The Waterman: A Novel of the Chesapeake Bay (23 page)

Byron emptied the rest of the coffee into a cup and guzzled it down.

“She riding with us to the wharf?”

Byron took a long last drag, exhaling slowly. He flicked his ash into the sink. “Nah, man. We can go. They'll swing by and pick up the truck on their way.”

Clay finished his coffee, set his cup down, and looked at Byron. “You up for this trip, man?”

Byron gently smacked him on the shoulder. “I'm fuckin' psyched.”

“Let's roll.”

The mist was beginning to lift as the bateau pulled out from the mouth of the Tred Avon and entered the Choptank. The river was placid, white, mournful in the morning stillness. Neither had said much to the other, but they had a six-hour boat trip ahead of them. Six hours at about twelve knots, if the Bay stayed calm and the wind didn't rise against them.

The engine pounded out a clear drumlike rhythm, firm and sure and without hesitation. It pushed the bateau smartly through the glassy water, sending out its foaming wake, parallel patterns running to wash the shore. The tide was out. As they rounded Cook Point, fields of flattened eelgrass, browned and bent from the storm, appeared through the mist, overshadowing an abundant spread of new green shoots, whose tiny points could be seen emerging from the dark root of the riverbed, like a false spring.

The morning bleached out as the mist dissipated. The sky was white paste from horizon to zenith, without any distinguishable differentiations of shadow or light, without even visible separations of cloud. And the still water was a flat, undisturbed reflection of the sky. Just off James Island and running south, they were not
able to discern the line marking the horizon. All around them they could see nothing but white, as though they were proceeding into an immaculate white space.

The view was almost surreal. Passing Taylors Island, Clay and Byron were able to see down and across the Bay to the shoreline above Point Lookout, guarding the wide mouth of the Potomac. Distant vistas looked close enough to touch. Clay blinked in the eerie brightness and saw against his eyelids the image of a freighter beyond the horizon and then realized he had experienced second sight. He had seen over or through the horizon, through some unexplained telepathy—a reflection in the sky, some claimed. Clay blinked again, unsure of what he had seen, and again, but could not conjure up the image a second time. He gazed at the strange apparition of white that was the sky and then far into the distance toward their destination, looking for what lay beyond and wondering about his second sight and had he seized it more clearly, what else it might have revealed.

The freighter soon came into actual view. It came out of the south and gained in size and shape as it steamed up the Bay, passing eventually to the west, its screws churning a huge wake. Arabic letters were written across the stern, and Clay assumed they named her and gave her home port. A few pleasure yachts plied the channel, and an occasional sailboat passed by under power, there being so little breeze. Sometime around midmorning they passed the point off Hooper Island lighthouse, and Clay adjusted course to pass west of Smith Island and begin to cross the Bay for the western shore of Virginia. The day didn't change, though out in the expanse of the southern Bay soft, rolling swells began to build, running from the southeast. After a while they lost sight of land altogether, and the white sheet of the world enveloped them completely.

Byron disappeared into the cabin and fell asleep. Clay opened a beer and sat back, content, steering the
Miss Sarah
with his foot on
the tiller, his thoughts melting into the white universe around him.

The
Miss Sarah
held steady and sliced up and over the barrels of swells, mile after mile. At first it was just Smith Point that came into view, a distant mirage of trees, like an island in a white ocean, and then gradually other parts of the Virginia shore appeared, like separate islands, clumps of trees, south of the mouth of the Potomac. The lone workboat traversed the narrowed entrance of the Great Wicomico and angled to clear the shoal off Windmill Point. A breeze began to blow out of the southeast, and only then did Clay first notice a streak of blue sky above. Slowly making headway, crossing adjacent to Windmill Point, he surveyed the opening of the Rappahannock, a wide stretch of river running a strong incoming tide. The saltiness of the air was strong. The swells grew and sent spray off the sides of the bateau. Gwynn's Island was just a glitter to the southwest, and he gave a wide berth to the land, studying the charts for the best approach into Mobjack Bay.

Byron slept for two hours before he came out of the cabin rubbing his eyes. Clay asked him to hold the tiller and went into the cabin to get the biscuits and sausage he had wrapped for lunch. He put them out on a plastic tray and cracked two beers, and they ate their meal.

Byron took the empty tray into the cabin and came back with two more beers. He sat on the rail across from Clay, who held the tiller. They were unfamiliar with the shoreline this far south in the Bay, and the distant trees, lee shore, and glassy horizon merged and unmerged in a mirage as the
Miss Sarah
traversed the swells and ran her course down toward her destination and new berth.

“I had this buddy,” Byron started. “He kinda reminded me of you.” He took some swallows from his beer. “His name was Peters. He was black. He helped me.” Byron took out a cigarette, walked back to the cabin to light it, and returned. He inhaled deeply, held it, then exhaled. “I remember the first night we were fired on. I had
spent only two days in Danang, when we were sent to a forward area called Dong Ha. It was an airstrip, the largest that far north. The marines had complete control of what they called the I Corps Area, the northern part of Vietnam from the Demilitarized Zone to Danang. At least they did at that time. Dong Ha was the main source of supply for that area. It was an ammo dump and an airstrip and could land Phantoms and C-130 transports. It was supposed to be secure.”

Clay sat listening.

“My first night in, we all went to see dirty movies. The Marine Corps had bunkers where they would show skin flicks. After the movies, we all went back to our tent, and I fell asleep. I awoke about three in the morning from the sound of explosions. Everybody else, it seemed, had just jumped up and gone. They ran across my bed and knocked me over and knocked my medical pack over. I didn't know what was happening. I couldn't find my boots or anything. Well, Peters was sitting there watching me. The whole place was deserted but for him and me. And he was very calm. He said, ‘Look, there's incoming, let's get in the trenches.' I didn't even know what ‘incoming' was. I told him I was trying to find my boots, but he said not to worry about the boots, to just come on and get in the trenches. He helped me pick up my medical pack and led me to the trench. It was rockets they were firing on us, and as we shoved our way into the trench, one blew up our tent, where we had just been. I guess that's when I started shakin'. They hit us all night. I think this was the first time I remember being totally afraid, Clay. I was panicked. In the bunker, there were maybe forty men, and we were all pressed in. Peters and I were the last two to get in, so we were damn near outside the door. The explosions would light up the night. You could see the company area and all the tents that were burning. Some men were screaming. They blew up the mess hall, they blew up the supply tent, and I wanted to run. I was trembling. But Peters held me and talked to
me. He was talking in my ear. We were so close together, I guess he could feel me trembling. He had his arms around me tight, and he told me just to wait, wait and we'd be all right. And I was crying, sobbing. And he held me like that all night. At dawn the Phantoms came. They chased the gooks back.”

Byron stopped. He drank his beer, then studied the top of the can, as if it were a strange sight, one he had never seen before. After a while he continued. “Peters didn't hardly know me. But that was just the first night. It went on. It was night after night. And I didn't get much better. He stuck with me, though.” Byron paused. “Figures, he wouldn't make it. Right in front of me. His rifle jammed. Up near a river called the Ben Hai. Some kind of experimental model M16, which had a flash compressor that worked the valves open, with three prongs on it. Peters thought it was defective. He'd already turned one back. He complained about the bolt action on the second one, and the major kept telling him to clean it. It wouldn't eject the rounds. ‘Clean it, mister,' the major would say. ‘Learn how to use your weapon, goddamn it.' Peters knew more about weapons than that fuckhead will ever know.” Byron looked at Clay. “I was in trouble, pinned down, tryin' to wrap the guts back inside a kid, and he was coming to get me. It was an ambush. A setup. And it jammed. And this gook just took his time. Firing into him. Firing and firing. Until Joe Armstrong came over and killed the bastard. I was supposed to be the corpsman, the medic. I couldn't do nothin'. We carried Peters back in my poncho. His blood was sloshing over the sides.”

Byron's cigarette had burned down. He flicked it overboard and, taking his time, walked back into the cabin and lit another. He came back out, took another long draw, and held it in his lungs before exhaling. “But I never got over being afraid. That was just the way it was. Funny thing. I wasn't much more than a scared kid out there. And what they did to the men. Men I was supposed to help. Their bodies torn apart. And usually I was useless. And always
scared. A waste. I mean, the whole thing was a waste, but I was a waste within a waste. And it got worse. Joe Armstrong, there”—he waved his hand—“he was the third one in the picture. The one that I showed you? He helped me after Peters. Helped me so often. Like he was my bodyguard. He would kneel over me when I'd try to stop some poor boy from bleeding his life out. And I know he saved me in the end. When I was shot. It was kind of a relief, really, as I lay there. That it would be over, one way or another. I didn't know it was such a clean shot, through the flesh. But I remember him there, crouched over me, my protector, firing, until I went out. When I awoke, they told me.”

Byron put his head in his hands. When he looked up, his face was damp. “There were too many of 'em gettin' split apart. And somewhere in there, I think I began to stop liking life, liking myself. And I still haven't stopped. Being afraid too, that is . . .” Byron paused again.

They sat there for a while, silent. The water rolled past, smooth waves of reflection, the cool, blue-green deeper element below. Sea ducks, roused by the intruder boat, whirled off the surface and skimmed about. Gulls cried to the sky in circles over the water in the distance. There were no other boats in sight.

“You did what men do in war, Byron. You did right. You were a hero. And you ain't no more or less afraid than the rest of us now. You just got enough guts to admit it.”

Byron squeezed his empty beer can and slowly mashed it against the wooden coaming. “Don't see you that way. Afraid, I mean.”

Clay hesitated. “Then look closer. I know I couldn't've of done any more than you. Or done it any better.”

Byron shrugged.

“In my eyes you stand taller than most.” Clay motioned at the beer cans. “You're strung tight right now. All this probably's not helping so much,” he said quietly. “But I wouldn't want anyone else
for my partner.” He studied the water. “Time'll help, Buck. Just give yourself some.”

Byron swept his gaze about them. “Well, time and space is what we got down here, don't we?”

Clay didn't answer. The two just stood side by side, staring trancelike at the shorelines appearing and disappearing beyond the running swells of the Bay, the steadily increasing breeze blowing the clouds apart and dissipating the aura of white that had girdled the day. The seascape was changing color, as though all along it had been viewed through a camera with a soft white filter over the lens, and that filter had just been removed.

“This here is what'll renew. Feeling it. Breathing it. Always has. Just take some time. Let it open you up again to all that strength you got inside there.”

Byron wiped his brow and face on his sleeve. “That's what I'm trying to be here for. I'm feelin' it and I'm waiting. But I'm having a hard time moving forward. Like old Johnnydog. Like a deer in the headlights. Hoping I make it.” He kicked at a bushel basket.

“You'll make it, Byron. You're healing already.” Clay tilted his chin at the stacked wire cages. “And maybe you'll pull in some crabs while you're at it.”

They breathed the saltier air and pushed the bateau on, continuing until Gwynn's Island was west of them and then nearly off their stern. They pushed on toward their point of destination. Passing the Milford Haven Spit, Clay angled the
Miss Sarah
due south, and after a while they both could make out the red buoy marked #4 on the chart off the island New Point Comfort and the stone lighthouse standing as a sentry marking the shoal. From there Clay set a northwesterly course for the entrance to Davis Creek, noting his direction as 342 degrees by the compass and realizing that they were entering Mobjack Bay.

It was even larger than they had expected. On the chart it resembled a giant hand stamped into the land, with the several rivers
protruding into the western shore as the fingers. Davis Creek, their destination, was the first inlet on the northern side of Mobjack Bay, and the smallest providing safe harbor. It ran closely parallel to its longer but less hospitable neighbor, Pepper Creek, which was shallow at its entrance and, according to what Calvin had told them, required local knowledge to navigate. Well past Pepper Creek, and going around the bay, the larger tributaries of the East, North, Ware, and Severn Rivers, opened in a circle, the mouths of the latter two being across Mobjack Bay and indistinguishable in the afternoon haze, at a distance of about three miles, Clay guessed.