The Waterman: A Novel of the Chesapeake Bay (2 page)

The granite headstone Bertha had chosen was inscribed
GEORGE WAKEMAN 1924–1972
and was there to urge upon both of them a sense of finality. He ran his foot over the spaded earth at the stone's base and then bent over and gathered some of the dark soil in his hand, rubbing it between his fingers and into his palm, and stood there for a while longer. The wind came colder and caused him to shiver. He turned and walked back to the church.

Inside, the plank floors creaked under him. He could see Reverend Burns gathering the flower arrangements near the altar. His stepmother had invited everyone to come back to the house, and he had promised to be along shortly. He walked up the aisle. The
single stained glass window set over the altar cast a shimmering prism of light over the pulpit. It depicted a young woman, Mary, holding her lifeless son in her arms. She seemed very beautiful, and she and Jesus looked to be the same age, as though they could have been lovers.

Reverend Burns heard him approach and turned. The two of them stood in the silence for a moment.

“Do you need any help with anything?” Clay finally asked.

“No, son. I'm fine, thanks.”

“I appreciate the service.”

“Of course.”

“You going back to Oxford, Reverend? To Bertha's?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I'll go on.”

“Tell her I'll be along soon, if you don't mind.”

“Sure.” He stuck out his hand.

Reverend Burns looked at it, and then he took it to shake.

Clay turned and crossed in front of the altar and pushed against the metal bar to the side door of the chapel. He walked down the steps to the gravel parking area, where three people leaned against a pickup truck, talking quietly. Byron, his crew cut finally growing out, saw him first and stood erect as though coming to attention. Matty, next to him, wore a flannel suit, with three points of a white handkerchief showing at the breast pocket. He had a camera case strapped over his shoulder. Kate smoothed her dark pleated skirt. Her copper hair was tucked loosely under an embroidered linen scarf. She moved to him, took his hands, and pulled him toward her.

“I'm so sorry,” she whispered, holding him tightly.

Matty put his hand on Clay's shoulder. Byron, standing somewhat stiffly still, reached out and squeezed his arm.

“You doing okay?” Byron asked.

Clay looked at him and nodded his head. Then he looked at Kate and Matty.

“It's good to see you.”

“Likewise,” Matty answered.

There was an awkward silence. “We should have come earlier. To help,” Kate said. “We miss you. Everyone from school does. They all said to say hello. And how sorry . . .” She let her voice fall.

“You drive over from school this morning?”

Matty answered yes. “It wasn't bad at all, really,” he continued. “Kate drove us over the Bay Bridge so I could shoot out the window. There was a huge tanker coming under.”

“Nice threads,” Clay said, trying to force a smile, nodding at Matty's suit. “You didn't trade in your Bolger blues, I hope,” referring to a torn pair of jeans Matty had worn daily their second year of college and named for the Georgetown professor who had complained about them.

Matty ran his hand down the lapel. “Decided to go upscale. I needed a few suits for interviews. For summer internship.”

Kate shrugged. “That one pair of jeans I finally threw out. When he wasn't looking.”

Clay thought of the nights they would stay up at the town house they had shared, before he'd had to transfer away. How his mind and sense of the world had begun to open and how Matty first, and then Kate, had become his tutor after becoming his friend, had brought him to books and music in a way he had never before experienced. He thought how he missed all that, and then he focused past them, through the trees, and saw the traffic moving along the highway. He looked down and kicked at several stones with the tips of his shoes and noticed the dust rise up.

“We just wanted to come,” Kate said. “I wish I could have come sooner.” She reached for his hand again and held it.

“You will stay over?” Clay asked.

“We have to leave early, though,” Matty explained. “It's spring break. We're taking a cruise.” He put his hands in his pockets. “You're off too, aren't you?”

Clay considered. “I suppose,” he then answered quietly. “I've already missed two weeks of school. Now class is out for Easter break. I may get used to this.”

“We're catching a 7:30 flight to Miami,” Matty continued. “Out of Baltimore. We're packed to the gills.” He motioned toward his MG sports car, parked down the way, suitcases bulging out of the trunk.

Kate seemed embarrassed. “It's been planned for a long time,” she offered, still holding his hand. She hesitated. “We saw some motels on the highway . . .”

Byron interrupted. “There's plenty of room at the farmhouse. Where I sleep and Clay's been stayin.'”

“Of course you'll stay with us,” Clay finished. “We'll fix up a bed for you there.”

He raised the back of his hand, the one she was holding, and passed it lightly against her cheek, then let her hand go. Looking up, he saw the red-tailed hawk just overhead and believed he felt the rush of air from its wings like a breath across his face. He looked at Byron, who had hardly stirred, but whose eyes also followed the hawk's flight. Despite his own demons, Byron had been with him there through the days of dragging the coves and the river. He wished for words to tell all three of them how he appreciated them, but he only shook his head. Kate started talking again and made it easier. Eventually he urged them to start back to his father's house, Bertha's now, in Oxford, while Kate announced that she wanted to ride with him in his rusty '66 Chevy wagon and climbed in. Clay shrugged at Matty, who just nodded and indicated that he would follow them.

Driving down Oxford Road, Kate had moved over next to Clay and taken his arm with her two hands and had leaned her head against his shoulder. Her scarf had fallen back and her hair was soft against his neck and he could smell her perfume. It was as if they had never been apart, this friend, who had always treated him
like more, even from the first. It was as if she had recognized something in him and loved him for it in a different way from how she loved Matty. It was in a way just as real, yet constrained, of course, by custom and propriety. She began talking quietly as they drove. She told him how brave she thought he was, and then about how their house in Georgetown seemed so empty without him.

They crossed the bridge over Peachblossom Creek, and Clay pointed out Le Gates Cove and described how in winter everyone would gather there at night to ice-skate, and how the bonfire they would build with the old tires taken from Scully's Junkyard would light the shore and sometimes burn for days. His father had taught him to skate there, he told her, before his father had left.

Kate sat up, still close against him.

“I'm so glad I'm finally seeing all this,” she said. “I knew it would be beautiful. From the way you've always described it.”

When they crossed over Trippe Creek, he had her look out into the wider Tred Avon River and told the story of how, his last year of high school, before his mother died, the river had frozen solid, and the Downs boys had bet they could drive their car, “an old '59 red Stude,” from the ferry dock across to Bellevue, and how they took her across and back, and the boys who had bet against her had run out on the ice and were climbing all over her on the way back, trying to make her heavier, with Billy Downs trying to shake them off, doing fishtails on the ice, and then Sheriff Clark came out after them, only on foot, because he wouldn't take his patrol car out on that ice, so Downs just turned upriver, and with the sheriff slipping and falling all over himself trying to give chase, he drove clear up to Easton.

Kate said she could picture it, and laughed as she spoke.

At Bertha's, the house was full of people. The dining room table overflowed with turkey and roast beef, ham, pastry dishes and desserts. Byron and Matty attached themselves to the adjoining bar. Both men were tall, over six feet, though Byron was broader in
the shoulders and had a rougher face. Planted there, the two of them might have, in a different setting, been taken for bouncers.

Clay accepted the condolences from everyone as gracefully as he could but was uncomfortable with the mourners and the anecdotes about Pappy. Kate must have sensed this after a while because she asked if they could go back to the farmhouse. Clay spoke to Bertha, who understood but asked Clay if he would visit her soon for lunch. He agreed. Over Clay's objections, Bertha packed them up ham and turkey, oyster stew, and bottles of beer and whiskey.

They drove down Oxford Road, took the bypass toward Trappe, and turned off to Hogs Neck Landing, where Byron had been living since his discharge from the hospital and the navy. It was a white aluminum-sided two-story farmhouse that sat about a half mile down a dirt lane, surrounded by fields of soybeans and feed corn. The lane ran fifty yards past, ending at the headwaters of La Trappe Creek. Two brothers, Junior and Curtis Collison, owned the house and occupied the upstairs bedrooms. Junior was in the merchant marine and was gone much of the time. Curtis was a plumber by trade but mostly shot pool, played cards, collected the rent, and drew his unemployment. Byron lived in the attic, which had a potbellied stove in the corner and a narrow back stairwell to the first floor. There was also a small fourth bedroom off the kitchen, with a double bed, where Clay had been staying, and he directed Matty and Kate to put their things in there as he helped them unpack the car.

Kate changed into blue jeans and a T-shirt and came into the kitchen, where Clay had lit the stove, tucking her shirt deep into her jeans, and let her hair down while he watched. It fell in a wave of auburn along her white neck and rested on her shoulders as she threw it back, her eyes fastened on his, compassionate, uncompromising. He pulled his attention away from her to put the oyster stew on to warm and put the ham and turkey slices in the oven to
heat. Byron had Patsy Cline playing on the phonograph. They gathered around the warped pine-top table in the center of the kitchen, feeling the heat from the stove. The breeze outside had picked up and was whispering through the siding into the walls. Byron opened more beers for everyone. He lit a cigarette, taking a long pull, then poured out shots of whiskey. He and Matty had been trying to match each other at Bertha's, and they were arguing over who was next to drink. The conversation turned toward the memorial service, which they all approved in turn.

After a while Matty started talking about the photographic exhibit he was working on—all sunsets. He described it in detail, then went to his car and brought in a portfolio of his pictures. He also brought in an Ansel Adams book, a collection of sweeping photographs of the West, and started comparing artistic styles. He went on until Kate took the Ansel Adams book from him gently and closed it, assuring him that his pictures, by themselves, were more interesting. He had some promising prospects for summer work, he told Clay. He'd been asked to submit some photographs to the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond, which had a quarterly magazine, and his father knew someone at Colonial Williamsburg who was going to interview him for a project they were doing on plantation restoration. As he spoke, Kate walked over to the stereo on the sideboard against the wall, where Patsy Cline had just clicked off. She put on George Harrison singing “My Sweet Lord” and began to sway with the music.

Byron seemed to hesitate over a question he had. He went on, though, and asked Clay if he'd learned whether anything was left from his father's bankruptcy.

Clay drew a breath, leaning back. “I finally spoke to Bertha about it this morning,” he slowly answered. “I've got the bateau. Pappy apparently put it in my name some time ago.” He turned his palms up. “Everything else's being sold to pay the debts. The wharf
was mortgaged. The dredgers. Everything. Except the house. House is Bertha's. And some life insurance for her too.”

Kate came over and put her hands on his shoulders.

Exhaling on his cigarette, Byron turned his face up toward the hanging ceiling lamp and into the glare and heat above. Then he turned back. “Why don't you ask Bertha to put up some of the money she's gettin'?” He spoke softly. “To help you through.”

Clay shrugged. “Not her problem. And she needs the security.”

Byron raised his shot glass and studied the amber liquid against the light, then drank it down. He waited, then looked at Matty for him to follow, but Matty put up his hand.

“In a minute,” Matty said.

“Ask me, you're gettin' the piker's end there,” Byron went on, speaking to Clay.

“No.” Clay drank his shot of whiskey down and pushed his glass over toward Byron for another. “No. I don't see it that way.” He gestured for him to pour. “Hell, I've got the workboat. That's something. For sure that's something.”

Clay knew Byron wanted to ask him the question that was really on his mind. The question about what he had seen in Clay's face and eyes while out there together on the river, searching for Pappy. And now with the boat his. But as they watched each other, Byron recognized that Clay foresaw the question, and with that came an unspoken understanding. Clay would talk about it soon enough. Reaching for the bottle, Byron poured out more shots. He turned from Clay and leaned over and spoke to Matty, nodding at the whiskey in his glass. “Gonna leave you behind there, pal.”

Matty winced.

“I'll try one. What the hell,” Kate said.

Everyone looked at her, surprised. “Hold on,” Matty muttered. He raised his shot glass and finished it. “Okay, pour out four. We'll see.”

“Well, let's all raise a glass,” Kate then said.

Matty now seemed amused. He poked Clay to watch.