The Waterman: A Novel of the Chesapeake Bay (15 page)

“Jesus,” said Matty.

The guys in the line on the rooftop stood still. Most of them had long hair, some even shoulder length. Byron was the exception. They all appeared muscular, and their muscles were flexed and ready. They were taking deep breaths, their chests expanding and contracting slowly, and in unison. They all seemed to be concentrating. Everyone was watching them. The one closest to the side of the boathouse raised his arms straight up, and the rest followed. They brought their arms down slowly, and then they all dove out, in unison, out far away from the boathouse, far into the sky, arms reaching, out over the river, suspended for a moment, and then falling in a dive, together, toward the water, and they seemed gone. And then they were up, splashing, shouting, and laughing, and the girls on the blankets were cheering.

“Wow,” said Kate. “Why haven't we been here before? I've been missing this?”

Clay counted heads in the water.

Matty said, “What a picture that would make. I have to get my camera.”

“I think that was their only dive,” Laura-Dez said. “They were just jumping before. At least it better be.”

“Now, that should be in
National Geographic!
” Kate exclaimed, laughing. “Endangered creatures of the Chesapeake, or something.”

“Give her some binoculars,” Matty quipped. He stood up.

“It's not like that,” she said. “And sit down, why don't you? You've taken enough pictures. Enjoy the day.” She reached up for his hand, but he ignored her.

The divers had begun to climb the ladder to the dock on which the first landing of the boathouse sat. One of them pushed another off the ladder. Another jumped up on the handrail and dove back into the water. One was shouting for his girlfriend to strip and come in swimming, but she pretended not to hear. Byron had climbed out and was walking along the shore toward them, dripping wet. His right hand covered the purplish scar that ran across his side above his hip. Laura-Dez threw him a towel.

“Sorry,” he said, grabbing it and covering himself.

“You're cute, but not that cute.”

“That was such a rush. But my head's still ringing.” He shook the water from his hair and then wrapped the towel around his waist. “How'd we look?”

“Like a bunch of naked boys showing off,” Laura-Dez said, feigning disinterest.

“I thought you all were amazing,” Kate said. She spoke carefully. “I will remember you like that. In the air. So beautiful.”

Byron seemed to appreciate her for the remark. “Yeah. It felt very cool,” he responded. “Wild.”

The rest of the afternoon unwound itself at a languorous pace, a picnic on the river. People moved from blanket to blanket, sharing food and wine and an occasional joint. Children ran through the picnic baskets. A few splashed in the shallows. Byron had brought his guitar and played it with some others. It was about four o' clock when Clay, out on the dock, saw the first spinnaker running up the Choptank, billowing like a golden cloud. Soon after, through the distant sheen of river air, he could make out the figure of a red serpent emblazoned across the sail, wavering like a mirage. The
Scarlet Dragon
. He knew the boat, one of Annapolis's premier racing sloops, and was not surprised she was first. Behind her he saw a second sail, pale with rose stripes, and then a third spinnaker, riffling crimson, as the racers raised their headsails after coming around the mark off the tip of Tilghman Island.

“Look!” someone shouted from the bank. And soon there was a crowd with Clay, watching the distant colored sails, puffed out like red-and-gold roosters, approaching as though in slow motion through the thin and sparkling haze of the Choptank in the summer sun. Clay was watching when Kate came up and put her hand on his shoulder. Then she took his arm, nestling close.

Clay looked at her. Her fine hair blew around her forehead. He looked back at the river. “Where's Matty?” Clay said.

“He ran to get his camera. He couldn't miss this sight.”

“He's already missing it, if he's worrying about his camera.”

Kate gazed out at the wide river adorned with the gilded spinnakers. “But we're seeing it,” she answered.

Barker Cull didn't waste any time the next morning. They were rigged and on the river by eight, and only
Flying Cloud
was out before them.

Including Barker, and his nephew, Lex, who was ten and was the bailer, there were twelve on
Misty
. Barker showed each crew member his place in the boat. He gave Clay the foresail sheet, and his brother, Earl, the main. Pal Tyler had the kite. Byron was to work the jib sheet and direct Matty on the springboard until he learned to balance with the other crew members. Two crew members would climb out on each board. Like parallel seesaws, angled high, they would counterbalance the effort of the wind to push over the streamlined sail-heavy racer.

The wind was out of the south and brisk at twelve to fifteen knots. “A good spike of a breeze,” Barker called it. The sky was deep blue with an occasional cotton fluff trailing like a banner. The river gushed up green and foamy along the gunnels of the boat and stirred silver out to the horizon. At anchor were the hundred or so sailing yachts that had come up the day before from Annapolis, all tied alongside each other in rafts of eight or ten boats
along the shore near Oxford. Teenagers worked Boston Whalers as ferries, taking the sailboat crews to and from the yacht club for showers or breakfast. A flotilla of party boats and cruisers milled about, waiting for the race to get started. The log canoes would sail in the morning, and the afternoon was set aside for the smaller Penguin, Flying Dutchman, and Star one-designs to race.

Barker pinched up close on a starboard tack and let his crew work the boards for a while and feel the sway of the wind and water. He took her downstream and then came about and traversed the channel. During the first few tacks, Matty was slow and clumsy compared to the others, but he soon got the idea. He started out second man on his board, but he had bulk, and once Barker saw he could move, he put him first on the middle board.

The race started at half past nine, and at the ten-minute gun Clay looked up and saw the river full of white sails moving across one another and surfing the blue swells in a dreamlike minuet.
Misty
carried two stepped masts, raked aft, holding their massive leg-of-mutton sails, and a boom-fitted jib—three large sails of canvas spreading from bowsprit to stern—and then a kite rising above the head of the foresail, all powering a narrow dugout hull with a deep centerboard. Barker began talking to Clay, Earl, Pal, and Byron in a steady chatter about strategy. At the five-minute gun, Barker was abreast of
Flying Cloud,
and he and its captain were shouting at each other.

“Looks right sharp for an old gal gone in the beam,” the other man hollered. “Hope she likes tastin' my stale air.”

“Keep to your point there, Clacky,” Barker hollered back. “You don't want your crew to be swimmin' too soon, now!”

Clay motioned to Jed Sparks, who was handling
Flying Cloud
's main, and Jed saluted in return.

Barker called out, announcing three minutes to the start. At one minute he started cussing. “We're too fast, boys,” he shouted. “Too goddamn fast.”
Misty
was rapidly approaching the starting line but
couldn't cross it before the starting gun or she would have to come round about and recross the line. Clay eased off the foresail sheet, and Earl and Byron both let out sail, and they slowed some. “Thirty seconds. Men, drag off the boards,” Barker bellowed. Even with the loosened sails,
Misty
was flying from the momentum. “It's gonna be close—get into the goddamn water!” he screamed. Matty looked and saw the other crew members hanging on to the boards with their hands and lowering their bodies into the river, dragging their mass through the swiftly passing water, trying to slow the boat.

“Matty, goddamn it, get into the water!” It was Byron echoing Barker, and Matty slowly lowered his legs into the water, holding on to the board, but went no further.

“Five seconds!” Barker shouted. The nose of the boat was even with the line between the two orange buoys.
Bang!
The gun went off. “We made it! Get your lazy asses out of the water! Out now! Up! Up, boys! Move it, goddamn your lazy souls!” Matty was quick, up first as the rest hauled themselves back onto the boards, drenched. Clay had tightened up on his sheet, as Earl and Byron had on theirs, and
Misty
was surfing through the spray, boats on either side of her, boats moving faster because they had not had to slow their momentum for the start.

“Tighten that main. Pull in on the kite.”
Misty
accelerated, rushing through the foam. Matty, out on the tip of his board, could almost have reached and touched the boom of the boat next to them, except that he was holding on for dear life. “Come down, Matty,” he heard Byron say quietly, and he inched down the board. The foam rushed and seethed below him. “Steady there, boy. Feel it. Pay attention. Feel that blow now.”

As they sailed past the Town Dock, Clay looked and saw Kate standing out on the end, waving a red scarf. Matty, balancing on the springboard, had his back to her and couldn't see. The wind, Clay could sense, was strengthening in incremental gusts.

A smaller canoe, one that had taken an early lead on the first leg and was down the channel, was the first to go over. Clay saw it lurch and swamp but wasn't sure which boat it was.

“That's
Island Bird,
” Barker yelled. “Built in 1882. She's done. Her sister
Island Blossom
's up ahead. Built in 1892.” He grinned. “Getting' blustery now, boys,” he continued. “She won't be the last. Be ready now! You, Lex, work that bail.” Lex was in the center of the boat, with a halved Clorox bottle in his hand. His job was to constantly scoop up and throw overboard the water that came in over the side and sloshed around the bottom of the canoe.

Clay felt the line and the pull and give needed to keep the sheet full and right with the wind. No winches. Only block and tackle. It took strong arms to man the sheets.

The boat flew off its port tack and seemed to speed-glide through the element as though it were almost airborne—heeled over, perfectly balanced with weight and wind, its sails redundant. The green froth flew by the gunnel in a rush of sound and foam.
Misty
was faster than the smaller canoes and was able to pass them before the first mark. Clay saw that they were gradually gaining on the two larger boats ahead, but there was still considerable distance to make up.

He watched Matty, who was moving a few inches at a time, up and then down his board, watching the sails and the masts intently. Clay called to him. They locked eyes for a moment. Matty nodded and smiled, and then shifted his stare back to the sails.

After a few minutes, Clay could make out the windward mark, a yellow inflated buoy out past Bachelor Point. He watched it get closer as he worked the sheet, keeping track of the pressure of the wind in and around the sail.

“That's
Flying Cloud
and
Jaydee
ahead,” Barker shouted. “Watch 'em close as they round the mark, and be ready to come about. Wind's getting swirly. I'll count down from ‘five' to ‘go' and
then I'll swing. On ‘go' you boys throw the boards, and be quick about it.”

As they approached, they could see
Jaydee
reach the mark first and turn into the wind, the crew heaving the boards across to the opposite gunnel.
Flying Cloud
turned right behind her and slightly to her leeward. As
Jaydee
's sails took, though, she seemed to go over too much, and then, in an overcorrection on the sheets, she bounced back too far. As though in slow motion she listed and fell on her side, over further and further, not righting herself, her skipper cursing and the crew shouting, as her sails settled into the river.
Flying Cloud
had to take evasive action and ease off the wind, losing some ground. Barker continued shouting through all the excitement and turmoil, shouting at
Jaydee
's skipper and crew as he approached, laughing and shouting at the wind itself.

“We got a break there, boys,” he continued. “Let's make the most of it.” He started yelling the countdown, “Five, four, three, two, one, go!” as he swung the tiller hard to port. “Go, goddamn you lazy suckers, go! Bail there, Lex. Bail! Go, boys—run those boards across there! Now set them things and climb boys, yes, climb!” Clay released the port foresail sheet and simultaneously hauled in the starboard sheet, pulling it through the blocks and tightening with his arms and shoulders. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Matty, who followed the others. He swung down off the board, grabbed his end, and in unison with a mate pulled out the board and stepped it across, then slid it out over the opposite side rail and fixed its edge beneath the leeward washboard before shinnying out to balance. The sails filled and the canoe surged forward, making new spray in the sun. She was balanced and never lost momentum. Barker cut just inside the floating
Jaydee
and, grinning widely, tipped his hat to the captain and crew as he glided by.
Flying Cloud
had moved back in, but since she had lost ground she was only two boat lengths ahead. The three other boats remaining
in the race, smaller and not as fast, had yet to round the first mark and were well behind.

Over the first half of the next leg,
Misty
and
Flying Cloud
ran even, the spray flying and the wind strong, coming more from the southwest.
Flying Cloud
was outside, to windward, and began to move closer to
Misty
.

“She's tryin' to steal our wind, goddamn it,” Barker shouted. “Pinch those sheets. Make some magic, boys. I want to cut out where she won't follow!” Clay started to pull his line tighter, but
Misty
's sails began to luff as
Flying Cloud
took her wind and forged ahead. Barker cursed. They watched as she opened up her lead. Clay adjusted his sheet as did the others and they regained their momentum.