by Tim Junkin
“Right fair, for spring,” Byron commented. “Right fair catch on the first try.”
Clay opened the top side of the trap, which was fastened by a stretched piece of surgical tubing with hooks at each end, and emptied the crabs into the crab box. He stuffed a handful of menhaden into the bait cylinder, sent the pot back overboard, and started toward the next buoy. Byron started culling the crabs. The large males, or jimmies, went into one basket, and the mediums into another. The females, or sooks, and the recently molted crabs that hadn’t filled out their new, larger shells, known as liver-bellies, went into a third.
“Big crab, yessir,” Byron said, tossing a large yellow-bellied jimmie into the basket. “Fatter’n a rich man.” He had a cull stick to measure the males, point to point if necessary. The minimum size for a keeper was five and a half inches. Anything smaller was thrown back. There were only two small crabs in this first bunch. He finished just as Clay was guiding the next buoy line into the pulley. Seconds later the trap came up with even more crabs, and Clay said, “Damn!” and then Byron said, “Damn! I think they like your pots there, Clay.”
Clay swung the trap onto the rail. “You mean our pots.”
“Well, they do appear to fancy ’em.”
Clay grinned. “It’s these sweet alewives that Barker saved for us, probably.”
“Whatever works.”
“Yeah, Buck.”
Clay emptied the crabs out, rebaited, and reset the pot, moving down the line, as Byron culled. They worked their first lay and then the others, and by midday two full bushels of large, fat blue crabs, four and a half bushels of mediums, and several bushels of sooks sat in the sun. Clay looked at the crabs in the boat, then studied their line of pots running southeast in the swash along the extended spit of land. His hands were swollen and sore and his arms ached. He looked at Byron, who was wobbling a little.
“You ain’t tired, now, are you?”
Byron spit over the rail. “I don’t know nothin’ about tired.”
He kicked the bushel baskets. “But I’m done cullin’ and I got no whiskey left to celebrate.”
Clay took a jab. “Just suck on your own breath for a while.”
Byron snorted and, trying to take off his apron, nearly fell and had to grab the rail for support. Then he tottered his way to the cabin.
“Maybe I’ll hit the cot for a few minutes while you take us home.”
“Don’t miss the payout, now.”
“Just hold my share, partner,” Byron said as he ducked into the cabin. “And wake me when the party starts.”
At the dock, Jed Sparks eyed the crabs. “Right handy catch,” he commented as Clay lifted the bushels up on the loading dock. “Still paying high, though catches like these’ll move the price.” He counted out six twenties and two one-dollar bills and handed the money down to Clay. “Prices’ll probably drop after Memorial Day, anyway.”
Clay received the money. “Appreciate it.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s a start.”
“Good start. Where’s Byron?”
Clay motioned forward. “Snoozin’ in the cot.”
“There’s a girl came by for him. Said she’d come back later. Laura somebody.”
“Thanks.”
“Sorry about Brigman,” Jed offered.
Clay was untying the stern line from the loading dock cleat. “Yeah,” he muttered.
“Figure’d he’d take my advice.” He shook his head. “Apparently he’s got his own agenda.” Jed paused. “I heard yesterday he’s gone to the bank with an offer.”
Clay stopped what he was doing.
Jed’s face was lashed with salt and rigor tough. Still, Clay could see the wince. “It’s a ways off. May not happen. Course, somebody’s gonna buy this place.” Jed spat, away from Clay. He turned back. “I hear he wants to keep the restaurant and marina. And for some reason the seafood wholesale operation. Wants to tear the rest down, though. Build condos. It’d require all kinda permits and state approvals.”
Clay felt a surge of weakness well up, an incapacity, like vertigo. He realized he should have been ready for this, but he wasn’t. He sat down, holding on to the rail.
“I’m sorry, Clay. I think the same as you.”
Clay nodded.
“Strange combination. Condos. Crab and oyster wholesalin’. He likes cash, though. Crabs are an all-cash operation. But still . . .”
Clay tried to focus. He looked down the dock, but the Mood Indigo wasn’t there.
“Boat’s been gone a week. Must be nice,” Jed added.
“Whose her captain?” Clay mumbled.
“Don’t know. Him, I suppose.”
Clay pressed his temples.
“We’ll talk later,” Jed finished. “I’ll keep you posted.”
“Yeah,” Clay mumbled again. He sat for a while, just breathing. He brought his chapped hands up to his face and cupped his eyes, shielding them from the light, searching the docks, the decrepit buildings, searching out the fabric of his past. The image of Poplar Island, once grand, now mostly washed away by the Bay’s tides, slid into his thoughts. He struggled for balance. Slowly he rose, trying to center on the tasks before him. He restarted the engine, backed the Miss Sarah away from the dock, and took her into her slip, trying to stay with the present and the things he needed to do. He washed down the boat. When he finished, he checked his bait barrel. The brine covered his diminishing supply of menhaden. On Wednesday he would make another run to Barker. He had money in his pocket. That was something new. A good thought. But everything seemed obscured by what Jed had told him.
He checked the lines once more and then checked on Byron, who was lying mostly on his back, one leg hanging off the cot, snoring sporadically. Clay took the army blanket that was stowed in the forward hatch and arranged it lightly over Byron. He turned on the small chart light on the captain’s table and wrote a note to Byron, telling him about Laura-Dez and to call him when he woke up, and then Clay left two dimes for phone calls on top of the note.
He walked around to Jed’s office to cut through to the parking lot, and standing there, leaning against the side of the building and looking out over the creek with a vacant stare, was Amanda. Her hair was pulled back and braided, and she wore a halter top over faded cutoffs, her bare legs crossed over each other. He muttered hello to her and she looked at him as though she didn’t recognize him. He stopped next to her without thinking and then had no idea what to say.
“Waiting for someone?” he blurted out.
She turned and then went back to looking at the creek. “Maybe.”
There was so much about this place that she and Brigman needed to understand. He had no idea even how to begin, and he also knew that any words from him would be wasted. He stepped back and moved off across the landing, then got into Byron’s pickup and left.
When he got back to the farmhouse, the telephone was ringing. He was surprised because he thought Byron would be asleep longer than this, but it was Matty calling from Washington with news. He had gotten the summer internship working for Colonial Williamsburg. He would be taking photographs of the restoration process at a plantation house in Gloucester. Kate had decided she wanted to spend the summer on the water, and a real estate agent they had called had found a cottage for them to rent in a water-front town called Gwynn’s Island, just up from Gloucester. They were moving there after classes were over. He and Kate were celebrating and they wanted to see Clay soon. He asked when they could come.
Clay didn’t mention the wharf. He didn’t want to blunt Matty’s enthusiasm. He did tell him about the crabs he had caught, and Matty said he wanted to photograph the whole crabbing operation. Clay thought for a moment and then mentioned that the first summer regatta would be held over the weekend of June 14, in celebration of Flag Day, and he invited them to come for that. He told Matty that they could certainly stay with Bertha. Matty said it sounded fine and then Kate got on the phone. She told him that her trip over the P
eachblossom Creek with him, after Pappy’s funeral, was what made her want to live on the water. She got Clay to repeat everything about the crabs that day. She had their calendar and said she really didn’t want to wait a month to come see him, but she would, and that the weekend of the fourteenth would be perfect, and they’d try to come Thursday or at least very early Friday. Later he couldn’t remember much else of what she had said, just that they were coming in a few weeks. Clay had visited Matty a few times, at his father’s big house in Richmond. He had even been to Kate’s parents’ once, in Potomac, Maryland, a suburb of Washington. But except for Pappy’s funeral, neither Matty nor Kate had ever seen his world. He was pleased they were coming. Especially for the first summer regatta.
11
Clay ran the bateau out with the fifty new pots they had just bought. They’d had four good weeks and he felt prosperous. In addition to the pots, he had purchased more bait, paid rent, and still had money in his pocket. He had also gone to see his father’s banker, Frank Dawson, who had been an old friend of Pappy’s and who spoke courteously with him. Hugo Brigman’s proposal was contingent on a “due diligence study.” Rezoning would be required and the process would not be a fast one. Other alternatives were still being explored. Clay had felt better after learning this. With the warm air at his back, he arranged the new pots along a zigzag course running southerly from the others. He worked more slowly harvesting the crabs without Byron, who was nowhere to be found that morning.
Clay culled the crabs and rebaited, but he was impatient. The June sun climbed high, and the river seemed swollen as it rose and fell, as though it were breathing heavily in the heat of the day. A girl water-skied past, pulled behind a twenty-two-foot Whaler with a Johnson 150 on the back. She waved as she cut the water on one ski, sending a rooster tail his way that left rainbow droplets hanging in the air. He edged back the throttle and watched her slice through her own wake. She had long legs and looked beautiful on the slalom, sliding side to side on the spread of silver wave. She looked almost familiar.
He worked through lunch and finished up in the afternoon. The river turned flat and the sky high and pure as he crossed the Choptank. A little breeze for the weekend, and the weather will be perfect, he thought.
Docking alongside the landing at Pecks, he saw Jed Sparks on the office porch, leaning back in a rocker with a Budweiser in his hand. Clay threw two half hitches over the piling to his stern and jumped out with the painter, which he quickly notched around a cleat on the landing.
“Good catch?” Jed asked.
“Average.” Clay looked around, not seeing any of Jed’s men.
“Let the boys go early, what with the races startin’ tomorrow.” Jed reached back into a cooler and pulled out a beer. “Here,” he said. “You crewin’?”
“Might,” Clay said, taking the beer. “Thanks.” He popped it and drank half of it as he walked back to the Miss Sarah and started loading bushels onto the landing. “Barker Cull’s asked. He’s sailing Misty,” Clay hollered back. He threw onto the landing a bushel of number one jimmies with no lid, the top crabs hissing and scrapping with their pinchers. Jed got up and walked over.
“Misty’s right smart. Clacky Wheeler’s sailin’ Flying Cloud, though. Be tough to beat.”
“But I’ve got some friends coming up tonight for the weekend,” Clay went on. “I’ve got to see if I can work it.”
“Lady friends?” Jed’s face turned conspiratorial.
Clay heaved the last bushel up, ten in all. “One’s a lady all right. But she’s with the other, whose not, I’m afraid.”
Jed Sparks winked. “You need some polshky, boy.” Clay looked at Jed, who was grinning like a sheepshead, and figured he must have had a few. “Personally, I’d like to frig with that Amanda there.”
Clay shook his head. “Right. She’s a friendly one.”
“She does have her nose stuck in the air.” Sparks chuckled. “That ain’t all that’s stuck up there, though. And she’s the kind that needs it—and would do it too, if she thought she could get away with it.”
Clay smiled at the way he was carrying on. Jed was trying to wink again, but he looked more like he had a facial tic.
Clay pointed. “That bushel with no top, I’d like to stash in your cooler. I need to take about eighteen jumbos home for soup. If you can find me a paper bag. The rest in the bushel are for a crab feast tomorrow night down at Bertha’s. Come on by if you feel like it. These other bushels, I’d like to sell. That is, if you’re not too busy thinking about other things.”
Jed Sparks eyed the full baskets and took out a wad of bills and paid Clay. He picked up one of the baskets. “Help me carry these inside, will you. Truck’ll be by soon to get ’em.” He started walking, then stopped and turned to Clay. “Thanks for the invite. I’ll probably be drunk with Clacky.” He laughed to himself as he walked inside.
Clay stopped at the grocery and then went home to start cooking the crab soup. He straightened the house and swept the walkway outside. After a while he lay down and fell asleep in the hammock that hung underneath the twin silver oaks. When he woke up, Byron and Laura-Dez were sitting out in front of the house on the picnic table, drinking gin and tonics. He rubbed his eyes and sat up. It took a minute for him to get his bearings. He studied the sky. The lawn and trees were tinted with amber. Down the lane the creek shore seemed to burn with small fires. Byron went in and brought him out a drink. Laura-Dez was rolling a joint when the car came bouncing up the drive.
Matty was the first out of the car, with his camera in his hand, shouting for no one to move as he angled to capture the scene in the fusion of light and color. But Kate came bounding around the car with a champagne bottle in her hand, jumping to embrace Clay, who, trying to get up, fell out of the hammock. She helped him up, laughing. Then she wrapped her arms around Byron’s neck and sat on his lap. Laura-Dez frowned, and Kate, seeing, composed herself, rising and apologizing as they were introduced.
At the picnic table, Matty popped the champagne. They drank it out of plastic cups and then continued sipping the gin as they watched the light recede and dusk take over. Matty and Kate had just moved into the cottage on Gwynn’s Island, and Kate described it to them, calling it country charming. Matty mumbled something about small-town nostalgia, then said the cottage ought to be at least charming after all the moving he’d done. “Damn piano almost killed me,” he finished. Kate was disappointed with the real estate agent, though, because it really wasn’t right on the Bay, but you could see the Bay across the road as well as from behind the cottage, through a row of houses. Still, it at least had the feel of the water about it, she concluded. Matty passed around his first set of plantation house pictures and began talking about his newest project, which was to collect enough photographs of disappearing Eastern Shore “relics”—that was the word he used—to compose a coffee-table book.
Clay started to say something about the wharf and then changed his mind.
“I’d like to get some shots of you doing your crab pots. And maybe shoot you working those oyster tongs you’ve told me about,” Matty continued.
Clay wondered if he qualified as a relic.
Byron had come out, carrying the pot of steaming crab soup. “Oysterin’ season’s over, Matty,” he said. “Gotta wait till September.” Clay was looking in the pot, surprised. “Laura-Dez and I picked a few of the biggest ones while you were sleeping,” Byron continued. “We broke up a few and left them in for character.”
“Damn.” Matty said. “Couldn’t you act like you were tonging?”
Byron snorted. He took a long drink, finishing his gin, then seemed to examine the sky. “Full moon’s gonna rise, though, Clay. New summer slough. I could unravel the seine.”
They all started eating.
“What’s that—the seine?” Kate asked. “And a slough?”
“The old seine. She still in one piece?” Clay asked Byron.
“Sewed her over the winter.”
Clay sw
allowed a mouthful. “Soft crabbing,” he answered Kate. “You want to see it the old way, Matty? We got to get up early. It’s a real throwback.”
“Make for a tasty breakfast too,” Byron added.
“Sounds reliclike,” Matty said. “How early?”
“About six, I’d say. We’ll use the pickup and stop by your daddy’s to get the seine?” he said to Byron, who nodded. “Be in the water by seven.”
“I’m going,” said Kate.
“I think I’ll sleep in,” said Laura-Dez.
“Did you say in the river?” Matty asked.
“Up to about your waist,” Clay replied, “though you can take pictures from shore. We’ll have to scrounge up some old tennis shoes for you each to wear.”
“Do you think we’ll get some?” Kate asked. Her face was rapt with fascination. “I mean, for real?”
“Slight chance,” Byron said. He winked at Laura-Dez.
“Seining is almost a lost art,” Clay said. “And if you want, I’ll take you later to the boatyard. Rusted-out dredgers, clam conveyors. Even the picking house is antique.”
“Cool,” Matty said. “Right on.”
“And I got another one for you, Matty,” Clay added. He paused a moment. “The Chesapeake Bay log canoes are racing tomorrow and Saturday. Saturday, Byron and I are crewing on a friend’s boat, and you’re invited too. Nice canoe. She’s called Misty.”
“Sailing a canoe?”
“No camera though. These things go over right easy.”
“Matty, my sailor boy.” Kate’s inflection was maternal.
“Depending on the course they set, Kate might get a chance to see us pass close to the ferry dock, and she could take a picture or two if you want.”