The Waterman: A Novel of the Chesapeake Bay (5 page)

“I'll drink to anything,” Byron answered, raising his can.

They stood there facing each other and then were quiet, together taking in the peace of dusk out on the water. And after a time Clay nodded and moved over to the center console and started up the bateau.

Riding back, he had Byron take the tiller and walked up front to the bow and sat leaning back on the cabin window, watching the sky turn to mauve and the river to mauve dark. It disturbed him, what Byron had said. Clay wouldn't have expected him to consider
selling dope. Even as hurt as he was. He sat and thought about it, leaning back against the glass, and thought about his own decision and what was ahead. As the boat cut through the dark water, as night settled overhead, he studied the canopy of the universe, tracking the glimmering polestar as though he were a soothsayer searching the mystery for a clue, and knowing only that he was alone and making decisions now, traveling in life.

Pappy won his first skipjack in a poker game. It wasn't two weeks after he had gotten home from the war. Some eighty percent of his original squadron had been shot down over the Pacific, but he'd made it home with just a small sliver of anti-aircraft shrapnel lodged in his knee. The way he'd told it to Clay, it was mid-June when he got home, with the river warming but the jellyfish rare. In shorts and a T-shirt he would swim across the Tred Avon to the Dutch Inn Hunt Club, where he kept a locker. He'd change clothes, drink Jack Daniel's, and play poker all night. He always took Gus, his Chesapeake Bay retriever, with him. The night he won the skipjack, he'd bet his veterans disability with a queen under and two showing. He was dealt a pair of deuces on top of the queens and beat three aces. Afterward he was too drunk to swim but went in the river anyway. He grabbed hold of Gus's collar and Gus swam him clear across. The next morning, Sarah Rush found him unconscious, sprawled over the stone bulkhead that runs along the Strand, reeking of whiskey and muck and smeared with seaweed. She took him in and nursed him, and he took her heart for her trouble.

Sarah was the daughter of Dr. Samuel Rush, and according to her, her fine Baltimore family's trepidations at the announcement of her engagement were blown aside by the whirlwind that was Pappy, the son of a turkey farmer from off the Miles River who had made it through one year of college, flight school, a naval aviator's commission at age nineteen, and war heroics fighting from Midway to the Battle of Leyte Gulf. With some help from Dr. Rush, but mostly through hard work, timing, and a willingness to risk, that one skipjack became a fleet of oyster dredgers and workboats and a small seafood wholesale and packing company.

In the 1950s, Pappy took a chance on Fletcher Hanks's newly designed clam dredger. He borrowed from the bank and put three of the pump-belt dredgers to work, refitting a part of his packing plant to handle the softer and more brittle shells. The river bottom was an unplowed cornucopia for Pappy and the other dredgers, and they reaped the harvest, changing the contours of the Bay's bottom in the process. And during Pappy's mad acquisition, after two miscarriages, Sarah gave birth on a raw Saint Patrick's Day, 1951, at Easton Memorial Hospital, to Clayton Rush Wakeman. The birth was difficult, spanning a day and two nights, and Sarah was a long time recuperating. Afterward she was told that she should have no more children.

Despite his alcohol and gambling binges, and despite his wildness, Sarah adored Pappy, even after he started buying refrigerator trucks and adding new docks to the wharf, and even after the clamming dried up, and the oyster beds were depleted, and the money became scarce. Sarah adored Pappy and lived to please him until the day he left her for Bertha Wilkes, the young actress who played Tennessee Williams's Maggie in summer stock at the Cambridge Theater. That was the year Clay turned sixteen and pretty much the last year he saw his father until his mother's funeral, and he saw him little after that. Sarah died of a massive heart attack, in her own car, having picked Clay up on the last day of his senior
year in high school, the last day of her life. Clay was in the car with her, there to hold her, feel her hand on his face and then gripping his arm, hear her gasping for breath, pleading with him to stay with her as the car swerved into a ditch. Clay believed he knew why she died and why he could never understand or forgive his father.

It was midweek, midday, when Clay opened the front door to Bertha's dress shop, on the sidewalk off Harrison Street in Easton, Maryland. A pewter bell attached to the top of the door jingled. The inside of the glass door was draped in lace. Mildred, Bertha's black seamstress, who'd spoken to Clay at the funeral, stuck her head around the corner into the carpeted foyer, where he stood.

“Hello, Mr. Clay,” she said. “How you doin', chile?” She was thin and gray haired, and her eyes were gentle.

“Hello, Mildred.” Clay shrugged. “I'm holding up, thank you.”

“You have a seat now, Clay. Miss Bertha is expecting you and will be right out.”

“Thank you.”

Clay looked at the love seat against the wall where Mildred had nodded he should sit. It was covered in a floral upholstery. Mildred hadn't turned away but stayed watching him.

“Clay, honey, you sit there now,” she urged. She smiled. “Could I get you a Coke?”

Then Bertha came gliding down the staircase, interrupting them.

“That's just fine, Mildred, thank you, but we'll be leaving,” she said. Bertha spoke with a rich Carolina accent. She hailed from Charleston.

“Hey, Clay,” she went on, leaning over and brushing his cheek with hers.

Outside, a fine mist hovered over the street. Clay took Bertha's
red umbrella and opened it for her. He held it to shield her as they walked down Harrison to where it met Dover Street. A black man in denim overalls stood balanced on an aluminum ladder in the light rain, replacing the letters on the movie theater marquee with the name of the new film,
The Last Picture Show
. Clay'd heard it was worth seeing. At the entrance to the Tidewater Inn, Clay closed the umbrella, shook it dry, and placed it in the rack against the brick facade.

Inside the dining room, red embers glowed in the stone hearth. A waiter came by, bringing firewood. A girl Clay had known in high school—he remembered her name, Paula Firth—showed them to a table in the corner and gave them each a lunch menu. She was pretty, with short blond hair and long legs. She asked Clay how he'd been, flirted with him some, and told him it was nice to see him and that she'd bring some water. The restaurant tables were about half full, mostly businessmen in suits. Clay caught several of them staring at Bertha, who didn't seem to notice.

After they had sat down, Bertha looked at her menu for a moment and then set it aside.

“Thank you for joining me today, Clay,” she said.

“You're welcome.”

Bertha smiled but seemed embarrassed.

“My sisters are leaving this week. I'm a little afraid.”

He thought her face was thinner than he had remembered. Her tinted hair was pulled tight under a round blue brimmed hat. Her eyes looked flat.

“What do you plan to do?”

“I don't know. What is there to do? Keep on, I guess.”

“You're afraid of being alone.” It was a statement.

“And I'm afraid of not being alone.”

Paula came over and poured their water. She asked them if they were ready to order. Bertha asked for a salad, and Clay, a crab cake sandwich.

Bertha remarked about the memorial service and how amazed she was at all the people who came. After a while she turned the conversation. “I always admired you, Clay. The way you handled it all.”

He didn't reply. He was aware of the clinking of dishes from the kitchen and the background hum of conversation.

“I never really knew what I did until it was too late.”

Clay fidgeted. “There's no need,” he said.

“No. I want, this once, to tell you. I should have said this to you long before now. The time just never seemed right.”

“If there ever was a right time, I'm not sure it hasn't passed.”

“Clay.”

He picked up his spoon and turned it until it caught the reflection of the fire.

Bertha leaned her head back. “I was in trouble. I was twenty-six. I thought I was running out of time.” Bertha paused for a moment. She sighed. “The details aren't important. But love was what I believed in. Your father was taken with that show. He was there nearly every night. It just happened. And it was like God had put me on this earth to love him. Nothing else mattered. It was as if there were no choice to be made.”

Clay was staring into his water. He picked up the glass and sipped it and set it down.

“I don't blame you, Bertha. Not mostly, anyway.”

“I'm blameworthy. But I believed it was true and right, and I didn't know what a family was that could be broken like that.”

Paula came toward them with their lunch plates, and Bertha stopped. The food was set before them. Clay poked at his crab cake.

“I don't know what went wrong between your mother and Pappy. But he was already distant. He was there with the same need I had. I didn't think I caused it.”

She stopped talking. They both were silent. Then she went on.

“He wanted more children. You might not know. He said he wanted you to have brothers and sisters. I wanted to wait, while your mother was alive. And then it just never worked. I thought we'd have more time. I'm sorry.”

Paula brought over a pepper grinder and asked Bertha if she wanted some pepper on her salad, and Bertha said yes, thank you. After Paula finished, Bertha picked up her fork and mixed her salad, then put her fork back down.

“Clay, I'll always love your pappy. But you and I . . .” She lingered over her thought. “We both have a good measure of life left.”

Clay acknowledged this. “I know that, Bertha.” He watched her. “Strange, but you're the closest thing to kin I got left.”

Bertha reached over and put her hand atop Clay's hand on the table.

Clay felt awkward but kept still.

Bertha gently pressed Clay's hand and then released it.

“I have more than enough with the house and money and my shop. You see, after a few years being married to Pappy, I realized I should never count on anyone else taking care of me but myself. That's why I started the shop. It brings me a small but steady income. Plenty people think your pappy took care of me, but in the end it was the other way around.”

“He worked hard, you know that.”

“That is true. Pappy worked hard and he played hard and he spent hard. And he grieved hard too.”

Bertha looked up at the ceiling.

“He loved me, Clay, and there was fire between us. But he was hurt from what he did. It ate at him. I believe truly he would have undone it if he could.”

She looked down and picked up her fork.

“Food's getting cold.” She motioned.

Clay ate a few bites from his crab cake.

“You going to keep the house?” he asked.

Bertha waited. She finished her bite of salad and wiped her mouth with her napkin.

“Yes. For now at least. One day at a time.” She took a sip from her water glass.

Clay thought of Pecks Wharf, the marina, the boats, all mortgaged, all being sold.

“Clay, will you do something for me? Will you go back to school and finish? That's what Pappy wanted.”

“Pappy's gone now.”

“Yes. Well, I'd like you to finish. It's the smart thing to do. If you'd let me, I'd like to lend you what you may need to finish, to get your degree.”

Clay reflected on this. “I appreciate the offer, Bertha.”

“Well?”

“I'll think it over. I've got a few hundred left in the bank. I expect that will see me through for a while. I haven't decided about next fall yet. But I appreciate the offer.”

“What about the summer?”

“I'll be around. I'm planning to rent a room at the farmhouse, where I've been staying with Byron. I'm going to work the river some. I'll come by. Anything you need done around the house, you let me know.”

“Clay, does it have to be the river? So soon?”

He looked away. “It's what I want now. Hard to explain. Even to myself. But I feel it. And the summer's mostly calm. I'll be careful.”

She slowly sighed. “Of course.”

He didn't answer.

“Thank you, Clay,” she said then.

He turned.

“I mean thank you for everything.”

It rained in sheets all that Thursday. Clay had slept late. In the afternoon the telephone rang, and Byron answered it. It was Barker Cull. Barker needed help with his pound nets down off Ragged Island. They could make good money for the day, though it would be blowing right rough and stormy. Byron was heading out for the evening with Laura-Dez, so they agreed, in case he didn't make it home, to meet at the wharf at five the next morning. It rained all night.

It was still dark when Clay pulled into the lot at Pecks. The oyster shell surface crackled under his tires. Through the beams of his headlights, the raindrops seemed to float to the earth. Occasional gusts would send the swarming droplets curling across the light. With the engine off he sat watching the rain swish sideways and listened to the whine of the wind over the water.

He got out and walked past the boathouse and restaurant. Out on the dock he passed the sailing yachts, tied tight in their slips, their halyards snapping in the wind and clanging against their aluminum masts like so many bells in a churchyard. The largest, a Swan 50, he believed, its teak deck shining under the wharf lights,
was named
Mood Indigo,
out of Wilmington, Delaware. He had never seen it before. He had sailed since he was a young boy, and in his teens he'd moved some nice boats for his father, before the break, but nothing so luxurious. He looked at her and wondered about the runs she had made and the people who owned her. The wharf had always caused him to dream.