The Tidewater Tales

by John Barth

  in particular an odd, unKathylike dejection in the tone of the voice of this thoroughbred female animal his wife and friend, who now winces up at him, holds out her hand, says Please. Okay?

  You want to go sailing?

  Sailing. Us. Not a word to anybody.

  We’d have to be careful. . . .

  She grunts to her knees. I am careful. I’m thirty-nine and careful. I am full up to here with care.

  Alumnae tea. Saint Deniston. Strategies for the Eighties.

  Kate looks at him levelly. Fuck ‘em.

  Mm hm. We’ll just tell Chip, then, and he can tell Irma.

  He’ll want to go.

  Chip’s always welcome, yes?

  Forget it.

  Kath? But Peter reads the message of her presently brimming eyes: Just the two of us, please. Indeed, there is as much more to that wordless text as to a Sagamore minifiction. It may be argued that the language of the human eyeball is limited to dilation and contraction of the pupil, more or less irrigation by the tear ducts, and movement of the ball itself—a minimal vocabulary enhanced somewhat by muscular contractions of the lids, brows, and related features—and that the famous eloquence of eyes is largely a literary convention. Peter Sagamore is quick to question such conventions. But the ensemble of his wife’s expression, whose principal speaker is those Minervan eyes, delivers in less time than it takes to write “B♭” the following considerable communiqué: The protracted holding of the U.S. hostages in Iran by the new and erratic revolutionary government which deposed the hated Shah, together with the usual Arab-Israeli tensions, reminds us how precarious is the “free world’s” principal energy supply and the economies dependent thereupon. The flood of Cuban refugees and deportees into Florida, the intermittent violence in South Africa, the diaspora of “boat people” from Southeast Asia, the recent staggering genocide in Cambodia, the juntas and dictatorships and totalitarianisms of right and left which oppress three-quarters of the world’s runaway population—all remind us how rare and fragile is any measure of freedom, justice, and decency, not to to mention happiness, upon our planet. The recent nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, by no means yet resolved, on the river that feeds our Chesapeake, reminds us how almost unimaginably dangerous is the world even of the lucky unoppressed twenty-five or so percent. And the recent explosion of Mount Saint Helens reminds us that even should we ourselves not further ruin or destroy our Earth in the short run, which every disinterested expert tells us we’re doing apace, indifferent nature’s program is to do it in the long. Now, on top of all these contingencies, it has come to pass that what has been the center of your existence finds itself at odds with, finally even thwarted by, what must necessarily at least for some time be the center of mine, or at least be at that center: an alarming, almost unmentionable circumstance in itself, not to mention the other unmentionable factor or factors in your growing and now full-grown literary silence. This is the world, this the situation, into which you and I have elected and then labored to bring a child—children—knowing that he/she/they will almost certainly at very least have a life at very best less materially prosperous and qualitatively fine than ours, and discovering too late that the price of their creation may be much higher than we had dreamed. The clock is running, darling friend—your clock, mine, theirs, the world’s—running! Before Circumstance takes us further by the collar or History harder by the throat, I want an hour or two of sweet doing-almost-nothing upon these mesmerizing waters with sweet yourself and no one else (except the gang in uterine parentheses), as in sweet seasons past. There is a thing I have to say to you, I think, that can better be said in Story than on Nopoint Point. You have set me the task of setting you a task. The task I now set you—actually the first of what will prove to be a brace of tasks—is to take us sailing without qualm or quibble, while there is still time.

  Peter Sagamore kisses Katherine Sherritt’s hands. Let’s go sailing. Helps her up and back into her underpants and sunsuit, never mind the bra, which she inserts into May’s lexicon as a bookmark. She smiles now, lotions his back against the sun, finds herself horny. He lotions her legs, which she has some trouble reaching lately, and ditto. She says My prune is yours, you know. Jack Bass won’t mind. Want to dig my ditch?

  P pauses before replying I’m too scattered to dig your ditch.

  I’ll draw your blind.

  I have no blind. Let’s go sailing.

  Past Business and Pleasure, through roses, boxwoods, and wisteria, down colonnades of yew and arborvitae, under oaks old as our republic and pines taller than those oaks, we make it from First Guest Cottage to dock without interception. Plump bald brown Jack Bass waves to us with his left-hand fingers from the court, where he’s playing net while Henry serves. We note without surprise that Willy Sherritt has got himself partnered with silver-maned ex-Secretary Trippe; he waggles his big Prince racquet like a fiddler crab its claw. All four men wear tennis shirts despite the damp heat. The play proceeds. Irma has joined Molly Barnes Sherritt at poolside to sip Perrier, scan the Sunday Times, and chat with Joan Bass and Maryann Trippe, who have come over with their husbands from lunch at the Basses’.

  Out on the dock, however, is Andrew, idly netting early blue crabs off the piles, inspecting them for certain signs, and dumping them back into Sherritt Cove.

  LET’S SEE ANDREW CHRISTOPHER “CHIP” SHERRITT.

  Shy for a Sherritt, Andrew is his sister’s love and hobby. The nickname comes not from his being off the old block; it is short for microchip and derives from his remarkable store of information, his formidable memory, and his quickness at mathematics and nearly everything else. An accident of his parents’ middle age (Irm had thought herself done with ovulation), Chip has been raised languidly, by family standards, though not spoiled: Mother and father had expended their parental energies years since, on Willy and Kate, and at Andrew’s birth had not yet geared up for the busy grandparenthood they now look forward to. Chip’s discipline, what little he needs, and chief attention and direction, which he thrives upon, come from his sister and his brother-in-law; we are in fact older enough to have been his parents, while Irma and Henry seem to him a benevolent great-aunt and -uncle with whom he happens to reside.

  At twelve, Chip is a delicate-appearing boy, though like all Sherritts he’s nimble and good at sports. His hair is dark brown and almost shoulder-length, but his skin is fair and freckled, won’t tan properly. He’s skinny and bright-eyed as a fledgling heron, self-conscious about but interested in his body. This summer, displeased with his pale and narrow chest beside brown-muscled Peter’s, he won’t go topless; above his boxer swimtrunks he’s wearing a beige Izod shirt given him by Katherine. Nor will he go barefoot, but wears athletic socks and untied Nike running shoes except in the water, in church, and in bed. His top front teeth are still too large for the rest of him; that will change next year or the year after, when he shoots into puberty. Except for them, his face is a pretty young girl’s face, their best feature his unSherrittlike great green eyes. Tribadistic May can’t keep her hands off Andy Sherritt when she’s about; soon enough it will be straight women who cannot. Chip sometimes fears that despite the good examples of his parents, he’ll wind up making a bad marriage like his sister’s first, or being a bad husband like his brother, for whom he strives in vain not to share Kath’s distaste. He is therefore lately resolved never to marry, and in fact will not until he’s Kathy’s present age. But should the world not end before this century does, Andrew Sherritt in the year 2000 will be, at age two-and-thirty, not the computer software tycoon his dad half expects him to become, but a celebrated actor, director, and scriptwriter in several media, a serious intellectual, and a notably successful, nonpredatory lover whose ex-lovers, unlike Willy’s, will speak warmly of him. Just now, however, he lets his sister know with a quick cut of the eyes that he remains offended by her misbehavior, and goes back to wielding the crab net with one hand as adroitly as a lacrosse stick.

  Ka
th hugs him from behind. I apologize, Kewpie Doll.

  He stiffens, but permits his hair to be kissed. You probably hurt Mom’s feelings with that stuff.

  I’ll apologize; I’ll apologize. She shmoozles his head between her breasts; rubs her chin in his hair. Where’s the nearest intercom? I’ll apologize right now. Didn’t you put one on the dock?

  Use K-Four’s CB, the boy suggests at once; Olive’s always got her scanner on. His references are to the citizens-band radio aboard his father’s blue and white ketch, Katydid IV, looming beside us—also equipped with all-channel VHF and single-sideband transceivers, radar, LORAN, and SATNAV receiver duly interfaced with autopilot, all which gadgetry Chip understands inside out and we do not—and to the Sherritts’ West Indian cook, whom it pleases to monitor the highway police, the watermen’s traffic, and her husband while she works. Now he realizes that his sister is teasing him. He uses the excuse to disengage himself, but his left arm remains loosely about her waist, where she holds his hand against her hip, and she is allowed to massage the back of his neck between her right thumb and forefinger. Chip wears a brown bead necklace like Peter’s: another of her gifts, and the boy’s single concession to nonpreppie costume.

  ON WITH THE STORY.

  Peter Sagamore in this interval has been conning with skipperly eye the sky, Sherritt Cove, Nopoint and Shorter Points at its mouth, and the wider waters of Goldsborough Creek beyond, to guess what might be what out on the river. Tide’s low and slack; sky’s hazy-sunny; air’s mid-eightyish and humid. Since lunchtime, the breeze has veered from south-southeast to west-southwest and picked up from six to what looks and feels like ten or twelve knots out there: good air for a sail, but, together with those other signs, suggestive of scattered thundershowers later on. He considers.

  He considers. Though not a true blue-water sailor like Henry Sherritt in his younger years, who used regularly to place the earlier Katydids in the Annapolis-to-Newport and Newport-to-Bermuda races, Peter Sagamore grew up in small boats and knows the Bay’s humors well. Even Hank respects his “local knowledge” and his ability to put our little sloop exactly where we want it without an engine’s aid. In present circumstances, he is above all careful for Kate’s physical safety—though no more so than she, who did not lightly set this task; who has a further thing to say; who has been thinking, about our situation generally. He steps aboard Story, tucked in under Katydid’s windowed transom like a yawl boat. Tied up astern is the Basses’ runabout.

  Asks hopeful Andrew Going sailing?

  Got to give old Story a spot of exercise, says Peter. We’ll finish the intercom another time. He glances at Katherine.

  She squeezes her brother. I’ve asked Peter to take me for a little sail: just him and me and your nieces and nephews here. We need to be alone for a little while, okay?

  The boy’s disappointment is clear, but he gamely says I’ll help you cast off. He is instructed to report our project to the Main House, to announce that Katherine will be late at best to the Deniston tea, and to raise either the Come Home or the Call In pennant on the port arm of the Sherritts’ flagpole (from whose top stream the Stars and Stripes; from whose starboard arm flies the motley banner of Maryland) if we need to be gotten in touch with, for we do not intend to leave our radio on.

  Kathy eases herself aboard. Chip and Peter open hatches, remove and stow fenders and sail covers, fetch up cockpit cushions, raise the mainsail, and bend on a midsize genoa jib. Andrew then steps ashore and uncleats our docklines. We are blanketed by the bulk of Katydid IV, but a good push-off with our sculling oar sets us out into Sherritt Cove enough to catch the first of the breeze and reach languidly into the creek, whence we can beat through the clearer air out past the day beacons and into the Tred Avon River. We wave good-bye, but do not sound the conch we keep aboard to signal Story’s settings-out. Chip replies with a little left-handed wave from the hip and wanders back toward the tennis court and the Main House.

  HAVING MILDLY DISTRESSED HER FATHER, WHOM SHE LOVES,

  WITH THE DEPTH OF HER CONTINUING AVERSION

  TO HIS FIRSTBORN;

  HAVING THRICE IN SMALL WAYS OFFENDED HER MOTHER,

  WHOM TOO SHE LOVES—

  BY NOT JOINING IN THE FAMILY LUNCHEON,

  BY MISBEHAVING ON THE VIDEO INTERCOM

  AND OBSTRUCTING ITS CHECKING OUT,

  AND NOW BY VIRTUALLY PROMISING A NO-SHOW

  AT IRMA’S DENISTON ALUMNAE TEA—

  AND HAVING FIRST EMBARRASSED AND THEN DISAPPOINTED

  HER BELOVED YOUNGER BROTHER,

  KATHERINE SHERRITT SAGAMORE SETTLES DOWN TO ENJOY

  OUR PRIVATE LITTLE DAYSAIL.

  Well, we make me sound awful when we put it like that, says Kathy—settling herself heavily on the portside cockpit seat, her back against the cabin bulkhead, and idly twirling a wet-sand-colored lock of her hair between two fingers while watching stately Nopoint Point slide astern as Story gathers way—but we all know we love one another, all but Willy, may herpes simplex rot his pecker and make a monk out of him, and the main thing is we had to get away from there for a little while, because much as I love my family, I love you more, and we need to have a little talk. How’s the breeze?

  Better in the river. We won’t go far.

  I wish we were starting out on our June cruise.

  P.S. almost says Me too, but his heart catches as, checking our sail trim against the masthead tacking vane, he realizes for the first time, really, that there’ll be no more June cruises on this boat until the babies are old enough to be left for a week or so in their nursemaid’s care at the First Guest Cottage—two Junes from now? three?—though we might of course borrow Katydid IV and take nursemaid and babies and paid hand Bobby Henry along too. Hoo, boy.

  I’m afraid of this little talk, he says.

  Says Kathy So am I. Let’s sail for a few minutes before we start it.

  A mile-long bend in the Tred Avon, from Goldsborough Creek to Town Point and the village of Oxford, runs east-west, affording the breeze a good fetch and Story a fair beat into it on the port tack. At Oxford the river widens and turns south for two miles to join the Great Choptank, itself about four miles wide there. Peter’s plan, wind and weather permitting, is a brisk close reach down toward the Choptank River Light, at the Tred Avon’s mouth; a steady beam reach back up past Oxford; a gentle run home. Seven or eight nautical miles in all, counting Goldsborough Creek; ninety minutes or so of sailing, tidily divided among the three main points; home before the likeliest thunderstorm period begins and in time for Kath to freshen up and check in with the Denistonians, if she wants to, before they disperse. It is a route we have daysailed countless times, in every sort of weather, and seldom failed to enjoy: from secluded to open and back to secluded waters; from the all but boatless creek, through the thronging fleet off Oxford, into the endlessly commodious Choptank, and back to Sherritt Cove.

  The upwind leg is fine: Story pushes along at four and a half knots and ten degrees of heel in twelve knots of apparent breeze. We could carry our big #1 genoa, but with the woman of us about as pregnant as a female animal can get, it is well not to heel us over any farther. Moreover, the #2 is cut high at the foot and will give us better visibility reaching through the fleet on the second and third legs. But as we fetch Town Point, the wind begins to fade; by the time we hang our left, we’re making barely three knots and slowing down. We give this state of affairs a skipperly ten minutes to establish itself as a tendency rather than a lull; then Kathy takes the tiller and aims us south while Peter changes up to the #1: a big, lightweight, deck-sweeping thing, twice the size of our mainsail. Just when it’s raised, sheeted in, its predecessor bagged and stowed below, and the man of us back in Story’s cockpit, the west-southwesterly sighs a last sigh and expires.

  Feces, growls Peter Sagamore. His wife agrees: Bowel movement. Should we check with NOAA?

  While we give it once again the old ten minutes, Peter tunes in the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s weather station in Baltimore, whose recordings still prophesy widely scattered thundershowers late this afternoon and evening—the standard Chesapeake summer forecast—while reporting eight-to fifteen-knot westerlies and southwesterlies here and there about the Bay. Ours must be a local lull. Sails limp, we drift down slowly on the tide with half a hundred other hopefuls large and small, sans even steerageway. The still air is oppressive; Kathy takes her top off and lotions up her front while Peter does her back. Take a dip, she recommends. I’ll stand sea-nettle watch.

  But the previous tide has really fetched that nuisance in, earlier than usual in the season. They’re everywhere we look: mostly babies, but enough junior-high-schoolers with three-and four-inch quinquecirrhas to discourage swimming.

  If we were up in the Chester or the Sassafras, says Kate, we could swim. Maybe even in the Miles or the Wye. I can still get up and down that boarding ladder. Says Peter Another year. Let me have your considered opinion of that sky.

  He means to windward, westward, Bay ward, where the blue-white haze has darkened down through several shades. In these latitudes in this season, end-of-the-day thundersqualls are at once so common, so local, and so widely scattered that while any given lawn may go for weeks without a drop of rain, almost every afternoon somebody or other will get lambasted. You may be bracketed by nature’s artillery on three horizons and never have to put away your knitting or gather up your Sunday Times; or you may be sunk and drowned, electrocuted, or squashed by a falling tree while folks on the next river up continue their tennis match without a pause. Wise tidewater tennis players, therefore, knitters of baby-afghans, and poolside readers of the Times, go on with what they’re doing even when the wind veers northwest, the air suddenly cools, and the first fat raindrops drop. Only when the next point of land to westward disappears behind the lumbering wall of the storm will they say Well, I guess this one’s for real, and head for the house. Wise tidewater sailors, however—especially those eight point five months pregnant in engineless small sailboats—make different assumptions.