by John Barth
They are sufficient, just. Willy whoofs and chuckles. Porter Baldwin, Jr., perhaps begins to say to Peter affably If your wife wasn’t having a baby before, I’ll bet she is now—but Peter’s out of the car already, springing to Katherine, who’s fumbling with her seat belt and her door latch at the same time. We do not see Willy step over to have a word with his alarmed wife, or Paul straighten out the New Jersey Cadillac and withdraw with Poonie some discreet yards up the road; we’ll reconstruct that business later. All momentum one moment ago, P now halts, almost in doubt; holds his hand out to the open window, fingers spread. K almost shyly puts out hers. As electrically as at that Katherine Anne Porter party so long since, our fingers interlace. Now our man pulls open the ice-blue passenger door and joyously thrusts in; our woman gives up trying to unbelt herself and joyfully receives his arms and chest and back, his wet face in her hair, hers on his bare shoulder.
For the expectable while we go on like that, with the expectable muted interjections, protestations, apology—until now, which is when Franklin Key Talbott drives up in his wife’s chocolate-mousse Toyota fraught with electronic items and Andrew “Chip” Sherritt. From his Radio Shack errand Frank has made a spontaneous embassy of reconciliation to Nopoint Point, only to learn from Irma that Katherine has taken leave of her senses—at about the same moment, it will turn out, and as precipitately, as Peter put by his willfulness—and sped spouseward, pride be damned. The right move, Irm guesses, but Frank thinks her unconvinced. Sure, Chip can come along back to Key Farm, if he wants to catch the next chapter of our story. Why not?
Why not, indeed? Everybody’s out of automobile now except Paul and Poonie, up the road. Willy Sherritt has actually kissed his sister in the hair and grunted Did Molly tell you our good news? Before Kate gets to reply, Peter with his arm around her says to Frank Talbott This is my brother-in-law Willy Sherritt and his wife, Molly; Frank Talbott. Pleased to meet you, red-faced Frank declares, shaking hands with the object of his research. To his wife and everyone, Peter explains I got this really urgent message, and Willy happened to be here on business. . . . So did I, K murmurs. It was garbled, but never mind.
Brother Andrew, Willy says to Chip for no particular reason as we stand about. Self-conscious Chipper waggles two fingers hello. Improbable brothers! Frank Talbott glances up the road. Inspired Peter Sagamore (flipped-out Peter Sagamore, in his wife’s opinion, but never mind; we’re back together) waves the New Jersey black limousine usward, saying to Katherine and to Franklin Key Talbott Guess who was good enough to give me a lift to Nopoint Point?
We bet Molly’s looking nervously toward Katherine just here, Willy having spoken with her in low tones, but we are so full of our reunion that neither of us happens to be looking Molly’s way. Upon reflection, we find it surprising that dour Paul would respond to Peters’s summons—Who is Peter Sagamore, to order that one about?—but at the moment our man feels so much the dramaturge that he could summon spirits from the vasty deep, and they would answer him. Why else would Leah Allan Silver Talbott—having at last got through some while ago via C & P to Nopoint Point and reported to Katherine that Peter was attempting frantically to reach her side before she gave birth, and been told that she, Katherine, wasn’t giving birth yet, if ever, but was on her way out the door with Molly en route to Key Farm to put this foolishness behind us, pride be damned and maybe good sense too, and hurried out back (Leah did) to tell Peter that, only to see the black limo tear off, and gone back inside to let Kath know, but found as she feared that Kath had also already set out, and then stood by until, sure enough, in roared the ice-blue Mercedes an appropriate number of minutes later, got the news brief, did a one-eighty, et cet—why else would Lee just then stroll down from the house and out to the road in time to join the party and meet (as does hard-swallowing Frank Talbott and appalled K. Sherritt Sagamore) Porter “Poonie” Baldwin, Jr.?
Says introductory Peter: Frank Talbott, the writer. Poon remains in the car but shakes hands through the window. Frank says politely Congressman, and quickly and pleasantly Poonie says Former and Future, thanks; hello to your father from his ex-representative. Professor Lee Talbott, our master of ceremonies announces, and Lee says Hi, just ducking down a bit to have a look at Kath’s celebrated and controversial ex there in the flesh, though she knows nothing of our woman’s forest-green recrayoning in 1963.
Peter pauses; he has gone far enough. Everybody pauses. I guess the rest of you know one another, he says then lowly. Much obliged for the lift, Paul, Willy, uh, Porter.
We have not described old Poonie’s face, have we, framed now in the limousine window and regarding swollen Katherine with grave benignity. The baby-blue eyes; the trademark black eyebrows and mustache below the waved trademark hair, once ash-blond but now a distinguished silver-gray; the sensitive-looking chin, on which, politically, Peebie Junior has more than once taken it; the delicate mouth—
In which ditto, grudging Kate says later, but holds her tongue when at the time, earnestly, he says My best wishes to both of you, Katherine. Glad to’ve met you all. Willy?
Business, Willy explains to the assembled. Tells Paul he’ll get the gate. Goes and gets it while Cecilia Skinner drives up with a Dodgeful of groceries and Judge Talbott wanders down to see whether he can see where everybody went. The taxi from Easton—which we expect to see driven by one Stavros Petrakis of NYC, but it isn’t—rounds the bend.
BEEP
goes Frank Talbott’s beeper then for the next half-hour up at the house, whereto we have all repaired except Molly Sherritt, who guesses she’ll head back home unless she’s needed here, and Chip, who guesses he’ll let Molly drop him off now that things seem to be going to be okay with us, and the taxi man, whom Katherine pays for his trouble, and the driver and original passengers of the New Jersey Cadillac, who are at their business, the beeper tells us, at Natural Recycling Research. Beep. Beep. Once per second, like Peter’s now normal pulse, Beep, till Frank turns the damn thing off; but then he can’t help switching it back on every few minutes to confirm that they’re still over there, all right, doing what wouldn’t he give to know exactly what.
We shake and shake our heads at the thing that so surprisingly seized the pair of us by our relationship (but heedless love, we note, fetched K back to P; mere emergency P to K; our man will not soon forgive himself that); at the unassimilable but after all not so surprising coincidence of Peter’s catching Willy and Poonie and the Garden State Mafia red-handed at damned if we know just what—Why doesn’t Frank just stroll over there and ask for a tour of the plant?—followed by P’s and K’s respective impulsive simultaneous automobiling eachotherward. Beep. Katherine says Molly says Willy says in his cups that there’s a couple hundred drums of PCBs right smack in the foundations of the North Ocean City high-rise where their own condominium is, right next door to the one where Hank’s and Irma’s is, stashed there by the building contractor by arrangement with NRR. You trying to tell me they’re doing any harm down there under all that sand and cee-ment with a twenty-story building sitting on top of them? Willy demanded of Molly, who wasn’t trying to tell him anything. Baloney, her spouse declares, in his cups: They’re our friggin’ ballast! Used to be sturgeons in the Bay? Used to be shad? Used to be dinosaurs, too, once upon a time.
Beep.
Somewhere toward this chapter’s end, a merry Key Farm dinner gets made and eaten—rockfish: They’ll be the next to disappear, we reckon—and then the couples go down-lawn to savor the filling moon, the sweet southwesterly that breathes through our standing rigging. Katherine Sherritt keeps covering her face with her left hand and saying Poonie! I can’t believe it! But she’s laughing with the others now. Peter has been being so happy to have his friend back, so self-reproachful for having breached us, that only now he remembers to ask her what that good news was that Willy mentioned, when we were all standing around back there in the road. K groans Oh Jesus: Molly told me Willy’s humping her for the first time in a hundred ye
ars as part of his big one-eighty, and she’s letting the sonofabitch in, herpes and all, which he says is in remission, and now she’s missed her period. She knows it’s probably menopause, but she won’t get a test ‘cause she wants to think she’s pregnant for a while.
Poor poor Molly.
Franklin Talbott steps aboard Reprise to silence a clinking staysail halyard; we’ll follow and sit pensive about the dewy foredeck. Frank declares himself pleased with Lee’s job decision. Today’s crazy encounter with both the Sher and the Bald of Sherbald Enterprises (Your ex-husband’s cute, Lee teases Kath) has geared him up all the more for his minidump book. He means to crash forward on the investigative work between now and Labor Day and then commute to wherever from wherever to be with Lee. Happy Katherine, her fingers linked with forgiven Peter’s, asks Leah Did you telephone Carla B Silver to tell her your news?
Says Lee Are you kidding? She told me. Ma intuits stuff. So I asked her what else is new, and she told me to remind Frank that this coming weekend the moon’s full and I’ll be ovulating. Plus she says hello to you guys and thinks you ought to have a little talk with your daughter in there.
We have in fact already had one, gentle but serious. She is cool and indisputably precocious, is Pepper Sherritt Sagamore, but inexperienced and after all quite young. She simply got the story wrong, her mother now explains: Little Salt was frightened and discouraged, for sure—as who wasn’t—but not last-ditch desperate, and certainly not self-destructive. Yes, he cried himself to sleep; presently, however, he’s sleeping peacefully, sucking his thumb. He missed his daddy, is all. I missed me, too, says Peter; where in the world was I? We conclude that Jean Heartstone’s Magic Language Theory is only that: a theory. Or, if a principle, not the only principle. Rest in peace, poor Jean: Amor omnia vincit, now and then.
All the same, says Peter, I’m glad I got the message. Good night, Leah; good night, Franklin. We’re sleeping aboard. Tomorrow we’ll see.
Says Lee Us too, leaning her head on her husband’s portside upper arm. Okay? she asks his shoulder.
Okay. Frank fishes from an aft pants pocket his old black boina and frisbees it to Peter. Wear this for me, okay?
Lee wonders: Honey?
It’s okay, Frank assures her. I’m okay.
P regards it; puts it on. Okay.
OKAY,
he declares to his family a short while later, snuggled together in Story’s forward berth. We’re going to do whatever suits your mother: either go back together to the First Guest Cottage and let the chips fall where they may, or wait here together till the action really starts. He tells Katherine I’m working now. Ready to get started, anyhow. I’m okay, I think, sort of. And the world’s not likely to Vug out before next weekend.
Immeasurably happy K considers, not for awfully long, those alternatives. What we’ve done is what we’ll do. Take us sailing.
You’ve got to be kidding, says astonished P, and hears she’s not. Well! Well. We’ll see what we think in the morning. Settle down in there, nihos.
But they’re both wide awake now, Fore and Aft, playing madcap ring around Mom’s rosy. Says sleepy Kate For Christ sake tell them a story, would you? A short one. Less Is More. With authoritative hands upon her belly, their stirred father quiets them and, their mother’s fingers deep in his hair under the boina that’s all he’s wearing, whispers through her navel
THE KEY TO THE TREASURE,
guys, may be the treasure.
Night.
Night.
Night.
Night.
DAYS 11 & 12:
WYE TO SASSAFRAS
THE PLOT THINS
Before daybreak, the wind over Maryland shifts northeast; from splendid sleep we wake to a cloudy, cooler, sprinkly Thursday, June 26, rich in confidence that Candidate Reagan will never be president of the United States of America and that when, despite our confidence, he is overwhelmingly elected to that office in November, he will not rape our federal regulatory agencies, kill Soviet/American detente, rearm and unleash the CIA, plunder Central America, put the nation on a war footing, and spend spend spend on armaments until our federal deficit bankrupts half the world. Also that our concern with Breadbasket/BONAPARTE/Natural Recycling Research/Sherbald Enterprises can be put on hold for a semester or two while Franklin Key Talbott accumulates his minidump/Mafia evidence, and that Carla B Silver’s Annapolis prediction (that Kate will deliver on 6/29/80 and not before) can be depended upon at least as much as these others. What a very good night’s sleep. In family council over breakfast, we therefore resolve neither to stay on at Key Farm nor to retreat to Nopoint Point; we will, after all and by golly, reset sail, no longer whither listeth wind and tide but out of the Wye and straight upstream, upBay. Destination: Ordinary Point on the Sassafras, Blooey!, and the rest of it. ETA: mañana, or the day after: a little margin for prematurity.
We reasonably inquire of ourselves whether we have lost our mother-fucking minds. Regained them, we prefer to imagine: Before donning our slickers and bidding the reasonably surprised Talbotts au revoir, we spend the mild, dripsy morning effecting certain changes in our and Story’s way of going.
From the treasure trove of Nopoint Point (specifically, from the hind end of Katydid IV’s tender), Bobby Henry drives up with a 9.9-horsepower electric-start outboard engine to clap onto the long-unused bracket on Story’s transom. It comes complete with an alternator for topping up our battery and two six-gallon fuel tanks, filled. We now have a calm-weather cruising range of at least a hundred miles at better than five knots. Hefting the thing into place, Peter sighs Sorry there, Story, but it’s late in the action, you know?
Winking Bobby also brings us Andrew Christopher Sherritt, seabag packed, to help with the boat handling, and Andrew Christopher Sherritt’s citizens-band radio transceiver to back up ours and our VHF. We propose to radio position and status reports and float plans to Nopoint Point not once, not twice, but thrice daily: before weighing anchor each morning, again at noon, and upon anchoring each evening. Welcome aboard, Chipperino.
So far from protesting, we agree in telephonic conference to rejoice at the proximity, as it may occur, of Katydid IV and/or the Basses’ sloop Off Call, their owners and crews. The elder Sherritt and Bass appetites for a Chesapeake go-round of their own have been whetted by our reckless small adventure; they mean to sail up in one or the other or both yachts to Back Creek on the Sassafras to take official possession for Breadbasket Inc. of that old granary, gift of Sherbald Enterprises—a business in which the crew of Story hereby defer their concern, yes sir, for the present.
We arrange to be pleased, and in fact are, that Doctor Jack will carry aboard a bit more than his usual medical-surgical kit, and that Joan Bass is a veteran R.N. who could in a pinch deliver rings around your average midwife. Recommends Kath Put that in our catalogue of what Ma Non-troppo helps Whatsername deliver: rings around your average midwife.
Does Irma want to redo Katydid’s captain’s cabin into an emergency delivery room? Stirrups, rubber sheets, high-intensity lights, sterilizer? Go to it, Irm—but we’re setting sail at 1100 hours this morning, noon at latest. We like it that K IV’s electronical hardware (and its master’s clout) can summon and coordinate ambulances, rescue boats, helicopters, obstetrical frogpersons, who knows what. We promise not to hesitate to call for such aid as may be called for, and we mean it.
Willy Sherritt even offers (via happily choked-up Molly) to station Easton Air Freight’s chopper on standby alert in our daily neighborhood; it has business up that way anyhow. Says grim K, but politely, No thanks, Moll. Bye. We love you.
Reprovision? Um, no need to: P already did that on stiff-necked Day 10 or 9. He did, did he, says Kath, and looks the larder over while Peter stows stuff. Jesus, honey: canned beans and franks? Yes, well; sometimes a chap regresses. She negotiates better stores from Cecilia Skinner’s Key Farm pantry; Irma sends up better yet with Chip and Bobby Henry and the 9.9, so much t
hat Reprise has to stock the surplus. Finally, at P’s request (but don’t ask, he warns his crew), Chip delivers from his seabag the battered three-ring binder in which Peter has first-drafted everything since college days. Don’t ask. We re-ice, re-water, rebid auf Wiedersehen and good hunting to Frank and Lee Talbott, thanks to the Skinners, good-bye to old Judge George, whom we shall not see again in this life, much obliged to Bobby Henry and Irma and Hank, peace on earth to men of goodwill, and we cast off (under sail, having tested the outboard and shut it down), Chipper at the helm in the light air, from Wye Island. Bye-bye. Beside themselves with excitement, By and By romp and giggle and wave. K rolls her eyes; puts one hand to her mouth, one to her belly; sits down.
Could you and I chat for a minute? Peter Sagamore hears Franklin Key Talbott off-handedly ask Bobby Henry as Story slides stern-first away from the dock into the Wye. Chip puts our helm over; Peter holds the jib aback until our bow swings across the wind. Kate then deftly trims the main, Chip the jib, while Pete coils docklines. His sheet made fast, young Andrew sounds our conch.
We’re under way.
THE TOWN QUEEN OF SWAN CREEK’S PRINTS
Texas heat wave continues; candidate Reagan calls for tax cuts now; House okays peacetime draft registration; Story broad-reaches down stem of Wye on light northeasterly through cool drizzle like suspended dew, hoping to turn the corner under Bennett Point and port-tack up Prospect Bay to Kent Island Narrows. The wind fizzles, however, and the tide’s contrary; the men douse sail, rig our awning against the wet, fire up the outboard. Ears and nose offended, Kate says Blah and goes below to build lunch. Through water roiled now only by our wake and the occasional swirling school of skates, we chug up the chart while green-eyed Andy dutifully radiotelephones home base.
