The Tidewater Tales

by John Barth

  ACT I: THE CONFLUENCE

  Scene 1: Shooting the Tube

  K wants to know Since when do scenes in a play have titles? How would the audience see “The Confluence” and “Shooting the Tube”?

  Bemused Peter, who’s on page 2 already, says Read. Evidently this was meant to be a TV play. Tube could be the telly screen, no? But you’ll see what else it is.

  Katherine thinks it sounds like what we just did: shoot through Knapps Narrows into that confluence where we found this canister. And many’s the time she’s felt like shooting the Idiot Box at Nopoint Point. Let’s not ever have one in our house, okay?

  Says Peter Read; you’ll dig it. It’s about white-water rafting.

  We read:

  (Total darkness. Continuous sound of rushing water. June’s voice-over: a young woman’s voice, excited but mainly businesslike, as if the speaker is dictating into a tape recorder or making radio transmission while attending to other business. Titles and credits appear on the dark screen during June’s soliloquy, which is punctuated by the sounds and, gradually, the sight of her busy navigational maneuvers, like those of a self-contained white-water rafter.)

  Wonders Katherine Self-contained? But she does dig white-water stuff.

  JUNE (Voice-over): The end of this Tube can’t be far off. The Branch current has slackened half a knot; there’s a very dim light downstream at one five five degrees. (We see the light: a faint spot in the center of the screen.) Whoops . . . I’m spinning counterclockwise a bit . . . (The spot of light moves accordingly.) “Hard right and right along!” That does it. Full ahead now. (She does something momentarily strenuous, then sings unmusically.) Drifting and dreaming . . . (We hear a rush of water.) That was a tricky one! (She sings again.) On-ward and downward . . .

  Onward and downward, echoes Kate: That’s us this morning. Read, says Peter.

  (The spot of light is now an area of light, holding fairly steady.)

  JUNE: Definitely less current along here. Less spin, too. Easier to steer now. Whoa . . . Ah. (More officially) Right Ovarium, Right Ovarium: This is June Graduate Eighty, June Graduate Eighty, forty-eight hours out and floating. Do you read me, Right Ovarium? Over.

  Whoops Kathy: Right Ovarium?

  JUNE (Pauses, hand to ear. There is no reply.): Damn! (Louder) Ms. R? Can you hear me? Your prize pupil J. G. Eighty says Damn it to hell! Over? (She pauses again, hand to ear, amused at her own impudence, and sighs. Sounds of business.) Now hear this, girls . . . (Business) This is your class valedictorian and pride of our dear Right O., making her post-commencement report from somewhere way down the Right Branch—oof! It is mighty dark and lonesome down here, friends, just as Ms. R warned us it would be. . . .

  Says Katherine I get it: It’s the Saint Deniston senior class play.

  (As JUNE speaks on, she begins to become dimly visible: a young woman whose bare arms, legs, and head protrude from a light, flexible inflated envelope, egg-white, diaphanous but tough, through which the rest of her body will be discerned as the light improves. In this envelope she “floats” as in a rubber raft, busily steering with movements of her legs and right arm while speaking into her cupped left hand as if it held a microphone, JUNE is fresh and somewhat delicate-appearing, but entirely competent, energetic, even athletic.)

  Yay! says K: The Deniston Girl.

  (Indeed, one sees now that the terse, preoccupied tone of her soliloquy is owing to her navigational activity: In addition to steering and speaking, JUNE seems to be taking sights through her hands as through binoculars, closing one eye to line up ranges or take bearings with her raised forefingers, logging navigational data as if her finger were a pencil and her flotation-envelope a writing surface. Foam or wavelets may now be seen on the surface around her, moving downstream past rubbery boulders and soft stalagmites. They and the smooth walls of the Tube reflect ripples of light, as does JUNE’s envelope. The effect is of a soft and resilient undergound watercourse.)

  K’s never heard of navigating while you shoot rapids; you’re too busy staying right side up. And what’s this envelope? P says if she doesn’t stop interrupting, we’ll have to write her lines into the script.

  JUNE: And it’s mighty strange making these reports without knowing whether anybody reads me or not. Speed three point five. Heading one five zero. Now I know how Jan and April felt, calling home from clear down at the Confluence and never knowing whether we could hear their good-byes.

  KATHERINE: Jan? April? June?

  JUNE (Pauses, hand to ear): Definitely some light ahead, at one five five magnetic. Can’t estimate distance. (She caroms expertly off a stalagmite.) Wo-ho! Shooting the Tube is some terrific ride! Take those white-water seminars seriously, girls, and don’t neglect night practice. Are you there, Ms. R? I’ll hang a right at the Confluence, ma’am, like you taught us . . . (She sweeps adroitly around a boulder.) I mean as you taught us. (She declaims.) “Hang tight all night, then hard right, at first light, and you’ll sight Mister—” Ouch! (She bumps over a rock; grabs her backside.) Well, sisters: I’ll keep making these reports till Mister Right swims along or I’m Down and Out, whichever happens first. But I could use a word from home before I hit the Mainstream. (Lightly and a touch waveringly, she sings.) Some day my prince will come. . . . (More strongly) Some da-a-ay . . . (Peering downstream, she breaks off to report urgently.) Right Ovarium, Right Ovarium! This is Jay-Gee Eighty, June Graduate Eighty, Juliette Golf Eight Zero! I’ve got Tube’s End, do you read me? I have definitely got Tube’s End, dead ahead at one five zero! Plenty of light now. No hazards in sight; no sign of any Swimmers, either. (She looks directly at the viewer.) Now I can see past the Tube to the Confluence: loud echoing noise where the Right and Left Branches come together. (We begin to hear the sound she describes.) Current’s picking up now, but it’s easy to manage; I’m going to shoot it. Three point two knots. Three point five. There’s the Confluence! (The rushing sound crescendoes.) Three point seven; four knots . . . Here comes your dream girl, Mister Right! Onward and Downward and awa-a-ay we go!

  (She shoots down and out of sight in a spray of white water toward a large area of light as if at the end of a long tunnel—from where, blending with the sound of cascading water, comes now an almost choral reverberation.)

  KATHERINE SHERRITT: Is this damn thing what I think it is?

  PETER SAGAMORE: I think it’s what you think it is. But for pity’s sake read on. Here comes Scene Two.

  Scene 2: At the Confluence

  (Holding wearily and warily onto a spongy boulder in a calm eddy between swift currents streaming toward us from great tunnels on her left and right is MAY, breathing hard.)

  KATHERINE: May! Did you write this, Peter Sagamore?

  PETER (Shakes his head): Cross my heart and hope to die.

  (May’s envelope is of greenish paisley, tougher-appearing than JUNE’s but considerably the worse for wear. In the faint light we see that MAY herself is an attractive young woman, but, like her envelope, battered and disheveled: a survivor. From the Right Branch, over the sound of rushing water, JUNE speaks the last words of Scene 1.)

  JUNE: Here comes your dream girl, Mister Right! Onward and Downward and awa-a-ay we go!

  (At the words “Mister Right,” MAY scowls and draws closer to her boulder. Her expression is nervous and hostile. She holds fast with her right hand. Her left—she is left-handed—is open and ready to deliver a karate blow.)

  K: I don’t believe it! But May Jump hates green.

  P: Mess not with the distinction between life and art; things are tough enough already. Are you up to the Swimmer/Floater business yet?

  (KATHERINE is too busy reading to answer.)

  (Now JUNE shoots out of the Right Branch, trying hard to steer to starboard.)

  JUNE: “Hard right and right along . . .”

  (But the current sweeps her into MAY, who loses her grip on the boulder. Cries of consternation from both women; they spring in opposite directio
ns, but are at once swept together again by the opposing currents. For a few seconds they mix it up vigorously in the eddy; both are able in the arts of self-defense.)

  KATHERINE: Yeah, well. But May Jump’s a brown belt, not a green. A brown belt can throw a green belt nine times out of ten.

  PETER (From some other page): What?

  (Then each recognizes that her adversary is of the same general sort as herself.)

  JUNE Hey, you’re one of Us. . . .

  MAY: You’re not one of Them. . . .

  (They laugh and embrace. In the eddy behind the boulder they bob and circle gently. Each finds it difficult to realize the other’s presence; both are breathless from the wrestling, MAY coughs from having swallowed water.)

  JUNE: I thought you were a Swimmer!

  MAY: I thought you were, Sister! (Coughs) You can thank Mother Moon I didn’t sink you before I realized . . . (Coughs) . . . you’re a Floater.

  JUNE (Laughs and raises her eyes as she pounds MAY’s back to ease her coughing): Thank you, Mother Moon, for not letting her sink me before she realized I’m a Floater.

  MAY (Still coughing): Don’t think I couldn’t do it.

  KATHERINE (To herself): She could. (To PETER) What’s this Mother Moon, and all these women named after months?

  (Without looking up from his page, PETER points to hers, by way of saying Read on.)

  MAY (Sarcastically, now that she has her breath): Okay. Float along down to your Mister Right now, Dreamgirl.

  JUNE (Lets go of her, embarrassed): I was being ironic when I said that! (MAY reaches out quickly and holds onto her through a spell of coughing.) Are you all right, Sis? (MAY nods.) What in the world are you doing here? I don’t even know you!

  MAY: Right’s a dirty word where I come from: I’m all left. (She displays the rips and tears in her envelope.) And this is all that’s left of me!

  JUNE: No kidding! You’re a Lefty?

  MAY (Nods): I’m a left-over, too, believe it or not.

  JUNE: I’ve never met a Floater from the Left Branch before!

  KATHERINE: Left Branch?

  MAY (Dryly): The pleasure is mutual. (She looks JUNE over appraisingly.) How did a Right-O manage to stay afloat this far?

  JUNE: I managed.

  MAY (Scornfully, but holding onto JUNE’s knee): Without even getting her hair wet! Shooting the Right Branch must be a breeze.

  JUNE (Unfazed): Must be. (She removes MAY’s hand from her knee and pushes off into the current.) Auf Wiedersehen, Lefty; pleased to’ve bumped into you.

  MAY (Splashes after her): Hold on a minute!

  JUNE: Onward and Downward! (She shoots expertly the first short stretch of the Mainstream, where the current is noticeably less strong and the boulders and other hazards are less numerous than in the Branch, MAY comes tumbling pell-mell after. At the next eddy, in the lee of a large boulder, JUNE pauses and plucks MAY nimbly from the current. Dripping wet, MAY hangs exhausted onto her rescuer.)

  MAY (Out of breath): Okay, Right-O: You’re not bad.

  JUNE: For a spoiled little Floater from the Right Ovarium?

  MAY: You’re not bad, period. But you haven’t been floating for a full month, either. You haven’t been down yet, much less down and back.

  JUNE (Impressed): You really have been?

  MAY (Nods): I told you I was a left-over.

  JUNE: That’s amazing! What’s your name?

  MAY: Mike Alpha Yankee Eight Zero: May Graduate Eighty. (She holds out her hand.) May.

  JUNE: May! (She takes her hand.) How can you still be here? I’m June!

  KATHERINE: I get it. Boyoboy.

  MAY (Shrugs): I’ve done two or three things that I was told no Floater can do. Swimming upstream, for example.

  JUNE (Smiles and shakes her head): Only Swimmers can move upstream. Floaters can steer and navigate, but only downstream.

  MAY: Watch. But be ready to catch me: I’m too far gone to go far.

  (By dint of much thrashing, MAY actually manages to “backstroke” a few yards upstream, toward the Confluence, before spinning exhausted back to JUNE, who, laughing, once again plucks her safely into the eddy, MAY’s grateful grip this time begins to resemble an embrace.)

  PETER: This will never do for Saint Deniston’s.

  JUNE: I’m astonished! (She moves MAY’s hand from the neighborhood of her breast.) Where’d you learn to do that?

  MAY: Swim? You can bet I didn’t learn it from my Floating coach, Right-O.

  JUNE (Moves free): I’ve got to try it. What’s the trick?

  MAY: Draw yourself in as narrow as you can, to reduce drag, and then kick like crazy.

  JUNE (Merrily): I’ll pretend I’m one of Them, heading for one of Us!

  MAY: Oh boy.

  JUNE (In false baritone): Onward! Upward!

  (As MAY watches skeptically, arms akimbo, JUNE manages to hold her own against the current by merely kicking; when a wave accidentally turns her belly-down, she cries out but improvises at once a sort of crawl stroke, much more effective than MAY’s awkward backstroke, MAY is impressed.)

  KATHERINE: So am I, sort of. Who in the world wrote this, Peter?

  PETER (Shrugs): Are you up to the lesbian part yet, and the Lunations?

  JUNE: Look out, girls! Here comes Mister Right! (Another wave tumbles her over; she floats expertly back to the eddy, laughing and clearing her wet hair from her face.)

  MAY: I’ve got you! Don’t worry! (She seizes JUNE in another embrace, from which, exhilarated, JUNE firmly extricates herself.)

  JUNE: I don’t need getting. What fun!

  MAY: Didn’t I tell you? We aren’t really built for it; we’ve got all this drag . . . (She spreads her envelope wide with both hands.) where the Swimmers have nothing but a streamlined head and a long tail.

  KATHERINE: Uh-oh.

  JUNE: But we can do it! That’s amazing!

  MAY: We can do it. Whereas if they tried to float downstream the way we do, they’d sink in a minute.

  JUNE: We can actually swim! Why weren’t we told that?

  MAY: They have to keep thrashing upstream just to stay afloat.

  JUNE (Muses): Maybe that’s all they want to do! Maybe they actually don’t want Us at all! (She laughs at the heretical idea and lifts her arms to fix her hair, MAY watches with dour appreciation.) Maybe they’re just trying not to go under!

  MAY: Like you and me? I doubt it.

  JUNE: Not like me. (Pensively) I may not be sure what I want, Lefty, but it’s more than just not going under.

  MAY: That’s what I thought, this time last month.

  JUNE (Looks at MAY with new interest and sympathy and offers her hand, which MAY takes readily): You’ve really hung on here since the last Lunation? That’s incredible!

  KATHERINE: I don’t believe it: a menstrual comedy, yet.

  PETER: A lesbian menstrual-show. I think it’s a first.

  MAY (Nods): I agree. No floater in history ever did it before, as far as I know.

  JUNE: And you made your way back to the Confluence from clear downstream!

  MAY (Modestly): Not from all the way downstream. But from a lot farther down than this. It took me three weeks to swim back up to the Confluence, and I’ve been resting here for nearly a week.

  JUNE: How’d you ever do it?

  MAY (Shrugs): I’d swim a little and then hang on a lot. There are caves and coves and things, where I was able to hide out, and low banks and ledges where I could climb out of the water and rest.

  JUNE: Climb out of the water!

  MAY: Watch. (She heaves herself laboriously up to sit on a small projection of the boulder.)

  JUNE: I can’t believe my eyes!

  MAY (Nods and smiles grimly): Not only do we not die on dry land; we don’t even get stiff, if we splash a little water on our envelopes now and then. Those rest periods saved my life.

  JUNE: Move over, Lefty; if you can do it, I can too.
(She scrambles up, more agilely than MAY, and perches beside her, laughing.) They didn’t say a word about this in the Right Ovarium!

  MAY: Nor in the Left. Much less that we can actually swim against the current.

  JUNE (Indignantly): Excuse me, Sister. I’ve got a bone to pick with a certain teacher of mine. (She speaks to her cupped left hand.) Right Ovarium, Right Ovarium: This is Jay-Gee Eighty, just below the Confluence. Do you read me, Right Ovarium? Over. (No reply, MAY watches, amused, lightly fingering JUNE’s envelope.) Ms. R? This is Jay-Gee here, high and dry and mad as a wet hen! Come in, please: I’ve got some things to ask you and some more to tell you. Over! (No reply, JUNE smacks her hand against the boulder; MAY takes her other hand.)

  MAY: What could she say, Right-O? She’s been lying to you and your sisters for a hundred Lunations.

  KATHERINE: This is too spooky. May Jump used to talk just like this May here.

  PETER: Read on: It’s a lesbian feminist undergraduate menstrual television comedy.

  JUNE: Ms. R never lied to us!

  MAY: My teachers sure did.

  JUNE: I loved Ms. R!

  MAY: I loved my teachers too, doll. (Wryly) And they loved me. But they were wrong.

  JUNE (Hopefully): Maybe our teachers didn’t know any better, even in the Right Ovarium, (MAY grimaces.) Or the Left. Ms. R never claimed she’d been downstream herself.

  MAY: Neither did Coach Lefkowith. She’d been around plenty in other respects—

  JUNE (Merrily): We had a coach like that, too!

  KATHERINE: So did we, at dear old Deniston.

  PETER: What’s that?

  K: A butch riding coach.

  P: Never mind your butch riding coach; I’m up to Mister Right and his fellow rapists.

  JUNE (Swims again, experimentally and to keep her distance from MAY; she backstrokes and sidestrokes lightly against the current as they talk): I can’t believe this!

  MAY: I hate to think what your Ms. R told you about the Swimmers.