Journal Article

Whale Fall

Melissa Ferrone

2018

Overview

This is the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, the drowned valley of the Susquehanna. Out on the water, the dim opal surface of an overcast morning, my uncle reels in his cages. Each one is bursting with blue crabs. Sputtering and cackling, they stumble over one another. They snap at the metal bars. They're looking for a break. The bayside docks are awake, and the smell of coffee billows out to sea from the little inlet cafes. The smell is warm and rich. There, too, is the downwind smell of phosphorus, a rank smell, drifting off the tidal wetlands: the marine dead zone of stagnant water thickly blanketed in algae bloom. This is the end of September. The trees have begun to drift, dropping their red and brown lashes along the roads. The maple in the front yard has turned over early, but my father thinks it's dead. Crumpled leaves tumble into the garage where my uncle prepares the steaming pot. \"If you were older,\" he says, \"you could pour the crabs.\" But in this memory I'm a child; my hands are not big enough and my arms are not long enough to hoist the cages over the top of the pot, the big gray speckled pot that I could hide inside of. Then the crabs tumble in, some linked together claw by claw. In the pot, the crabs are frantic, scratching the sides, and as the steam boils the moisture within their bodies, they make a high whistling sound, as if they were screaming.

• Publisher: Michigan State University Press
• Subject: Algae / Automobiles / Bed sheets / Cheek / Childhood / Children / Crabs / Essays / Horses / Leaves / Meats / Rapists / Smell / Studies / Trees / Wetlands / Wythe, George (1726-1806)