Chesapeake Tide

by Jeanette Baker

  Chloe was interested. “Why?”

  “Pollution from farms and factories to the north have killed huge numbers of fish and blue crabs. Chemicals have destroyed hatcheries and spawning areas. Limits have been set for fishing and crabbing and harvests are down. But it will be a generation before the bay returns to its previous prosperity.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  Libby shrugged. “Everyone who lives here knows it. It’s all we talk about, our only debate. Sides are taken and lines drawn. There’s no faster way to begin a fight than to take a stand and state an opinion.”

  “Nice place you’ve brought us to, Mom. I can’t wait to get clubbed to death some dark night because I’m a tree-hugger.”

  Her sarcasm barely registered with Libby. She looked around curiously, noting the changes, the refurbished windows and new upholstery, the fresh paint and updated window hangings. For the most part the house looked the same, only better, old-fashioned, rich and warm with colonial colors uniquely different in every room, harvest gold, robin’s-egg blue, Indian red, reflecting the tastes of seven generations of Delacourte ancestors.

  She opened the back door and gazed out at the wide expanse of water, the Chesapeake at sunset. The smell of it assaulted her senses and stopped her short. She breathed deeply and clung to the pillar on the back porch. Had she forgotten that it smelled this way, brackish and metallic, pungent, a mixture of fish and salt and pine and dirt, teeming with underwater life? Or maybe she’d never noticed because she’d grown up on its shores and known nothing else?

  Chloe passed her and looked back curiously but didn’t stop. Libby drank in the view; the rich green grass sloping gently downward to the bay; blue water, glassy beneath the setting sun; a lone trawler, silhouetted against a copper-penny sky; a single blue heron circling in the distance; the white gazebo and lawn chairs; her father depositing her mother in one of them, her daughter flopping down at their feet as if she’d done so a thousand times.

  Emotions surged through her body, overwhelming, threatening, more than frightening. Libby sat down on the porch and rested her head against the pillar. Her stomach lifted and the sky spun drunkenly.

  “Libba Jane,” her father’s voice called to her. “Come along, honey. Have some lemonade.”

  The command steadied her, turned her thoughts toward her father. He’d changed, become confident, assertive, more present than she remembered. She’d always adored him, but her memory was that of a remote, soft-spoken, apologetic man, content to leave the raising of his child to his wife. She walked across the lawn, accepted the sweating glass of lemonade and sat down in an Adirondack chair. “This is beautiful,” she said softly. “I’d forgotten.”

  Cole Delacourte nodded. “I can’t think of another view that compares with this except for Hennessey House.”

  “Where is that?” Chloe asked.

  “Across the water, set back a ways from town,” said her grandfather. “It was closed up for a while, but Russ Hennessey’s had it opened up again. He’s coming back home to run his daddy’s business.”

  Libby’s cheeks burned. “I thought he moved away years ago.”

  Nola Ruth spoke up. “He’s coming back. Beau Hennessey left the business to both boys. After Mitch died a few months ago, Effie Blair kept on working the office. She said that Russ was moving back. Working a fleet of trawlers is a young man’s job.”

  Cole shook his head. “Mitch’s death was a tragedy. He was all set to marry Sue Ellen Cavendish when he was diagnosed with leukemia. He went quickly, thank God.”

  “Leukemia?” Libby frowned. “That’s unusual, isn’t it, for a man his age?”

  “The townspeople here have had their share of illnesses,” said Cole, “but I don’t know that it’s unusual.”

  “Has anyone else in the area come down with leukemia?” asked Libby.

  “As a matter of fact, I think we’ve had several cases. No one we know personally, except for Mitch. Why do you ask?”

  “Leukemia is found in adults who’ve had exposure to radiation or chemicals. Is anyone investigating the cause?”

  “There’s been some rumor in town. The Environmental Protection Agency has opened an office. I never put much credence in blaming the water, although that’s what some folks are saying. We’ve had problems with overfishing for years. More than likely the federal presence is here to enforce commercial fishing limits.”

  “It’s possible. The EPA has more than one role.”

  “As I was saying,” Nola Ruth interrupted impatiently, “Russ Hennessey is coming back to town and he has his work cut out for him.”

  “Why is that?” Libby was surprised. “Russ is a born fisherman.” There was much more she could have said. She could have added that before he was twelve he could maneuver a trawler in seas that would make a lesser man lose his lunch, and by sixteen he could find the best netting spots on the bay without using a loran. Before he was eighteen years old he could out-harvest and out-shuck every fisherman on the water.

  But she said none of those things. Her interest would be too obvious and there would be questions she didn’t care to answer. But the memories were strong and private and deeply personal. Russ Hennessey was as close to a legend on the water as an ordinary mortal could be. He’d handcrafted his own fishing lines and fought his first shad at six years old. He’d worked as a deckhand on his daddy’s trawlers, pulling up bucket after bucket of soft-shelled crabs, glistening wet and cobalt-blue as they squirmed on the dock in the shimmering heat of summer afternoons. And somewhere, after his first shad and before his first beer, not too long before, he’d tasted the softness of Libby Delacourte’s mouth. And later, much later, in a sweltering vortex of heat and need and pubescent longing, he’d stepped across the line separating childhood from adolescence and pulled her along with him, leaving the former behind forever.

  Russ Hennessey had loved her. It was as simple as that. He’d loved her from the time she was seven years old, and she’d repaid his devotion by leaving town with Eric Richards, without so much as a word of explanation or even a goodbye. She’d carried the guilt of her behavior around for years, imagining a dozen different scenarios by which she could absolve herself. It appeared that her time was nearly at hand.

  “I never did like that girl he married,” Nola Ruth said, stringing out the words with her Louisiana drawl. “You remember her, Libba. She was a schoolmate of yours, the Wentworth girl.” She appealed to her husband. “What was her first name, Cole?”

  “Tracy.”

  “That’s it. Cheap thing.” Nola Ruth fanned herself. “They had a child, a daughter, but Cora Hennessey had her doubts.”

  Libby drained the last of her lemonade. “About what?”

  “Never mind,” answered her mother. She nodded at Chloe. “Little pitchers—”

  Chloe rolled her eyes and stared at the bay.

  Her grandfather laughed. “What she means is Russ and his wife tried for years to have a child. When they finally gave up, Tracy announced she was pregnant.”

  “It happens that way sometimes,” said Libby.

  Nola Ruth stared at her husband over her daughter’s head. Their eyes met and he shook his head slowly. Only Chloe noticed and wondered at the unspoken message that passed between them.

  Five

  Verna Lee Fontaine hummed as she wiped down the counters of her health food/coffee shop. The herbs she’d hung from the ceiling in the back room were dried and ready to grind, and she’d decided to keep them in containers beneath the glass counter where people could see them. Occasionally, she would break into song, her rich, throaty alto filling the empty spaces in the room and rattling the prisms dangling from the tree branch that served as a jewelry stand.

  Her grandmother hobbled in from Verna’s house in the back and lingered in the doorway, smiling at the picture the younger woman made. She was tall and lush, with full breasts, narrow hips and long, lovely legs that just now were exposed through the slit of the calf-length, flowere
d skirt she’d knotted around her waist. She had golden eyes, a small pert nose and a thick mass of tawny ringlets twisted on top of her head and secured with a chopstick. Only the caramel color of her skin and the fullness of her lips revealed her African heritage. Verna Lee was approaching forty-two, but no one looking at that vivid, expressive face would have marked her as a day over twenty-five.

  Drusilla sighed. Watching Verna Lee flit effortlessly from door to windows to stairs and back to the door again was a reminder of her own age and its limitations. There was something about Verna Lee that drew the eye, something raw and primitive and vital. She shook away her woolgathering and remembered her errand. She had a message to deliver. “Mornin’, Verna Lee,” she called out.

  Verna Lee stopped singing and smiled. “Good morning, Grammy. I didn’t hear you come in.”

  “You was singin’.”

  “Yes.” She twisted a ringlet around her forefinger. “Have you eaten breakfast?”

  “Hours ago.”

  “Good.” She crossed the room and kissed the old woman’s weathered cheek. “I didn’t want to make you any, anyway.”

  “I could use some coffee.”

  “Why don’t you make some for the two of us? Put in some of that New Orleans chicory I brought back with me. It’ll take out the bitterness.”

  “My coffee ain’t bitter.”

  “You only think it isn’t. Sometimes it is.”

  Drusilla grumbled as she made her way to the kitchen. Verna Lee watched her grandmother with an anxious wrinkle between her brows. “Is your arthritis bothering you?” she called after her. “I wish you wouldn’t insist on living all by yourself. I have plenty of room.”

  “No, it ain’t botherin’ me.”

  “Why are you limping?”

  “I walked to the market yesterday and stopped by the Delacourtes on the way back.”

  Verna Lee’s lips tightened. “What for?”

  “I had sweet potatoes left to sell. Mr. Delacourte always buys ’em from me.”

  “Did he buy them this time?”

  “Every last one.”

  “I hope they were a bad batch.”

  Drusilla finished measuring out the coffee and put the water on to boil. “Shame on you, Verna Lee. Mr. Delacourte’s been good to me. He even asked after you. He wants more of your sleepy tea.”

  Verna Lee returned to her counters. “He knows where to find it.”

  “That’s what I told him.” She tilted her head. “Libba Jane’s comin’ home.”

  “So?”

  “I just thought you’d want to know.”

  “Libba Jane Delacourte was always too curious for her own good. Sometimes, I thought—” She shook her head. “Never mind.”

  “She’s bringin’ her child with her, a girl.”

  Verna Lee’s hands moved in slow circles on the glass, “That’s nice. It will give Nola Ruth someone else to persecute.”

  Drusilla poured two cups of thick, chicory-rich coffee and walked back into the shop. “You’re in a sour mood today, child.” She handed her a cup. “Here. Maybe some coffee will help.”

  Relenting, Verna Lee pulled up a stool, accepted the peace offering and sat down, crossing her spectacular legs. “What’s she like?” she asked, despising herself for her interest.

  “Who?”

  “Libba’s daughter.”

  “Don’t know. I heard the news from Serena.”

  “I wonder why she’s coming home after all this time?” mused Verna Lee.

  “Nola Ruth nearly died,” Drusilla reminded her.

  Verna Lee’s hand tightened around her cup. “That’s right. I remember now, not that Mrs. Delacourte and I run in the same social circles.”

  “Should you?” her grandmother asked pointedly.

  Verna Lee released her breath. “No. Of course not. I don’t know what’s the matter with me today.”

  “Full moon?” suggest Drusilla.

  “Possibly.” Verna Lee’s eyes had a dreamy quality. “I wonder if Libba Delacourte is as gorgeous as she was in high school.”

  “Don’t waste any time over it. You’ll see her soon enough.”

  “I doubt she’ll ever set foot in this shop.”

  “Maybe she will and maybe she won’t.”

  “She won’t be here for long, anyway. No one in her right mind would trade California for Marshyhope Creek.”

  Her grandmother didn’t mention that Verna Lee had done exactly that. She simply nodded. “Libba was a nice little gal, all dark eyes and dark hair and a smile that lit up the world.” She glanced at her granddaughter. “Just like you. Nola Ruth went into a decline when she left with that boy.”

  “Where is that boy?” Verna Lee asked.

  Drusilla shrugged. “Ask her when you see her.”

  “I just might do that.”

  “No reason why you shouldn’t. You had the same schoolin’.”

  “No one knows that.”

  “That’s your fault, Verna Lee. You always were a smart one. No one would be surprised to find out you came home with an education.”

  Verna Lee left the room and came back with the coffeepot. She refilled their cups. “Things are fine the way they are, Grammy. I love this shop. It’s a whole lot better than being a wage slave and haggling over hours and raises and pension plans. It suits me. I’ve never deliberately kept the fact that I have a degree from anyone. Because no one expects a black woman from Marshyhope Creek to have a college degree, it just doesn’t come up.”

  The old woman eyed her shrewdly. “If you say so.” Verna Lee smiled over the rim of her coffee cup. “So, do you have any other gossip to tell me?”

  “Russell Hennessey’s comin’ home to run his daddy’s fishing fleet.”

  The younger woman’s eyes widened. “Well, well, well,” she said softly. “Libba and Russ home at the same time. It won’t be dull in Marshyhope Creek this summer.”

  Russell Tremayne Hennessey pulled his Ford Explorer over to the side of the road, removed his sunglasses and stared across the gold-tipped waters of the Chesapeake. The sun sat on the bay like melted copper. Trawlers and single-manned boats would all be docked by now, leaving what they hadn’t caught to the brown pelicans and giant blue herons and an occasional migratory loon on its way to the colder, cleaner ponds of Maine. As a child, Russ had dreamed of birds and what it would be like to feel that lifting, soaring, tightening-of-the-stomach sensation at the surge of an updraft, to experience the power of wind beneath spread wings and know that the world was miles below.

  He wondered, not for the first time, how he could have left. Seventeen years ago it seemed reasonable to put the pain and disappointment behind him and move on. But now, in retrospect, he’d been a fool. The pain had abated in its own time, and the memories had followed him on that mad, diabolic flight out of Marshyhope Creek, away from the light-struck, water-bright bays of Maryland, west through the smoky Blue Ridge Mountains and the red-earthed flatlands of Virginia, north across the Mason-Dixon Line into the rolling green farmlands of Pennsylvania, breaching for the first time in his life the boundaries where no self-respecting Southerner would willingly exile himself. How he’d come to believe the flight syndrome was the only way to deal with the downward trajectory of his life was a mystery.

  As close as he could tell, it had all started when Libba Delacourte ran off with a boy too wet behind the ears to know what to do with his hanging body parts. Her defection had shocked Russ. Mitch had told him, albeit reluctantly and by mail and after all other topics had exhausted themselves, that Libba had run off with a Yankee and then, rubbing his nose in it even deeper, married him.

  Russ had gone into such a decline that he no longer attended classes, was put on probation and subsequently kicked out of the Citadel. That led to a stint in the army as a private, a return to Marshyhope Creek, a bad marriage, another flight as far and as fast as his wherewithal would take him, another attempt at college, successful this time, and a career he’d tired of, given up
and sold out in order to come home. It was a crapshoot, giving up a successful architectural company, starting over at his age, but the way he saw it, he had no other option. He’d come for Tess, his love, his only child, his fifteen-year-old daughter, whose recent behavior had forced his ex-wife to break down and ask for his help.

  Russ acknowledged that he’d been a disappointment as a father. He hadn’t wanted a child, not at first, and not with Tracy. The idea of having a child with Tracy Wentworth left him shuddering. She was dangerous, spoiled and self-absorbed, and she had no concept whatsoever of child-rearing. As long as Tess was obedient, dressed well and disappeared when her mother was occupied, all was well. But now that Tess was growing up, now that she had opinions and preferences and a will of her own, Tracy couldn’t cope. Russ had sued for custody, but Judge Wentworth, Tracy’s father, had influence.

  Not only had Russ been denied custody, he hadn’t even been awarded normal visitation privileges. Throwing up his hands, he’d left town, preferring to see his daughter on rare occasions when Tracy needed a break, rather than haggle over alternate holidays and weekends. It wasn’t his first mistake. He realized that now. Tess needed something solid in her life. She needed a role model, someone other than her frazzled, hysterical mother, a woman who had no interests, served no useful purpose and had difficulty concentrating on a serious conversation.

  Russ turned off the engine, climbed out of the car and walked down the bank to the water. The Chesapeake— America’s giant protein factory, environmentalists had called it in earlier, richer days. It was no longer true. Commercial harvests of American shad had almost disappeared in the Virginia and Maryland portions of the Chesapeake. Valleys of underwater greenery, life support for dozens of species of fish and fowl, simply vanished. Pollution and commercial fishing were cited as the primary causes. The environmentalist’s answer was to remove the fishing pressure and allow the spawning stocks to rebuild, a harbinger of death for the watermen of the bay.

  He hoped the fishing lobbies had enough power to hold them off. If not, he was doomed before he ever took over the Hennessey Blue Crab and Fishing Fleet.