! You ain’t no girl, are you?’ Jason added to the taunting.
‘Tell me I’m a girl, Jason!’
The boys crowded around the two fighting tyrants and screeched cries of support. Their voices rang out like a sharp barrage of bullets in an empty sky:
‘Hit ‘im, Jase!’ Some cried, or ‘Go Jason!’ More of the boys, though, were shouting for Wil. They pounded the air and screamed his name:
‘Pummel ‘im in the nose, Wil!’
Jason really is like the Cubans, Wilson thought as he rose from the boy’s supine body. I don’t really like them Cubans and awful lot, now, ‘cause I don’t like that Jason!.
Grinning,
The next day was a Saturday, and
the gang of boys was back at the beach. The atmosphere of the gang was
different, though, and more restricted and quiet: Jason was quiet and submissive
and Sam made less jokes. After seeing Jason’s brutal beating, the boys decided
to remain as slaves to
‘You can do anything with a conch shell,’ the boy harangued monotonously. This time he smiled as he spoke and paced pretentiously at the front of the growing group of boys, though, and everyone paid—or pretended to pay—close attention.
Jason stood at the back of the group with a dreamy, blank look on his face. His nostrils were encrusted in a case of brown-red blood and his voice was distorted by this clog. His white undershirt was still stained a rusty hue around the collar, and his arms were trembling slightly.
‘How ya doin’, Jase?’ The boys mocked.
‘Oh I’b tooing jus fibe,’ Jase replied, grinning and pretending he thought their joke was funny. His eyes were stained with tears, though.
‘You can do anything with a conch
shell,’
The group needed
‘What can you do with a conch, though, Wil?’ Sam asked.
‘Well, Sam, you can do anything
with a conch shell,’
‘We know that, Wil,’ Joe interrupted. ‘What else can you do with a conch shell?’
‘Well—’
‘Can you scare girls with a conch shell, Wil?’
‘I want to put one in Lizzie’s bed!’
‘No, men! You can’t do none of
that!’
‘I bet it can even go through glass!’ JT said zealously.
‘Oh it can definitely go through
class. Most anything can go through glass, JT.’
‘Prove it, prove it!’ JT began chanting.
Suddenly a chorus of voices arose.
The small boys’ voices were heard above the deep, booming basses of the older
boys, and sounded like the soft cheeping of baby seagulls. The yelling of the
older boys boomed and droned like the calm, profound voice of the ocean.
The group of boys looked to him and their chanting ceased. They all listened intently.
‘I can prove it, men! You know
that Cuban that lives up there on that hill?’
The boys cheered joyously at the notion of this treacherous vandalism. They leapt about, slapping hands and hugging each other. Even Jason joined in the merriment. He kicked sand about and threw his wet hat into the air. The wind carried it into the ocean and it drifted softly upon the waves.
‘Smash the glass!’ The boys sang tribally.
An hour later the festivities came
to a halt as
The guards made a distorted circle around the group of younger boys. They held their hands behind their backs—an homage to a monotone television show that Wilson had seen with his father—and held their heads high, proud to be defenders of the little gang.
‘No one ever comes to this beach anyway,’ Sam said. ‘Why do we need seatinals?’
‘We need some seatinals!’
‘Tomorrow’s Sunday,’
The boys whooped enthusiastically and smiles broke the glumness of their faces.
‘We ain’t going to do nothin’ else, men. We’re just gonna throw that conch right through his window!’
‘We ain’t gonna kick the planks on his house, or steal his mailbox or nothin’?’ Sam asked.
‘Nothing like that! We just want
to get that conch through his window.’
The boys prepared a meeting place
for their excursion, and a time that they would begin their destructive plan.
After the meeting, they all broke out and walked away in different directions,
most slapping each other on the back or dancing lackadaisically. Only Joe and
Wilson remained on the beach. They sat on a rock that, to
In the tide pool beneath the rock was an assortment of mollusks and kelp. Tiny ripples circled the pool as Joe circled his naked feet through the cool water. The shrimp were startled by these invaders and shot away.
‘We probly shouldn’t do this, Wil,’ Joe said concernedly. His countenance bore a look of disappointment. ‘We probly shouldn’t break that Cuban’s windows with the conch.’
‘It ain’t nothin’,’
‘It ain’t right, though,’ Joe said. He cleaned the dirty lenses of his glasses with his even dirtier shirtsleeve. His freckles were hidden beneath a layer of rough, itchy sand.
‘Sucks to you, then, Joe’
Joe sat for a moment before
following
Sunday morning proved a dismal,
dreary day, though the sun shone brightly and seemed to create a white, liquid
road when it hit the ebbing water of the ocean. The clouds were swiftly passing
through the clear sky and the (sickly) sweet fragrance of quivering Mayflower
alleviated the tension and horror felt by
In his room,
The kitchen was a dirty, little room. Unwashed dishes lay upon the counter and a smell of must impregnated the cabin with an acrid smell. Four mismatching chairs surrounded a small table. Graffiti had been scratched into its wooden surface, and small amounts of food still clung to the nooks and crannies.
Joe sat at the table, along with
‘Bacon or cereal?’ Rhoda asked
warmly.
‘Don’t forget we got church today, Wil. Don’t you dirty that suit!’ Rhoda said sternly from the frame of the quaint little house. Her tarnished dress contrasted the pristine white paint. ‘Don’t you let Joe dirty his nice, new suit neither!’
‘I ain’t
gonna forget church, Ma, and neither is Joe. We’ll be
there!’
Wilson and Joe began their walk to
the meeting place.
‘Finally, everyone’ll know that you can do anything with a conch
shell,’ he said with conviction. ‘We’ll smash that Cuban’s window like it ain’t nothin’!’
The two boys rounded a corner in the road and approached the ominous hill. A sense of foreboding plagued Joe.
‘I still don’t think this is
right, Wil,’ he said.
As planned, the boys were dressed like cannibals with twigs in their hair and leaves in their coat pockets. Some of the more creative youths had even painted their chubby faces with dark, rusty mud and clay. They were all dressed in dull, blanched colours. The smaller boys held pine boughs in their hands and had placed them in their pants, like rabbit tails. Their hands were dirty with sap and mud and they smiled as they slowly picked the adhesive liquid from their hands.
The larger boys had decorated their bodies with whole bushes and had covered their clothes with sand for camouflage. Their faces were heavily laden with brown and black mud, drizzled in thick bands. Their hair was wild and disheveled because of the sap their hair had collected when they had rummaged through the coastal undergrowth.
‘Okay, men, the Cuban’s in church
and so are our parents. We just gotta throw this conch
through that window.’
‘Break the window! Smash the glass!’ Sam said. The boys maintained the chant as they ascended the hill to the Cuban’s shack.
‘Break the window!—’
Their steps seemed thunderous in
the silence of the morning placidity. They sounded like
‘Smash the glass!’
The boys passed slowly over the rocky hill. What little grass that had existed on the east of the hill was matted by their careless stomping. They purposely took their time climbing so that, if the Cuban was home, he would notice them and banish them from the property. After ten minutes of their blood-lusting war cry, though, the Cuban had not appeared.
‘Okay, men, when we get to the top of the hill, I’ll throw the conch in.’
‘Break the glass!’
‘Yes, break the glass! Shatter the glass and break the window!’ A few boys shouted as they continued their march. All of the boys remained behind Wilson, who stopped every ten paces to sound the deep, bellowing conch. He tried to play war songs like he’d heard on the radio but found it difficult. Instead, he made the conch bleat like a dying calf three times every ten steps.
When the boys reached the top of
the hill, they glanced around suspiciously.
‘Well men, the shack is empty.
I’ll sound the conch three last times and then we’ll break the window.’
The boys were silent while the
three blasts on the conch were sounded.
The horn blasted the first time:
‘Break the windows!’ He screeched.
The horn blasted the second time:
‘Shatter the glass!’
When the horn blasted the third
time,
The boys joined arms and danced about, singing about breaking the window and about cannibals. The younger boys sang their favourite jigs and their light, fruity voices drifted on the wind. The larger boys were hugging and jumping, proud of their work. Joe, though, stood glaring at the shack.
‘Look,
Joe continued staring at the fire and began crying. The other boys tore the leaves and twigs from their hair and pockets and threw them into the woods. They ran swiftly down the small hill, this time taking seconds instead of minutes. They had forgotten about the conch and about their celebration. They huddled in a large crowd near a gray rock, and yelled for Joe to join them.
‘Get outta there, Joe!’
‘I don’t think we shoulda done this,’ Joe said slowly to himself. ‘It ain’t
right.’
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