The Waterman: A Novel of the Chesapeake Bay Read online

  Leaving the campus, he drove out of the city to the beltway and around toward Annapolis. There was little traffic. He turned on the radio and listened to the news for a while. President Nixon was returning from California. McGovern and Humphrey were battling it out in the Democratic primaries. The Paris peace talks had stalled again. The negotiators were at odds over the shape of the bargaining table. He changed the channel and listened to Country Joe and the Fish singing “one, two, three, what are we fighting for . . .” The news came back on and he turned off the radio and started thinking about all he had to do to get ready. The day was cold and clear. Driving over the Bay Bridge, he could see south past Thomas Point to the West River, and north past the Magothy to Gibson Island and beyond, where the horizon met the sky in a thin stream of silver vapor. A single oyster dredger moved under sail plowing the banks below Rock Hall. She was running with the wind, and her sails were spread wing on wing; she looked like a huge white seabird puffed out proud and steady against the moving blue of the Bay.

  Before Clay had left the farmhouse near Trappe to return to school, Curtis Collison had agreed to rent him the small bedroom for $120 a month. Curtis was there when he arrived and watched him and Byron unload his belongings. Afterward, Clay and Byron hung out in the kitchen. Byron had put some water on the stove.

  “You want it black?”

  “Yeah.” Clay sat resting at the table.

  “Be sure when Curtis gets drunk to leave him alone,” Byron mentioned. “When he drinks, he gets ugly. He likes to fight.”

  “How often is that?” Clay asked.

  “Not too often,” Byron returned. “Not as often as me.” He didn’t smile when he said this.

  Byron poured out two cups of instant coffee and brought them to the table. They each sipped at the hot liquid. A clock radio on the counter was on, and the disc jockey was counting down the top ten country tunes.

  “So what’s your plan?”

  Clay stirred his coffee with a finger. “I told you before. I’m going on the river.”

  Byron shook his head. “I hoped you might come to your senses.”

  “There’s a pull to it. I feel it, that’s all.”

  Byron leaned away, tilting his chair. “You know, I was thinkin’ back. There used to be shad in the Bay. Tons of ’em. And sturgeon. Oyster beds like natural reefs, big enough to give names to. Clams. Shit.”

  Clay nodded. “I know. The whole world’s that way. Changing.”

  “Yeah. But making a living on the water . . . Ain’t so easy no more.”

  “She’s still got life, Byron. She’s changed. But she’s still brimming.”

  Clay heard a commotion outside and stood and walked to the kitchen door. Opening it, he looked through the screen to the southern cornfield. It was full of snow geese, and so was the air above it. He stepped out on the porch, and their barking filled his ears as hundreds of them dropped like leaves from the sky, floating the last few feet to the ground, where others snorted through the stalks, feeding on the kernels left by the husking machines.

  Byron had joined him on the porch. “Never seen so many snow geese as the last few years,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Different cycles seem to play their way out, I guess.”

  “There’s a cause.”

  “Sure there is. Those guys on the moon. Upset the balance of gravity.”

  “Right.”

  “I’m serious. Think about it.”

  Clay gave him a playful shove with his shoulder. “How about all those jets landing at Friendship Airport every day. Suppose they knock the earth off kilter?”

  Byron frowned. “Moon’s different. Smaller. Virgin.”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, no one really knows, do they?”

  “The Bay has her cycles too. And the crabs are strong as ever. If I can just make one or two good seasons, I believe it will work. I could build a business. That’s what I plan to do. I figure I’ll give it a year or two. Build up my pots. Then reassess.” Clay turned toward Byron. “I’m going to be needing a culler. At first. Then a partner for the second boat, I figure. Eventually.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Got any ideas?”

  Byron backed up, shaking his head. “You’re doing too much dreamin’.”

  “What are you living on now, anyway?”

  Byron thought for a moment. “I really don’t want to know.”

  “One day you got to make a move. Put something in front.”

  “Maybe.” Byron walked down the steps and opened the door to his pickup. From under the front seat he pulled an opened bottle of Calvert whiskey and returned with it to the stoop.

  “Living off the water, you live free,” Clay said.

  “To be free, you got to be free in your mind.” Byron took a drink from the bottle and offered it to Clay, who took a drink himself and passed it back.

  “Bay air might help some with that.”

  “I think maybe you’ve gotten too much air.”

  Clay kicked a stone off the porch. “We’d make good partners.”

  “You got a college education. Think with all that learning you’d know enough not to throw it away.”

  “I want to be outdoors. I don’t like working inside.”

  Byron took another drink. “Yeah, I know.”

  “What do you got to lose?” Clay asked. “Could be like when we were kids.”

  Byron raised the whiskey bottle and held it up to the light. “Not much left. There or here, right now.”

  “Well?”

  “I ain’t really right, now, Clay. And I ain’t sure I want to be. I just don’t know.”

  “Well, will you think on it?”

  Byron gulped down the remaining whiskey. “Sure,” he said. “Course I will. I’ll think on it. But don’t hold your breath, now.”

  Clay, satisfied, turned to watch the snow geese swirling over the amber land. White petals free-falling, awhirl in a vortex.

  7

  The Bay-built workboat rested on crosses of seasoned hardwood, having been hoisted and wheeled in the day before. The barn was womblike, dark, warmed by a torpedo space heater that glowed red-hot in the shadows. Shrouds of tobacco leaves hung drying from the rafters above, emitting a sweet, torpid aroma that mixed with the creosote and varnish used on the boats, the smells of river decay, brine, flesh, urine, and sweat. The power spray had knocked loose the bone and barnacle fragments grafted to the bateau’s hull, along with the slime and matted cockle hair. The lead copper underpaint was gone in places. Even the color of the wood had been leached away by time and salt, leaving scoured streaks smooth as oil.

  Clay had been sanding since morning. He put his hand on the transom of the bateau and began to walk her line. Built on Tilghman Island for his father when Clay was a boy, she was solid mahogany, ran thirty-six feet to her bow, and needed three feet of water for her keel and single propeller to clear bottom. Driven by an oversize 280-horsepower GM gas engine set just aft of center and enclosed in a large engine box, she had speed greater than most workboats of her size, the majority of which used diesel power. A canopy top running from midship forward offered ample headroom above the cockpit, which stepped down into the fully enclosed bow cabin, with icebox, bunk, and marine toilet and sink. A marine radio, depth finder, and compass were set in the cabin, above the wheel. The boat could be run from inside the cabin or from the open cockpit at midship, where a full set of engine controls and a tiller post were fixed to the port side, adjacent to the engine box. For one man to run pots or a trotline by himself, he had to be able to maneuver the boat from midship, where he dipped the crabs or pulled the pots.

  He walked outside and sat dangling his legs from the wharf his father had once owned and lost. Shafts of sunlight streamed through the porous clouds, creating halos that shimmered across the cold, clear skin of the river. The watery breeze cooled his face, sweaty from his work. He shaded his eyes from the wind and the shifting light.

  He
tried to remember Paula Firth and how she looked in his car that night, so smooth and bare. It was Friday. He had finally reached her, and she had told him to meet her later at a party down Wye Neck. He realized he hardly knew her and wondered where they would go from where they had been.

  Another day of sanding, he figured, and he could begin to patch and paint the bottom. Then he would work on the sides and rails. He planned to spend some time on Saturday in Cambridge looking for used pots and a bait supplier. He figured he could bend a few pots himself as well. He also had to find a hydraulic pot puller and attach it to his port rail. That would cost him and would be done last, after the pots were ready, if he could find a way to pay for it.

  “You lay your bait pots when the first dogwood buds swell open.” That’s what Pappy always said. He figured on about two weeks till then, which fit well, as it would take two weeks to get ready. He got up and went back inside the boat barn, back to work. He picked up the electric sander, put the gauze mask on over his nose and mouth, and ducked back under the hull. Within moments the taste of the lead from the paint dust was again in the back of his throat.

  He had offered to pick Paula up, but she had told him that she was going to dinner with some girlfriends and would meet him at the party. She gave him the address and directions. He was on Wye Neck Road looking for a sign that said ferry bridge farm. He found it and turned onto a long, poplar-lined driveway. There were cars lined up along the drive, and he could see people in blue jeans milling around in the front yard.

  He parked and walked up to the columned front porch. A few people he knew were on the portico, holding beers or drinks. Two girls in sweaters sat sharing a porch swing and a joint. They offered him some as he passed, and he declined politely. Sounds of laughter and conversation mixing with the beat of Eric Clapton filtered outside.

  Seeing a crowd in the entranceway, Clay backed down the stairs. He walked along the front of the house, landscaped with symmetrically trimmed boxwood, and past the red brick two-story extension, which ran east and ended at a stone path leading to a pool house. He turned off the path and walked around the house to the back and out onto a sweeping lawn that sloped down to the Miles River. He walked down away from the house. The air was turning cold and he could see his breath. The river was still, lapping gently against the riprap bulkhead. Overhead the sky was dark and starless. There were no lights on the pier, which ran about a hundred feet out into the river. He turned and watched the figures in the windows and the light that filled the windows and flooded through. He saw girls silhouetted in the light, laughing. He watched them move and bend, and while he watched, he felt the breath and pulse of the river, measured, steady, faithful. He thought about himself and his own fevered stalking and wondered how the sanctuary of the river—for all its beauty and power—could be insufficient, and how his own longing and loneliness remained.

  Inside, the house was crowded and filled with smoke, music, and movement. He found the keg in the kitchen and helped himself to a cup of beer. He knew a few people but didn’t see Paula. He worked his way into the living room, where in one corner three girls in cowboy boots danced to Van Morrison singing “Brown Eyed Girl.”

  Downstairs he found Barker Cull at a pool table, playing dollar eight ball. Clay watched as Barker cracked the cue off the break, sinking the five, and then dropped three more before catching the corner of the side pocket on a bank shot.

  “You whore, you.”

  Barker took a deep draw from a joint and held it out to Clay. “Some monkey weed there, Captain?”

  Clay took a hit.

  Barker looked at a skinny blond leaning against the wall with two friends. “Shirley, darling, run get us a few more beers out of the keg, will ya?”

  Shirley reached for the joint and sucked at it between her red fingernails, blowing him a smoky slipstream kiss as she exhaled. Then she passed the joint to her friends and turned up the stairs.

  “How’s the pot-bendin’ business?” Barker said, reaching for a half-full bottle of tequila.

  Clay shrugged.

  “Might try talkin’ to Dell Swann down at Pier Street for extra pots. He’s sellin’ ’em. Most are usable. Another season or two anyway.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I got a good trade for alewives. Had a fair sale to the feed plant. Froze a bunch too. The rest salted up nice. Just let me know when you’re ready, and I’ll fill a barrel or two for you. Get you started anyway. Part of your payment for savin’ my pound haul.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Where you gonna sell?”

  Clay watched Barker’s opponent bank the six off the side into the corner.

  “Not sure. Probably stick close to home. Jed Sparks. He’s running Pappy’s wholesale operation now. You know, for the bank.”

  “Let me know his prices. I might have a deal on a refrigerator truck. Ship to D.C.”

  “Appreciate it,” Clay said.

  He wandered up the stairs to the second-story hallway, which was lined with people he didn’t know. He walked its length, and as he turned back he glanced in one of the bedrooms and saw Mac Longley sitting cross-legged on the floor with his back against the bed. A round mirror was on the rug in front of him, holding lines of white powder. To his left sat Teresa Bonner, who had gone to Easton High School with them, and to his right, Paula. She wore a sailor’s cap and held a rolled-up dollar bill in her hand. She waved to him.

  He stepped into the room.

  “Clay Wakeman. Goddamn. How ya been? Wanna try a sheep’s leg?” Longley asked, grinning. “Take the edge off.”

  “Sit down, Clay.” Paula gestured generously with her arm, sweeping it before her as though offering him the field. Her silver bracelets jingled with the motion. “Get high.” She reached for her beer, and Clay saw her breasts move under her blouse.

  Clay stood, wrapping his arms about him. “I think I’ll hold off for now,” he said.

  Mac licked the tip of his finger and ran it over the mirror, gathering some powder on it, and then put it in Paula’s mouth and pressed it over the front of her gums. “Like a freight train.”

  “Been here long, Clay?” Teresa asked.

  “Watched Barker Cull shoot some pool.”

  “Nice party.” Paula laughed.

  “Heard you’re going on the water,” Longley remarked.

  “Yeah,” Clay answered.

  “Fool’s life, there.” Longley pointed to the lines of coke. “Better off getting high.” He sniffed. “Bay’s going sour, you know.” He squinted up at Clay. “It’s the government dumping that’s doing it.”

  Clay was suddenly impatient. “How about a dance?” he said to Paula.

  Paula looked quizzical. “Now? I’m sorry, Clay, but not now.” She reached across the mirror and squeezed Longley on the thigh. “I can’t leave in the middle of dessert, now can I, Mac?” The two of them laughed. She looked up at Clay, pouting. “But we’ll share with you.”

  Clay studied her for a moment. “You go ahead,” he finally said. His voice seemed to him to come from a far-off place. Longley offered the mirror to Teresa, who bent over it and snorted. Clay felt tired. He studied his hands, which were bruised and stained from the day’s work, and then he saw himself for a moment, earlier, beneath the underside of his bateau, smelling the lead from the sanding, his fingers feeling those places that were so smooth, the mottled streaks, shell gray, almost like driftwood. He heard Paula saying something but had lost his sense of the present. He tried to focus. There was some commotion behind him, and someone lurched in carrying two beers and handed one to Longley, nearly falling over. It was Byron, and as he started to slide down the wall, Clay took his arm and held him up. Paula was talking about the band that was supposed to be playing at Kent Island on Saturday and how she knew the lead singer. Longley began to lay out some more cocaine. Clay told Byron he needed to talk to him about something.

  “Leave him be, Clay. Let him party,” Longley said. “He’s grown.”

  Byron sta
rted to shake his head, but Clay held him and asked him again, telling him he needed his company, and then Clay had him going, down the hallway and the stairs and out the front door. Clay sat them down on the porch steps and breathed. He could feel the low, moist cloud front across the sky.

  “I appreciate your company right now,” Clay repeated. “That’s all.”

  He got Byron back up and walked him to his Chevy wagon. When he drove Byron back down the lane, he saw couples in some of the cars, embracing.

  Back at the farmhouse, Clay made coffee. The telephone rang. It was Byron’s mother, Blackie, and Clay talked to her.

  “What’s up?” Byron slurred through half-shut eyes.

  “Blackie called. Your father’s been picked up again.”

  “Where?” Byron tried to speak more clearly.

  “VFW.”

  “I mean, where’s he at?”

  “Town jail.”

  “I got to go.” Byron started to try to rise.

  “You can’t go anywhere. I’m going.”

  “Like hell. I do this one.”

  “Not tonight you’re not. They’d take one look at you and lock you up with him.”

  “Got to, though.”

  “Tonight, I’ll help,” Clay said, and talked to Byron until he came around. “Come on, then,” Clay finished. “I’ll drive. We’ll go together.”