by Tim Junkin
“What?” Clay asked.
“We got engaged. Kate and I.” Matty halted. Clay could hear him breathing. Or was it his own breath, or his own pulse, that seemed to mark the space and silence between them? “Last weekend,” Matty finally continued. “Her parents can’t know until we finish school. After that, we’ll announce it. We’ll have a big party.”
Clay reached out for a chair and sat, looking away from Byron. He knew his own face was a betrayal.
“It was kind of sudden,” Matty went on. “We’d fought. We were both feeling—I don’t know—like we needed to. Like it was time. We went to Williamsburg. I bought her a ring. It was a good way to make up.”
Clay sat and listened as Matty described more of the details. Matty’s tone became more natural and animated as he went on. Byron whispered, “What? What is it?” Clay struggled for composure. He made the necessary effort to talk, to ask Matty the right questions, to congratulate him. He managed to get these questions out and repeated his congratulations several times before finally handing the phone back to Byron, who knew what had happened from hearing Clay but received the news as though with surprise, congratulating Matty in his turn. Byron finished the call by making the arrangements for their visit. Clay heard him confirm and then promise that they would drive the truck down the next week for a look.
Later, as the news settled in, as Byron shared his whiskey, a vague sense of relief seeped into Clay’s mind. He decided, that night, to raise a few extra glasses. For his friends, he told himself. He closed the pub down. Byron, for a change, had to help him get home.
It was the following Wednesday when Clay and Byron climbed into the truck. Clay had been anxious about the trip, raising objections, but Byron was set and unrelenting. Only after finding the highway, with the wind whirring through the open windows, did Clay begin to relax. Byron started telling navy jokes and Clay appreciated his friend beside him. He also appreciated having a direction, the delusion of travel as progress.
They started after lunch and drove Route 50 down the Eastern Shore, across the Choptank River and through Cambridge, slanting down the coast across the Nanticoke. At the Highway Inn, where Byron had once been in a fight, they stopped and Byron bought a six-pack of malt liquor. They slid around Salisbury, touching the Wicomico, down Route 13, through Princess Anne, over the Pocomoke River and through Pocomoke City, and down into the narrow marshy neck of Virginia’s eastern peninsula. Clay studied the flat, unending fields and glittering marsh beyond and took in the vistas of the flatlands around him, land that you could see about you and believe in, and this too steadied him. As they passed these places, he found himself reciting the names that had been given to the land and the waters: Hooper Neck, Hurlock, Galestown, Shad Point, Bivalve, Onancock, Wachapreague, Honga River, Terrapin Sand Spit, Assawoman Inlet, Hog Island Bay, and on and on, down toward Cape Charles and the mouth of the Chesapeake. It was a fine summer afternoon, the water sparkling, and it was still light when they crossed the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, some seventeen miles long. As they glided along the narrow ramp, to their right, northward, lay the great Bay, the basin for hundreds of rivers, inlets, and tributaries, cutting through four states, mixing the seas with the continental freshwater flows. To the south, to their left, lay the Atlantic, running a tide from the shores of Africa, Europe, the Arctic, carrying its store of life and history. Crossing here, over this mix of the world’s currents, Clay felt a flush of gratitude, almost as though he were on the water again.
They got lost in Hampton because Byron wanted more beer, and Clay decided to find and inspect the old crab docks at the end of King Street, where the winter dredgers laid up. Winding through a maze of urban sprawl, they passed a series of commercial shipbuilding yards, the gantry cranes standing like giant sentinels above the clamor of iron and industry. Clay had Byron drive over the James River Bridge and back so he could look at the freighters and cargo ships lined up in the mouth of the harbor. Towering smokestacks billowed black smoke over Portsmouth and Newport News; tankers, pulled and pushed by tugs, worked in close to the loading docks; horns blasted the air; blocks of dilapidated housing, water towers, and gray storage tanks ran away in the distance. Following their instincts, the two of them wound their way east until they eventually found Queen Street and then the old district in Hampton, and slowly cruised along King Street to its end and the city dock, studying the ocean crab dredgers, some sixty feet or more in length, although they appeared small and anachronistic in their surroundings. Byron stopped and turned off the engine.
“That’s what they use for winter dredging,” Clay remarked.
“Uh-huh. They’re taking all sooks.”
Clay spat out the window.
“Cocksuckers.”
“I’d heard they were big workboats.”
“Livin’ in all this shit these watermen musta lost their bearings.”
“There’s a dredger on the dock.” Clay motioned at a contraption that looked like a steel plow with teeth and a chain net, sitting on the wharf. “Scoops them right out of the mud.”
“Damn Orientals are buying all the sooks. They eat the eggs.”
“Yeah, I heard that. Not right. That’s for certain.”
“Think the government would stop it.”
“Too much money in it.”
“Supposed to be a delicacy over there. You wanna get out and walk?” Byron asked.
“Not really. Seen what I wanted to. You?”
“I’ve had enough of the confusion round here.”
“Yeah.”
Byron turned on the engine and backed the truck out. They worked their way back until they found Route 17 to Gwynn’s Island. The citylike surroundings lasted until they crossed the bridge over the York River and, after a few miles, hit the farmlands of southeastern Virginia. They drove through Gloucester and then up Route 14 as the sun began to fall behind the tips of the trees edging the fields of tobacco that receded in the distance, and the light passing through the trees slanted in muted layers. Driving between miles of cornfields, the corn stalks close to a man’s height, they reached the turnoff to Gwynn’s Island, crossed the bridge, and by driving along several of the back streets, finally found Kate and Matty’s address.
Kate came to the door.
She was wearing faded blue jeans, an oversize green sweatshirt, white tennis shoes, and a Baltimore Orioles baseball cap. Her red hair fell in waves out the back of the cap and curled down the nape of her neck. At first she seemed exasperated, as though she were bothered by the knock on the door. When she saw Clay, she was startled. She caught herself, then smiled and drifted into his arms, murmuring his name. After a few seconds she stepped back and then gave Byron an embrace. She took their hands and pulled them inside.
“What a shock, you two,” she said with an effort, as though out of breath.
“Didn’t Matty tell you we were coming?” Clay asked.
She let go of Byron, shooing away the question. “He doesn’t tell me anything anymore. You’re staying the night?” She seemed to plead and then she answered herself. “Of course you are staying the night. Or maybe several?”
“We came to look around a little,” Clay answered. “We’re thinking of bringing our boat somewhere down here. Crabbing till the fall, maybe south of the Rappahannock.”
“There ain’t no crabs left in the upper Bay now. Not after the hurricane,” Byron added.
Clay let her hand drop. “Byron called Matty, and he said you wouldn’t mind putting us up for a night. We need to find a boat slip, and somewhere to sell our catch. I’m sorry you weren’t asked. I hope you don’t mind.”
Kate took this in. “Mind?” she repeated, turning her head sideways. “I’m sorry about the storm, Clay. But if it brings you down here ... well, of course I don’t mind.” She reached for Clay’s arm. “Where are your bags? Do you have any? Let’s go get them. We will just have to celebrate your arrival, now. Come on—”
“Congratulations,” Clay stammered.
“On your engagement.”
“Yeah,” Byron added. “Likewise.”
Kate looked at one, then the other. “Matty told you?” she said to Clay, studying his face. “He said he’d let me.” She started to say something else but held back. “Oh,” she answered in almost a whisper. “Well. Thank you.” Her eyes dropped down to the floor, then lifted as she held out her hand, showing them her ring. “Nice, huh? Matty’s very generous.” She seemed unsure of what else to say. She moved forward and gave them each a little hug. “I’ve been so emotional lately.” She paused. “I guess we’re growing up. Or trying to.” Then she turned abuptly, as if from shyness, and motioned for them to follow her to their car.
Back inside, Kate picked up the phone to call Matty. “Hello. Yes, is Matty there?” She saw them standing by their bags. She cupped her hand over the receiver. “Clay, I’m sorry. The guest room is at the end of the hall upstairs. Leave your stuff up there if you want. One of you can sleep there, and I’ll make up the couch in the living room.” She nodded her head toward the stairs. Clay and Byron walked down the hallway.
A fluted banister ran along the stairway from the hall to the second floor. The walls of the hallway and stairwell were covered with framed photographs. Sunsets and rainstorms, black-and-white shots of watermen and their boats, waterfowl, pictures of bridges and mountains.
“All Matty’s work?” Byron asked.
“Appears to be.”
At the top of the landing were more photographs, but these were mostly of Kate, some posing and some with family. Clay found himself talking, explaining to Byron the photograph of Kate and her mother standing on either side of a large chestnut mare. Kate’s father, astride the horse, was decked out in formal foxhunting attire, derby and all. “Her father hosts a fox hunt every year. It’s a big deal.” Clay pointed to another photograph, taken at a debutante ball of some kind, in which Kate stood with ten or so other young women in a semicircle, all of them dressed in long white gowns.
“She hardly looks any older now,” Byron said. There was one more of Kate, playing the piano in a concert or recital. In it her eyes were closed.
The only family picture of Matty was part of a wedding portrait, “his older sister’s,” Clay guessed out loud. In the photograph, sepia toned, Kate stood between Matty and Matty’s father. The resemblance between father and son was remarkable. The three of them were on a staircase looking down at the bride and groom.
“Where’s his mother?” Byron asked.
“She was killed. Car accident. Before Matty started high school. Something we’ve had in common.”
Byron took this in. Then he whistled. “I see where he got his looks.”
“He used to do his own developing. I assume he still does. Some of these are pretty nice, you’ve got to admit,” Clay answered.
“Get’s around a bit, I’ll say that.”
Clay led the way to a small bedroom at the end of the hall. “You might as well sleep here,” Clay said. “I’ll take the couch.”
They dropped their overnight bags against the radiator.
“Good plan there, Cap.”
Clay caught the drift. “Forget whatever it is you’re thinking.”
“What?”
“You know what. And not a word. I’ll be glad to sleep here, if you prefer the couch.”
“Whew. Whoa, now. I ain’t said a thing. And I don’t plan to, neither.” Byron took out his wallet and set it and his keys on the dresser. “This here’s fine. Of course, now that you mention it, it did seem sudden. I mean, I know you’re fixed about what you’ve said. I know that. I don’t know what they’re up to, though. I hope she’s in on the program. That’s all. Those boundaries, like you talked about.”
“You’re thinking cockeyed stupid, Byron. Jesus.” Clay tried to check himself. “Of course she is. She’s just sensitive now. She just got engaged.”
“Probably am. Thinking cockeyed again. Won’t be the first time. Definitely not the last. You yourself now, I believe you could use a college course on women. Maybe if you’d’ve finished you’d’ve gotten one. Anyway, I do know one thing for sure: that you ain’t made of stone. She neither.”
“Byron, I wouldn’t’ve come down here if this were even an issue. You might know that.”
“Well, where is Matty, anyway?”
“He’ll be here. Meantime, you get your thinking straight.”
“Yeah. Okay, forget it. I won’t say another word.”
“Yeah. Don’t think it, either.”
“It ain’t easy to stop thinking about something you don’t wanna be thinking about in the first place.”
“Try harder,” Clay said.
“Yeah.”
Back downstairs, the living room was heavily curtained, dark and soft. The floor was covered with worn, overlapping braided rugs. Against one wall stood an old red velvet sofa framed in sweeping black mahogany, with a white lace antimacassar spread across the back. The unused fireplace had three chairs gathered around it—a pine rocker, and two armchairs in corduroy upholstery.
“Matty is on his way,” Kate said. “We found some of this at auction, down here. It’s like playing house.”
“Well, I thought Byron and I might go out and pick up a couple of pizzas or find some Chinese or something,” Clay said.
“Nonsense,” Kate answered. “We’ll rustle something up. You’re such a good cook, you can help me.” Byron rolled his eyes. “Only we’re out of beer. But we do have some wine,” she offered.
“Good,” Byron said. “And I have just a nip of whiskey in my bag.” He rose to get it.
Kate took Clay’s two hands and pulled him with her, saying, “Come on, let’s see what we can find.” Holding his hand, she walked him into the kitchen. She pulled a bottle of Beaujolais from the pantry and handed it to Clay. “I’ve wanted so much to talk to you,” she said. “I wish you’d called.” Her eyes were uncertain.
Clay glanced down at the bottle, then looked back at Kate. He tried to read her face. “I didn’t know whether I should. I wish you’d told me, though. I mean, I’d have wanted to celebrate for you both.”
“It happened so fast, Clay. Of course, it was something we’ve both taken for granted since . . . since forever, really. Since we were in high school. Matty’s been so jumpy. Preoccupied. I don’t know. Not himself. And he needed to, he said. He needed to . . . And I guess I did too.”
Clay stayed quiet for a moment before speaking. “Well, I know he’s very happy now. He sounded like he was.”
Kate turned and pulled down some glasses from the shelf. She polished one, holding it up to the light from the window, and then looked through it, squinting.
“He’s seeing life through rose-colored glasses,” she answered. “Or maybe I should say through Rosa-colored glasses. And a Polaroid. He’s already found a fast crowd down here.”
Clay wondered at this, but they heard Byron returning. He found a corkscrew and opened the wine.
“That’s a sound I like,” said Byron, walking in with a bourbon bottle, half full, in his hand. He took a glass from Kate and poured three fingers, then clinked his glass against the wine bottle. “And that one too,” he continued. He raised his arm high. “To beautiful young women,” he offered, and swallowed his drink down.
“Pour some for us, Clay,” Kate asked. She tilted her head at Byron. “And I’ll drink to naked men diving off boathouses.” She lowered her eyes. “And to swimming in the moonlight.”
“And to you and Matty,” Clay added. “To your engagement.”
They found pasta, olive oil, and garlic, and Kate and Clay cooked while Byron, and soon Matty, who had come home, sat at the kitchen table sipping whiskey. Matty pulled out the contact sheets of the photographs from the regatta and passed them around. He promised them prints. Byron started telling them about how Agnes hit them, and they wanted to know all about Clay’s being on the water in the storm. Matty opened a window, and the salty night air, w
arm from the summer sun and the sea, washed through the house and over the conversation.
Next morning, Clay and Byron were up and out early. They had a chart of the lower Bay with several of the dock areas circled. They drove through the small watermen towns along the western shore and down the coast, trying first Hudgins, then New Point and Mobjack, and finally Bavon, jutting out on the westernmost edge of the Gloucester peninsula at New Point Comfort and just inside Mobjack Bay. Bavon was just a smattering of white and ocher-colored houses, a public town dock and parking lot, and wharfs and dock slips for watermen and small pleasure boats, which ringed the head of Davis Creek, horseshoe fashion. On one of the wharfs skirting the town dock, which was laid out down a long, bottleneck crushed-gravel drive, stood a gray two-story building with a blistered white railed porch and a sign reading the waterman’s hole. A marine supplies store was on the first floor, and the second housed a small bar and restaurant, which opened early but closed at nine, according to the sign on the wall. Adjacent to this building was a loading dock. The loading dock, they discovered, was operated by a white-haired man who introduced himself as Calvin. Calvin bought crabs from the watermen and trucked them daily to Richmond. From the dock, the view south was down Davis Creek, bordered on both sides by wide swaths of sharp-bladed spartina and bog, and out toward the wide water of Mobjack Bay. Clay studied the chart. He liked the remoteness of the place and being surrounded by so much water. Calvin had a slip available and offered it to Clay for eighty dollars a month. “I’ll take your crabs,” Calvin said. “All you can catch. At a fair price. And you can get your alewives here too. I keep ’em boxed and frozen in my cooler.” Calvin chewed tobacco and gave off a brown glob of spit as he pointed to a refrigerator unit inside a shed on the loading dock. “Yeah, and don’t fret the channel there. She got ten foot all the way out.”