Shrimp Rolls - Mark Maynard

When she named her baby boy, Artemis Johnson’s momma figured everyone would call him Artie, but we all called him “Shrimp Rolls” ‘stead.

That’s cause all Shrimp Rolls ever ate was shrimp. He ate it fried in flour and butter, fried in flour and beer, grilled, baked, stewed, boiled and brined in salt and lime. I even once seen him eat a huge platter of ‘em raw right off the deck of the Darla Jean and he didn’t even shuck ‘em. I’ll never forget the crunching sound that made, sounded like the man was eatin’ the thickest ‘tatoe chips ever.

Shrimp Rolls ate so much shrimp at a time that his whole body was these big rolls of fat and blubber. That’s how he got the name. He belly came in sections cause all of that fat couldn’t spill over his belt in just one roll. The downhill belly traffic got all backed up and it wrinkled over on itself like a meaty accordion. His arms had great big rolls on ‘em from his shoulders on down around his elbows and he had fatty bangles around both wrists.

A long time ago, when Shrimp and I signed on as the only crew of the Darla Jean, Shrimp made a deal with Captain Delacroix that Shrimp would get paid half the wages I would for the same work…and all the shrimp he could eat. I think Captain Delacroix thought he got over easy on Shrimp Roll at first, thinking that eventually even a fat man like Shrimp would get sick of eatin’ one thing over and over again. But the Captain was wrong. Shrimp Rolls cost Delacroix more in shrimp than if he’d of been paid like the King of England.

That’s not to say that the Captain didn’t get something out of the deal. Since Shrimp Rolls got paid in crustaceans, he worked like five men, cause every net we hauled in was his dinner. And you ‘aint never lived until you seen a 400 pound man hanging out over the Gulf of Mexico runnin’ shrimp nets out to the end of the outrigger boom. Every time Shrimpy headed out on one side or the other, the Darla Jean would list over towards Shrimp Rolls like one of them rich folks’ sailboats tippin’ in the wind.