The Tidewater Tales

by John Barth

  Frank Talbott had felt on uncomfortably familiar ground, especially when his investigations led him to the mafiosi, with their alternate bribing and bullying of truckdrivers, disposal-site superintendents, barge captains. We were reminded of Doug Townshend’s comparison of the criminal and the political undergrounds, and their not infrequent dealings with each other. In this instance, the industrial corporations were like the executive branch of the federal government; JGH’s parent company was in effect their covert-operations division; Jersey General Hauling was like the proprietary airlines and other dummy companies to whom the CIA farms out its dirty work; and the estate caretakers, rural trash collectors, excavation contractors, and off-season watermen who often did the final dumping were like the hitmen and other cut-outs employed ad hoc by those dummy companies.

  Caretakers? Off-season watermen?

  Frank Talbott would get to that. We should understand that the more his Kepone researches (as he still called them) came to resemble his KUBARK researches, the more his feelings about the project were divided. Here was a book he knew he could write and which his citizenly conscience, as well as literary ambition, bid him pursue. But his probing was a little dangerous, and bid to become more so as he pressed on; after KUBARK, he had promised both himself and Leah not to expose himself to further such risk. And his real literary ambition lay elsewhere.

  Early in 1979, an occasion presented itself to set aside Kepone for Reprise. The breakup of Jersey General Hauling broke also, at least for a while, the link between Mafia-influenced waste contractors and the Delmarva minidumps whose detection and cleanup had been the chief business of Natural Recycling Research, Inc. Restless John Trippe therefore sold NRR to another company and turned his attention to Eastern Shore grainland speculation, establishing with several cronies a firm called—

  Breadbasket! Katherine cheered. Let’s hear it for Breadbasket Inc.!

  Home turf, Frank Talbott acknowledged—though he had not known at the time that the Henry Sherritt who organized Breadbasket Incorporated was the writer Peter Sagamore’s father-in-law. In any case, the new management of Natural Recycling Research redirected the firm’s energies toward the ecologically sensitive but potentially beneficial and lucrative project of using activated sludge from municipal waste-treatment facilities for agricultural fertilization. Its minidump activity they scheduled for phase-out, though NRR maintained its Wye Island monitoring station. It was a good time for Franklin Key Talbott to redirect his own activities.

  And that he did, especially when his brother’s disappearance from Reprise in late March, into the mouth of the Wye River, reprised John Arthur Paisley’s from Brillig off Hoopers Island Light the previous September. The blue cutter went ashore almost within sight of Key Farm; the body must have been carried out into the wider and deeper waters of Eastern Bay, for it was never found: a most unusual though not unprecedented circumstance among Chesapeake drownings.

  The Talbotts divided that sore spring between Key Farm and Baltimore. They consoled George Talbott, Carla B Silver, and each other; they chased down, in vain, all possible clues to Rick Talbott’s demise, while still pressing reluctant State Department people to keep open the inquiry into Short Jon Silver’s disappearance in Chile two years earlier. Addressing the question of their personal future, they decided upon a sabbatical from responsibility: the extended cruise aboard Reprise that they had half planned for years but never quite got around to. Frank set aside Kepone and began making notes toward a novel.

  At least he set aside his more extended investigations: no more expeditions to New Jersey and New York and the D.C. offices of the Environmental Protection Agency. But an NRR department chief whom he had come to know remarked to him in April that while her minidump-detection staff had been halved by the new management’s venture into sludge-recycling research, there was alarming evidence that the dumping itself had been vigorously resumed. With fewer people on the lookout, her office was nevertheless turning up danger signs everywhere, faster than her processing crew could stay abreast of them. It looked to her as if the link broken by the exposure of Jersey General Hauling had been reestablished by someone with much more local knowledge than the original leasers of Judge Talbott’s and John Trippe’s gooseblinds. The Key Farm operation, she informed Frank, was now no more than a passive monitoring station and a depot for materials in process of detoxification elsewhere. She thought she might look around for a different job.

  The place looked little changed from the summer before: a brown metal prefabricated building on a concrete slab, fortunately screened by white oaks, ashes, river birches. Padlocked olive metal cabinets on small concrete pads presumably housed the monitoring devices. The rust-stained loading dock was lined with black fifty-five-gallon drums in wooden cradles, under the girders of a loading hoist. The chain-link fence was now grown with and disguised by wild honeysuckle and Virginia creeper, the No Trespassing sign on its gate perforated by bullet holes like all such signs in rural America. Back to Reprise and Reprise: both the boat and the novel had to be gotten ready for the voyage ahead.

  But George Talbott had complained that traffic in and out of the place these days reminded him of Jersey General Hauling’s goose-hunting department. Trucks came and went even at night—checking those instruments, George supposed—and now that he’d sold that part of the property, he couldn’t prevent them. All the same, Wye Island was zoned strictly agricultural and (just barely) residential; a variance had been granted John Trippe’s NRR solely for ecological research and cleanup. The judge wondered whether the new management mightn’t be using the shed as a storehouse in its sludge-recycling operation, which, while essentially of a research nature, had a commercial aspect too, and would thus be pressing if not quite overstepping the limits of its zoning variance.

  Good old Wye Island, sighed Peter Sagamore yesterday. Down in waterlogged Hoopers Island, where he comes from, every waterman’s backyard is residential, agricultural, and light-commercial at the same time: A man takes his ease among his half-acre of Big Boy tomato vines while repairing his trotlines and his crab pots.

  Out of professional habit, Frank Talbott that June did a bit of monitoring of his own. Without telling Lee—

  Uh-oh, said Katherine Sheritt, yesterday.

  Yes. That habit has a long half-life, and is as contagious as herpes simplex. Without telling Lee, not to worry her, he kept a mild surreptitious eye on the comings and goings from that sheet-metal building. In three days he saw as many vehicles: an unmarked half-ton pickup driven by an elderly black man whom he recognized as the rural private trash collector whose clients included Key Farm; a midsize tank truck marked “MT”; a smallish six-wheel closed-body truck marked “Easton Air Freight.” The dusty pickup was accompanied by a shiny Mercedes driven by a white man; it arrived with three fifty-five-gallon drums in a wooden cradle, which the driver exchanged for three others from the loading dock. The white man, well dressed, assisted the black man with the hoist. The tank truck connected its large-diameter hose to a pipe cap on one side of the building: its pumps pumped for a quarter-hour—in or out?—and the truck left, its driver padlocking the gate behind him. The closed-body vehicle drove up one night at eleven, but by no means secretively; the driver, with a companion, unlocked the large loading doors of the building, turned on the lights, backed the truck inside, closed the doors, and left at midnight.

  This is traffic? had wondered Frank Talbott. Well, yes, for a virtually abandoned building on busyless Wye Island. And none of the visitors seemed interested in those little freestanding olive-painted instrument boxes. Summoning his long-unused “tradecraft,” Frank had one night scaled the chain-link fence and, seeing no sign of burglar alarms, let himself into the building through a side door locked only with a push-button door lock, easily picked without damage. The air inside smelled damp and oily. His flashlight showed more rows of metal drums, stacked vertically along one wall and horizontally along the other, together with an overhead chain ho
ist like the one outside. In the rear of the building, opposite the loading doors, were two long tanks from which pipes ran out through the walls, down through the concrete floor, and up through the ceiling, replete with valves and electric pumps. There were overhead fluorescent fixtures, gray switchboxes, several empty cardboard barrels and corrugated cartons. No desks, chairs, tables, file cabinets, phones. Frank’s tradecraft did not extend to the picking of the padlocks on the instrument boxes outside.

  With the Key Farm telephone he was more successful. All the while scolding himself for not mentioning this little adventure to Lee (and for not working on his novel instead of mucking around in activated sludge), he quickly learned that “MT” stood for Marshyhope Transfer, a small hauling and vehicle-leasing company down in Dorchester County. Its modest fleet included, besides several trucks, one air boat, the sort used in shallow marshy waterways, and one “buy boat,” a small freighter like those to which oystermen sell their catches. The company’s principal customer was Natural Recycling Research, for whom (said the genial fellow on the phone) they provided the air boat for tracking down illegal dumping in the Dorchester marshes and their other vehicles for hauling this and that from here to there.

  Settle down, children, said Katherine Sherritt, yesterday.

  So also did Easton Air Freight, a two-man company whose total hardware was one vintage DC-3, one helicopter, and one biplane for spraying pesticides. The first two, sometimes even the third, were frequently hired by NRR for aerial spotting of minidumps.

  Back to Reprise: a novel about a former CIA case officer who etc. But it turned out that Frank had gone to high school with one of the pilot-owners of Easton Air Freight; in renewing their acquaintance by telephone, he happened to learn that both EAF and Natural Recycling Research were in fact owned by a local odds-and-ends conglomerate called Sherbald Enterprises, Inc.—

  Oy gevalt und veh is mir, groaned Katherine Sherritt, yesterday. Lee Talbott said Me too. But did he tell me? No.

  —with offices in the village of Queenstown, right over there. Did Sherbald Enterprises own Marshyhope Transfer as well? It did. And who owned Sherbald Enterprises? Their telephone receptionist would not say, but John Trippe would: The “Sher” in Sherbald was his Breadbasket partner Henry Sherritt’s eldest son; the “bald” was ex-Congressman Porter Baldwin, Jr. Both sons’ fathers, in John Trippe’s opinion and phrasing, were as fine a gentleman as you’d ever want to meet; but he wouldn’t give you fi’ cents for either of the boys.

  Neither would I, said Katherine Sherritt, yesterday. May we get out of here right now?

  We could take up the slack on the anchor rode, declared Franklin Key Talbott, for all that remained to be told just then in Queenstown Creek was that this was the first time he’d heard the name Willy Sherritt. Also, that while he was a touch surprised to find ex-Congressman Baldwin involved with NRR—until his defeat in ‘76, he’d been the consistent enemy of federal regulatory agencies like the EPA—still, a profit was a profit; howevermuch it seemed a contradiction of values, the venture could scarcely be called a contradiction of interests. John Trippe declared he wouldn’t trust the bugger with a ten-foot pole; he had demanded a cashier’s check for the sale of NRR to Sherbald Enterprises. But NRR’s new activated-sludge operation did not surprise him, for both Will Sherritt and Poonie Baldwin were just as full of you-know-what as they could stick.

  SHIT APPROACHES FAN.

  Mm hm. And that was that, friends, expositionwise, both in Queenstown Creek yesterday and at Key Farm late last spring. Time for Reprise to set out for southern waters; for Frank Talbott to set aside Kepone for Reprise, and Reprise in turn, eventually, for SEX EDUCATION: Play. Time for Reprise and Story to make their way yesterday, as we had by then agreed, from Queenstown Creek over to Kent Narrows and down to Key Farm, where the Sagamores would meet Judge George Talbott and go on with their story. Were our new friends sure we wouldn’t be underfoot? Much as there was yet to get said (and now it was Story’s turn), Lee and Frank were after all completing a twelve-month voyage and must have one million things to do.

  As we had seen, Lee Talbott said, she and Frank were in no great rush to declare this voyage ended, pressing as were the decisions to be made ashore. We were welcome to tie up with them at the Key Farm dock until we felt like moving on.

  Therefore we said so long to the seven white swans and single Canada goose, tied Story behind Reprise (There’s a switch, said Peter Sagamore) and the two dinghies behind Story, and motored down à quatre in the cutter’s cockpit through the calm mid-afternoon. Once our caravan cleared the Kent Narrows Bridge and was aimed due south toward the Wye, Frank Talbott said So: That was where things stood, Keponewise, last June. No reason at all, beyond professional suspiciousness, for him to imagine anything amiss about Natural Recycling Research. Okay, the name buzzes; but no more so than John Trippe’s Environmental Research Corporation, which was one hundred percent legit. George Talbott’s trash man had acknowledged to Frank that he hauled and dumped trash for Mister Sherritt both “reg’lar” and “extry,” as he did for Judge Talbott and anybody else along his route; trash removal was his line of work. He no more cared what was in those drums and cartons than he cared what was in Frank’s father’s garbage.

  So that was Willy, Peter said. On that loading dock, with Lester Treadway. Ice-blue Mercedes, right?

  Kath declared gloomily It’s like Willy to help old Lester with the hoist.

  And so Frank had put by the Kepone project right about then and set to work on the Reprise novel en route down the ICW, as aforetold; and in Scarborough, Tobago, he had dumped that novel; and en route home he had scribbled Acts One and Two of SEX EDUCATION: Play; and latterly he had been pitched for Operation BONAPARTE and had learned from Carla B Silver about the Willy Sherritt/Porter Baldwin, Jr., involvement in that. But so what, after all? Frank had not one shred of hard evidence, and only one shred of soft, that Sherbald Enterprises was involved in anything improper at all. The direct application of activated sludge to agricultural acreage, for example, has its vigorous proponents among the ecologically knowledgeable; there are established experimental programs in its use not only at a number of agricultural colleges but in several rural Maryland counties. Reviewing last week in Carla’s Cavern what he knew about Doomsday Factors and minidumps, Frank had felt like one of those KH11 reconnaissance satellites: sharp-eyed, much-seeing, but stupid. Something was missing from the picture; BONAPARTE and NRR (or, as one might say, KUBARK and Kepone) were like, oh, two locked caskets, each of which perhaps contained the key to the other. All they had in common was ruddy, ubiquitous Will Sherritt.

  Katherine covered her face with her hands. Peter patted her shoulder and asked Frank Talbott what was that shred of soft evidence he’d mentioned.

  Old Lascar Lupescu there, without knowing it, gave it to me, Franklin Key Talbott quietly replied. In my last conversation with him before Lee and I left Fells Point to go back to Reprise and sail over here, Lascar happened to mention that that BONAPARTE fellow he’d pointed out to me the night before gets his money from New Jersey, quote unquote. I was supposed to know what that meant. It turns out that a friend of Lascar’s in the Baltimore mob had complained of his New Jersey colleagues’ muscling in on the Maryland waste-dumping racket; he and his outfit had kept them out of the city so far, but thanks to that fellow sitting right over there, the Jersey crowd had the whole Eastern Shore in their pocket. I’m sorry, Katherine.

  Her face still covered, K only shakes her head.

  There was the key he’d needed, Frank Talbott told us finally. But before he could turn it, the shit had hit the family fan—abortionwise, confessionwise, musewise—and he had dumped those orange flare canisters and most of his literary aspirations over the side. Then Story and Reprise had crossed wakes in Queenstown Creek, and here we were.

  And there we were, reader, yesterday, and pretty silent for the next half-hour. Anon we reached the lovely Wye. Lee pointed out grimly, as we turned
upriver, the shoal below Bennett Point, near Black Can 3, where Reprise had been found aground last year sans the Prince of Darkness; more spiritedly, as we approached the fork, the spot where her Sunfish had capsized in ‘73 and Uncle Franklin had come to her and Marian’s rescue. We sighed together at new construction in evidence since either of us had last been there; no season went by without more woods cleared, more waterfront houses built, more docks run out—in these instances, mainly tasteful half-million-dollar items with hundred-thousand-dollar yachts moored in front, but where would all these wealthy new sailors sail to? Who, other than they, would not rather have the woods that used to stand here? And who could keep his/her mind upon such trifles in the face of what we had just learned?

  We separated our train of boats and docked. Judge George Talbott, white-shirted, necktied, balder than his son and lean instead of stocky, made his smiling way down the lawn to greet us as we tied up; alerted from Baltimore, he had expected the homecoming for some days, but was wise enough in the ways of wind and tide, evidently of his son, perhaps also of the world, to wait without impatience. We Sagamores shook his hand and busied ourselves aboard Story, to stay out of the family’s way and begin the labor of assimilating what we’d heard.

  Unnecessary, the former, and the latter impracticable. The deaf have small conversation. Father and son and daughter-in-law embraced and shouted close-range greetings. How was their boat ride? Fine! How’re things at Key Farm? Can’t complain; storm last weekend took out two trees. And to Lee: Are you prettier than ever, honey, or am I just a year older? The Henry Sherritt relation was established: as fine a gentleman as etc. Judge George had even heard of Capn Fritz Sagamore, and looked at Story with an appreciative eye. Though he was no sailor, he could see the design’s tidewater lineage. He reckoned with a wink at Katherine that we’d be in the market for something bigger next season. Next weekend! Kate called into his starboard ear.