I have only one a-burnin' desire
Let me stand next to your fire
Jimi Hendrix, "Fire"
The Crumbs had three things in common: they were orphans, they were criminals, and they hated wearing shoes.
They were criminals not because they didn't have a choice, but because they were four passionate souls and it just so happened that their radio station was illegal.
They were barefooted due to their lack of social conformity and because they liked to do a small thing called "what they wanted".
They were orphans, of course, due to their lack of parents. Some were more sad about this fact than others.
Perhaps if they had been born in a different time, at a different place, then they would not have ended up where they were.
"Where they were" wasn't always a bad place.
Except "where they were" was currently on fire.
"Blast it all to bloody hell!" Smiley, the youngest, was saying.
His older brother, Bash, was hoisting buckets of saltwater from over the side of the boat and casting it onto the felt mannequin that was really having a terrible day.
Kathy, the alleged arsonist, was sobbing too hard to be of much use and her sewing kit was still clutched in her hands.
Syl, the fourth member of the Crumbs, was nowhere to be seen.
"Don't let it get near the circuit boards," Bash told Smiley as placidly as if he were asking him to pick up cabbage at the store.
Smiley, who was still swearing like a sailor, clambered across the deck and grabbed the microphone just as a song from The Doors was playing its last note.
"Sorry everyone," he said, his voice shakier than usual, "there's been a bit of a...glitch...in the system. Hang tight and we'll be back on air in three tics."
He unplugged the transmitter, which cut off their connection to the airwaves.
Smiley then wheeled the cart that bore all of their equipment underneath the arbor they'd built to store the station at night, far away from the fiery mannequin.
Syl appeared then from below decks, paint smudged across her cheek. She squinted first at the sunlight, then at the pillar of fire aboard Wolgemoth & Sons.
She blinked at Smiley.
"What's this?" she asked, more disappointed than surprised, although her Russian accent always made it sound like she disapproved.
She surveyed Bash's desperate but futile attempts at putting it out before making her way over.
She took off her painter's smock and, without a hint of hesitation, wrapped it around her arm to protect herself from the heat before picking up the mannequin and tossing it overboard.
"Syl–" Bash started to warn, but the fire had already been extinguished. The mannequin hit the water and fizzled out with a hiss.
A single dying spark caught the very tip of one of Syl's flyaway hairs. She pinched it between her fingers and turned to Bash.
"How is it you say in English," she asked, "badly done?"
Bash released a short exhale. "I think you said it quite well."
"I'm sorry," Kathy said, still frozen in place. "I didn't m-mean to, I swear! I thought the heat from the candle would make the thread lay flat. I had no idea!"
"It's alright," Bash assured her.
"It bloody well is not!" Smiley refuted, stalking toward the huddle and completing the ring they made around the singed spot on the deck.
He gestured to the black smudge. "It'll have to be repainted. We can't have this boat looking like an absolute dump and smelling like the charred remains of one."
Bash had only to put his hand on his little brother's shoulder for him to quiet down.
Smiley rolled his eyes and muttered, as if nobody else could hear him, "We almost lost the station."
"But we didn't," bash reminded him.
Smiley straightened suddenly. "The station!"
There was a mad scramble as everyone reconnected the wires to their respective circuits, set up the microphones, and readjusted the antennas to get Crumb Radio back on the air to play their last song of the day.
Smiley, the radio's evening host, sat down in a torn leather chair and said, "And we are, once again, live from the seven seas and will continue our Top 40 playlist for you here on Crumb Radio."
With the flip of a few switches, "Ode to Billie Joe" began playing for hundreds of listeners across London.
As The Crumbs sat in silence for their last-song-of-the-station ritual, they were reminded how there was a certain aspect of public service in their villainy.
Because, although the government forbade any private music stations to be broadcasted, Wolgemoth & Sons sat on international waters just off of Canary Wharf amongst the West India Docks, which made it legal.
They were untouchable as long as their anchor didn't rest on English shores.
Parliament, like all governments, wanted what they always wanted–control.
But the year was 1967 and the people wanted music. They didn't want the stuffy old tunes the BBC forced upon them; the kind that felt like listening to a history lecture that required the writing of an essay afterward.
The people wanted the kind of music that transcended all language barriers and all preconceived notions that humanity was anything but a wound that craved healing.
In 1967, music was that healing salve and The Crumbs were the physicians who administered it.
The song on the radio began to wind down and Smiley, in his deeper-than-real-life voice, said, "That was from Bobby Gentry here on Crumb Radio. There's more where that came from tomorrow, but for now, this is Crumb Radio, where love and rock 'n roll live."
With a flourish, he shut off the system. With the sudden absence of static noises, there was nothing but the sound of the waves gently lapping against the hull of Wolgemoth & Sons.
Then, like clockwork dolls on a timer, The Crumbs got out their instruments and began to play.
Bash was on guitar, Syl on bass, Smiley on piano, and Kathy on drums (which was actually three plastic buckets).
They played through most of the songs they'd heard on the radio that day, not uttering a word but speaking volumes.
From the wharf, people were saying that the ghost ship off the shore was striking up the band and stopped to listen to the distant tunes of the phantom players.
Few people knew it was four teenagers who were making the ruckus, much less four fugitives.
They played until midnight, half-forgetting that they had almost burned down their home, before climbing down the steep metal ladder to their rooms, which were each separated by a curtain. The electricity wasn't always working, except for the bulb above Syl's painting space.
The water, for the most part, ran smoothly except in wintertime.
Specifically, the ship was a small handysize carrier made of fiberglass that could hold the weight of approximately twenty thousand tons.
Less specifically, it was an abandoned piece of junk.
Bash and Smiley had found it when they were newly orphaned and hiding in a marina near Poplar.
The owner of the marina was about to send the boat to the junkyard and had laughed when the boys asked him to name a price on it.
The old man had said that if they could get it to float, they could have it.
It had taken more prayer than tools to get the ship in manageable order, but when the day came, Wolgemoth & Sons proved faithful.
It wasn't long before Syl came along, then Kathy, and thus The Crumbs were formed.
It hadn't taken but a few weeks for them to feel like family and for the boat to become like home. Everything they had, and, more astoundingly, everything they wanted, was being held afloat by haphazard rigging and legal waters.
Home, to the Crumbs, was music and it was each other.
They often thought about how unlucky and how lucky they were at the same time. Unlucky because all three sets of parents had died in various and tragic ways–one from a fire, one in an automobile accident, and one under mysterious circumstances.
Yet, it was this unluckiness that brought them together. This was what they considered lucky in the end.
Perhaps The Crumbs thought all of this, but only in private. Outwardly, their conversations mostly looked like this:
"Syl," Smiley complained, thumping his hand against the curtain that separated him and Syl. "Turn off that blasted light. You've been painting all day. Give it a rest so I can finally get some too."
"Bash and I were reading an article today," Syl replied instead of answering, then raised her voice to call, "What was the article, Bash?"
Bash promptly responded from his side, two curtains down, "It was about steelworkers up North. Two hundred thousand workers, forced to labor under severe conditions that leave them with all kinds of medical troubles. Working fifteen hours a day with nary a tenner in their wallets at the end of it."
Syl nodded, even though Smiley couldn't see. "There you have it. Now close your eyes and the light shouldn't be too much of a bother."
Kathy added to the conversation by laughing from her spot in the middle.
There was a muffled "Shut up" from Smiley, though he raised no further complaint.
"Ten points for Syl," Bash said.
"You're always on her side," Smiley said, "and I'm your brother. By the way, while everyone's busy busting my chops for living my life, we haven't talked about how Kathy almost set the boat on fire."
"It was an accident," Kathy said. "I was trying to–"
"We know, we know," Smiley interrupted, "you were trying to do the thread and the fabric and the blah, blah, blah. But there was a fire. Set by you. The bottom line is that you're a pyro, Kathy."
"You take that back, Smiley Gibbs!"
"Take what back? The truth?"
This was why most of them didn't go to sleep until around two o'clock in the morning. This was also why Bash had grown accustomed to dozing off to the sound of arguing.
Eventually, the disputes died out and turned into other conversations that ranged from music to food to the question of what if London was ransacked by pirates? Would they sail away aboard Wolgemoth and Sons or stay and fight?
In the end, when nobody but Syl could keep their eyes open, they offered a muffled "Goodnight" to one another and fell asleep to do it all again tomorrow.
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A NEW DAY, A NEW BOOK! I've been keeping this little delight under wraps for such a long time, it feels so good to finally be able to share it with you guys!
~What's your first impression of The Crumbs?