Chesapeake

by James A. Michener

  Amos swilled deep and allowed as how it probably would remain a mystery. “At least to me.”

  In the morning the two men had the motorboat waiting at Peace Cliff when Amanda Paxmore came down the long walk in a summer dress, carrying two heavy sweaters, which she asked the men to stow. Caveny, noticing that she had brought two, looked knowingly at Amos, as if to say, “I win the bet.”

  “Shove off,” she said, and the men pushed the boat away from the dock. When the motor caught, Martin Caveny called out, “I’m headin’ due west to clear the point, then straight to Annapolis.”

  She nodded, and thought how perverse it was that this day promised to be one of the most serene the bay had known in years. There to the right lay Oxford dreaming sleepily on the Tred Avon. Four early cars of tourists were riding the little ferry across to Bellevue, with at least a dozen children gaping and yelling directions to their parents.

  When the ferry passed out of sight Amanda looked to the south, where the fragments of Devon Island could still be seen. There were the chimneys and the eastern walls of Rosalind’s Revenge, fighting to stay erect, as if the indomitable will of that great woman still fortified them.

  What a sad sight, Amanda said to herself. Almost an omen for a day like this. A ruin ... The word came uneasily to her lips, but she repeated it: A ruin ...

  Caveny seeing her lips move, asked, “What’s that?”

  “I was looking at the old house,” she replied.

  “You won’t be lookin’ long,” he said.

  They reached Annapolis at nine-thirty and pulled into the dock of a private marina, where two young men waited with a rented car and papers for Mrs. Paxmore to sign. As soon as she had done so, they handed her the keys and sped off in a second car, which they had brought with them.

  “What’d I tell you?” Caveny asked. Turlock shrugged his shoulders. “No big deal. She rented a car.”

  “I should be back about six,” she told the men.

  Caveny almost had to bite his tongue to keep from asking if she was headed for Scanderville. He refrained, nodded politely and said, “We’ll watch things for you.”

  Mrs. Paxmore had not expected him to say this, and the charming way he did, as if he were a loyal retainer, disarmed her. Her voice caught and she almost burst into tears. Ripping open her purse, she produced a ten-dollar bill and jammed it into Caveny’s hand. “Have yourself a good time. Get some crabs and beer.” She grasped Turlock’s hands and said, “Enjoy yourselves. Damnit, if we enjoyed ourselves more ...” She hurried to the car, wiped her eyes and drove north.

  She found Route 2, which took her to Route 695, the superhighway circumnavigating Baltimore. From it she exited onto Route 83, which carried her into Pennsylvania, and when she was well north of Harrisburg she turned west for the small town of Scanderville, where the federal penitentiary stood.

  It was a new type of prison, minimum security it was called, and it possessed no towering stone ramparts or twists of barbed wire. The main building looked much like the office of a prosperous motel, built in semi-Colonial style with white pillars, and there were green lawns. But it was a prison, nevertheless, and to it had been sent many of the distinguished and well-educated men who had participated, one way or another, in the great scandal of Watergate. All had originally been sentenced to three- or four-year terms, but because some had cooperated with government prosecutors, these had been diminished to six or eight months.

  Pusey Paxmore, a minor figure in this attempt to subvert the government of the United States, was not one whose term had been shortened. He had refused to reveal the names of others, had refused to plead ignorance of what he had done, or to beg for mercy in any way. At both the Watergate hearings and his trial he had been a stubborn defender of the President.

  Before the television cameras of the nation he had said, “Unless you were in Washington in the summer of 1970 you cannot comprehend the dangers this nation faced.”

  “Were they sufficient,” a young lawyer had asked, “to warrant your breaking the basic laws of our land?”

  “They were,” he had replied.

  “You are testifying under oath that you knew what you were doing, and that you judged the temper of the times to justify those illegal, immoral and criminal acts?”

  “You have asked two questions.”

  “Then, please,” the young government lawyer said with extreme politeness, “answer them one at a time.”

  “I intend to. First you ask if I judged that the situation at the time was crucial. With rioting in the streets. With publications openly announcing the destruction of our system. With planned destruction of public institutions. Yes, the situation could have been fatal to our form of society and particularly to our form of government. Second, you ask if what I did was done with the knowledge that it was illegal and immoral ... and some other word which I forget.”

  “Criminal,” the young lawyer said helpfully.

  “Yes, criminal. None of my acts were criminal.”

  “Your assessment of your behavior is in sharp contrast to the way every well-intentioned man and woman in this nation sees it. They judge your acts to have been illegal, immoral and criminal.”

  “That’s the judgment now,” Paxmore had replied stubbornly.

  “You suggest there will be a later judgment.”

  “I certainly do.”

  His refusal to bend had earned him a sentence of two years at Scanderville, and he had served it. Now he was being set free.

  Some miles east of Scanderville, Amanda was flagged down by a mounted policeman, and before she could protest that she had been doing less than fifty—which was true, for she was apprehensive about entering the penitentiary town—he asked politely, “Are you Mrs. Paxmore?”

  “I am.”

  “I’ve been sent to intercept you. There’s press in town, and they might ask questions.”

  “I would expect them to,” she said.

  “Don’t you want me to slip you in through the back?”

  “Sooner or later I’ll have to come out through the front.”

  He felt rebuffed. “That’s your headache,” he said.

  “It is indeed,” she said, throwing the car into gear and driving into the town.

  As soon as her presence became known, a group of seven newsmen, some with cameras, descended upon her, pressing her to answer a veritable barrage of unassociated questions. In her neat summer dress, with her hair pulled back Quaker-fashion, she stood beside her car in the hot sun and responded briefly to every interrogation:

  ... “I have no feelings about President Nixon. I voted for George McGovern.”

  ... “My husband was honored when asked to serve at the White House. He respected the President, and from what I hear, did an excellent job.”

  ... “No, my husband did not ask that I drive up here today. Nobody asked me. Whom better could I have sent?”

  ... “Remorse? Every day of my life I experience remorse over something. Have you ever taken a faithful old dog to a veterinary to be put to death? That remorse lives with you for the rest of your life.”

  ... “Our nation has survived a score of disasters. If we elect Jimmy Carter this autumn, we’ll have survived Watergate.”

  ... “I was never easy in the Nixon White House, but my husband worked for him and considered him one of the ablest administrators he knew.”

  ... “Naturally, I have often thought of President Nixon sitting free in San Clemente while my husband sat in this prison, and only because he did what Nixon directed. But long ago I learned that life does not dispense justice, and I do not expect it. I have absolutely no hard feelings, as you phrase it, against President Nixon.”

  ... “Yes, my husband is a Quaker, as I am. Yes, Nixon was a Quaker and so was Herbert Hoover. I think the lesson to be drawn is, ‘Don’t send Quakers to Washington.’ ”

  ... “I left home at seven this morning, crossed the Chesapeake Bay in a small boat, and will cross back tonight.”

&nb
sp; ... “Of course we intend to live where we live now. The Paxmores have lived there since 1664. The house was burned once and fired on three other times. Today is merely one more incident in a long, long history.”

  ... “You ask if I am as hard as my replies might indicate. No sensible answer can be given to that question. We live in an age when it is not customary for people to speak their minds. In an age when it is not usual for a man like my husband to refuse to crybaby and plead for mercy for wrongs he did not do. You call it hardness. You ought to get out in the countryside and find out how many hard people there are in this nation. People who give straightforward answers to devious questions. Now I must go in and fetch my husband.”

  The motorcycle policeman who had wanted to smuggle Mrs. Paxmore in through the back door said to an associate, “That cookie don’t need no help from us,” and his friend replied, “I wish Mabel could of heard her. She’s always warnin’ me not to speak up when Lieutenant Grabert is throwin’ his weight around.” But the first man said, “She’d be a tough one to be married to,” and the second said, “I wish Mabel was a little tougher. She’s like livin’ with a panful of cookie dough.”

  REFUGE

  WHENEVER A NEWCOMER SETTLED ON THE EASTERN Shore he was obligated to declare himself on three vital points: Are you Protestant or Catholic? Republican or Democrat? And do you favor Chesapeake retrievers or Labradors? They way in which he answered these questions determined his status in society.

  He was free to answer as he wished, for Catholics and Democrats were tolerated, and a stranger could build a satisfactory life regardless of his classification. Of course, the political question did present some difficulties, because definitions on the Eastern Shore were somewhat arbitrary and many a newcomer found himself confused when arguing with a local Democrat whose social opinions were far to the right of Genghis Khan.

  For example, Jefferson Steed, who had served two terms in Congress, was universally known as “that radical,” and questions about the Russian revolution or the spread of communism were customarily referred to him on the grounds that “Jeff would know about that, him bein’ so radical.”

  Steed was against labor unions, against women’s rights, in favor of child labor, strongly opposed to integration of schools, against ministers who brought politics into their sermons, vigorously opposed to the federal income tax and distrustful of any foreign alliance. He believed in a powerful army, the supremacy of the white race and the omnipotence of J. Edgar Hoover. Yet the community classified him as radical because in November 1944 he had voted for a fourth term for Franklin Roosevelt on the theory that “you shouldn’t change horses in midstream.”

  One confused emigrant from the biting winters of Minnesota said, “I love the Eastern Shore, its seventeenth-century architecture, eighteenth-century charm and nineteenth-century congressman.” Steed considered this a compliment.

  As to the dogs, those city northerners who had always dreamed of a snarling beast protecting their rural demesnes, or who wanted to pursue honest hunting, chose the Chesapeake, while those who believed that a dog should be part of the family, a kind of perpetual five-year-old, forever young, forever loving, preferred the Labrador. Each encountered many neighbors of similar persuasion.

  When the newcomer arrived he found an immediate friend in Washburn Turlock, head of the prestigious firm of realtors who seemed to control most of the good locations. Once inside the Turlock office, with its Colonial furniture, North Carolina hooked rugs and subdued light illuminating transparencies of beautiful waterfront homes, the prospective buyer was lost. His surrender became complete when Washburn himself appeared, all blandishment in his three-button vested suit, to nail down the deal.

  “Prices are high,” he confessed, “but where in America can you find comparable values? Our water, our sunsets? Crabs and oysters in your own stretch of river?” Land which Steeds and Turlocks had bought for ten cents an acre now sold at $55,600 for a two-acre plot, and such land had no road, no well, no house, no convenience, no virtue of any kind except one: it faced water.

  In August 1976, when the real estate season was about to begin, Washburn Turlock convened his sales staff for a pep talk which would set the future course for his agency. As his fourteen salesmen finished their coffee, he startled them by distributing without comment his new advertising brochure. It was a shocker. From the cover leered a cartoon resemblance of Washburn dressed as a buccaneer, with sword, tricorn hat and pistol. Bold lettering proclaimed TURLOCK THE PIRATE, A MAN YOU CAN TRUST.

  When the gasps had subsided, he informed his people that from here on, this was to be the sales pitch of the Turlock agency, and he directed their attention to the first inside page, which contained a brief, well-written account of selected Turlocks who had occupied Eastern Shore lands for more than three centuries:

  The original Timothy was no Virginia Cavalier. He appears to have been a petty thief who served his first years as a bonded servant, euphemism for slave.

  This was too much for one of the women, who asked in a rather gray voice, “Washburn, do you think that wise?”

  “Read on,” he told her.

  Much was made of General Washington’s lauding of Teach Turlock, who was presented as a pirate devoting his energies to patriotic causes, while Matt Turlock was offered as a hero of the War of 1812. It was an exciting brochure, modern, witty, directed precisely to the kinds of clients the Turlock agency hoped to attract. But it was what Washburn said in his sales pitch that morning that set the pattern for the new era:

  “The old days are gone, and if any of you are indissolubly linked to them, get out now. For new days are upon us. What are the characteristics, you ask. Well, I’ll tell you.

  “This agency no longer has any interest in properties selling for less than a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Now, I know that some cheap clients will find their way to us. Can’t escape them. But you can take a client only once to a ninety-thousand property. If he wants it, all right. If he doesn’t make up his mind on that trip, drop him. Let someone else make that sale. We’re not interested.

  “The reason I say this is simple. Who buys the cheap property, the place at ninety thousand? Some young couple. They keep it for forty years, and what good does that do us? One commission and that’s the end. But who buys the real property? The one for half a million? Some retired geezer in his late sixties. Lives in it five years and finds it too big to handle. Turns it back to us to sell. My father told me, ‘You get yourself four good properties at half a million each, you’ll find one of them coming back on the market every year. You just keep selling those four year after year, you got yourself a good living.’

  “We are after the client who thinks of a quarter of a million as nothing ... chicken feed. We are going to wine him and dine him and three years later sell him a new place for half a million. What we’re really after is the million-dollar sale. On our lists right now we have eleven properties at more than a million each. Get out and sell them.

  “The secret of such salesmanship is to think like a millionaire. What would you like? Who would you like to do business with? That’s the reason for this new brochure ... this new attack. Four billboards go up this week with the pirate theme. Why? Because a rich man is himself a pirate. That’s why he’s rich. He’ll want to do business with me. He’ll see me as a kindred spirit. You watch, this campaign will prove a gold mine.

  “But the second part is also important. Turlock, a man you can trust. We emphasize that in everything we do. A client hands us a deposit, then changes his mind. We are happier to refund his money than we were to take it. He’ll remember and come back. A young couple comes in here with forty thousand dollars. You bring them to me, and I’ll explain that right now we don’t happen to have anything in that price range. I give them coffee. I take them by the arm and lead them across the street to Gibbons, who does handle cheapies. I give them a brochure and ask them to let me know what they find. And later, when they have two hundred thousand to s
pend, they’ll come back to us.

  “When you get hold of a real client, provide what he expects—the history, the charm, the security, the gracious living. I was appalled when I found that Henry here had allowed that old shack on the Fortness place to be torn down. Henry! Didn’t you realize you had a gold mine in that shack? Have the owner spend two thousand dollars propping it up, then tell the clients, “These were the slave quarters.” Don’t you know that every man who comes down here from up North wants to imagine himself as the master of a great plantation ... cracking the whip ... overseeing the cotton. A good slave quarters on a piece of land increases the price by fifty thou.”

  His intuitions were correct, and Turlock the Pirate became not only the most prosperous agency on the shore, but also the most talked about. Its agents wore conservative suits, drove black cars, spoke in low voices about Rembrandt Peak’s having lived in this house, or Francis Asbury’s having stayed in that one during his famous revival. The firm concentrated upon those houses located on the best rivers, and Washburn instructed his agents:

  “When clients ask you what the best locations are—how the various rivers rank socially, that is—you must tell them the story of the American military expert who went to Berlin to find out about the relative ranks in the German forces. An aide to the Kaiser explained, ‘First there’s God. No, first there’s God and the Kaiser. Then the cavalry officer. Then the cavalry officer’s horse. Then absolutely nothing for a long, long way. And then the infantry officer.’

  “On the Eastern Shore there’s the Tred Avon and its tributaries, Peachblossom and Trippe. Then there’s nothing for a long, long way. Then there’s Broad Creek but certainly not Harris. Then again there’s nothing for a long way. Then we have the Miles and the Wye and the north bank of the Choptank. After that, there’s absolutely nothing.

  “If someone should ask about land south of the Choptank, you’re to say, ‘It’s rather attractive ... if you like mosquitoes.’ But never take your car over that bridge. Turlock people are not seen on the other side.”