The Eastern Stars - Mark Kurlansky [78]
The locals in Soco eat crabs, often in coconut. Cooking with coconut was a cocolo idea that had become typical of San Pedro. This was the recipe of Raquel Esteban Bastardo, who was married to José Canó’s cousin. Squeezing the liquid out of coconuts is still common practice in San Pedro, although few Americans would have the patience.
Grate coconut and squeeze out the milk until it is completely liquid. Add garlic, big and small ajies (long chartreuse peppers that are not very hot), and ground oregano.
Mix the coconut milk with the seasoning and a little oil and vinegar. Wash the crab in clean water and take out the meat. Add it to the coconut milk mixture, add 3 spoonfuls of Maggi chili pepper sauce, and let boil 15 or 20 minutes, but be careful not to let the meat fall apart. (Nestlé makes a series of Maggi sauces that are very popular in Latin America, including the chili pepper sauce for this recipe.)
The Canós were fishermen, the only alternative to being crabbers in Soco. The fishermen lived in Boca del Soco, on the eastern side of the river. José’s father would get him up at two every morning, and they would row their deep-welled, open-decked wooden boat out into the river. A man stood on either end of the boat, holding a net. They dragged a net while rowing, which demanded tremendous skill because the rowers had to maintain an even speed to keep the net extended behind the boat. At noon they would row in and sell whatever had turned up in the net. Some days the ten hours would not yield a single fish.
An exceptional day on such a boat might land one hundred pounds of fish, which today would earn them about $125, a fat paycheck in San Pedro. But that rarely happened. Half that much was more likely. There were fewer and fewer fish near shore. Most locals blamed this on too many fishermen. But in North America, studies of climate change show northern species moving toward the arctic, subtropical species moving toward temperate areas, and tropical species moving toward the subtropics. What will that leave in tropical waters? Today, to get a good catch, fishermen have to mount little fifteen-horsepower engines on their boats and go to sea to a fishing ground seven hours away. They stay there in the calm Caribbean Sea for five days to catch enough fish to make it worth the cost of gasoline and ice.
In good weather Soco seemed empty, a quiet town of women and children, because the men were all off fishing. It was a village of unpaved streets and small Caribbean wooden houses, some of which seemed to have been slapped together out of scraps. Other houses, such as one handsome little dwelling on a corner, freshly painted a bright blue, were constructed a little better. That was the house of Canó’s mother, and as everyone in town knew, the Canós had money. But it wasn’t always like that.
José remembered his father, a catcher, as a good ballplayer. But he never made it into professional baseball. Life would have been different if he had, because he was trying to support his fourteen children on fishing. Three of the fourteen tried to go into baseball. Charlie Canó was a shortstop who signed with the Dodgers but never made it past the minor leagues. Another brother, David, was never signed at all. Then there was José.
He started playing on the dirt streets of Soco when he was five years old. His was a typical San Pedro story. He and his teammates had socks for balls, sticks for bats, and no gloves at all, but socks are not very hard on the hands. There was no diamond. When a car came they had to stop the game, but in Soco that didn’t happen often.
This was San Pedro and there were scouts everywhere, and one day a scout from Florida watched José playing shortstop and walked up to him and said, “How would you like to be a major-league ballplayer?” At that moment his life changed, although it did not all work out the way he had imagined.
He was signed to the Yankees at age eighteen,