The Tidewater Tales

by John Barth

  Yours. Cheers.

  A bout of lovemaking more gentle than athletic, when we got down to it: careful and caring, even, given that we’re newly met and hot as two pistols. A surprising long sweet sweaty afterplay that can only be called affectionate, seeming as it seemed to be directed less at rearousing us for Chapter Two, though anon it did, than at stretching out our pleasure in Chapter One. A pleasure, at that, not alone in a happy roll in the hay with a nifty new number, but in finding and bedding a paisano to whom one doesn’t want to say good night.

  Whom in fact, little ones—and this is how it happens you’re hearing this tale—whom in fact we enjoy swapping stories with as much as swapping kisses from head to foot and around the world by both the equatorial and the transpolar routes.

  Sex and stories, stories and sex. Teller and listener changing positions and coming together till they’re unanimous. About three a.m. you lifted your head from my lap to ask me Had I ever happened to anchor behind Shorter Point on Goldsborough Creek off the Tred Avon River, across Sherritt Cove from Nopoint Point? And to tell me how your mom and dad rebuilt Nature by undoing the mighty works of Parker Pink—and I wanted that story as much as I wanted you not to pause to tell it.

  Stories, stories. In the dark, with sirens in the background as New York’s other night-business went on. Now, what Katherine Sherritt would like to know is how in the world two people who found so much pleasure in each other all that night and next morning—as much pleasure in taking as in relinquishing both the narrative and the sexual initiative, so to speak—

  I like that.

  Could then say good-bye after a very long brunch—room service again, as the G.P.H. doesn’t open its dining room for breakfast—and not see each other thereafter for six long busy years? I mean six years of our mortal life, children, that he and she could have spent together and didn’t! Six yearsworth of doing everything together before the Doomsday Factor gets us all! It’s not as if the world’ll end any later because we held off. I hate our being apart for twenty-four hours, and we lost six whole mothering years that we needn’t have! How did that happen?

  Shrugs Peter Sagamore Don’t ask them. We weren’t ready, obviously, and that would’ve been a pity even if we had somehow put doomsday on hold by kissing good-bye on the corner of Twentieth and Irving Place and me going up to New England and you going down to West Eleventh and then down to College Park and then up to Baltimore. What a consoling idea, Kath: that by staying apart we maybe kept the world together. Who knows but what?

  We know.

  We know. And therefore we console ourselves and our offspring with twin other considerations: that those six years gave us a many another tale to tell each other when our paths recrossed; and that thanks to a perfectly unlikely chain of perfectly fortunate coincidences, culminating in the coincidence of Kate’s admiration for and Pete’s obligation to the elderly author of Ship of Fools and other opera, P.S. put down his trusty Parker pen on a certain early evening in early fall Nineteen Seventy, after an hour’s trimming of a certain story-in-the-works, and ambled across campus to pay his respects, thinking all the way about Parker Pink and Parker’s ink and Shorter Point and Katherine Anne Porter and Katherine Shorter Sherritt of the egg-blue knickers and peach-pink knockers, whom and which he had not forgotten over those six years, no indeedy—a windfall like that is rare in the luckiest man’s life—though he’d not followed up on it, either, except in his imagination, where that Gramercy night lived its narrative half-life aglow like pitchblende in the dark. While at the same time K.S.S. and her roomie are hauling down the BW Parkway to pay their respects ditto. P’s distance is shorter, but he gets there later because he’s woolgathering about Shorter and Nopoint Points and Less Is More. He even gets to wondering specifically whatever happened to classy Kate Sherritt: probably found herself a sharp young international banker years ago and divides her time between London and the Upper East Side with him and their gorgeous preppie kids, Pounds Shillings and Pence. They would be gorgeous, for sure, and no snobbery in them if their dad’s genes matched their mom’s. I imagined, says Peter, you would have remembered our little adventure with a smile now and then when you saw me being patted on the head by the Times or trashed by The New York Review of Books—

  Loyal Katherine pats his head. On with it, says Peter.

  Maze and I get there and pay our respects and swap a few Shorter-Porter stories with old K.A.P., who is in fine fettle, and I learn from our hosts that the university’s new writer-in-residence will be stopping by. Says Katherine Anne He wrote a fine first novel a few years back about the tidewater country, and I haven’t finished anything he’s written since. But don’t tell him I said that, she told us with a wink, ‘cause he’s sexy and single. Her very adjectives. When she was our age, she declared to me and May, she’d have run off to Mexico with him. Young fellow named Peter Sagamore. When you were my age, May said to Katherine Anne, I’d have run off to Mexico with you.

  She got Porter going then, May Jump did, on Mexican revolutionaries and the Weimar Republic, and Katherine Sherritt was glad of that, because while she’d read somewhere that Peter Sagamore had moved to College Park, it somehow hadn’t occurred to her that of course he might be at this party. Ms. Porter’s remark brought that night in New York back to her so strongly that she felt like a character in a romantic flick: as if Yussuf al-Din and Saul Fish and Jaime Aiquina had been digressions in the plot, and now we were getting back to the main story-line. She got trembly in the gut, and when she saw P.S. come in, smiling and salty-looking from his summer, she went to get a drink so he wouldn’t see her right away. Not that he’d recognize her six years later in a roomful of strangers—he hadn’t been seeing her in the Times and on book jackets and bookchat shows and in David Levine caricatures, getting leaner and handsomer and intenser-looking all the time, in K’s opinion, with his Less Is More. For all she knew, he’d had hot-assed little sophomores and Sagamore groupies jumping into bed with him every other night for the past six years, a thousand and one one-nighters, and didn’t even remember Union Square and the Gramercy Park. She watched him shake hands with the host and hostess and kiss Katherine Anne’s powdered cheek hello and be introduced to May Jump—who as a matter of fact knew we’d gotten it on once years ago because Kath had mentioned it to her in passing in the library while praising some new piece of Peter’s she’d just read. But the subject had never come up again, and K wasn’t even sure May’d made the connection when Porter said what she said. I sort of hoped she hadn’t, Kath declares: It surprised me to be feeling so nervous about such a thing at age thirty. I actually decided I’d go find a bathroom, because I figured you’d be heading for a drink at the bar about now, and anyhow my bowels were acting up. But just then I see May point me out to you across the room—across two rooms—and that’s where I freeze the frame.

  Says Peter Sagamore I owe May one forever. To our unborn offspring he goes on In the world whereinto your mom and I have seen fit to bring you people, women and men are engendered by the physical coupling of one with the other and in no other way, normally. Got that? But their coupling is not confined to that purpose; it is done recreationally and in other spirits as well, most often across but not seldom within the genders. And when, as happens, man couples with man or woman woman, engenderment is precluded but not pleasure, so one hears. You will now understand, your Auntie May being in love with your ma, that it was either a calculated risk or a considerable altruism for her to tell me that she believed I might remember her apartment-mate and fellow library scientist, a major fan of mine whom I’d met once in New York City some years before. That’s her in the spiffy Anne Klein fall colors, over by the bar. Kathy Sherritt?

  Says K.S.S. Up with the music: Your father’s smile across those rooms, kids, would have lit the suburbs from College Park to Alexandria. Without even an Excuse me to May Jump and Katherine Anne Porter, he swarmed through that party like a seal through kelp. People turned to see what was happening; I d
idn’t know myself quite what to expect. . . .

  But, says Peter Sagamore, she smiled! With a roomslength still between us, your ma gave her head a small toss and raised her chin a bit and laid one forefinger along her cheek and smiled—and oh, I tell you that if biology were romantic, you’d be going on ten right now, ‘cause then and there you’d have been conceived, in a roomful of people, before your parents even touched.

  Katherine Sherritt must have wondered was the man literally going to sweep her off her feet? Not his style nor hers! A Hollywood clinch, then, to the party’s mild amusement? Not impossible: sort of nifty. And then run hand in hand, grinning and lushing our undies both of us, from College Park clear back to Gramercy Park?

  We wish. But the prosaic fact was, P. Sagamore lost his nerve—if that’s fair to say when he couldn’t have been said to have any plan of action to abandon, beyond crossing that room and bringing those smiles together. It was the smashing coincidence that had propelled him, and the unexpected sight of that woman—still six years later the finest he’d ever shared a bed with, and her beauty more seasoned and womanly at thirty than it had been at twenty-four. When we were close enough to touch, Katherine Sherritt set down her drink, not knowing just what would happen next, and leaned back against the edge of the bar-table. And at that moment Peter Sagamore ran out of spontaneity, though not of heart-feeling, and of all things stuck out his right hand toward her as if to shake hands. But Ms. Sherritt put out her left instead, fingers up and slightly spread, a surprising gesture, as if half reaching out and half holding off, and without glancing from her smile he found his fingertips touching hers, point for point—a light mild innocent friendly moment’s business, not lingered over as in a B movie. Except that then, bambini, one or the other of us spread those fingers the rest of the way, wide open, for a long second as we both looked down at them before dropping our hands and raising our eyes and saying something like Well hi! and laughing lightly and beginning our Boyoboy-talk-about-coincidence conversation. And ten years later we both agree that few moments in our two lives have been more sexual than that one there: that opening, that spreading of our fingers.

  However, that was pretty much that, for then. Neither wanted to presume upon the past, though it was clear from across two rooms that we both remembered it with unembarrassed pleasure; and neither of us knew yet what the other’s present circumstances were, or his/her own desires. So our conversation quickly turned to general pleasantries and catching-ups, though with a special voltage on it, a curiosity beyond the just polite. May Jump joined us as Peter Sagamore was getting to the really odd coincidence of his having made notes that very afternoon on the Parker Pink/Shorter Point story Katherine had told him apropos of something or other while sixty-nining back in Sixty-four. All the signals were that this friend of hers was “butch,” as we still said back then, or at very least bi-, and that she took a proprietary interest in our Kath. May was on her guard already, a touch too breezy, with an edge, and that made the man of us wonder what was what—especially when he registered now that the pair of them shared a flat. At the same time, he was pleased to understand that K wasn’t presently living with another man (he had checked already those spread left fingers for a wedding band, and she, shortly after, his cocktail-holding ditto ditto).

  He tells them both the Funny Coincidence, looking for signs that lovely Kate remembers being disrobed and arsey-turvy when she told him the exemplary saga of Shorter Point. No sign: Either she doesn’t remember, or she is one cool cookie indeed.

  Not so cool, guys, as she looked: Fact is, her guts were churning, her ears were burning, her nipples tingling, her vulva jingling with the memory of those narrative circumstances, which she’s sure are being advertised to the room. May sure felt the amperage in our air.

  May Jump’s radar is even finelier tuned than that of your average library scientist. In any case, all hands concurred that that coincidence was some funny coincidence, all right, and then we chatted some more, and then May steered you off to meet Whatserface the Computer Folklorist, and I spent some hors-d’oeuvres time with my new academic colleagues and the guest of honor. But I knew exactly where you were in whichever room at any given minute of that three-hour party.

  I you too.

  And I’d made up my mind to follow up on our remeet.

  As had I. We found it exciting then (goes on our story) to keep the party between us for those couple of hours, feeling the pull across a houseful of people and knowing that the point of the evening now was our coming back together for bye-byes at its close. It was Katherine Sherritt, it turns out, who, when that happened, volunteered that she and May were in fact driving over to Sherritt country for the weekend, to introduce May Jump to Hank and Irma. If there was anything further Peter Sagamore needed to know about Parker Pink and Shorter Point, she would be happy to check it out and phone in a report, if he’d give her a number.

  Well, would he ever, now. Address too; just happened to have Parker and paper right on him, he being a writer. But look here; talk about coincidence: He’s hopping over to the Shore tomorrow too, for the long Columbus Day weekend! But driving’s such a drag: the last Ocean City traffic of the season. . . . He’s sailing over from Annapolis, no particular destination in mind, whither the wind listeth et cet, maybe touch base at his parents’ old place on Hoopers Island, maybe not. He might just check out Shorter Point himself, an easy day’s sail with any breeze at all. If you girls happen to see a beamy little twenty-five footer—named Story, he’s embarrassed to confess—becalmed off the Sherritt doorstep . . .

  Amused K wants to hear again: Your boat’s named Story, like the one in your novel? That’s a touch much, no? Says blushing P That’s another story and yet another coincidence: I’ll lay it on you next time. The woman smiles: Next time? Says our fellow thinking fast Eight a.m. tomorrow, which is when the tide turns at Slip Thirty-three in Beasley’s Boatyard on Whitehall Creek at the foot of Whitehall Road off U.S. Fifty, just before the Bay Bridge. Your instructions are to pack lunch for three and an extra sweater apiece and meet me there at eight sharp, and we’ll ride that tide to Shorter Point. The three of us.

  May quickly says Thanks but no thanks: She mal-de-mers at mere mention of Winslow Homer. Besides, they’ll want the car through the weekend and to get back home, right? But Katherine Shorter Sherritt takes a lock of beachy hair in her hand and remarks to it that there’s always a car to spare on Nopoint Point, and she hasn’t gone sailing in approximately one hundred years. The gentleman asks whether May Jump has tried Bonine? Keeps your muffins down but doesn’t toddle you off. There is Bonine aboard. At eight a.m. on a Saturday, says May, I want to be toddled off. Also at nine. We’ll honk from the bridge. May doesn’t need Bonine, Kathy scoffs: She’s a hotshot white-water canoeist. Says Peter Sagamore Well, then.

  Anyhow, you’re welcome at Nopoint Point, Ms. Sherritt declares. Seriously. We’ll look for you. Up the Tred Avon, she goes on, possibly embarrassed at having let May Jump decide for the both of them, and hang a right at Oxford. Goldsborough’s your next real creek to starboard after Town Creek, and Sherritt Cove is your first serious cove to starboard in Goldsborough. You’ll see a humongous blue-and-white center-cockpit ketch in there named Katydid Four, unless Dad’s out sailing.

  Says the man of us Katydid, is it. He has lost this round to Miss May, he sees, but scores a point yet by divining that that nickname was doubtless Daddy’s for our woman when she was a tot and remains her pet-name yet—maybe her love-name? Tit for tat for twitting him with Story. He’s pleased to see her color a bit behind her merry eyes. Says May Off to Baltimore, Kiss. But Katydid Sherritt asks Peter Sagamore Do you live here in College Park?

  He does, temporarily, though he’s scouting to rent something on the water. Tonight, however, he’ll be sleeping aboard in Whitehall Creek, to get a jump on the tide. He smiles. Slip Thirty-three, Beasley’s Marina, foot of Whitehall Road, eight a.m. Little Sagamore Twenty-five named you know what. Says May Don�
��t hold your breath, skipper.

  I didn’t. Bade good night to all, walked back to my flat, changed into sailing clothes, popped a few things into the cooler, and drove out to Whitehall Creek, full of handsome Katherine Sherritt. Katydid. Kiss! It was exciting as well as flattering to’ve been told that that old novel of mine had not only brought the woman up to Ninety-second Street one famous evening, but had fetched her back to Maryland not long after for her graduate degree. In a way, you’d let me know at the party, I was responsible for your being there; and I’d replied of course that in a way you were responsible for my being there: the Shorter Point tale you’d told me . . . once upon a time . . . which had become, in a way too complicated to go into at a party, the story of my literary working life. So, you’d said: We are responsible for each other. May moved in on us then, and that was that. But the future parents of these children of the future exchanged over that remark a smile of understanding that we were being responsible to each other as well, by curbing our curiosity and going easy on the innuendo. The man of us sat a fair while right here in Story’s dew-damp cockpit, regarding the stars and—having paid his dues to responsible restraint—thinking horny thoughts. Missing good Marcie Blitz for sure, since leaving whom he’d not in fact been laid, but hugely lusting for Katydid Shorter Sherritt. Went below to sleep. Couldn’t. Masturbated. Slept.

  The woman of us rode back to Baltimore, comparably though not identically preoccupied, to May Jump’s clear chagrin. Her thoughts were less pornographic; anyhow softer porn: voice hair eyes and smile instead of knickers and knockers and sixty-nining in Room One Seven Six of the G.P.H., Two Lexington Ave. But warm they were, her thoughts, and while she didn’t blame May for trying to turn her arousal to advantage, she wasn’t up, thank you, for going down. A touch too gaily, excuse me, she said Why not sail over and drive back? You know you won’t get sick. Replied May I’m sick already, but I’ll survive. Go take your boatride with Mister Straight; I’ll sleep in and maybe drive over later. Maybe not.