The Tidewater Tales

by John Barth

  We hear Henry assimilate. It does look like the heavy stuffs gone by, he admits. And it’s a good reaching breeze to Dun Cove, if it holds. Irma will want to send Bobby Henry in the chase boat with something better than canned beans and franks for us to make for dinner.

  Insists Kathy We don’t need it. But then she sees Peter’s Don’t Be Stubborn look and yields. Tell Mom to send whatever she feels like sending. Ice. Caviar. Barbecued chutney bananas in aluminum foil. Nothing. Anything.

  That’s my Katydid, her father says. He will send Bobby Henry as soon as he knows we’re in Dun Cove. Sooner, if the wind drops. We are to watch the weather and enjoy our sail.

  Over and out. The wind promptly drops, but for minutes only, as the storm fades; then it sets southwesterly, warm and damp at ten and twelve knots: our prevailing Chesapeake summer breeze. Peter raises the midsize jib; Katherine lays a starboard tack for the Choptank River Light, from where a port tack should fetch us directly to Dun Cove.

  Says her husband, beside her now in the cockpit, So we’re going sailing.

  One leg at a time, says happy K. S. Sagamore. On with the story.

  Peter complains I finished the story. Once upon a time, he means, the storm of the past overtook the storm of the present, or the storm of the present the storm of the future: blam blooey. And Whatsisname and Whatsername and their offspring abode in all pleasaunce and solace of life and its manifold delights, for that indeed Allah the Most High had changed their annoy into joy; and on this wise they continued till there took them the Destroyer of Delights and the Severer of Societies, the Desolator of Dwelling-Places and Garnerer of Graveyards, and they were translated to the ruth of Almighty Allah, and their houses fell waste et cetera. He beams. Over?

  Katherine duly declares, in hormone-rich contralto, Then there reigned after them a wise ruler who loved tales and legends, and he found in the treasury the marvelous stories contained in the thirty volumes called The Stories of the Thousand Nights and a Night. So he read in them a first book and a second and a third and so on to the last of them, and each book astounded and delighted him more than that which preceded it. My friend Chip tells me, by the way, that a thousand and one nights divided by thirty volumes comes to thirty-three and a third nights per volume: a very long-playing record. We sure are moving on this tack.

  Peter Sagamore agrees. Then asks Chip said that? Then says Boyoboy, that boy doesn’t miss a trick. Then asks further whether she happens to know why there happen to be exactly 1001 nights in The Thousand Nights and a Night, rather than 5047 or 39. Katherine does not, other than the pretty symmetry of the number. Peter doesn’t either, but he bets there’s a story in it somewhere. We are indeed moving on this tack, down and out of the Tred Avon, feeling more lifted with every water-and airborne kilometer. Kath’s hunch has proved as usual sound: that this is what we needed, even if, as would be doubtless prudent, we sail back to Nopoint Point tomorrow. Would she meanwhile, from her boundless memory, recite more of the ending of our favorite book in the world? That is a base it’s time we touched, in Peter’s delicate condition.

  Croons Kath With goodly gree. That book we love and base you feel a need to touch ends with the word FINIS, and there is a very great deal more one could say about it, including why there aren’t say thirty-nine nights or sixteen hundred thirty-four nights. That FINIS is only the beginning. On with our story?

  Says Peter, sighting side wise westward over our compass, Time to tack, Scheherazade.

  We tack, just past the girdered, rock-girt frame of Choptank River Light. The wind over this expanse of water is stronger; the waves are steep and short and cresting. But our new course is a comfortable close-to-medium reach; Story lifts and slides almost parallel to the seas instead of punching into them, a fast and lively hour’s ride out to Harris Creek. No land on the far horizon; no other boats in sight. As always in such circumstances, we wonder whether everybody else knows something that we don’t and should.

  What are we doing out here?

  Says Katherine at the helm We’re taking us sailing and telling a story to these postmodern children of ours: Show and Kiss and Tell.

  Our children, frowns Peter at the sheets, are going to be postmod?

  Ineluctably. Blooey and Blam, she explains, have blown us willingly, though a touch riskily, out of our comfortable, even luxurious, but nevertheless antsy-making routines. A cruise through the Ocean of Story, since you ask, is what we’re up to out here.

  Says Peter Hum. Anyhow a one-nighter, up the Active creek with nothing but a paddle. What day’s today? Replies K Day Zero, and tomorrow’s the first of the rest of your narrative life. We’ve touched one base already: On with our stories.

  Peter Sagamore isn’t sure there are any more, for him, though he grants there is allegedly many a story in everything and everyone: a thousand and one stories in the naked Bay, so to speak. He so speaks as we leave to starboard the mouth of Broad Creek—thus called though it’s bigger than our Tred Avon River. Puns musing Katherine “The Naked Bey” sounds like a story right there itself: a Tunisian romance. Ease the jib a bit; it’s stalling. Or like The Emperor’s New Clothes.

  Peter does, and says suddenly Our story’s vice versa.

  Tell it. The Clothes’s New Emperor? Tell it.

  Not quite. The man squints, checks windvane and telltales, eases the main too till its luff just starts to flutter, trims it in a touch till the flutter quits, says

  THE NEW CLOTHES HAVE NO EMPEROR.

  Over.

  What do you mean Over? You haven’t started!

  But Peter Sagamore insists he’s done. For just as, in that folktale, the vain king advertises for new regalia from the finest tailors in his kingdom, and is gulled by sharpsters who scissor and stitch thin air, declaring their cloth so fine as to be invisible to cuckolds, and thereby con both ruler and ruled into praising their work while each man privately gnashes teeth at the revelation of his cuckoldry, until a stripling lad too green for sex and a fortiori et cetera cries out Hey, the emperor’s bare-ass naked! and the barefaced shame is shown. So we, in P.S.’s opinion, just contrariwise, have laid out upon Imagination’s bed a true new suit of Story: shirt socks and shoes of Situation, pants of Plot, drawers of Dramaturgy, Viewpoint’s vest and Method’s mufti, even cravat cuff links cummerbund and crown of Character—but those new clothes have no emperor. All that, however, he says, goes without saying.

  No!

  Less is More, Pete says seriously, but adds Look how we’re tearing along. Five and a half knots? Six?

  Five anyhow. But in his wife’s opinion, what goes without saying in his opinion would fill a book—maybe the book that grew out of the poem that grew out of the castle that grew out of the clam inside the oyster that Whatsername gave birth to at the end of the prologue of our story. And the emperor waiting imperiously to don those nifty duds . . . is the emperor Dolt.

  WE REACH HARRIS CREEK IN NO TIME,

  but before we do Peter kisses Katherine’s cheek, where strands of dry-beach hair hang breeze-loosened from their bun, and helps her into her sunsuit top because the air’s cooling down, and puts on a short-sleeved sweatshirt himself, and grimly observes, but does not remark, that back yonder to starboard on Ferry Neck is the estate with the big brick house lately listed for sale by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, who for years used it as a safe house for e.g. interrogating Soviet defectors and debriefing the former U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers after his release by that government in exchange for the convicted Soviet spy Colonel Rudolf Abel. The place is no longer needed by the Agency, P does not remark, since their purchase of Sagamore Flats, his name for the old white clapboard house on Middle Hoopers Island where he and his siblings were born and raised: a house built by his grandfather, enlarged by his father, and extensively remodeled by its present owners; a much remoter and more secluded place for their sundry activities than Ferry Neck in thriving Talbot County.

  Remarks Kath with a shiver Ferry Neck: G
et me out of here. Poor Doug Townshend.

  A curse, grim Peter says, upon all spooks and Doomsday Factors. Off with their stories.

  On with ours, says Katherine. Do it.

  We reach Harris Creek in no time—another Choptank estuary long and broad as a river itself, the last before the Bay proper—and hang a right for the short run up to Dun Cove. P takes the helm. K radios home, chats with Olive and with Irm. Olive complains she’s having trouble with her CB; Chip promised to fix it, but has done strange things to it instead; now it picks up stuff she can’t make head nor tail of. Will Mister Peter have a look at it when we get home? No, says Katherine: He’s not a repairman. Yes, calls Peter. Says Olive Here your mother.

  Mom, says Kath, we’ve only got this one battery on board and no alternator to keep it charged. Can’t we write letters? I’m sorry I misbehaved on the telly and stood you up on the tea party. I’m ashamed of myself. Hi.

  Hi. It was not your finest hour, Katherine. If you want, we’ll send Bobby Henry back in the chase boat with a spare battery. Do you know Russian when you hear it?

  Da.

  Well, you won’t be hearing it at Saint Deniston’s. The price of Kate’s dodging the alumnae tea, reports Irma cheerily, turns out to have been having her, Irma’s, Deniston proposals warmly received by nearly all present and no case made for Katherine’s except, surprisingly, by Molly Barnes Sherritt, whom Irma worries something must be wrong with, pleased as she is to see the poor woman take a stand for a change. Anyhow, she says, you and the Commies and academic excellence lose this round.

  That’s show biz, Mom. I’ll sock it to ‘em at the trustees’ meeting. Kath declares that we do not need the chase boat, but will not refuse it. Irm says that’s considerate of us, since it’s on its way already: Andrew and your father did some time-speed-distance calculations and sent Bobby Henry, let’s see, twenty minutes ago with a few little things, so you won’t have to wait around for hors d’oeuvres and dinner once you get parked. We’ll send him again with a battery.

  No, Mother. But the women chat and chuckle all the way up Harris Creek. She did mention Katherine’s proposals to the group before presenting her own, Irma now reports among other things, but left their exposition to their author for a later meeting, should it take Kate’s fancy to attend one. Molly Barnes Sherritt had weakly seconded the idea of selling out to the Russkies—but then Molly always followed Kath’s lead when not following her husband’s orders. I wish she’d follow my advice instead, says K, and leave Willy. Irma says I know you do, dear, but Molly’s problem is she loves the wretched man. If only Willy were completely hateful. However, he’s a Shorter-hyphen-Sherritt. For a Shorter-hyphen-Sherritt, says Kath, Big Will comes very close to completely hateful. What’d you serve with tea? Sighs Irma Champagne. Plus everything. Bobby Henry’s bringing you the leftovers. Daddy says you’re being reckless, but you’ve put a bee in his bonnet all the same: Now he wants to take me sailing. If you go, says K, for heaven’s sake take Chip; we felt creepy going off without him. Irma says firmly You needed to. Everybody understands. I love you, Mom, says Katherine Shorter Sherritt Sagamore: Dad too. Irma says We know that, Kay; likewise, I’m sure.

  To Peter Sagamore, such conversations as this by ship-to-shore radiotelephone between a thirty-nine-year-old woman and her sixty-four-year-old mother—who had had already two considerable tête-à-têtes that day—are an ongoing remarkability; he never to the best of his recollection had a sustained, relaxed, quarter-hour general-interest chat with either of his own parents in his adult life. As an erstwhile storyteller who pays some notice to the souls and skins of others, he acknowledges notionally that the difference between Sagamores and Sherritts in this particular is less a matter of class than of individual family tones: that many a privileged Gold Coast clan are numb and dumb with one another; that many a marsh-country waterman’s house is aglow with mindful and articulated love. All the same, every time we sail down the Great Choptank, with lowlying Dorchester on our left and high-banked Talbot on our right, his heart tells him that while much authenticity lies aport there, where his roots draw salty nourishment yet from the mosquito-rich, seafood-infested marshes of his youth, nearly everything civilized lies astarboard—where also are all the best natural anchorages on the river. Almost always, when we turn, we turn north.

  We reach Harris Creek in no time and turn north; in no time we are two miles up it, approaching Dun Cove. Ten years ago, when we remet, we first retrysted in this cove and began our continuing voyage together. Then, too, we made a turn: for Katherine Sherritt, an ongoing though qualified return to home waters; for Peter Sagamore, a qualified putting of home waters behind him at last for keeps. Ten years it took Odysseus to sail home from Troy; it took P. Sagamore thirty to cross the Choptank from Dorchester to Talbot County, from Hoopers Island to Dun Cove and beyond.

  Kate kisses his tiller-arm as we enter the capacious cove. Does her husband want to tell our children how their folks got it on here in 1970?

  He does, but doesn’t just then, because even as we hang a right inside the bifurcate, tree-and farm-lined cove to anchor in its empty upper tine (there being two large rafted cabin cruisers already in its lower), we hear and see a familiar small motorboat astern: the forty-horsepower outboard which serves as tender for Katydid IV when that vessel goes to sea, slung in davits over its transom, and as an all-purpose runabout when the big ketch is in port. Before our anchor’s down and set, Bobby Henry and Andy Sherritt are circling us, Chip waving from the wheel. Elbow on the coaming and cheek in hand, Katherine smiles at them. As soon as Peter cleats our anchor rode and moves to furl our sails, Andrew flips out a pair of white rubber fenders and brings the runabout expertly alongside. Hi Kath; hi Pete.

  Well hello there, Kewpie Doll. Good evening, Bobby Henry.

  Stocky Bob—yellowbearded, redfaced, crow’s-footed, no-necked, thick-armed, T-shirted, bluejeaned, and early-swagbellied like many a commercial waterman—touches the green bill of his yellow Dekalb feed-cap and makes the runabout’s painter fast to Story’s midship cleat. Howdy.

  We’re not staying, Chip quickly assures us. Mom sent stuff. He smiles. They’re going sailing, too. He holds the runabout alongside with one hand on our gunwale, near his sister’s elbow. She lightly covers that hand with hers.

  Right smart of goodies here for you, Bobby Henry allows. Like Peter, he is from lower Dorchester County and used to work in Fritz Sagamore’s boatyard. As always when the two cross paths for the first time in a day, they shake hands, and Bobby Henry winks. Peter Sagamore thinks Bobby Henry thinks the bond between them to be not alone their common marshy origin, but that they both now live high and easy off the Talbot rich. There is no cynicism in Bobby Henry on this score—Hank Sherritt would detect it and cashier him promptly if there were—only such pleasure in his good fortune that he does half again what his job requires in the way of maintaining the Nopoint Point flotilla and waterfront in show condition (Story not included; Peter is fussy on that score) and still finds time over and above, except when Katydid sets out for Maine or Florida, to run a crabline from his own bateau in summer and tong oysters in winter, for extra money and to keep his hand in. Peter Sagamore thinks Bobby Henry thinks that he, Peter, writes and teaches in that same spirit: just to keep his hand in.

  We load our cargo: a bottle of Chandon brut, another of Beaujolais, a six-pack of Molson’s ale and another of Perrier. Three several dips with crudites and English table-water croquelins for dipping. Two gorgeous artichokes vinaigrette for appetizer. For entree, four magnificent loin lamb chops to barbecue off our taffrail, and a Tupperware container of cucumber-and-onion salad with Olive’s special Barbadian herb dressing. A baguette. A wedge of peppercorned brie. Fresh pears and apples. And for tomorrow’s breakfast, almond croissants and local strawberries. Also two twelve-pound blocks of ice and a seabag packed with our windbreakers, cotton pajamas and cotton nightgown, a change of underwear for each of us, Peter’s wallet just in case, and our tra
veling toilet kit. Finally, a bouquet of assorted tea roses from Irma’s garden: one Peace, one Sonia, two velvety damask reds. Andrew hands these to Katherine last. Bobby Henry stands hands on hips and grins. Think that’ll hold you?

  Peter frowns. Nothing to read? But Bobby Henry is not long on irony. Tell the Sherritts we’re wowed, as usual.

  We have to go now, Chip says to his sister. And to Peter, Dad says the weather’s not finished yet.

  Bobby Henry says Your daddy’s about right, too. Yall have fun now.

  Thanks again. We sit among our provender, tisking tongues; then Peter stows it. The vase of roses fits nicely into a winch-handle holder in the cockpit. Katherine radios to thank her parents—but is told by Olive that they have indeed gone for a sail in their big boat. Olive is amused. You put ideas in they head.

  Katherine hopes they have enough to eat.

  SOLIPSISME À DEUX

  Is he sure? He's positive.

  K does as bidden, but before letting herself very carefully down the transom ladder, puts a water-ski belt between breasts and belly to take the effort out of floating. Her husband paddles over to the bottom rung and receives her into his lap. For a while we hang there, steeping in the solitude, exhilarated still by our little truancy and our rousing sail, but fast relaxing in the circumambient deliciousness, the Tightness of Katherine's judgment,