The Waterman: A Novel of the Chesapeake Bay (11 page)

“I've been bringing old Mase home from the VFW since I was about ten”—Byron tilted the Jim Beam—“which you well know. You'd think I'd've learned something.”

Clay considered. “You have, I'm sure.”

“I'm worse. And worse than that, I don't give a fuck.”

Byron turned the label of the whiskey bottle to face him and studied it.

“Give it some time. Yourself. You're deserving of some patience. From your own self.”

Byron rocked for a while.

“I feel like I'm going in circles. Can't see nothin' ahead. I remind myself of that story about poor Johnnydog.”

“About who?”

“Johnnydog Cooper.”

“What?”

“You never heard? Don't guess you knew him. Terrible, really. From Cambridge. Drowned hisself last fall. Young waterman. Strong swimmer, everyone said.”

Clay shifted.

“Was out trotlining, late season. Near dark. His engine quit. Story is he figured he'd anchor and swim to shore. Apparently swam into a swarm of nettles with his face down and his eyes open. Blinded him. Couldn't see the shore. His boat. Nothin'. Swam in circles till he drowned.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah.”

“Christ, Byron.”

“I know. They found him with his lids swollen shut. His eyes were burnt blind.”

“Damn.” Clay shivered and took a drink. “You do hear the stories, don't you?”

“It was all over the county. In the papers, even. You were at school.”

Clay watched his friend as Byron rose and walked across the low-lit room to the stove. He had to duck to avoid the slanting roof. With the black apron of the iron stove already open, he threw in some pieces of split oak taken from the stack next to the wall. The two of them gazed into the orange center of the fire, crackling blue and violet, and let the fire burn away the image of Johnnydog, out there swimming to nowhere, unable to see.

“You still being courted by Mac Longley?” Clay asked after a while.

Byron frowned. “He does go on with me. Told me the other night his quote
operation,
unquote, runs the whole length of the Bay. Delaware to Norfolk. Said his people—the ones he works for, I guess—used to smuggle shit in from South America by using carriers pretending to be tourists. They'd swallow the coke packed into condoms before flying home. Said one girl's broke on the airplane. She didn't make it. So they had to find a better way. I know he's at least half full of bullshit. But apparently they have.”

“What's that?”

“Found another way.”

“What?”

“I don't know what. I guess it involves him. That's all I know.”

“Nice folks,” Clay added. “Cocaine inside condoms.”

“Yeah.”

Clay asked Byron to wait a minute and got up and went to his room. He came back with the corroded green ammunition box,
opened it, and carefully unfolded Pappy's creased and dried-out chart of the location of the wreck of the Spanish frigate, just above the Virginia line, above Smith Island. Clay showed the chart to Byron and told him the story. “That steel was so perfect,” he finished, “Pappy said that six weeks out of the water there wasn't even any oxidation. I'd like to find somebody today who could forge steel like that.”

Byron held the chart down at his side, looking queerly at Clay, his eyebrows knotted.

“We're talking the sixteen hundreds.” Clay took a drink. “Once we raise enough money crabbing,” he went on, “I figure we can go on a treasure hunt.”

Byron got off his chair and sat on the floor, placing the chart in front of him so that the firelight fell across it. He traced the coordinates with his finger. With eyes gleaming and new images in his mind, he laughed and sat back up on the rocker. “Your father,” he said. “What a fuckin' pisser. Smith Island. Wide as an ocean down there. Right above the Virginia line. You think this is the real thing?”

Clay shrugged. “Pappy found the wreck. And the ax. He was convinced.”

“Well, goddamn. Why don't we just go scuba down there?”

Clay shook his head. “Pappy went back. He tried. A bunch of times. Said it needed a proper salvage boat. Sonar, metal detectors, vacuums. The bottom's too shifty down there. The silt covers everything.” Clay reached for the chart. “This stays private now, Buck.”

Byron handed it to him. “Whatever.”

“It's a dream anyway. But for me I want it to stay private. Between us and Pappy.”

“Pappy ain't gonna say anything.”

Clay gave Byron a look, folded up the chart, and put it back in the metal box. He got up and took the box back to his room, came back, and worked the fire, stirring the red ash.

“Sorry,” Byron said.

Clay took another drink of whiskey. “Hell. You're right, I'm sure. He's gone. But what do you think?”

Byron was quiet for a minute. Then he got up and walked over to his bureau. He opened a drawer and pulled a photograph out. He handed it to Clay. The picture showed three guys in army fatigues. Byron was in the center. All three had their arms around one another's shoulders and were smiling. The one on the left was a black man. None of them looked to be over twenty.

“They were the ones that helped me. Saved my life. But I couldn't get them out.”

Clay studied the picture for a long while, then stood up and returned the picture to the drawer. After he shut the drawer, he sat on the couch, his arms on his knees. “I'm sorry.”

Byron took a deep breath.

Clay was silent.

“You know, it never bothered me. What you did. Protestin' about the war and all.”

Clay watched Byron squat down and take another turn poking the fire.

“It was more avoiding than protesting.”

“Well, whatever. Being a pacifist or whatever.”

Clay thought of Byron that summer after high school. Getting ready for boot camp. Driving around with a near arsenal in the back of his pickup. Talking the talk.

“It seemed to make sense at the time.” Clay reached over and took a swig from the bottle of Jim Beam.

“You were smart. To avoid it.”

Clay put the bottle down. “I don't know. Maybe. It was the easy way to go. I jumped on the easy train, really.”

“Safe is smart. Trust me.”

Clay mulled this over. “I'm not proud about it. Not sorry or anything either. I was just lucky, maybe. I mean, peace sounded right. But I was just taken up. Going along. Taken up by events, the
same as you. Most everyone I knew in school was the same. It was just easy. We weren't thinking enough about you guys. We pretended we were, but we weren't.”

Byron closed the cast-iron hatch and sat back down on the rocker. He looked at Clay.

“You were there at the hospital.”

“Yeah. Well, of course I was.”

Clay was surprised that Byron was speaking about this and waited for him to continue. But Byron stopped.

“We just didn't think enough about finding a way to object and still show support for the boys getting the worst of it.”

Clay halted, then tried again. “I know it was bad over there.”

Byron didn't respond. The only sound was the crackling and hissing of the wood from the squat black stove. Finally, Byron changed the subject back.

“I suppose I could get a job with the pool service. If I wanted a job, that is.”

“Sure.”

“I'd probably do better on the water. Cleaner. Less like doing somebody else's shitwork.”

“You got that right.”

“Not that I think it's such a good idea for you. I already told you that.”

“You did, in fact.”

The two friends watched each other.

“Better than drug running,” Clay commented. “Whatever Mac Longley's doing.”

Byron took another swallow of bourbon. “I suppose. Course, now you got a treasure to find. That's something different. Something worth considerin'.” He rocked back. “I ain't gonna make it for long like this, just sittin' around, am I?”

“I'd say you're a goner if you don't find something to put yourself back into.”

“If the crabs get us goin', I reckon we could do some oysterin' in the winter.”

“Yeah. Maybe run some fishing parties too.”

“I'd like to see the rock come back.”

“Blues are good fishing. And they're catching some big drum down south a bit. Least that's what I've heard.”

“That would all be to supplement, though.”

“That's right. But with a good season we could start on another boat over the winter. With you helping, we could probably build it before spring. With two boats next year, hell, we'd have ourselves the start of a business.”

Byron seemed amused at all this. “How many more pots you need to get started?”

“Maybe another fifty. To get a decent lay. Then we could add to them.”

“About five hundred bucks?”

“Less if we bend them.”

“Barker'll front us some bait, I'm sure.”

“He's already offered. He's got frozen and salted.”

“Five hundred, huh. I probably got that much. In the bank.” Byron considered. “Ain't that convenient?”

“Convenient. That's the word for it.”

Byron stretched his arms over his head, then winced, bringing his hand down to his side, the side where the ragged scar ran across his skin above his hip. He put his hand under his shirt, touching it, while Clay watched. Byron seemed to relax. “Okay,” he said. “I'll give it a try. That's all I can say. If you're sure you want me.”

Clay broke into a grin.

Byron shook his head again. “Maybe you're goin' brain-dead, though. Talking me into this shit. Brain-dead.” Byron reached for the remainder of the joint. He found a match and struck it on the floor. The match fired into blue flame. Clay thought back to the
hospital in Bethesda where Byron was laid up, and he thought of the other boys there and how they were hurt. He had stayed for days with Byron and his mother, Blackie. Mason was there too, but Mason couldn't visit without crying. Clay thought of the hospital, and then he thought of Pappy floating on the river somewhere. He pushed both thoughts aside and saw an ancient frigate, rusted and mysterious, in the silt under the dim water. He pushed that thought away too and saw his workboat sitting quiet and polished in the boat barn, silent in the night, waiting for her launch, and as he breathed in the marijuana, he saw the river, its surface shimmering in the light, and felt eager to start.

They were ready by Monday, the fifteenth of May. Clay noted the date. He heard Byron wrestling on his clothes in the attic. It had taken them longer than he had expected to finish bending the pots, install the hauler, and complete the engine work. He had hoped to have been ready earlier. But over the past week, Byron had worked with him nearly every day, and he felt pleased about that, though Byron drank while he worked and was mostly useless by late afternoon. The bateau had been launched on Saturday, and the pots and the bait barrels loaded the day after. Before the launch he had renamed the bateau the
Miss Sarah,
for his mother. Byron got Laura-Dez, who was studying art at Chesapeake College, to paint the name nicely on the stern. She wouldn't take any pay for it.

Clay heard Byron come noisily down the stairs. In the kitchen they drank coffee. Byron went back up the stairs and came down with a pint of Calvert whiskey, mixing some in his cup.

“I'm thirsty. Dry as the desert.”

Clay shrugged.

“Sorry,” he said. “Up all night.” And he took a long drink.

“Don't bother me. Long as you do your share. And you always have.”

“Just a couple to dry the sweats.” He took a drink directly from the bottle.

“You want some toast?”

“Nah.”

“I've made us some beef sandwiches. We'll get hungry.”

“Good.”

Byron brought the bottle but let it lie on the seat between them as they drove through the predawn mist down St. Michaels Road, the canopy of oaks along the Bellevue stretch looming like overseers above them in the hush of the dark country morning. They drove without talking and parked in the wharf lot, the oyster shells crunching under the tires of the pickup.

The air was still as they walked past the picking shack and onto the dock toward the
Miss Sarah
. Low across the eastern sky, a mantle of crimson tinged the horizon and began changing texture as they watched, the faint light ascending in miniature spires to violet and expanding to spheres of blue. In her slip the
Miss Sarah
looked overladen with the pots, which were stacked and lashed high on the deck and on the canopy above, but she rode serenely on the water. The two of them looked at her for a minute and then climbed aboard. Clay primed and fired the engine, which started smooth and idled steady. Byron released the lines. Clay put her in gear, and moments later they were clear of the slip and moving slowly past the wharf and out into the creek.

Without hurry, the
Miss Sarah
cut across the Tred Avon. The light from the rising sun reflected off the Oxford water tower, and Clay noticed the crew of the Oxford-Bellevue ferry doing their morning chores. The air was soft and the water mirrored the sky, flashing the rising sun's sharpness. They traveled along the bar off Benoni Point, the sandy beach edging steadily past, a lone blue heron standing on one leg in the shallows, unmoving, eyes scanning the bottom for food. Clear of the bar, they slanted southwest, aiming for Cook Point, the southernmost tip of the Choptank,
easily identified by the stands of loblolly pine that seemed to extend from the watery horizon, like a cluster of ships' masts in the distance. A swarm of gulls chased the bait fish across the way down near Cambridge. A few flocks of geese were moving just above the tree line from Blackwalnut Point below Tilghman over toward Dun Cove. The air was balmy and fresh and tasted of brine, and the sky was clear, as the newly painted bow of the
Miss Sarah
sliced through the flat silver surface, her white wake foaming behind.