The Tidewater Tales

by John Barth

  His companion, a burly older chap who will not look Katherine in the eye or belly, figures it’s likely one of Capn Jim Richardson’s jobs. This is a plausible hypothesis: The man referred to is a Dorchester boatbuilder of wider renown than Fritz Sagamore, whose yard turned out the full-size working replica of the seventeenth-century pinnace Dove now moored at St. Marys City off the Potomac, where Lord Baltimore’s Maryland colonists first settled. The younger waterman is of the opinion that this one here’s most likely a Viking ship: He remembers Kirk Douglas aboard of one like her on the television. The Vikings, he has heard tell, got here way before Columbus. Like as not, some boat museum like that one up to Saint Michaels hired Capn Jim to build them a Viking ship.

  His third assertion is reasonable, his second true, his first mistaken, but we let the error go, except that Katherine wonders good-humoredly how sailors as expert as the Vikings intend to reach St. Michaels (on the Miles River) from Jim Richardson’s boatyard (on the Choptank) by sailing south to the Little Choptank and Madison Bay. Why honey, says the older man at once—loudly, so we’ll know he’s teasing, but looking at the Andrews Sister instead of at Kate—they’ll go right round the world and come down on her from the C and D Canal! That’s how they come here in the first place, ain’t it, Shirl?

  Shirl reckons so. The young waterman laughs. The third neither speaks nor smiles. Katherine Sherritt chuckles, as entirely at ease with these people as she is with everybody. Not so Peter: He hopes he is neither elitist nor populist; he has outgrown his undergraduate prejudice against redneckery, but he will not sentimentalize the homefolk. The burly waterman’s riposte he finds fairly witty of its kind; more familiar and less engaging is the ragging, bluff, loud, endless and meaningless sarcasm that prevails and passes in parts like these for wit. In those red-rimmed eyes he sees the bullies of his childhood and the Negro-lynchers of generations past, as well as the hardworking, generous, self-reliant people he grew up among. He feels as much a part of them, and as uneasy in their midst, as a wrasse among groupers.

  Anyhow, he wants to get back to Story, get out and get anchored, for a particular reason, which he lays on his companion as soon as he can pry her politely away from her newfound friends. These dreams we have been dreaming, these stories we’ve been telling each other and the children over the past two days, some of them spontaneously and to our own surprise . . . It has occurred to Peter Sagamore, he allows as we push off from the marina bulkhead, to write at least some of them down, as the basis for, you know, whatever.

  Almost too joyed to speak, Kate is not quite. She declares from her perch on the cabin top I have a different suggestion: Let’s do a Doctor Jack.

  I.e., she explains, tucking some hair under her beret, just as when, unable to reconceive, on Jack Bass’s advice we took oral contraceptives for half a year and then fertility drugs and wham, here we are, so she proposes Peter not write down these tales and dreams and anecdotes. Not yet. Why not let’s dream and tell, tell and dream, narrate and navigate whither listeth wind and tide until we are delivered of our posterity, or about to be, and then—by when you’ll be as about to burst as I am now—deliver yourself of our several stories, duly arted up.

  Says Peter Sagamore immediately Yes.

  YES!

  He puts by the sculling sweep for a moment; goes forward to kiss her neck. But I’m afraid I’ll forget them.

  His wife advises So keep a list. Keep a log. Keep an inventory, like What Whatsername Gave Birth To. Then when your time comes, use that list as your table of contents.

  Another kiss! But suppose we come to forget what those titles are titles of? “Thirty-nine,” for example, or “The Container and the Thing Contained”? Replies Kate No matter: You’ll dream up new tales to fit those titles.

  Normally we anchor well away from neighbors: the Second Principle, after security, of Overnight Anchoring. But so eager now is Peter to get going on that tabulation—already he despairs of recollecting all we’ve told since leaving Nopoint Point—and so curious do we remain about that “Phaeacian 35,” as Peter has dubbed it, we wind up parking just astern of it instead of elsewhere in Madison Bay. The spot is at once convenient to the docks and yet out of their earshot and comfortably away from the watermen’s traffic in and out of the creek; anyhow, our neighbors are evidently not aboard. Our anchor down, K puts the Sun Shower out to heat up for later, does her preggers exercises, then makes herself comfortable in the awning-shade to write May Jump a letter about Act I of SEX EDUCATION: Play. P wishes he had the faithful little loose-leaf notebook in which for twenty years he has recorded story ideas and other potentially usable matter, from the look sound smell taste feel of things to overheard dialogue and general propositions about human life, its happiness and its misery. On second thought he’s glad he doesn’t have it, since what he’s about to do he’s never done before. It seems apter to fish out Story’s log, which needs updating anyhow, and in it reconstruct as best he can the succession of our seaborne dreams and tales (by title only), interpolated with the usual sailing data.

  The late still afternoon stokes up. Did “Another Version of the Old Prison Joke” come before or after “The Ordinary Point Delivery Story”? The day before yesterday he calls Day Zero, because we didn’t then know yet quite what we were doing. Under it he enters “The New Clothes Have No Emperor” and “The Points: Shoal & Shorter.” Under yesterday, Day One, go “Berlin Zoo,” “Sex Ed Act I,” and “Parable of 2 Locked Caskets.” Weren’t there others? Under “Day 2: T 6/17/80: Choptank R (Dun Cove) to Little Choptank R (Madison Bay),” he registers first his own early-morning’s dream, which, by the time we get around to re-creating it in written sentences, will have been reinforced and clarified by the dream he’ll have tonight and be called

  HUCK FINN ON THE HONGA, PART ONE.

  Peter Sagamore drifts away from home, thirteen let’s say, alone, just as on a mid-June early morning he once did—not running away, because there is in his Hoopersville childhood nothing fearsome or hateful enough to flee; not yet running toward, because he scarcely knows yet what he craves instead—but drifting in his ageless, hard-used, well-kept wooden skiff on the running tide just as he had done in fact, except that in the dream he leaves behind his oars. Down the wide, shallow Honga River he floats in the warming calm, hour after hour, through a featureless blue-green seascape whose every non-feature he knows by heart. He has chosen this day carefully—a windless forecast with high tide about dawn—and has notified his imperturbable parents that he’s going crabbing, though he isn’t. The still air steams and hums; so slick is the Honga’s surface that a swimming crab leaves a black and silver wake visible at a hundred yards. Our lad lies now in the skiffs warm odorous bottom, rough with dried fish-scales and crabfat, the scorings of bait knives over who knows how many years, and coat upon coat of flaking paint. Stretched out under the midships seat, he watches gulls and cumulus clouds. He imagines Portugal, the coast of Africa. As always, he is stirred by the knowledge that his homely Honga joins the Bay, the Bay the Atlantic, that ocean the others, and that therefore a message floated out from Hoopersville in a bottle, say, might just wash ashore in Morocco or Zanzibar. The young real Peter Sagamore more than once dispatched such messages and never failed, espying a washed-up bottle in the marsh, to check it for reply, but never found one. Peter Sagamore in last night’s dream had dozed off in the bilge of the skiff and been startled from his sleep-within-a-sleep by a rap on the deadrise. Crabfloat, no doubt, or lump of driftwood, but at second knock he pulls himself up and is glad he did. Awash at the skiff’s hard chine is a small wooden box, like a miniature sea chest, strapped in rusting iron, grown with barnacles and algae, barely afloat. Because Katherine yesterday fished out that Alert-and-Locate canister with a crabnet, there is a crabnet now in the dream-skiff: Young Peter uses it to draw the box alongside for hefting aboard. It is not lightweight: for one thing, it is both waterlogged and at least partially water-filled, as he hears when he shakes it. It is also l
ocked, and the lock mechanism is no doubt corroded and seized, though the sturdy escutcheon and keyhole are of brass or bronze and only tarnished to green. When he tips the front side down, water drains sluggishly from the keyhole for a long while. Now the casket is lighter; instead of a slosh, there is a satisfying muffled rattle of contents when he shakes it.

  Awake, he would be hungry and thirsty by now; in the dream, he is free to set undistracted about the task of opening his treasure. His only tool is his pocketknife. He probes the keyhole with its auger bit; he slips its smaller blade under the lid and feels a fairly hefty bolt, but is afraid to damage either his knife or the wonderful box by further force. He will wait until he can have at the lock with more suitable tools. Meanwhile, he contents himself with carefully scraping off algae and barnacles—he leaves a few of the latter on the iron straps, for effect—and with wondering what might be inside.

  He loses track of time. A small north breeze rises, welcome in the muggy forenoon. When the sea chest is as clean as can be managed in the circumstances, the boy looks around to check his bearings and finds that wind and tide together have carried him farther than he had supposed: out of the Honga, into the confluence of Hooper Strait and Chesapeake Bay. To eastward is the open water of Tangier Sound: no land visible on that horizon, because while the distance is not great—seven or eight miles—the land is scarcely higher than the water. To westward are the even more open waters of the Bay, toward which he is being carried: no land visible that way either, because while the shoreline over there is more substantial, it is a dozen and more miles distant at its nearest. Just south, he recognizes marshy, uninhabited Bloodsworth Island, a restricted area used as a bombing target by planes from the Patuxent River Naval Air Station. To the south-southwest, where he’s drifting, are the hundred-plus miles of the lower Chesapeake between Hoopers Island and the Virginia capes, where bay becomes ocean.

  In waking fact, in 1953 when Peter Sagamore roused from a dream-fraught doze and found himself being carried into the Bay, he had entertained a moment’s thrill of fear and then, child of these waters, had sensibly broken his resolve not to touch the oars and had used one to steer toward Bloodsworth Island, knowing the folly of braving either the Bay or Tangier Sound in an open skiff with neither sail nor engine. He was after all not running away from home (had he been, he would have set about the thing very differently); he was conducting a simple experiment, for which he had knowledgeably prepared: to test whether, setting out exactly at tide-turn on a windless dawn and never touching the oars, he would be carried downstream for six hours twenty-five minutes (he had estimated from the tide tables and current charts that his position at 2:40 p.m., when the tide next turned, would be just about here, at the confluence of the Honga, Hooper Strait, and the Bay) and then carried back up—here was the point of the experiment—to regain his approximate starting place at 9:05 p.m. Or, failing that—since no messaged bottle cast from the family dock had ever been seen again—back to wherever those bottles went, where he would recover every water-message he had ever sent to the world, and perhaps among them find the world’s reply.

  But the unpredicted wind had spoiled the experiment: There remained two hours yet to tide-turn, by when he would be at sea indeed. What was more, even the present gentle breeze would cancel out the returning tide; he would have to row the six miles home. Fair enough: He was wiry as a muskrat and tireless at the oars. But he also knew that should that wind increase more than a few knots he’d have to seek shore and wait it out, and his parents would be justly concerned.

  In fact he steered to the reedy shore of Bloodsworth, where few adults and no children ventured: strictly off limits, even between the well-monitored bombing exercises, because of the danger of unexploded munitions. So shallow are those waters, the skiff grounded in six inches a hundred feet offshore; he had to drag it gingerly through the mud, keeping an eye out for the larger sea nettles and hoping not to step upon an unexploded bomb. In his dream, on the other hand, oarless, he finds himself fetched by a slow curve of current not onto Bloodsworth but around it, into the open Bay—where, to make matters worse, he now sees unpredicted thun-derheads building in the west. It is clear to him, in the dream, that he must either wake up or go over the side and swim the skiff half a mile to shore: no great feat except for the sea nettles. He is about to try to wake himself when he finds himself awake in Story’s quarterberth, rocking gently in Dun Cove, wondering what that chest contained.

  Not yet having dreamed Part Two, Peter logs the above as “Drifting Down the Honga,” and under that title, for further expanding, enters merely “Round-trip Huck Finn, to Bloodsworth without oars. Floating box,locked.”

  He is in course of noting Katherine’s dream—”The Container and the Thing Contained”—when its dreamer, who has gone forward to check whether the Sun Shower is warm enough to use, calls back quietly Pee-ter, in a tone that says You’re not going to believe this until you see it. Bring the binoc-u-lars, she croons, and waves politely back at the couple who have waved politely herward from the fiddleheaded stern next door.

  The man is curly, burly, tan and gray, grizzled of hair and beard that once were auburn; middle-aged, robust, rather handsome, at once weathered and subtle-appearing—and dressed in a short white tunic loosely belted at the waist: a chiton! His companion, similarly robed, is a slender younger woman: A gold fillet circles her light-olive brow and smooth black hair; her eyes are large and dark—set off strikingly by mascara, Katherine notes, who herself never uses makeup when we’re sailing. From this distance, at least, she looks a beauty. The pair lean languidly on the starboard quarter-rail, having evidently just come up from below—where they’ve spent the whole hot afternoon?

  By when Peter gets there with the glasses, it would be rude to use them. He waves hello; the gentleman waves back. His arm about Katherine’s waist, Peter is emboldened to call across the windless water Unusual boat you’ve got there. The chap replies pleasantly Not so unusual where it came from. His accent sounds to us Oxbridge: more accurately, Oxbridge-as-second-language. His companion smiles. Is yours a local design? she inquires, politely. Interesting lines. Her voice is as elegant as her smile, and free of identifiable accent.

  Responds Peter Very local design. Intensely local. You’re welcome aboard, if you’d like to look us over.

  The sturdy gentleman says After a bit, perhaps, thank you. But he does not at once return the invitation, which we’d have jumped at. They remain at their quarter-rail, taking their ease but not pursuing the conversation. As they were there first, we withdraw from Story’s bow, not to intrude upon their privacy, and, full of curiosity, take our showers swimsuited in the cockpit. Katherine wonders sotto voce What are they? Peter replies It’s Odysseus running off with Princess Nausicaa. Isn’t she smashing? In Kath’s opinion they’re both smashing: a pair of Greek movie stars doing Odysseus Among the Muskrat-Eaters. Where’s the film crew?

  We slip into clean go-ashore clothes and mosquito repellent and at about seven climb into the dinghy to row in for dinner, first rigging the anchor light on our headstay to guide us home after dark. No sign of Nausicaa—Down there doing her face, P bets, and K says Her face doesn’t need doing; her face is done—but blocky Odysseus calls mildly from amidships Ahoy there, Story: Would you care for an aperitif?

  Kathy says for both of us as we check each other’s eyes Why not? Peter has the dinghy swung their way already. Their boat’s gleaming black freeboard is high, but the gentleman rigs an ample midships boarding ladder as we pull alongside. With his aid from above and her husband’s from below, K manages the climb easily in the calm water. Peter secures the dinghy and follows.

  There is no proper cockpit. Four folding deck chairs are arranged around a low table amidships on the teak deck, just aft of the mast, where we suppose rowing-benches must have been fitted in the prototype. The uncluttered decks, sturdy bulwarks, and high sheer give the craft a serious, seaworthy look, but Peter can’t figure out for the life of
him how the thing sails.

  Theodoros Dmitrikakis, Odysseus declares, shaking our hands. We are to call him Ted. Peter Sagamore. Katherine. We are seated, pleased that our host neither jokes about nor hastens to explain his unusual vessel and costume. Diana, he calls quietly down a companionway leading aft under the raised quarterdeck: Our neighbors are here. The vowels are European: Deeahnah replies she’ll be right up; he should ask us what we’d like to drink. Ted is afraid that they keep no hard liquor aboard: There is light white wine; there is retsina. Katherine says happily A drop of retsina—and a glass of water, she adds, pointing to her turn. Retsina, Peter affirms. Retsina, Ted says down the companionway, adding something in presumable Greek. Diana presently emerges with a serving tray which, when we move our eyes from her to it, we will find holds an unlabeled clear glass bottle of retsina, four small faceted wine goblets and a water tumbler, and a plate of Calamata olives and feta. She is gorgeous.

  You are gorgeous, Katherine says as Ted pours. And don’t we envy your waistline!

  The woman replies easily Yours too is enviable. She seats herself beside Ted, puts a hand lightly on his bare brown knee, smiles him a wistful quick smile of such beauty that Peter Sagamore’s heart goes buzz. She crosses two perfect brown legs and lifts her wineglass in salute. Moment, bids her friend, this time in French; goes to the rail; gravely empties his glass overside. Returning, he says pleasantly: To Poseidon. He repours; says to Diana, Peter Sagamore and Katherine . . .

  Sherritt, Peter says from habit. K says Sagamore, actually: Katherine Sherritt Sagamore. Kathy.

  We are pleased to meet one another. Here’s to us.