The Waterman: A Novel of the Chesapeake Bay

by Tim Junkin

  On Friday he drove down to Tilghman and located a used hydraulic hauler that would fit fine. His problem was money. He could only make a down payment on the hauler, and Lester Quill agreed to let him pay it off by the week, but he still had little left. He also needed money for bait and bait barrels, for fuel, and money just to live.

  Jed Sparks had told him that Hugo Brigman usually came over on Saturdays to sail his yacht, so early Saturday morning, Clay was there waiting. He sat on the front ledge, just outside the shed Jed used for an office, and watched the river, which had calmed, and the workboats moving in and out of the creek. The sun was straight away, about even with his face. He savored the warmth on his face and against his chest. Here, finally, was one of the first of the warm days, and he sat and soaked it in. He sat and enjoyed being there for a long time until he began to feel hungry and impatient with the time passing. He noticed a car coming too fast up the wharf drive, sending dust everywhere. As it pulled into the parking lot, he saw it was a red Porsche, and an attractive woman, not much older than him, got out first and headed for the new dock. The driver remained in the car, reading a newspaper.

  Jed had been in his office but poked his head out.

  “That’s the girlfriend, I believe. Amanda, I think her name is.” He grinned. “Forgot to mention her, I guess.”

  She wore new jeans that looked like they pinched when she moved. Above the jeans she wore a leather flight jacket over a T-shirt that had a picture of Janis Joplin on the front. Clay got up and started to follow her out toward the yacht. She walked fast despite her high heels. When she heard him behind her, she turned around, tipping her gold-framed sunglasses down off her eyes, then turned as though she hadn’t seen him and continued toward the Mood Indigo.

  Clay slowly approached.

  “Excuse me,” he said.

  She was searching through a small duffel bag she had set on the dock.

  “Damn,” she said. She turned her head to face him. “Yes?”

  Clay introduced himself and told her he had heard that the owner might be looking for a weekend charter captain.

  She stood up straight. “So?”

  “Well, I wanted to apply for the job.”

  She studied him for a second. “This is a hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar boat, pal.”

  Clay looked out at the river, which had begun to stir under a feathery breeze. Out across from Valiant’s Gas and Marine some gulls were swarming, and he watched them circle and dive, too far away to be heard. He bet there were some chopper blues underneath the bait fish, and he wished he were there. He looked back and saw Jed Sparks and another man walking out on the dock toward them. The man with Jed carried a newspaper and had a pair of binoculars hanging around his neck. The binoculars clinked against the gold chains that fell into his half-open shirt. He was tanned and muscular and appeared to be in his late thirties.

  “Here comes Hugo, anyway,” she said. “Talk to him, if you want.”

  Clay waited for the two men. They arrived and Jed introduced Clay to Mr. Brigman. Amanda had removed her heels and had already climbed aboard and was unlocking the cabin. She climbed down inside. Brigman invited Clay on board, and Clay followed him down inside the yacht. Jed hollered, “So long,” and left.

  “You met Amanda?” Brigman asked. “Amanda, lovey, this is Clay Wakeman.”

  “We met, Hugo,” she said, looking at Clay. “I’m going to change now.” She ducked into the aft cabin and shut the door.

  In the center of the main cabin was a table of polished teak, where Brigman motioned for Clay to sit. Brigman took two cups and a jar of instant coffee from a cabinet in the galley. He filled a pot with water and put it on the propane-fueled range, and the burner lit automatically when he turned the knob. On the table lay the newspaper, folded to the racing page, and Clay could see the schedule of starts at Pimlico, with several horses’ names circled. He could hear Amanda behind him, changing her clothes.

  Brigman leaned against the galley. His eyes had a way of darting around.

  “Jed Sparks says you’re an experienced sailor.”

  “I’ve been around boats some. Yes, sir.”

  “He says you could handle being a charter captain for my Mood Indigo. That you’re real qualified.”

  “I could sail her.”

  “What do you think of her?”

  Clay heard the cabin locker open behind him. Amanda brushed by, wearing a white bikini and holding a towel and a tube of suntan cream in one hand and her small duffel bag in the other. She got to the ladder and twisted around toward the two of them.

  “She’s beautiful.”

  “I got her name from a jazz song. ‘Mood Indigo.’” Brigman seemed pleased with himself. “You know it?”

  “It’s Hugo’s theme song,” Amanda added with a smirk.

  “Fits nice,” Clay responded.

  “Yeah, well.” Brigman paused. “Clay Wakeman, huh. I was thinking of somebody older. More experienced, maybe. Weren’t you, sweetie?”

  Amanda yawned, then turned and climbed out of the cabin.

  The water started to hiss. Brigman put the coffee into the cups and poured in the hot water. He came over and sat down and handed Clay one of the cups.

  “Do you have a charter captain’s license?”

  “Don’t believe I’d need one for inland water, sir.”

  “Well, do you have one?”

  “No, sir.”

  “How about those Coast Guard courses? Ever had any of them?”

  “I’m not sure what courses those are.”

  Brigman sipped his coffee. “But you grew up around here? On the water?”

  “Yes. Mostly.”

  Brigman half closed his eyes. “Why do you want the job?”

  “I’m refitting a workboat. A crabbing boat, mainly. For pots. Though it could be used for trotlining or oystering.” Clay paused. “So I’m starting up my own business. But I could use some extra income for expenses. Jed said you just wanted someone for weekends.”

  “Maybe not every weekend,” Brigman interjected. “Two a month or so. I’ve got friends, clients, whatever. Want to sail the whole Chesapeake. Maybe take her down to the Norfolk area, like the York River. Take her down one weekend. Bring her back a week later. I’d cover your land transportation.”

  “You have dockage down there?”

  Brigman ignored the question. “So what exactly is your experience?”

  Clay watched the shadow lines made by the halyards across the beams of light that came slanting through the starboard portals. He looked up and saw Amanda’s legs as she stepped across the hatch. He looked back at Brigman. “I grew up sailing. Moved some bigger boats for the wharf here a few years back. When I was in high school. When owners needed it.”

  “High school?” Brigman sounded skeptical. “Offshore?”

  “In the Bay. I’ve crewed offshore. When I was younger.”

  Brigman swatted at a fly in his face. It kept coming back. “So you know this part of the Bay well?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How far south have you been?”

  Clay took a sip of his coffee. It was weak and he set the cup down.

  “I’ve been south past the Hooper Islands, through the strait, and below Smith and Tangier Islands on the east. My father took me down there quite a bit. We used to crab and fish around Smith and Tangier. He liked it down there. We sometimes stayed over on Tangier. On the west side I’ve sailed to the Potomac and up to Cobb Island, and along the southern shore of the mouth looking for shelter.”

  “And north?”

  “I’ve sailed the Susquehanna, and I’ve been through the canal and down the Delaware Bay and through the cut at Cape May once, which is enough times for any man. The Delaware Bay is no place to sail.”

  “This is a Swan Fifty.”

  “Yes.”

  “You know this boat?”

  “I sailed a Dickerson Fifty once. Built here in Trappe. Never a Swan.”

  “Do you
have a résumé or anything like that that you could leave with me?”

  “Not really, sir. I suppose I could make one up.”

  Brigman sighed. “What’s the biggest boat you’ve handled?”

  Clay thought for a minute. “Probably the Dickerson. Sailed a big Gulfstar once.”

  “And how long ago?”

  Clay shrugged. “It’s been a few years.”

  Brigman leaned back. “Uh-huh. I see. Any questions you have?” Clay thought. “What kind of business are you in, sir?” Brigman paused. “Varied interests. Seafood. Real estate development. Complicated.” He reached for a dish towel and snapped it, killing the fly on the table. He got up and put his cup in the sink. He turned to Clay. “Nice of you to come by. I’m not so sure this is the job for you, though. I wanted someone who knows Virginia waters better. Maryland and Virginia. I’ll leave word with Sparks, okay?”

  Clay got up and shook Brigman’s hand.

  “Yes, sir,” he answered. He didn’t feel disappointed, for some reason. He wasn’t really surprised. He was just glad to be leaving. He turned and climbed up the ladder. As he stepped into the cockpit, he was almost on top of Amanda, who lay on her stomach on a blanket on one of the cockpit seats, out of the breeze, her top un-snapped and her tan legs oiled and shiny in the sun. She wore earphones attached to a radio. Clay softly said good-bye to her as he stepped over her, though he knew she wouldn’t hear him.

  9

  They sat in Byron’s room, the farmhouse attic, Clay leaning back against the frayed blue corduroy couch pushed under the eaves, and Byron on a low rocker, a half-full fifth of Jim Beam between his thighs. Smoke still hung in the air from the joint that smoldered in the ashtray. They each held a bottle of Budweiser and were listening to Van Morrison sing “Tupelo Honey.” The song ended and the turntable clicked off.

  Byron shook his head back and forth. “Curtis Collison grew this pot in his garden.” He took a gulp of beer. “Fuckin’ guy is into everything.”

  Clay sat back up. “Not bad for homegrown.”

  It was late, and the deep calm of the night wrapped around the farmhouse. Clay had left the wharf in the afternoon, and coming through town, he’d seen Byron’s truck parked outside the pool hall. Byron was inside the door arguing with Clifton Dodd. There were nearly a dozen empty beer bottles at Byron’s table, and Clifton was insisting he leave, so Clay had driven him home and was making him tea when he passed out. Clay found two goose breasts in the freezer and took them out to defrost. Later, he broiled them in the oven, and made a rich currant gravy as well. When he went to rouse him, Byron was already awake, sitting in his room with the bottle of Jim Beam. They ate the goose breasts with the gravy and some canned yams that Clay found in the pantry and then drove back into town for more beer and to retrieve the pickup. The night was cool. Once back home, Byron started a fire in the black cast-iron stove in the corner. They watched it light up and then gradually burn down to a fine, hot pitch.

  “I’ve been bringing old Mase home from the VFW since I was about ten”—Byron tilted the Jim Beam—“which you well know. You’d think I’d’ve learned something.”

  Clay considered. “You have, I’m sure.”

  “I’m worse. And worse than that, I don’t give a fuck.”

  Byron turned the label of the whiskey bottle to face him and studied it.

  “Give it some time. Yourself. You’re deserving of some patience. From your own self.”

  Byron rocked for a while.

  “I feel like I’m going in circles. Can’t see nothin’ ahead. I remind myself of that story about poor Johnnydog.”

  “About who?”

  “Johnnydog Cooper.”

  “What?”

  “You never heard? Don’t guess you knew him. Terrible, really. From Cambridge. Drowned hisself last fall. Young waterman. Strong swimmer, everyone said.”

  Clay shifted.

  “Was out trotlining, late season. Near dark. His engine quit. Story is he figured he’d anchor and swim to shore. Apparently swam into a swarm of nettles with his face down and his eyes open. Blinded him. Couldn’t see the shore. His boat. Nothin’. Swam in circles till he drowned.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Christ, Byron.”

  “I know. They found him with his lids swollen shut. His eyes were burnt blind.”

  “Damn.” Clay shivered and took a drink. “You do hear the stories, don’t you?”

  “It was all over the county. In the papers, even. You were at school.”

  Clay watched his friend as Byron rose and walked across the low-lit room to the stove. He had to duck to avoid the slanting roof. With the black apron of the iron stove already open, he threw in some pieces of split oak taken from the stack next to the wall. The two of them gazed into the orange center of the fire, crackling blue and violet, and let the fire burn away the image of Johnnydog, out there swimming to nowhere, unable to see.

  “You still being courted by Mac Longley?” Clay asked after a while.

  Byron frowned. “He does go on with me. Told me the other night his quote operation, unquote, runs the whole length of the Bay. Delaware to Norfolk. Said his people—the ones he works for, I guess—used to smuggle shit in from South America by using carriers pretending to be tourists. They’d swallow the coke packed into condoms before flying home. Said one girl’s broke on the airplane. She didn’t make it. So they had to find a better way. I know he’s at least half full of bullshit. But apparently they have.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Found another way.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know what. I guess it involves him. That’s all I know.”

  “Nice folks,” Clay added. “Cocaine inside condoms.”

  “Yeah.”

  Clay asked Byron to wait a minute and got up and went to his room. He came back with the corroded green ammunition box, opened it, and carefully unfolded Pappy’s creased and dried-out chart of the location of the wreck of the Spanish frigate, just above the Virginia line, above Smith Island. Clay showed the chart to Byron and told him the story. “That steel was so perfect,” he finished, “Pappy said that six weeks out of the water there wasn’t even any oxidation. I’d like to find somebody today who could forge steel like that.”

  Byron held the chart down at his side, looking queerly at Clay, his eyebrows knotted.

  “We’re talking the sixteen hundreds.” Clay took a drink. “Once we raise enough money crabbing,” he went on, “I figure we can go on a treasure hunt.”

  Byron got off his chair and sat on the floor, placing the chart in front of him so that the firelight fell across it. He traced the coordinates with his finger. With eyes gleaming and new images in his mind, he laughed and sat back up on the rocker. “Your father,” he said. “What a fuckin’ pisser. Smith Island. Wide as an ocean down there. Right above the Virginia line. You think this is the real thing?”

  Clay shrugged. “Pappy found the wreck. And the ax. He was convinced.”

  “Well, goddamn. Why don’t we just go scuba down there?”

  Clay shook his head. “Pappy went back. He tried. A bunch of times. Said it needed a proper salvage boat. Sonar, metal detectors, vacuums. The bottom’s too shifty down there. The silt covers everything.” Clay reached for the chart. “This stays private now, Buck.”

  Byron handed it to him. “Whatever.”

  “It’s a dream anyway. But for me I want it to stay private. Between us and Pappy.”

  “Pappy ain’t gonna say anything.”

  Clay gave Byron a look, folded up the chart, and put it back in the metal box. He got up and took the box back to his room, came back, and worked the fire, stirring the red ash.

  “Sorry,” Byron said.

  Clay took another drink of whiskey. “Hell. You’re right, I’m sure. He’s gone. But what do you think?”

  Byron was quiet for a minute. Then he got up and walked over to his bureau. He opened a drawer and pulled a p
hotograph out. He handed it to Clay. The picture showed three guys in army fatigues. Byron was in the center. All three had their arms around one another’s shoulders and were smiling. The one on the left was a black man. None of them looked to be over twenty.

  “They were the ones that helped me. Saved my life. But I couldn’t get them out.”

  Clay studied the picture for a long while, then stood up and returned the picture to the drawer. After he shut the drawer, he sat on the couch, his arms on his knees. “I’m sorry.”

  Byron took a deep breath.

  Clay was silent.

  “You know, it never bothered me. What you did. Protestin’ about the war and all.”

  Clay watched Byron squat down and take another turn poking the fire.

  “It was more avoiding than protesting.”

  “Well, whatever. Being a pacifist or whatever.”

  Clay thought of Byron that summer after high school. Getting ready for boot camp. Driving around with a near arsenal in the back of his pickup. Talking the talk.

  “It seemed to make sense at the time.” Clay reached over and took a swig from the bottle of Jim Beam.

  “You were smart. To avoid it.”

  Clay put the bottle down. “I don’t know. Maybe. It was the easy way to go. I jumped on the easy train, really.”

  “Safe is smart. Trust me.”

  Clay mulled this over. “I’m not proud about it. Not sorry or anything either. I was just lucky, maybe. I mean, peace sounded right. But I was just taken up. Going along. Taken up by events, the same as you. Most everyone I knew in school was the same. It was just easy. We weren’t thinking enough about you guys. We pretended we were, but we weren’t.”