The Waterman: A Novel of the Chesapeake Bay (26 page)

Clay stood stone-still. He looked at the tickets on the engine box, ready to blow away any moment, and picked them up and read them, not believing he had been charged $250 in fines. He went into his cabin and took a flashlight from the drawer. He returned to the cockpit and squatted over the bilge, shining the light into the hold. About an inch of water sat in the bottom, hardly anything, considering the chop. He put his hand down in the bilge and ran his fingers along the wood under the water. The water was dirty, like all bilgewater, but he came up with no muck or debris. The ventilation seemed in no way impeded. He looked at the ticket
again, and then at the other one. They were real. He cursed the officer and then cursed himself.

Once tied up at the unloading dock, he sought out the old man, Calvin. Before Clay even heaved up his crabs to sell, he told Calvin what happened.

“Describe him again for me,” Calvin said. Clay did so. “Let me see them signatures.” Calvin read over the tickets. “Sounds like Amos Pickett's uncle, Walsh. Amos's got the
Vena Lee
. Ties her sometimes across the way in Pepper Creek.” Calvin pointed toward the trees that separated the two inlets. “He knows the shoals there. Has another place he keeps her up Ware Neck. Bad temper. Amos, that is. Used to be big into oysters. Was a seeder. Bought heavy into the spat. Got hurt with that oil spill. That and the parasites pretty much closed his operation down. A shame. Been different since.” He paused. “Walsh, though, usually runs south of Mobjack.” Calvin squinted into the sun, then eyed Clay. “You have a run-in with someone already?”

Clay shook his head no.

“Lay your pots atop a line of black and reds?”

“No. I stayed well clear.”

“Well, I dunno. You can go an' drive to Portsmouth and protest 'em, I suppose. State marine sets there. Or wait till your court date.” He scratched his head. “Amos's gotten stranger, some say. Likes his space. Busted up old Clem Griffin in a fight. Claimed Clem was crowdin' him off the point. Clem moved his lays clear up the north side after. Stay clear of him, I'd say.” Calvin shrugged. “Sorry there, son.”

Clay sold him his crabs. Not enough to pay for the tickets. Then he brought the
Miss Sarah
around to her slip and hosed her down. He kept an eye out for Byron's pickup, as he hadn't seen it in the parking lot. When all the gear was stowed, he went into the bar and ordered a beer. It was around three when Byron wobbled in, a plastic cup of whiskey in his hand.

Byron was in no condition to help. Clay asked him if he could use the truck and got the keys. Byron said he'd had it with Laura-Dez. Wanted a fresh drink.

“What happened?”

“I dunno really. We'd had a good night. Were playin' in bed. Firecrackers started blowing up around the motel. Some kids, but I started in on 'em, screamin' back and forth. Laura-Dez got to yellin' at me. I left and went down the boardwalk. Came back late, drunk. I pissed in the closet on her sister's bags. Thought it was the head. They threw me out in the morning.” He rubbed his eyes with his fingers. “Fuck it, I say. Can't take a joke.”

Clay drank his beer and paid for Byron to have another whiskey. Byron said he'd sleep on board when he was ready.

“What'd we catch?” Byron wanted to know as Clay was leaving.

“'Bout eight bushels,” Clay answered. He didn't mention the tickets.

Clay walked out of the bar, started the pickup, and found the highway south to Portsmouth. He looked for speed. The highway sparkled with the bits of shattered glass embedded in the asphalt. He could not outrace himself. Lost in Norfolk, he traversed neighborhoods deserted like the outskirts of a ghost city, with only an occasional witness, staring silently at him from a dilapidated front porch. He flew through these side streets, seeking the cold steel of battleships, the stark glint of an abandoned fleet. Corrosion, iron in dark rust and shadow, might cool his mind. He could not get close enough. Locked gates patrolled by bored Seabees in white hats met him at every entrance. He lost time in the endless turnarounds on the gravel roads that twisted through among the shipyards, exhausting himself. The futility of his errand became more clear the closer he came. Somewhere in the stranded city, he found a bar and ordered a drink. Then another. A hooker asked him if he wanted a date. She was young, and her face was attractive until she smiled. She wore white clamdiggers, sneakers, and a football jersey,
cut off at the middle. He declined politely and left, starting the journey back. His mind drummed along with the undertow of the asphalt. Dusk seemed to come quickly. The lights on the highway rushed past like ideas in the darkness of time. Illusions that gird the modern mind. He drove without thinking until he found himself back at the house on Gwynn's Island.

“I've saved a plate for you,” Kate said. “I'll warm it up.” She looked fresh and young as a flower and kissed him on the cheek. “You better wash up. Matty's out late too. Down at the fire department in Gloucester.”

Clay washed in the kitchen sink. The soap stung his face, burned from the wind and sun. “Look at these hands,” he said, holding them out to Kate. They were red and swollen from the day and callused. She came over and took them. “Days out there'll take a toll,” he said. “It's different than you think.”

He sat at the table, feeling almost too tired to eat.

“What happened out there today?” she asked. She seemed to have a sense of things with him.

“Had a run-in with the state marine.” He sighed. “Nothing grievous. Just one thing after another.”

“What do you mean?”

“He fined me. But he shouldn't have. Everything was in order. He was delivering a message.”

“From whom?”

“I don't know. Locals, probably.”

“How bad?”

“Couple hundred.”

She went to the refrigerator and took out a beer for him. She opened it and set it before him with his plate of food.

“You know, I'd like you to let me help you in this.”

“Kate, please. You're doing too much already.”

“I've not done anything, Clay. And not near what I'd like to do.”

He frowned and started to eat. “I'm putting fifty in the food jar tomorrow, and if you argue, I'll leave,” he said.

“Clay.”

She put her hands on her hips.

“I mean it.”

Kate made herself a cup of tea and sat with him. When he finished the fried chicken she had made she brought him a second helping. He told her thanks and started to eat again.

“You've built up a hunger there, Clay Wakeman.” Kate had crossed her arms.

“Yes,” he answered. He finished the food. He felt another surge of anger over the day, and with it a recklessness. “I have an appetite.” As she reached for his plate, he grasped her arm. She didn't resist. He wanted to pull her to him.

“What?”

He let her arm drop. “Nothing. I'm just beat. Thank you for dinner.”

She brought him another beer. Stepping back, she opened a kitchen drawer and took out of it some skin lotion. She dabbed some onto her palm, smoothing it around with her fingertips. Stepping behind him, she began to spread the cool cream gently onto his forehead and around his swollen eyes, working it into his face. He stiffened at first and then tried to relax. She spread it over his lips. He leaned back, feeling the gentleness and the coolness of her fingers on his skin, and shut his eyes until he heard the sound of Matty's MG in the driveway.

Wind chimes hung from the front porch of the cottage. They were wooden, and in the night breeze, damp from the Chesapeake, they made a muted, plaintive sound. It was Thursday, and Kate had called from Richmond, from a gas station. A hose had split in her Volvo, and she was getting it fixed. She was fine, Matty reported, but she would be late. He, Clay, and Byron had all eaten dinner together: some fried rice Clay had stirred up, with beer and buttered bread. Afterward, Byron had taken the pickup back to the bateau. Living aboard was living “freestyle,” as he called it. Matty had wanted to shoot the early sunrise and had agreed to drop Clay off in the morning.

Clay had walked Byron out and then sat on the front porch. He sat rocking, listening to the soothing timbre of the wind chimes in the damp night air. His own solitude was like a blanket over him.

He was used to longing. It went where he went. He relished the work because the work filled him with a contentment that flowed naturally from it, and because it camouflaged the longing until the work was over. And then the longing returned.

He sat up when Matty opened the screen door to the porch and
stepped outside. Matty walked to the steps and sat down. He was holding a pipe, which he raised to his mouth, lit, and began to smoke. Neither spoke for a while. They seemed to share the sense of the night and sat together quietly wrapped in its curtain.

The embers of tobacco inside Matty's pipe glowed when he drew on it.

“If only we could read our futures in the glowing fire,” he remarked.

Clay detected resignation. “You got the present and future right here, pal. You know that?”

“Perhaps. People are never satisfied with what they have, though. They want more. The active life is a greedy life.” He took a silver tamper from his shirt pocket and patted down the bowl of tobacco. From a pouch in his pocket, he added more tobacco to the bowl, tamping it down as well.

“The future ain't nothing but what you decide to make it.” Clay got up off the rocker and sat down next to Matty on the first step.

Matty relit the pipe, considering. “I'd have to say no to that. Least, not that you can count on. I mean there's fate. You've seen so yourself. The hurricane and all.”

Clay shifted and leaned back against the banister. “Well, I guess there is a passel of surprises in store for anybody. Seems so, anyway.”

“Things you don't expect,” Matty continued. “They can bite you right from behind.”

Clay reached for Matty's matches, took one, and used it as a toothpick. “How's the photographer's life? Really.”

“About half true. Just like my pictures. Light and shadow. I like it. But it's a long road to where I want to go. And it's got some curves to it.”

“What curves?”

Matty seemed to muse over the question. “I don't know. My father's pulling awfully hard to bring me into the business. He
doesn't understand I don't want to be just a studio photographer. You know. The art world's out there. That's where I see this leading. Of course, it's full of its own pretensions. Temptations.”

“Like?”

“Lots of cuties hanging around. They seem to dig it.”

On the corner of the street, a tall lamppost illuminated a small circle of the night. Clay noticed a swarm of moths and night insects flying about and into the hot light. He shook his head. “Man, you need to appreciate just what you've got going here.”

Matty followed Clay's gaze to the light and the moths colliding with it. “I know,” he whispered. “I know. Of course I love Kate. We'll have a good life together. A long road. But I am young. Wild oats and shit. Man, you know . . .”

“I don't know dick.”

“After we graduate, we'll announce the engagement. Then it'll seem more real.”

“If I were you, I'd do it tomorrow, slick. Announce it, anyway.”

“Both of our parents want us to graduate first.” Matty nudged Clay with his foot. “So what is secret hurts no one.”

Clay frowned. “I wouldn't mess up what you got. That's for sure.”

“We'll set a date next spring. Get married. All so normal, predictable. I feel like a last hurrah or something.”

“Maybe you've been snorting too much of that good shit.”

Matty stretched his arms out. “Hell, she's gone enough. I'm safe.”

“You're missing my point.”

“Aw, don't worry. I'm just allowing for distraction. Life is short.”

Clay turned away.

“And it's fun, man. It's really fun. How about you? You gotta get some sugar soon yourself.”

“Nothing right now,” Clay answered. “Trying to concentrate on making all this work.”

They heard some sirens start up from way behind them.

“Fire station,” Matty said. “Half the guys in town belong to it. They start their sirens for just about anything.” He paused. “How's Byron making out?”

“'Bout the same.”

“You remember, when he came down to visit us at school, just before he went to boot camp? Running around in that pickup with that huge knife in his fatigues?”

Clay focused on the moths hitting the streetlamp. “I remember.” He sighed. “He didn't know what was coming. Any more than the rest of us, that is.”

“What happened? Did he ever tell you the details?”

Clay thought for a moment. “Not really. He keeps it private. Wrote a letter to me, though, when he was over there. And he's not one for writing. Said, ‘The world will never be the same for me anymore.' That was it. And then a short time later he got hurt and came home to the hospital.”

Matty tried unsuccessfully to take a last draw from his pipe. Then he knocked the ash from the bowl on the side of the step. “That was all wrong over there,” he said. “I can imagine. But he's seemed pretty good the last few times I've seen him.”

“Well, we've had some good days this summer.”

“Yeah. Well, I'm sorry.”

“Yeah.” Clay shifted. “But speaking of him. There's something I need to tell you.”

Matty yawned. “What's that?”

“I've decided to move out, Matty. I need to.”

“You just got here.” Matty seemed disappointed.

“Byron shouldn't have to live on that boat. It won't work. He's got enough pressing on him.” Clay spoke deliberately. “You've been generous. You and Kate. And it has been appreciated. More than I could say. But I know we need to do this.”