The Waterman: A Novel of the Chesapeake Bay (17 page)

Matty and Laura-Dez came over and stood with Byron. Kate said thank you to Clay, who excused himself. He walked out onto the large screened porch, which ran the length of the hall, and then down the steps and out onto the sandy beach. The dark water lapped against the sterns of the day-sailers pulled up on the shore. The moon wavered just under the water, a beacon to be embraced by a drowning man, he thought. He heard some commotion and giggling out on the pier and saw a woman with her skirt up pushing away a man in a blue tuxedo. As he focused, he noticed it was Amanda and Hugo Brigman, and sitting on the dock piling next to Brigman was Mac Longley. Clay walked back in the opposite direction
and ran into Laura-Dez, Matty, and Byron coming down the steps. “C'mon,” they said, walking between some of the boats. Matty reached in his pocket and took out a joint. “Acapulco gold,” he said. “Smell.” He handed it to Laura-Dez. He lit it while she took a pull. Matty then took a deep drag and passed it to Byron, who took a toke. “We've had enough of the crowds,” Byron said. He passed it to Clay. It tasted light and smooth. “Matthew here wants to take a drive out to the point.”

“Yeah, let's,” said Laura-Dez.

“Where's Kate?”

Matty answered, “Here she comes.”

“I'll drive the truck,” Byron said. “You all pile in the back and enjoy the evening.” Laura-Dez and Matty started walking.

“Where we going?” Kate asked.

“Just some fresh air, Kate.”

They got in the back of the truck, and Byron drove slowly out of town. Laura-Dez sat next to Matty, and Kate was half on Clay's lap. He could feel the whiskey and pot. The houses and trees whirred past. His head felt hot. Kate leaned her bare back and shoulder against his arm. Byron kept straight past Pope's Tavern and drove down the Wilgus's moonlit lane, past the stand of pines where the doves all roosted, and on out to Bachelor Point and parked. They all got out, and Byron put in an eight-track tape of José Feliciano singing “Light My Fire” and turned up the sound. Byron had a blanket in the truck, so they walked out on the point and then sat on the blanket in the sand, looking out over the river. Farther out they could see the beacon from the lighthouse circling around. Matty relit the joint. Everyone took a hit, and they sat and talked in whispers and listened. Clay lay back and tried to focus on the night sky. A barn owl periodically hooted from off in the pines, a soothing, ghostlike sound that carried out over the water. He tried to listen hard for the return call of its mate.

It was some time later that Laura-Dez whispered that they
should go swimming. Clay sat up, and his head spun. Byron and then Matty happily agreed to her suggestion. And then there she was taking off first her boots, then her halter top and skirt. Matty and Byron were up and with her, and they were both trying to help her and laughing and stripping as well. And then they both pulled up Kate, who was protesting.

“No. No.” She shook her head.

Matty, wired, said, “Come on, Kate.”

And Laura-Dez, nearly naked, said Kate had to.

“Should I really?” Kate whispered, as though she needed permission but wasn't sure who to ask. Matty had gotten behind Laura-Dez and was fidgeting with her bra. And then Kate just shrugged and turned to Clay. She bent and took the bottom of her shift and lifted it slowly over her head and then stood there. “Well?” she said, watching him, a fierceness charging her eyes. She continued to stand there, uncovered, her hair falling and shining over her breasts. And then she pointed at him. “Well?” she asked. He looked at her. Laura-Dez was naked and laughing and helping Matty pull off his trousers. Clay stood before Kate. He began to unbutton his shirt. Byron was naked, and he and Laura-Dez and Matty waved at them to follow and then linked arms and started wading into the water. Clay looked at Kate, and at them all. His eyes had adjusted to the night and traced the glow the moon bestowed on Kate's skin. He watched Kate step out of her panties and hold her hand out for him, her eyes never leaving his. Her hair fell like a red flame against her. He went into the water with her. The river was bath warm. He heard the owl calling to them from the pines. He was in a dream. The water was black and still, and she swam around and against him and they could hear the others splashing and frolicking in the water. Then they were apart from the others, waist deep, on firm sand, and she put her mouth against his, there in the moon-spun water, warm and still, and his hands were all over her, and all restraint was washed away, in the
sweet breach of deceit, in the crook and anguish of a love that he knew wasn't his to take.

In the morning when he finally woke, he wasn't sure how he had gotten to where he was, there on a cot in Bertha's basement. He felt like a diesel was working inside his skull. And everybody was gone. They had left a note on the dining room table saying good-bye and thanking him. It was in Kate's handwriting. She had drawn the outline of a heart on the side. He put it in the wastebasket and looked around for Byron. No one was home. Bertha must be in church, he thought. Trying to put himself to rights, he ate some cold crab cakes. He drank warmed-up coffee that tasted like gunmetal. After a while he went out onto the front porch and found the Sunday
Baltimore Sun
. He tried to read it, but his eyes burned and ran. He put the paper down. Later he tried again but only scanned the headlines. He never got to the small column inside where the weather was reported. The article made mention of a storm developing in the Gulf, a tropical storm, early for the season, now somewhere southeast of the Yucatán. It had already been given a name: Agnes.

The following day, Monday, was the nineteenth of June. Byron mentioned this to Clay as they motored east along the southern shore of the Choptank. White streamers crisscrossed the blue sky. The water chopped as the morning tide ran against the wind.

“It's Mason and Blackie's anniversary.”

Clay took this in. He felt weak still, anemic. “Mason and Blackie,” he repeated. “Well, God bless them.”

“I figured I'd take 'em a bushel of jumbos if you don't mind. Come on over, if you like.”

“These crabs are half yours to do with what you want. Without you asking. You know that. You pick out the fattest crabs this river'll grow, and give Mase and Blackie my very best, Byron. From both of us. But I don't want to come anywhere near a drink for a while. I need a dry spell.”

Byron lit a cigarette, striking the match off his boot. “Dry spell, hell. You're just a piker.”

“How many years it been, Byron?”

Byron scratched his chin. “One more'n me, I guess. Really six months.” He grinned. “Twenty-two years, I suppose.”

Clay eased down on the throttle. Ahead the crab pot buoys were strung out southeasterly along the bank below Cook Point. They both saw the first one riding the chop like a fish bobber.

“Twenty-two years. That's a bite of time.”

“Yes, sir, it is that.”

“You think they still fire each other up?”

Byron took several deep drags on his cigarette and threw it overboard, readying himself to heave the first pot onto the hauler. “I ain't sure. I've heard 'em doin' something, though.” He thrust his hips out. “Now and then. I mean Mason's no slacker. But mostly I think they just look after one another.”

Clay eased up to the buoy, bringing the bateau alongside. Byron pulled the pot onto the hauler, and moments later it came up and was on the gunnel, full of scrapping crabs and eelgrass and slimed with a jellyfish caught in the mesh. He dumped the crabs into the cull basin.

“Smart catch here, Cap'n. Right full. Bait's light, though. A few look papery. Molt's just done, I guess.” He began to fill the bait cylinder with the alewives from the barrel.

“I was in a rush on Saturday. Didn't have time to bait up right with Kate and Matty on board.”

“They had fun, it seemed?”

“I hope so.”

“Showed Matty plenty of Eastern Shore for his pictures.”

“We did that.”

“She's a dolly bird, that one.”

Clay didn't answer.

“Hard to keep my eyes to myself, on the beach there.”

Clay turned his face to the wind, breathing deep for ballast. “Tell me something I don't know.”

Byron reached for another bait fish and stuffed it in the cage. “Course, Matty seemed to enjoy the show too. He was all over Laura-Dez—not that she seemed to mind. He's no shy one.”

“He's always attracted women. Like a magnet,” Clay answered distractedly.

“Well, I told you before, she fancies you, that Kate.”

Clay held the bateau in neutral. “Yeah. And I told you, it's just her way.” He ignored a wave of nausea.

“More'n that, from what's obvious to see.”

He shifted, unsteady. “We all got carried away. We were drunk. Stoned. It's in her blood, anyway. She just loves people.”

“May be. If you say so. But it's more'n that, where you're concerned.”

“You going to finish with that pot or what?” Clay answered impatiently.

Byron didn't budge.

Clay sagged back against the stanchion, letting the boat idle. “It was a night, all right.” His eyes strained. “Hell, I don't know. Of course there is something between us. But she and Matty have been together forever. Since high school. From the same world. Meant for each other. You just learn there are certain boundaries you can't cross. They're my friends. Like family.”

Byron stayed quiet. Clay could feel it inside himself, and knew his eyes reflected it—the stamp and stain of his past.

“There are lines you don't cross, Byron. Pappy crossed them and broke my mother. I've learned.”

Byron swallowed.

“What?”

“Nothin'. Not my business. It can all be hard to figure, though.”

“There's no other way to see it.”

Byron hooked the bait cap closed. “I won't argue. When you put it that way, Cap.”

Clay straightened and put his hand on the throttle. “Are you finished yet?”

“Well, with all these jimmies on the bank, I stuffed her full,” Byron commented, easing the pot back off the side. He watched it sink three or four feet as it disappeared into the sediment-dark flood.

Clay backed off and moved toward the next pot as Byron began culling the crabs, throwing them into the bushel baskets. He knew he should talk to Kate but didn't know what he would say. He felt frozen. Uncertain of what to do, except to work. To keep at his work.

They ran the line, harvesting the crabs steadily as the sun moved up over the white towers of Calvert Cliffs across the Bay and on up into the sky, which had turned milky with the day. They emptied and baited, culled, and worked their boat along the lines of pots as though they were connected by some invisible tether to each place they needed to be. They seldom spoke, both aware of the bounty of their catch and occupied with the steady harvest of the produce from the invisible bottom. They finished an hour before noon and turned northeast to run across the Choptank. The breeze brushed them from the south as they lazily crossed the river. They had on board their largest catch of the summer.

Byron broke open a can of beer from the cooler. After a while he spoke. “We ought to buy more pots,” he said.

Clay agreed. “We'll stop in Easton this afternoon.”

Clay steered past Bachelor Point and studied the beach where they had all gone swimming. He looked at the bushels of crabs all over the belly of the bateau and all full. He felt the breeze and the hot sun over his head, and a certainty that at least he was able to do this work well and proper.

They unloaded the crabs at Pecks, and Byron took one bushel of jumbos and put it in the back of his pickup for Mason and Blackie. Then they drove to Easton and bought all the traps the hardware store had on hand, twenty-three factory-made galvanized crab pots. Byron bought a six-pack of National Bohemian, and they
drove back to Pecks and loaded the pots onto the roof of the bateau and tied them down. He drank while they worked, and when they were finished he left to go find Laura-Dez.

Clay stayed to wash down the workboat. There were bits of crab and bait stuck to the floorboards and gunnels, and he enjoyed washing her down to her white coat in the sun. There wasn't much traffic at Pecks. He stowed all the gear and took the key. Walking along the pier, he noticed
Mood Indigo
sliding out of her slip and coasting past the wharf toward the red channel marker. He saw Amanda up on the bow, sunning herself, and Hugo at the wheel wearing a blue captain's hat. Another man and a young woman were in the cockpit drinking beer and talking loudly. The boat was long. Her blue hull rode high in the water and her inboard purred with a perfect rhythm. Clay watched her round the buoy and continue to motor out into the channel, steady and certain in the flood tide.

Still tired from the weekend, he went back to the farmhouse and fixed himself an early dinner of fried rice and cornbread. He had been reading
Islands in the Stream,
and after dinner he lay on the couch with the screen door open and read as the light faded and the dark crept over the house and he shut his eyes. When he opened them, it was the dark before dawn, and Byron had not arrived.

In the morning, at Pecks, just as Clay was about to cast off, Byron showed up, wasted. He was wearing the same clothes he'd had on the day before and he staggered when he walked. Clay put him in the forward cabin and then started out for his pots.

Before the sun rose, the horizon exploded in a bright orange fan of color that filled the entire eastern sky. The Bay was rough. Clay studied his surroundings. He sensed a strangeness in the air.

North of his pot lay he found a stretch of deeper water where he
decided to set his new traps. He untied them, filled each of them with bait, attached the buoys and buoy lines, and dropped them in the river. He worked easterly, laying the new traps in a line, perpendicular to the others, but in about eighteen to twenty feet of water. As he worked, the wind held heavy out of the northwest. Once they were all in the water, he checked the lay against the shore and in relation to his other pots. Satisfied, he moved to his old pot lay and began to work the line. The going was slower because of the wind and his working alone. He was nearly finished when Byron came out of the cabin, holding his head and moaning.