Crabmeat and Blood

‘Crabmeat and blood,’ she said. ‘For four days. Heh, that case of crabmeat must have thought itself the luckiest case of crabmeat in the world – perched up there on the wreckage all alone. I was pretty happy when I saw it, I can tell you. After I hauled myself up, I found Lysaker and Brinz, but the rest were already gone. We found Young – well, half of Young. He’d been savaged pretty badly, and was bob-bob-bobbing around in the swells. We hauled what was left of him aboard, all blue veins and white skin and still leaking pink. Brinz and I argued for a while about whether we should keep him. Okay, we argued about WHY we should keep him. Brinz thought we could get him a proper burial after we were rescued, I figured we may need something to keep us going after the crabmeat ran out. In the end, Lysaker began kicking what was left of Young off the edge, and do you know, another shark grabbed him from the wreckage, just like that! It took us hours to get at that crabmeat. They were stiff cans – we bashed them on a rivet until the metal bent and softened, then pried them apart with our bare fingers. Lysaker offered to open the cans by himself. “No need for all of us to shred our hands off,” he said. But the jagged metal did end up shearing through the flesh of his fingers, all the way to the bone, so then Brinz and I had to open the cans as well. We were not a particularly merry crew, I can tell you – you can’t throw a party with crabmeat and blood. After three days, the wreckage had drifted close enough to the mainland that we could see the shore. Before we could stop him, Lysaker announced that he would swim to land and fetch help. Just like that, then he was over the edge and cutting his way through the ocean. The trawler picked us up the next day, but nobody ever saw Lysaker again. I suppose that's what happens when you go swimming with crabmeat and blood all over your hands.’