Death in the Polka Dot Shoes (4 page)

“Is that your standard of excellence?” she said through a smile.

“Pretty much,” I said. “Even as a kid I wanted tablecloths. Clean and white. I think I went to law school to get away from formica.”

“I thought you were a fisherman,” she asked with a slightly scornful look. “With scales and guts and cutting those slimy fish open on the dock. Now you tell me you want table cloths.”

“This may be part of my problem,” I said, wanting to get the conversation back to my future. “I miss the water, the independence and orneriness of the people. But there's a Brooks Brother in me that likes the city as well.”

“So what's the problem?”

“My brother left me his boat. It's an old wooden thing that my father left him. I have a lot of sentimental memories about it. Dad used it for crabbing for nearly 30 years. My brother was turning it into a charter fishing boat. Taking people out to catch rockfish. I guess the business is changing.”

“You want to run a crab boat?” she said incredulously.

“I used to tell my brother that I wanted to get back on the water. I thought it was romantic when I didn't actually have to do it. It sounded great knowing that I had a law firm and enough money to buy any crab boat on the bay. So I dreamed of the smell of the saw grass in the morning, when the herons stand frozen in the marshes, or the egrets line the bulkheads, and the water is as still as porcelain. I miss dropping my hand over the side of the boat and letting the water rush through my fingers.”

“Oh brother,” she interrupted. Then she looked in my face and saw the yearning that could not be hidden. “Why not just do it. Buy a boat. Or take your brother's. And slip out there on Saturday mornings for a little nostalgia.”

“There is a catch to this trotline Diane, that I haven't mentioned,” I said. “My brother also left me about 75 acres, much of it on the water, probably worth several million dollars if it's developed right.”

“What's a trotline?”

“Sorry for the pun. It's what the crabbers use,” I said, “they go out early in the morning, lay out about a thousand feet of trotline -- that's what it's called -- with a piece of bait every few feet. It settles down to the bottom of the bay. The crabs come to the bait for breakfast. The crabber waits a while, then pulls up the trotline, and as each crab comes out of the water, the waterman scoops him with a net and tosses him in a basket. Kids do the same thing when they tie a chicken neck to a string, let the crab take it, then pull him up. Same idea only the trotline makes it a kind of assembly line. Crabs are a hundred and fifty dollars a bushel today so the guy does all right. Pull in ten bushels a day and you live pretty well. Of course, you can't do that every day. Actually, not many days.”

“Let's get back to the land and the millions,” Diane said. “What's the catch there?”

“I have to work the boat for five years to get the land.”

“What!” she exclaimed. “Was your brother a practical joker, or did he hate you? What'd you do to this fellow?”

“No, you don't understand,” I said. “I think he thought he was saving me from myself. He thought I belonged on the water. And this was a way to get me back. He probably also thought he would never die, or he could change the whole thing later if I turned out to be a phony baloney ambulance chaser.”

“What's 75 acres worth out there?” she asked.

“Probably millions,” I said.

“Ned, for ten million I would leave Simpson, Feldstein and James so fast I couldn't remember what the building looked like,” Diane said. “Besides, your brother didn't say you couldn't practice law. Hang your shingle in Parkers. Fish in the morning. Lawyer in the afternoon.”

“That may be a little much,” I offered. But I fell silent, realizing this was a new idea, worthy of consideration, and maybe a solution to lots of things.

“I may even have a first client for you,” she said, showing some enthusiasm for the project. “Listen Ned, you don't have a problem. With millions at stake, you only have opportunities.”

This is why I liked Diane. Alone among most of the lawyers I know, she was a woman who could see opportunities. Admittedly she had detractors who saw her creativity as unbridled ambition, but I had never known her to chew anybody up or set a course that benefited her more than the client. Seeing around corners was a good quality for a lawyer, and I wasn't the best at it. Mostly, I am a goal oriented, slightly lazy, above average intellect who sets a course and sticks to it, except for Saturday evenings at the Willard when I am likely to stroll off into the unknown with the first lady lobbyist who believes my line about becoming a Congressman some day. That's not a pickup line I use often, but it has worked in some very ambitious circles, and it works amazingly well at the Willard because everyone who goes there expects to become President some day. That's why the Willard is a very strange setting for discussing a new career as a waterman.

I dropped Diane off at the firm, noticing the warmth that comes from having a strong confident professional woman at your side. And the faint smell of pricy bath soap under starched linen was also nice.

My greatest fear of going back to Parkers was that it had changed. I might have lost my sense of reality about the place, with all that education, travelling around the country, seeing Europe for nearly three months after college. Just yesterday, after the memorial service, Parkers seemed raw and slightly dangerous. In high school I never feared going into a bar in Parkers, or visiting a crab house on Saturday night when you knew fights could occur. I knew everyone and their intentions. Now I was an outsider, under suspicion for my ambitions and perhaps my income. The safety of familiarity was gone. But still, I couldn't forget the independence of heading your own boat out on the bay, spending six or seven hours in a cradle of waves, and returning home with the evening sun turning bright red. As I said goodbye to Diane, a single line of poetry floated through my mind: red sky at night, sailors delight. I never knew a waterman who could tell you who wrote that line, but they could all recite it, and most set their lives by it. I was doing it too.

Chapter Three

Martha Claire Shannon's name appeared on the bow of two boats in Jenkins Creek, one a thirty-foot bay-built docked at the Bayfront's pier, and the other a fourteen-foot Boston Whaler that my brother kept on a trailer at this home. One was his profession; one for recreation. He bought the smaller boat and twenty horse motor when his daughter was born, with the distant dream of taking her fishing near the marshes of the Bay, floating aimlessly on a warm summer day and showing her the patterns of life on the water. He knew she would enjoy seeing the long legged blue herons, with their necks stretched tight as a clothesline, skim across the water, then raise their heads and bring down their legs just like a jet airplane preparing to land. Already, at age one, the little girl would cry in the night when she heard the fractious, angry cry of the heron, such an ugly foghorn of a sound to come from such an elegant bird. And Jimmy wanted to show her how the herons came to the marsh at low tide, pranced around in the mud with such satisfaction that they finally drew that long neck down into their feathers, and in a final act of hauteur, raised one leg into their wheel well, and went to sleep, so motionless that they might be mistaken for a Florida yard sculpture. He also wanted to show her how natural enemies like the Osprey, growing in numbers in their big nests on the man-made channel markers, would attack the heron for no apparent reason, forcing them out of the sky in violent battles until the heron could find refuge in the tall marsh grass. None of that would happen now.

My brother had married Martha just two years ago, but they had known each other for several years. She had worked at the Bayfront when he started crabbing on his own. But it took eight years for the spark to catch, and then they wondered how they could have ignored each other for so long. Jimmy always figured it was because his mother was also named Martha, so he avoided her, at least subconsciously. But names seem to have a special niche in the culture of Parkers. Every waterman has a nickname, like Muskogee or Tank or Pirate, that usually comes from some experience on the water. The wives' names are often on their husbands boats, sometimes with middle names never used in other circumstances. And waitresses seem to call everyone Honey, or Sweetie, or Darling.

The anomaly for Jimmy was that his wife and mother had the same first name, but different middle names. However, since he inherited his Dad's boat, and since everyone knows that changing a boat's name is bad luck, he simply kept the
Martha Claire
on the boat and everyone assumed that meant his wife's middle name was Claire. It was complicated, but in the end nothing changed.

Now Martha was alone again, and seeking comfort where she had always found it, the Bayfront on a Sunday morning. The Bayfront Inn exists in every waterfront fishing community between South Carolina and Maine. It's always dark and carries the same worn and splintered façade as the fishing boats. Both the bar and the boats are painted every year, never with all the old paint scraped off, so the surface is thick with coats that build up on door frames and window ledges. And the first day after painting, heavy rubber boots leave sliding marks on the floor, and grease from the diesel engines leaves dark smudges around the door handle. It's only a matter of weeks before the spiders and dust mites have added their special touch of décor. And that's when the watermen feel the most comfortable. The Bayfront wraps her smells of stale beer and eggs around you like a bomber jacket with a fur lining. It's warm and comforting like a dear friend that has known you sick or drunk or foolish and still welcomes your presence.

Martha carried her Irish daughter Mindy in a plastic car seat into the Bayfront bar, set her on a round stool with red cover, wedged the seat in some practiced fashion against the bar, and tied it to a brass rail just under the ledge. It seemed unlikely Mindy would fall from that perch, yet most of the fishermen at the bar left an open seat between themselves and the child, a margin of safety as it were.

Vinnie Tupelo, the first mate on my brother's boat, moved through the outside door to the bar, let his eyes adjust to the dim, and took the open stool beside the sleeping Mindy. Vinnie had been with my brother for six years, and now would have to find another boat unless I picked him up, which I probably would. He had been with the Marine police for 20 years and had arrested every waterman on the Bay at least once for violating one of the many fishing regulations. Vinnie was a very optimistic fellow for a policeman, and he used to brag that in twenty years of issuing tickets for violations, he seldom made arrests or got a conviction. The reason, of course, was that local judges around the Bay would seldom find a waterman guilty of any water-related infraction. The judges figured life on the water was tough enough, and a day of fishing lost to a court appearance was punishment enough. Besides, they were neighbors and friends. It's one of the few breaks watermen get in their dealings with the government. Vinnie came to appreciate that fact, played his role in the drama, and after twenty years he joined the opposition. He became a first mate. Plus he knew that the old days of casual justice were dwindling and law enforcement wasn't so much fun.

“Hi Vin,” Martha said, reaching across her daughter to tuck in her blanket so Vinnie wouldn't accidentally pull the whole thing off the stool.

“Hello Miss Martha,” Vinnie said in his usual way. “Haven't seen you since the service. Real nice.”

“Thanks Vin,” she replied. They both took a drink of their tomato beer, the only concession anyone made to breakfast. Martha hadn't been a regular at the bar since she quit working at the Bayfront, but she was the wife of a waterman, and one who kept his boat at the Bay-front, so she was known to everyone. As the bar started to fill up, the boys filed by Martha, expressed their regrets, often with just the word, “Sorry,” then took a stool.

Vinnie decided to move the conversation away from sadness by commenting on the Redskins, the Washington football team that was the real reason for the Bayfront's fast gathering crowd. It paid to arrive early on Sunday if you wanted a bar stool for the game at one o'clock. There would be standing room only by game time, which meant tradesmen and watermen three deep around the bar, a sound level equivalent to a diesel engine at daybreak, with people trying to reach between each other to pick up beers or shout orders to Simy, who was tending bar. It was important to be “on stool” by eleven o'clock.

“We may need another new coach,” Vinnie said, looking at Simy as she walked to the back of the bar. “The Skins can't gut it up. They choke.” No one answered, mainly because the other guys at the bar were reading the sports page of the Sunday Post, and hadn't quite assimilated the prevailing wisdom of the day.

“Vinnie,” Martha said, “I never really knew how Jimmy put that fishing trip together. Do you know?”

“No mam,” Vinnie said, shaking a pinch of salt into his beer. “I heard his talk about it, but I didn't hear that. He was real excited about going, though.” Vinnie was still wearing his baseball cap with the logo for St. Mary's Seafood on the front. Caps were a part of the uniform, mainly because they were always free. As Vinnie says, nobody in his right mind buys a cap anymore. And it gives you a little sun protection. Even so, caps always fall off when you're working the crab pots or the trotline, so it's best not to wear one at all. Hats with brims would be better protection from the reflections off the water, but you can't keep them on at all. Just the speed of the boat will blow them off. But if you walk in the Bayfront restaurant or bar at lunch time, every man in the place has his cap on, and no two will have the same logo. If you ask someone to remove a hat, well, Vinnie never heard of that.