With a seagull for company
Little Bob died tonight.
I looked for him, across the room in the aquarium. It’s the only light in my room, when I come home at night. I didn’t see him. I saw the green plants, and his wood log. But Little Bob wasn’t sitting on top of it. That’s his spot.
I took off my coat, hung it up on the floor, tossed my hat on a lamp, and walked across the room to the tank.
Big Bob was sitting inside the log. That’s Big Bob’s favorite spot.
Hi Big Bob.
Big Bob is a crab. Little Bob is a crab, too. A smaller crab.
Big Bob tucked himself closer against the side of the log. Big Bob has post traumatic stress syndrome. Somewhere along the line, Big Bob lost two legs on his left side. He doesn’t do well with the whole socializing thing.
Little Bob, on the on the other hand, is a party animal. The original Wild and crazy guy. That was Little Bob.
A woman in the Hotel where I live was going to throw him into the creek.
He clipped a foot off of my frog, she said.
I looked into the yogurt container she held. Sitting on a wet tissue, I saw a crab, not much bigger than my thumb. It waved a tiny claw in the air.
It kind of looked like he was goading me to fight him. I imagined I could hear Little Bob saying:
C’mon. Let’s fight, ya’ dick head. I can take you, and five more just like you! Faggot.
What if I took him, I said to the woman. I was still looking at the crab. I looked up at her.
She knew I had an aquarium. Take him, she said.
That’s how I adopted Little Bob.
So, I said to Little Bob. You’re dead, huh? Little Bob was laying on his back, his legs swaying in the current.
Yeah. You’re dead.
I scooped him out with a chopstick. Then I wrapped him in a leaf from one of the plants, and tied it all together with a stem.
Little Bob and I walked to the Santa Cruz Wharf in the chill night.
This is where you go on without me, Little Bob, I said.
I placed a small denomination coin in with Little Bob to pay his way into Beulah Land. I owed him that.
I reached my hand into the darkness over the end of the pier, and let go. Little Bob was gone.
I sat down on one of the benches, and I listened to the waves. A seagull walked over to me, and listened to sea lions with me.
Was it Little Bob, the seagull said.
Yeah, I said.
Sorry, said the seagull. He’ll be missed.
Thanks, I said.
The seagull counted a couple of waves with me. Then he silently walked away.
I took a long, deep, smell of sea air. It was ripe with seaweed, and salt. Then I got up, and I walked back home.