I’m rolling through the produce section, just like any grocery run, when the first whiff of raw fish wafts over from the seafood market. It’s inescapable, that smell, but it passes once you hit the dry goods or salad dressings. This time, I stop short. There, in front of me, is a teeming mass of writhing, clawing, blue-brown crabs in a huge plastic bin. They’re crawling on top of each other, some raising their claws like the fists of wary prizefighters. I live near landlocked Austin, so live ocean creatures are an unexpected sight. But a recollection rises from the depths, as I stand in Fiesta Mart, and suddenly I am 7 years old again.
It was after Labor Day, the start of the offseason on the Texas coast. My parents had pulled me out of school for a getaway to Crystal Beach, a small community on the Bolivar Peninsula, a spit of barrier sand 3 miles east of Galveston. From our home near Kilgore, in East Texas, it had been a long four-hour ride with my two younger brothers in the back seat of our minivan. Somewhere between memory and imagination, the van pulled up to a weather-beaten shack of gray, unpainted lumber set among the sand dunes. Our home away from home teetered on wooden stilts. The floor of the shack was farther off the ground than our treehouse back home. I can still picture the daunting flight of stairs that led inside to a dim, rustic space with old furniture, wide screened windows, and the coconut smell of suntan lotion. Old family photos reveal my brothers and I very much enjoyed digging in the beach sand outside. We splashed in the water and rode the surf on inner tubes.
During our long weekend on the
