Deep Breath
The lobster exposed itself darting backwards across a twenty-foot open sandy area, then ducked into a ten-inch wide hole in the reef. The water wasn’t deep, maybe ten or twelve feet—yet well over my head. I took a breath through my snorkel, dove beneath clear Caribbean waters and kicked hard, hurrying after the lobster. Arriving at the lobster’s hiding spot, I hastily plunged my stick into the small cave. My attention was distracted from the lobster as I saw an arm appear from nowhere, reach out from one side of the opening, and wrap around my stick, then another. Suddenly, I had a clear view of an octopus or part of one—suction cups, rapidly changing colors, a hint of an eye.
Goat
A story from my father.
Wimpy and Majette were improbable names for the two twelve-year-old boys. Wimpy was Stanley’s nickname. His buddies called him Wimpy because he was so crazy about hamburgers—just like the fat comic character, J. Wellington Wimpy, then appearing in the popular comic strip Popeye. Majette was Wimpy’s cousin and in the county where they lived, his name was not an unusual last name. Somehow, as often happened in their close rural northeastern North Carolina farm community, Majette’s last name had migrated to forename.