The Waterman: A Novel of the Chesapeake Bay (36 page)

Matty's face was pallid, with bruises on one cheek and around his forehead. He was coughing and scared. “Where's Kate?” he asked.

“She's safe,” Clay whispered. “With Byron. They escaped. Now you go. Swim.”

He hesitated. “Why?”

Clay paused. He didn't know just how far the question went. There wasn't time to answer. He wasn't sure if he had an answer. “Go,” Clay implored. “Swim now. I'll be in and coming right after you. Trust me.”

“Trust you?” But Matty's eyes registered. They were frightened but steady, boring into Clay's eyes, and acknowledged his help. Matty turned and started swimming away, hidden by the
Miss Sarah
from the sight of the men in the other boat.

“Where is he, goddamnit,” Pickett yelled. “Show yourself.”

Clay stood up, most of his body still protected by the engine box. “He can't get in the boat. He's hurt. He's holding on the side. He's too heavy to lift.”

“What a shame. Well, now you best throw us the crab pot, mister.”

Clay gambled for time. “Why don't you tell Brigman to come on out and say hello?”

“Throw the dope over,” Pickett repeated.

“Tell him to come out and join the party.”

Pickett leered at Clay. “I'd heard you were smart. But guess not. You talk too much.”

“The man's a coward, Pickett. He won't face me.”

The cabin door opened. It was Brigman who stepped out. The
men on the boat all turned to look at him. He crossed his arms, then uncrossed them and pointed at Clay. “You shouldn't have fucked with this, Clay.” His voice was like ice and carried over the water. “You're a goddamn thief. Throw what's mine over now. Otherwise I'll tell them to shoot.”

“If I throw it, then what?” Clay answered.

Brigman stared him down. “I won't repeat myself, boy.”

Clay considered. “Take your guns off me, first.”

Brigman hesitated.

“I mean it. I'll waste this stuff so fast.”

Brigman nodded to Pickett, who motioned for his men to lower their guns. They did so, except for the one on the roof.

Clay pointed to him. Slowly he relaxed, placing the pistol down at his side.

Clay took a breath. Then nodded. “Okay,” he answered. “Okay. Hold on.” Remaining behind the engine box, he acted as though he were opening the crab pot and putting in the white packages. He took his time and watched Matty, who was moving gradually away. Clay finally stood up, holding just the top portion of the pot above the engine box. “I'll start my motor now and drop this overboard. Then I'll back away.”

“No,” Brigman commanded. “No motor. Just throw it out here. We'll hook it in.”

Clay raised one hand. “Whatever,” he said. Using the buoy and warp line as a sling, he heaved the pot with the ripped white preserver in it out between the two boats. Pickett backed up and then came forward close to the buoy. From the side of the
Vena Lee,
one of the men extended a boat hook out over the water to retrieve the float. As the man pulled it in, Clay eased lower behind the engine box, praying for Matty to swim, to go. Clay looked back and saw him make the bar and on his knees in the shallows. Brigman, Pickett, and his men were focused on the buoy in the water. One of them grabbed the buoy and they had the line and were pulling up
the pot, all watching it break the surface. It came over the side as Clay reached for the flare gun. He wheeled and fired it at them just as they reached the wire pot and saw the preserver inside, and then he dropped to the deck as pistol bullets and shot splintered across the rail and engine box. His flare had broken through the window and ignited their cabin. He could see and hear the flames. Lying behind the engine box, he reloaded his second and last flare. Splinters were flying around him as the guns pumped a fusillade along his deck. He lit the rag on the gas-filled bottle. Throw it and dive in the water, he told himself. He reached his left hand up over the engine box and fired the second flare blindly. The guns ceased momentarily, and he reared back and heaved the lit bottle at the
Vena Lee,
but in his follow-through, a searing heat tore into his abdomen and he heard the echo of the pistol and then the explosion of the gas bomb. The impact knocked him back on the deck, and the pain was there now, below, and at first he wasn't sure, but he felt with his fingers and knew. He heard more shots and shouting and commotion with the fire, and he felt the wet around his belly flowing over him and onto the deck like warm grease. Then, in the distance, he heard sirens on the water. The men in the boat near him heard them also and were cursing, and he heard their engine engage and the acceleration as they moved off. He lay and reached his hand up and with all his strength pulled his head over the rail to look for Matty. He saw him, far off, wading across the bar headed for land, and then Clay let himself collapse back on the deck. Pulling his shirt off took him forever with the grinding pain below. He tried to tie the shirt around his middle to stop the bleeding, but the blood seeped around and through the cloth. Listening, he heard the sirens out in the Bay coming closer.

He felt the drift of his boat and sensed that the tide was taking him out into deeper water, pulling him south. Above him the gray dawn transformed itself moment by moment as he gazed into blue morning. A dull ache flowed over the pain he had felt, and he was
tired, his eyelids heavy. He struggled to hold them open to see, lying on the wooden deck, adrift, and feeling the rocking of deeper water as his
Miss Sarah
moved along in the strong current. Trying to keep his eyes open, he thought of Matty, saw his face horrified back at the cottage and then white and frightened in the water. He was sorry. But he also knew that he hadn't had the power within him to stop loving Kate and that saying no to it had not been a possibility for him. Overhead he heard a cry and opened his eyes, which had shut, and saw gulls whirling, their feathery white bodies luminous in the dawn. He listened to them crying.

Clay shifted and tried to think and supposed the tide was carrying him out above Smith Island. He smiled inwardly at the thought that he was drifting somewhere near the place on his father's chart marking the wreck. Maybe even floating right above it, his Pappy's dream, and his as well, in the water just below him. He could almost see it there. And he thought he could see his own shocked boy's face in that living room so long ago. His face, Matty's. He listened to the creak and drift of his boat. It was the waves now, and the breeze above, and the lapping water on the wooden boat, and the gulls. Then, in the distance, he heard another siren. Coming closer. They were coming for him, his Pappy at the helm. He would be saved. He would set things right, begin anew, ply the river, a waterman, like his father. A waterman on the river. A decent life. A fresh start. In a clean, abundant Bay. And so with the sirens coming and these thoughts washing over him, he felt his own heart pumping and his blood running and the motion of the boat in the current, all with the same rhythm. In the blue air above the mix of river and ocean, the gulls were crying. Whirling in the ether of a new dawn above him. White gulls over the blue Bay.

He remembers the sound of their footsteps on the mud and grass and weeds. There was the lapping of the river and
the occasional brush of swamp grass in the wind. But mostly there was the darkness and the mist and the quiet. The mist and quiet. The mist above all . . .

He was excited . . .

Special and particular thanks to my editor, Shannon Ravenel, for her sense of this book, her instincts, and her enormous assistance. I am grateful, also, to my agents, Robbie Anna Hare and Ron Goldfarb, for their belief and constant support. To Stephen Goodwin, who became an early reader and source of encouragement, I am most appreciative, and to Louise Wheatley for her initial review. I thank Lowry Hudgins for his tour of Mobjack Bay, Rachel Careau for her fine copyediting, and, with great esteem, all the people at Algonquin Books.

To those friends—present and lost—who have inspired and nurtured the seeds of this story I will always remain indebted. And, likewise, to Kristin, Isabel, and William Junkin for providing the ballast I needed and so much more.