by Tim Junkin
Brigman didn’t seem to move. He didn’t say anything. He nodded almost imperceptibly. The other man shouted a thank-you.
“You all right? You can make it?” Clay shouted again.
Brigman this time raised his hand.
Clay looked at them watching him. Then he turned the bateau away, easterly, pointing the bow to head across the mouth of the river. The rain began stinging his face, and he shivered and felt the cold for the first time. He slid down into a trough and the spiking crests were over his head, the spindrift streaking dense and white across the waves. He thought of his pots and knew better than to head out again. The Tred Avon was starting to rage. The open Choptank would be impassable.
Inside the cabin, he turned on the radio again. He heard no more calls for help, and the news of the storm was steady. The eye was coming up the gullet of the Bay.
Clay traversed the mouth of the Tred Avon, the rain now ripping across in horizontal fusillades from the northeast. Visibility was minimal, holding at twenty yards or less. He passed near the lighthouse and heard her bell but could not see her. He took dead aim in his mind for Bachelor Point, across the way, and held a steady course, as the water was deep to the shore. He plowed ahead, running the hurtling waves, and when he sensed he was close, he angled to starboard until he found the point and worked his way down the shore to the mouth of Island Creek, the water boiling off the northern shoal marking the entrance. He ran up the creek slowly, the waves slamming his bow, the water sloshing over the floorboards of the bateau. Hugging the bank, he searched through the blinding rain and thought he saw a light, and then he saw it again, and he said a prayer, for it seemed to be a safety beacon reaching toward him, and then he knew it was the dock lights at the end of the Lawlors’ wharf, and he thought it was a miracle that they were on. The storm was lashing at the dock, the flood tide pouring over the boards like ocean waves, and the wind whipped the rain laterally across the pilings, blurring the lights. He gave safe distance to the dock, slowly working his way around it, his bow pitching violently, to where he could approach the shore and then see where the creek cut out a half-moon bay. Moving in toward shore, he saw the narrow cut that opened into the pond on the Lawlor property. He slid into the neck, lined on either side with reed grass that was blown back as though trampled down. The waves rushed to his stern, the wind whined above him, and the rain was relentless, but inside the cut, the water calmed as he glided through, into a deep water pocket, protected on all sides by banked woods except for the narrow channel that opened to the river. There were no other boats. Clay set to work in the stripping rain.
Pappy had once taught him the three-anchor mooring, bridled 120 degrees apart. “For a hurricane,” he remembered being told, “or a permanent mooring where there is none.” And so he set it out, one anchor out front with a double-long rode, the other two nearly midships on either side. Hurricane winds can come from opposite directions, first from the counterclockwise direction of the storm’s cyclonic circle, and then, as the center passes by, from the opposite course. Clay thought of this as he worked, that with this anchorage, regardless of how the wind shifts, the bateau would swing in a very small circle, and there would always be one or two anchors to windward. The greater the load, he thought, the deeper the Danforths will bury. He worked with the storm about him, and the same thoughts cursed through his effort—that half his pots were still out there, half his business busting in the storm. Using the extra lines he had brought, he lashed closed the cabin doors and tied the hatches tight. He rechecked the anchors and anchor lines. He removed the foul-weather slicker he had on, stashed it in the engine box, and clamped down the lid. He looked at everything he owned. Then he swung himself over the side, swam about thirty yards, until he could stand in the sand, and waded ashore. On the riverbank he looked back and studied the Miss Sarah, certain that it would take a tidal wave to move her. Then he turned and started walking through the woods and up the hill toward the Lawlor house, seeing in his mind the buoys he had left bobbing in the furious storm.
14
When Clay reached the top of the hill and emerged from the woods, he saw a man he made out to be Jim Lawlor running from the front door of his house to his Jeep Wagoneer. Stumbling down to the edge of the driveway, Clay managed to place himself in the beams of its headlights as the Jeep started to swing around the drive toward the lane. Lawlor’s eyes widened in disbelief. He opened the door and Clay climbed in.
“My God, son, you look like a drowned ghost. How the hell’d you get here, and what the hell are you doing out in this?”
“Trying to save my pots, sir. And my boat.”
“Your boat! Jesus! You were out there?”
“Yes, sir. I got delayed some. Figured you got one of the best hurricane holes around.”
Jim Lawlor owned several farms in the county, and acres of riverfront property. He had been a hunting partner of Pappy’s. He told Clay that he had already moved his family into his cousin’s house in town and was heading there himself. “Just in case,” he explained. He asked Clay about his boat and how he had secured it and nodded thoughtfully on hearing the explanation. He asked about the river and kept shaking his head as Clay described it. “Of course I will take you home with me,” he insisted. “You need some dry clothes, son. Don’t say a word. Don’t try to argue. Don’t even mention it.”
The brunt of Agnes hit that night. Winds in Easton were clocked at near a hundred miles per hour, shredding foliage and knocking over trees, but it was the rain that was like never before, flying laterally in sheets for hours in the howling dark, battering the Lawlors’ frame house, pounding the windows, and sending flash floods cascading down the street. Clay, having showered and changed into some clothes the Lawlors had found for him, sat in the kitchen drinking coffee, watching the windows, and listening to the sounds of the storm for most of the night. The phones were down, so he couldn’t call Bertha or Byron. Jim Lawlor had made a bed for him on the sofa, but it wasn’t until first light that he lay down and fell asleep.
As Clay slept, Hurricane Agnes continued to rampage across the Mid-Atlantic seaboard before veering northeast, pouring more rain into the Susquehanna and the other tributaries of the Bay than ever before in recorded history, and causing the worst flooding in its huge watershed in two centuries. Some five inches of rain fell over the watershed in just four hours, the news reported. The Bay’s saline levels would become inverted. South of the raging Susquehanna, the floodwaters, of the Sassafras, the Gunpowder, the Patapsco, the Chester, the West, the South, the Severn, the Choptank, the Patuxent, and the Potomac had begun their carnage, carrying mud, silt, topsoil, fertilizers, pesticides, and debris from the Blue Ridge to the Bay and wreaking environmental havoc throughout the huge estuary.
Clay didn’t wake up until late Friday morning. By then the storm had tapered off to a steady rain, but the flood crests were still building. Clay mostly paced until the phone service was restored. He talked to Bertha first and made sure she was safe and then called Byron and told him where he was. Byron was pale and shaking when he came to pick Clay up. He stammered that he had looked for Clay everywhere, riding back and forth between Pecks and the house. The one person he had not spoken to was Jed Sparks, who had been more than preoccupied.
Clay told Byron what happened and to forget it. It was he, Clay, who had left for the river early. Byron was upset and then sullen. He cursed the Mood Indigo.
They drove down to Island Creek. On the way, Byron mentioned that Matty had called from Richmond. He and Kate had been worried. They had driven to Richmond to be safe. “Matty said to tell you that they talked about the wharf idea to his father,” Byron continued. “Said he’d agreed to look at the papers. You know, the numbers. If we could get ’em from the bank.”
Along Oxford Road there were trees down and debris everywhere. The lane to the Lawlors’ was under several inches of water, and the culverts on either side were like rushing creeks. Proceeding slowly, the pickup worked its way down the lane
to the house. From the Lawlors’ yard, Island Creek was unrecognizable. The south bank had disappeared under water, which lay over much of the southern landscape. The rising tide had covered the Lawlors’ dock, and the high brown water had flooded half the yard. A low, slate-colored cloud ceiling seethed overhead, though the air in the dissipating drizzle felt balmy and strangely calm. After moving carefully through the woods and sliding down the bank, they emerged at the pond’s edge and saw the bateau, riding low and fouled with water but steady on her lines and unharmed. The pond water was muddied with thick sediment. They spent the morning bailing out the Miss Sarah and cleaning her, till she rode fair and light on the high and rising tide. At Boone’s Landing they found the pots Clay had lashed to the trees. They untied and loaded the pots into the back of the pickup. Once home, they stacked them behind the garage.
After warm showers and a change of clothes, Byron and Clay pulled their hip waders on, put some tools in the truck, and started for Pecks Wharf. They had to park and walk down the drive. The water was nearly a foot deep over the lane and deeper over the ground. The first boats they saw were in the woods several hundred yards from the dock, twisted among the broken trees.
Those that had been hydraulically lifted before the storm and secured were untouched, and those properly moored with a safe swing were undamaged and floating in the harbor. Looking up the cove, Clay saw that Mood Indigo was one of these, swinging on Pappy’s black-painted buoy. But dock lines tied too tight had snapped on some, and anchor lines, on others. There were dozens of boats washed up on their sides in the yard, and too many to count half submerged along the wooded shore. A small cabin cruiser had been lifted and smashed into the side of the picking shack. The yard was a confusion of destruction. Clay and Byron found Jed talking on the phone. They offered their services, and Jed put them to work.
Inside the Washington Street Pub the next evening, Clay sat drinking beer with Barker, Byron, and Mason. They sat and watched the old-time watermen passing by, who just shook their heads. “Never heard or seen anything like it” was the common refrain. “Gonna have to go beggin’ to the government for help,” Clay overheard. “This here killed the watermen,” said another. “Kilt us all.” Clay knew the answer to his question, about the crabs, before he asked it. And the answer was in Barker’s face if Clay needed proof.
“You hearin’ anything on the radio?” Byron asked his father after a while. “We’ve been in the muck since daybreak.”
“News ain’t good,” Mason reported. “Terrible, really. Experts’re all sayin’ Bay’s goin’ into shock.”
“Don’t need no radio to know that,” Barker interrupted. “Don’t need no experts neither.”
“More freshwater and pollution than she can handle, they’re sayin’. Killed the salinity. And with all the runoff—the fertilizers and pesticides. Shit. I feel bad for you boys.” He raised his beer and took a drink. “But you’re young. Good thing.”
“Bay’s resilient,” Clay answered. “Always has been. It’s early yet to tell, anyway.”
“Years.” Mason eyed him squinting. “That’s what they said today on the TV. Maybe several.”
No one spoke for a while. They sat and drank and listened to similar talk coming from other booths in the pub.
“That’s why I quit,” Mason finally said. “State Roads pays me regular. It ain’t the water, but it’s regular.” He finished his beer and raised his hand in the air until Missy, their waitress, saw him and waved for him to put it down.
“Your daddy was a crabber,” Barker said. “Just like mine. Like Clay’s.”
“An oysterman too,” Mason added. “And fisherman.” He seemed to reflect for a moment. “Hell, he used to talk about the shad runs,” Mason went on. “More fish than you could ever imagine, Daddy said. Claimed you could walk on ’em, they were so thick in the water. Walk on ’em.” He chuckled. “Now, when’s the last time you even heard of any shad being caught up here. Not in any quantity, noways.”
He looked around for effect.
“He did some ocean trawlin’ too. Off the Labrador coast.” Mason paused, studying first Clay and then Byron. “Crabbin’s done for this year, son. Crabs’ll either die or migrate. They need the salt and cleaner water. Salt mix’s changed for this year. That’s what they’re sayin’ on the news. I’m sorry to say it to you. I know it’s true, though. I figure you know it too.” He crossed his arms in front of him. No one spoke for a while. Then he continued. “It’s the waterman’s way. My daddy, he’d come home and tell me over and over. It was one thing or another. This calamity or that. ‘Get away,’ he’d say. ‘You get away, young Mase. Far from the shore. Get yerself somewheres else and get the salt outta your veins and give yerself a chance. Go where no sea runs,’ he’d say.” Mason shook his head. “‘Where no sea runs and a chance for a decent life.’ Course he never meant a lick of it. He was as salty as they come.”
Missy came over with a round of beers, which she set on the table. She picked up the empties. “I’m sorry, boys,” she said. “Damn shame, it is. Damn shame.” Barker patted her arm as she left.
“And then I ended up on the ocean,” Mason finished. “In the war. On the ocean in the night.”
Byron raised his glass to toast, trying to change the subject. “To all our daddies,” he offered.
They all nodded approval and clinked their bottles together and then drank together.
“I can’t imagine,” Barker said then, quietly staring at the table.
“What?”
“Livin’ landlocked. Not knowin’ the water.” He looked up. “Can you, Clay?”
Clay sat silent for a while. “What are you going to do?” He answered Barker with a question.
Barker drummed his fingers on the table. “I’ll try and sell my alewives in Virginia. Or maybe North Carolina. I suspect the lower Bay may be all right. Up here, though . . .” He shook his head. “But then, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll ask Mase here for work.”
“We like to hire vets,” Mason stated. He looked at Byron.
Byron reached in his pocket and found a cigarette. He lit it slowly and carefully. “Aw, Mase,” he said exhaling. “Me and Clay got to figure this one out first.” He took another drag. “Don’t we, Clay?”
Clay took a breath. “We lost half of what we built already.” He looked around at the faces in the bar, faces chiseled dry and hard by the salt and wind. Most looked old for their age. He saw Byron watching him, trying to read his thoughts. Thoughts of a roiling Bay. Of torn, drifting pots below. Of sunken treasure ships. Clay’s thoughts whirled with these and other images of the days past and ahead, but one thought remained constant: he had no intention of giving up. That was the thought he figured Byron was looking for and would see on his face and in his eyes.
Over the following days the swollen rivers crested their banks and the Bay water was opaque with mud and debris and reportedly unsafe for boaters as far south as the Virginia line. Marine wreckage was everywhere. Clay and Byron checked on the bateau every day, and every day she rode her lines steady. They recharged the battery and tested the engine, which started after a prime. The rest of the time they spent working at Pecks, helping out with the cleanup and salvage. Jed Sparks promised them good wages once insurance payments started coming in, but Clay figured he’d have been there anyway. He was needed there, and there was nowhere else to go. He knew he had lost half his pots, but he still wanted to go look for them. “But what good are pots,” Byron kept reminding him. “What good are pots, when there ain’t gonna be no crabs? Not this year, anyway.”
During this time, Clay neither saw nor heard from Brigman. The Mood Indigo, seemingly unattended, road smartly up the cove, swinging on its borrowed mooring.
A week later, Clay ventured out into the Tred Avon and from the Tred Avon to the Choptank. The water was still high and the color of compost. Uprooted trees, sides of houses, wooden trailer frames, and creosote-covered pilings all floated in the muck trailing along the river surface. La
rge, dark areas of reddish foam stretched along the current. A wooden mast floated by, its torn sail tangled around it like a shroud. He rode slowly out in the direction of Cook Point, watching for underwater debris. The marsh grass to the south had disappeared underwater. Familiar landmarks were hidden under the tide. There was no sight of any of his crab pots. The sky was stained brown. The reports were coming in. The crabs were gone.
PART TWO
Virginia
Dawn breaks behind the eyes;
From poles of skull and toe the windy blood
Slides like a sea.
—DYLAN THOMAS
15
It was Jed Sparks who reinforced the idea. The thought had been planted in the Washington Street Pub that night after the hurricane. During the weeks that followed, Clay had been turning it over in his mind. He had discussed it with Barker and then with Byron. Tentatively, carefully. To salvage some of the season, to try to save what he had left—what other choice was there, except to give up? It made sense. Go south. To Virginia. Work the southern flute of the Bay, the mouth of the Rappahannock or lower. South, farther below the salt line, where the salinity was said to be still potent enough and the water, filtered by the Atlantic’s tides, still clean and alive with crabs. Ocean crabs were never as sweet, but the prices would be high. Work the crabs through the season, till October, maybe, and build his stash of pots back up. Then come north for the oyster. If the oyster had survived.
Money was the biggest problem. Or the lack of it. The insurance payments that the bank had been expecting had been delayed, so it had paid only minimum wage for the salvage work. And there were also concerns about intruding on the territory of the Virginia crabbers, though the Bay was wide down there. And then where exactly to go. How to start. And during this time, Clay found himself undecided, afflicted with hesitation, unlike himself, ignoring the obvious way to begin, until Byron called him into the kitchen one morning and handed him the phone. It was Matty. Byron had called to tell Matty that he and Clay needed to come down and check things out. Matty was insistent. Of course they should come, he told Clay. Immediately. He and Kate wanted to see him. They had just one guest bedroom, but one of them could sleep on the couch. “Plus . . .” Matty hesitated, his voice faltering. “It’s a secret. You’ll have to keep this quiet until graduation next spring . . .”