The Tidewater Tales

by John Barth

  Marvels Peter Madre de Dios, and Katherine Yup. This was on the extension in the little room off the foyer, and while I’m wondering whether herpes simplex has spread to Willy’s brain and what’s this Peebie business, Molly comes on teary-voiced on some other line and says Things really have changed in their house, and Willy says It’s a whole new ball game, and they’re both talking at the same time, like one in each ear, and I’m not believing a damn word of it but I don’t want to stomp on Molly’s feelings so I change the subject and say When did Poonie start being Peebie except to his parents and Molly? So Willy runs on how one of the things that’s turned his head around is how Peebie’s come to terms with his personal problems and accepted himself as being gay and his wife has too and other people will come around by and by, maybe even hardhearted me, and whether Peebie wins or loses in November, the whole experience will be a growth experience for everybody; he knows it’s been an education for him already, et cetera.

  The whole experience, echoes Peter. Kath says she gave Willy that one back, too; couldn’t resist it, but otherwise held her fire if only out of mere flabbergastment. She took for granted her sumbitch brother was lying as usual, just talking up the vote; if not lying consciously to her and Molly, then lying to himself, or both at once as had been her ex-husband’s wont. But so improbable a turnaround had no precedent in Big Will Sherritt’s biography, and she wasn’t after all one hundred percent sure that the man was an irredeemable swine; she was only eighty-five percent sure, and ready to give Molly Barnes Sherritt the fifteen-percent benefit of her doubt, though she feared the poor woman was riding for a harder fall than any in her wretched married life. She therefore confined herself to pointing out that it had never been Poonie Baldwin’s gayhood in itself—gaiety?—she’d objected to: Gay shmay, witness May; some of her best friends et cetera. That’s exactly right, had responded Willy, as if she’d affirmed rather than objected to his position; he had in fact remet her old friend May Jump at Nopoint Point last Sunday, and a fine upstanding person she was, too. But Kath had already begun protesting Anyhow, since when did Porter Baldwin, Junior, ever really own up to anything? What Porter Baldwin, Junior, did was get himself caught and then lie through his teeth to cover his tail until the lies wouldn’t wash and then switch over to his Repentance-and-Reform mode. Let him acknowledge what and who he is; let him come out of the closet altogether and run on the truth, and maybe then she’ll begin to forgive and even respect him. But that’s just what he’s doing, had trilled Molly as if into her starboard ear; he really is trying to be a new person, Kate. Come on, had scoffed Kath then: Poon doesn’t even know who’s really behind his campaign, much less who he really is, and sometimes I wonder the same about you, Willy.

  She really said that, she groans to Peter as we cross the traffic circle to Town Dock, and she could’ve bit her tongue for letting that particular cat out of the bag. Sighs sober Peter, squeezing her hand, Oy. Groans sorry Kate I know. And Willy picked right up on it, too: What’d she mean by that crack? Look here, Willy, she’d said, she was sorry she’d come back at him like that; she was at the end of dinner at the end of a day in the middle of a cruise at the end of her pregnancy, and she guessed she was maybe tired. It was good to hear that the leopard had changed his spots and become a cuddly hubby and a prospective loving uncle, and she hoped his medical problem would go away, now that it had done him so much good. What do you mean we don’t know who Poonie’s backers are, Willy growled with an edge—not your easiest growl to growl. She didn’t know what she meant, said Katherine. I’m being nice to you, Willy complained (to her relief) instead of pursuing the other subject, and you’re being your typical bitchy self. That’s true, Kay, Molly had agreed. Katherine apologized; was pleased to know that their marriage had suddenly turned perfect—There you go, went Willy—No, really, she didn’t want to belittle his spiritual rebirth et cet if he’d truly changed his head; no doubt she was too wrapped up in getting Oil and Vinegar through their first birth to appreciate anybody’s second.

  Well, it’s no joke, Molly had said staunchly. People can be born again; even Peebie. Gay Werewolves for Jesus, came back Kate, and heard Molly Barnes giggle for the first time since Deniston dorm days. I knew she’d mock, Willy grumbled to Molly across the Main House end of this trialogue, and to Kath Go ahead and mock. All I wanted to say is I’m sorry for the hard feelings between us in the past, and I forgive you and hope you’ll forgive me. Affirmed Molly He does, too, Katie. K had got loud then: He forgives me? Thanks loads, Willy! Grunted Will gratifyingly Up yours, Sis, but then at once said No, I don’t mean that; I take that back. Molly said There’s no dealing with you sometimes, Kay. Who’s dealing? Katherine wanted to know. We’ll talk about all of that, Willy declared; I just wanted you to know that whatever you feel, I feel like I said before. We’ll talk it all through when you’re back here.

  Like hell we will, Kate says she said to herself, but to Willy Yeah, well, and then Molly said The Deniston thing, too, Kay; Willy and I see eye to eye on that now. You what? had cried incredulous Katherine, but Willy declared they’d talk that all through later. Yall take care, now.

  Isn’t that a pisser?

  You got your moneysworth out of that Treaty of Paris pay phone, Peter Sagamore agrees. Hank and Irma’s VHF-radio gift to Story early in our pregnancy necessitated installation of a twelve-volt battery, an automatic built-in battery charger, and a 110-volt dockside power hookup, since our boat lacks an engine and a fortiori an alternator and indeed any electrical equipment at all except running lights with self-contained flashlight batteries. Taking advantage of our fifteen-dollar-a-night municipal boat slip, Peter rigs the shore-power cord to top off the battery charge; we walk out to wharf’s end in case Don Quixote’s waiting there to raise the ante on our story, though we’d as leave he put off that favor till tomorrow, Willy and Molly having raised it already. We think but are not certain we can make out Rocinante IV yonder among the other anchor-lighted vessels, and are relieved not to find her skipper standing by to buttonhole us, Ancient Mariner-style. Then we wander back to the dockside Hilton, soaking up the mild night, the salty-fancy town, the mere shore-room, before we go up to enjoy our room ashore, which we hired and showered in before dinner. Nightcaps on the balcony—That’s it out there, all right, that weathered old ketch, and What in the world do we suppose is going on over at Nopoint Point? and Okay, it’s too bad K let slip what she did about what Doug Townshend told us about Poonie Baldwin’s anonymous campaign backers, but after all she really didn’t let the cat out of the bag, just hinted that there was a cat in there; and Kath guesses she’ll give May Jump a call mañana, since here we are in Annapolis. Maybe May’ll explain how she happens to’ve become Willy and Molly’s buddy in just the past five days; is that really only how long we’ve been out?—and then at last we end Day 4 in a king-size bed, magnifico, if we call last Sunday Day Zero, Nopoint Point to Dun Cove, and count Monday, Dun Cove to Dun Cove, as Day 1. At this rate, reflects pensive Peter Sagamore, it will take us a thousand and one nights to reach Ordinary Point.

  Murmurs half-asleep Katherine Sherritt, half smiling: More Is More.

  And you children, thinks P, won’t get born till Nineteen Eighty-four.

  Wide awake inside their sleeping mother, into each other’s ears they whisper, chuckling. We’ll just see about that, says Phylogeny; Ontogeny says We’ll just see.

  DAY 5:

  LAY DAY, ANNAPOLIS

  With heart-pang fit to kill, Kate realizes that of course she isn’t married to any Peter Sagamore and thirty-nine and pregnant. Not at all. She’s twenty still, still working the cataloguing department of Harvard’s Widener Library, which however is also the library of The Deniston School for Girls. None of the foregoing in this account has happened, at least not yet, except the girlhood stuff. She’s still engaged to Poonie Baldwin; no wonder she’s so edgy, her stomach doing tricks.

  Mrs. Florence Halsey schools her in the arcana of the Dewey Decimal System:
the secret Tenth Category of the Tenth Classification, which a decimal master may reveal to but one protégée in her working lifetime. Dear Mrs. Halsey is nervous too, with excitement; she adjusts and readjusts her rimless glasses on her button nose. But she is a master; knows through and through not only her System but her girls. For forty years she’s watched them blossom on Deniston’s graceful grounds, and many have been lovely, many lively, many bright; several almost the one one waits for, and none quite. Then, just in time, along came Katie Sherritt, Irma Shorter’s daughter by Sam and Dorothy Sherritt’s son, and Florence Halsey knew she’d found at last what she’d been waiting for, but bided her time still, what little prime time she had left, teaching Dickens and Shakespeare as always—Charlie and Will, she calls them in the classroom—the love of language, learning, books. She waited for the System to speak to Katherine, for Katherine to come to her.

  Speak they did and deeply, Melvil Dewey’s Decimals, to that something-or-other under Katie’s breastbone that wants experiences sorted out, given name or number, put each in its place and thereby made, you know, accessible. Newly published acquisitions come to Cataloguing with their Library of Congress call numbers already assigned; the department’s Molly Barneses prepare the several catalogue cards, enter the acquisition on the main computer, type out and affix the proper call-number stickers for each item (we’re at the Deniston-Widener-Pratt now) and add the book itself to the main library’s holdings if it’s not already there or send it out to one of the branches if it is. Even this routine work speaks to our Katherine: She does it errorlessly with half her mind while the other worries about her becoming Mrs. Porter Baldwin, Jr.; what living with Poonie will be like; depending upon him. But her special pleasure is the gift collections, thitherto undecimalized, in which occasionally will be found unusual, even anomalous items to challenge the cataloguer’s acumen. All such Questionables are passed up to Mrs. Halsey’s desk, where now Katherine and that elder lady laugh together over Lapsang souchong tea on a buffety deep November afternoon because the red light has just come on, signaling that their latest attempt to classify That Book has been, like all its predecessors, rejected. El Misterioso, they’ve come to call it:

  THE MYSTERIOUS LIBRARY BOOK.

  The new book-filing system, which the library is justly proud of having pioneered, senses when a volume has been reshelved incorrectly by the stack staff, mostly student part-timers, and signals automatically to the circulation desk its floor, stack, alcove, and shelf number so that someone more expert can be dispatched to locate, retrieve, and properly reshelve the misplaced item. For in a library of any size at all, Mrs. Halsey warns her girls, a book wrongly shelved might as well have been thrown into the Chesapeake, for all its chances of ever being found again when called for. She makes the Denistonians feel the plight of that luckless volume as if it were a child astray in forest or city, too frightened to call for help; not many books are lost by misfiling in the Deniston Library. But even the most conscientious of high school girls, and these are those, has a thousand things on her mind. Mistakes happen. The red light lights.

  A refinement of this warning system—well beyond Deniston’s means and needs, but not beyond the Widener’s or the Pratt’s—rejects with a similar signal, transmitted to Cataloguing instead of to Circulation, any book that has been miscatalogued in the first place: “throws it back at us,” as the “Loggers” say, one of whom must then make her way against the black wind howling through the alcoves, follow the blinking red light to the offending item, and return it to the cozy shelter of her colleagues’ office, where Kath and Mrs. Halsey, with sighs that fail to mask their eagerness, will reexamine, reclassify, and reshelve it, hoping for the best. Kate herself has effected this latest rescue (Florence Halsey has made ten thousand like it in her time, but is too frail now for such heroics); with El Misterioso clutched against her swelling breasts; now she shuts with difficulty the office door, grins at Mrs. Halsey, pushes clear of her eyes her wind-wild hair, and plops Their Baby onto the desktop.

  Sent down like a riddling test from Dewey himself, el libro misterioso turned up like a foundling one morning in the library’s night depository. Sans call number, charge slip, or library stamp on its page-edges, it was sent from Acquisitions to Cataloguing with a note from the “Ack” people in schoolgirlish hand:

  A quarto volume bound in good though much-handled Morocco; marbled edges and endpapers; high-grade rag paper, clearly acid free; some pages still uncut—Haven’t seen one of those in a coon’s age, Mrs. Halsey said, fishing out her Toledo-steel letter opener to slit the folds. But no title on spine or title page, no named author, and the oddest text that anybody in the library had ever seen: a mélange of languages recognizable and unrecognizable, into which were mixed numbers and other symbols, white space, blank pages, snatches of verse, aphorisms (What you’ve done is what you’ll do is the only one in English that Kath and Mrs. Halsey can understand, and they’re not a bit sure they understand that), graphics of several sorts—including one pornographic, which Mrs. Halsey unhesitatingly cut out and destroyed, begging the pardon of the American Library Association and the Civil Liberties Union, before Kate could quite make out what was going on.

  Well now, Mrs. Halsey asked Katherine that first time, semesters past, her ancient joke: Dewey do or do we don’t? There are, it goes without saying, catchall categories in the system, but no Logger worth her salt will resort to those, and so began a series of trials and errors unprecedented in Kath’s mentor’s long experience. Their difficulty was compounded by the circumstance that (they would swear but could not prove it) the book’s contents were somewhat different each time they retrieved, reexamined, and reclassified it upon the system’s “throwing it back at them”—as if it were altered by their mistakes or—Kath’s happy thought, which Mrs. Halsey kissed her on the forehead for—were carrying on a dialogue with them.

  The old teacher could not have wished for a better problem at a better time. Carefully with her star pupil she would review the rationale for their previous classification, speculate upon why that classification had been red-lighted, log the interval between filing and rejection to see whether they were “getting warm,” and plan their next move. Their joint frustration bridged the years between them; brought the two women so close that Katherine can smell Mrs. Halsey’s pleasant powder now as the elder lady holds El Misterioso still, or tries to, like a squirming child at inoculation time, while Kate inks their newest trial call number onto its spine. They must bend forward together over the desk as wind shakes the whole library; Mrs. Halsey stands close behind her pet (Let them say it!), and they brace the strange book with their left hands while Mrs. Halsey guides Kath’s calligraphy with her right. There are the age spots; there is her old Wellesley class ring. Her ample bosoms press just under Kate’s shoulderblades; There is no Mister Florence Halsey, the girl suddenly understands. Had there ever been?

  The job done, El Misterioso sent a-packing down the dumbwaiter to Filing, now they laugh: Take that, Melvil Dewey! Mrs. Halsey’s English classes are frequently hilarious for all their rigor: a high-spirited, high-quality riot. But they’ve never before laughed together like this: two women with nearly half a century between their ages, laughing till the tears come. El Misterioso is out of their hands for the present, if not likely for keeps.

  At least we’ve decided what the poor thing used to be, Mrs. Halsey sighs between their laughter, and for some reason that observation moves Katherine’s heart. How she loves this ruddy little woman wiping her eyes now, her rimless glasses hanging from their black cord lanyard down upon her stout, befreckled chest like an official decoration: a silver-haired lady laughing like a schoolgirl! Heaven knows the situation isn’t just funny; already the red light’s flickering; K will have to go down there presently again, wind or no wind, find the thing and fetch it back, and her doing so will alter it yet further. The task is hopeless. Dewey do or do we don’t? In the open neck of Mrs. Halsey’s blouse, where her eyeglas
ses dangle, Kate sees now two or is it three underwear shoulder-straps: ivory, ecru, rose; brassiere, slip, what else. What I’ll do, she understands with an inward groan, is what I’ve done: Drunken Poonie must inscribe my spine; there’ll be an astonishing night in the Gramercy Park Hotel, Room One Seven Six; then Yussuf al-Din, Saul Fish, Jaime Aiquina, May Jump, the Katherine Anne Porter party—all to be beat through, dead to windward, before she gets. Back. Up. To.

  The light is on.

  Dead to windward is right, thinks Peter, and many’s the hairy time like this he has wished us home in bed instead of slogging through what Story wasn’t really built for. The characteristics of that light correspond to nothing on the chart in the neighborhood he reckons us to be in; to nothing in the Light List that he can find. Kath’s more than a help; she is mothering indispensable; but it’s his responsibility to know where we are and to make the major sailing decisions, and he has unaccountably lost track. Wind or no wind, he’s in a sweat. Commands himself to wake up and does so. Does not in fact know for some moments where we are, whether he’s not still dreaming one frame farther out. All right: We’re in the Annapolis Hilton, and K is softly sleeping beside him, thank God. Black as the proverbial et cetera, our room, and the wind is piping up out there. He envisions whitecaps on the black Bay and thinks late-night thoughts: John Arthur Paisley; other corpses he has met. What is an “easy death by sea”? Child loss: How does any parent recover, especially when this crazy trip was our idea. Near misses from his own not especially daring boyhood: a seafood truck that backed into his bike and kept right on; a deerhunter’s bullet that clipped through oak twigs ten feet from his head; a post-storm swim in the surf at the unguarded beach of Assateague Island, below Ocean City, where he learned that undertow really can tow under.