by John Barth
He gets like this, happy Kath explains, when he’s writing. Lean Joan Bass, on her second martini, says she thinks it must be a wonderful wonderful thing to make up stories out of thin air and write them down on paper in a book, you know? She couldn’t any more do it than fly to the moon. Binoculared Andrew Sherritt says Number Seven wins: They’re coming back out.
He passes the Fujinons to his sister. Sure enough, in the lengthening light she sees Rocinante winding out of Turner Creek as carefully as she wound in, this time without incident. Peter lifts his boina, whose provenance he has briefly explained over Dos Equis (and Katherine, less briefly, earlier in the afternoon as they toured the old granary). We look for the ketch now to head our way; to our surprise, C.D.Q. aims west again instead, behind the point, Bayward.
Uh-oh, says K. Says P Not necessarily, but declines to run through the half-dozen alternatives. At Irma’s suggestion, Chip checks the forecast; if there is even a slight chance of thunderstorms, we’ll unraft after dinner and anchor separately instead of swinging two boats from one rode. There is none, NO A A/Baltimore assures us. All the same, while there’s still light we follow sound nautical practice by setting out Katydid’s main anchor in place of Story’s; the raft now swings from its largest member, with the heftiest ground tackle.
While the four men play this game, the three women review our combined larders and set to building dinner. The remains of a wild-mallard pâté, served first with cocktails as hors d’oeuvre, now reappears with seedless red grapes and iced rosé as an appetizer; Olive Treadway made this pâté out of ducks shot down on location from the Shorter Point blind last December and now at the end of their shelf-life in her Main House freezer. The entrées are swordfish and salmon steaks, grilled on a pair of taffrail braziers to keep the heat outdoors and served simply with lemon, sliced tomatoes, ripe olives, and Pouilly-Fuissé. There follows a salad (Story’s contribution) of Belgian endive vinaigrette, and another round of the same wine for the nonpregnant. As the sun sets over this last course, we touch fortunate glasses across the big stowaway cockpit table—clink clink clink clink clink clink clink—and toast a number of things at once: Jack and Joan and Irma and Hank the good long life behind them: decades of successful work and harmless play, and who knows how many first-rate duck pates and white Bordeaux?—maybe five years more, ten at most, of sailing these agreeable waters before their bodies’ aging puts such sport behind them. To these agreeable waters, P proposes: May they remain so for our kids to enjoy, even when their parents can’t. Chip bets they won’t; he bets the twentieth century will be the last real one. Andrew? Irma wonders. Katherine smoothly hugs her troubled brother and proposes On with the story.
Now it’s deep dusk. Having corrected for our meridian of longitude the Greenwich Mean Time given in the tide tables, Chip scans the east with the 7 x 50s to watch for moonrise. A few boats are still coming in, under running lights; those of us already moored raise anchor lights on our head-stays. Cabin lights are going on, too; the anchorage glows like a little city. Here comes Rocinante, Chip announces. They’re following another boat. A cutter. It might be Reprise. It is.
We hope they’ll come this way, though there isn’t room left in our neighborhood for two more yachts to swing at anchor. The three skippers rapidly agree that, given the clear forecast, it will not be unsafe to add the pair to our raft, one on either side, if we can hail them and if they care to join us; Katydid will simply let out more scope. Peter goes below to try to raise them by radio; not surprisingly, all channels are achatter with friends calling friends round about the Sassafras and the upper Bay. The calling channel, 16, is free only for seconds at a time. In a clear moment P tries it, without response; either the Talbotts are monitoring another channel or, more likely, they’re too busy single-filing through the fleet in the dark to bother with their radios. He goes around the dial again (Katydid’s fancy VHF can do it automatically, pausing at each channel in use), returns to 16 for a final try, and hears what must be young Simon Silver’s voice calling him—and not from Reprise, but from Rocinante. Story, Story, this is Rocinante Four, Rocinante Four.
Rocinante, this is Story, Peter replies, though it isn’t. Try Seventy-two, Simon. Over.
After only a little confusion the boy gets the link established, along with the information that his Uncle Frank and Aunt Lee have been in radio contact with his grandma and Capn Don through the latter part of the afternoon; that the two boats had been going to join up behind Ordinary Point, but—Reprise being delayed in Still Pond Creek by Simon’s seasickness, and the daylight running out—they rendezvoused off Betterton instead, in the river’s mouth. There he boarded Rocinante, to lend Grandma a hand, and she and Captain Donald fixed his seasickness, and now they’re following Uncle Frank in because he knows the waters better at night. They’re looking either for us or for a place to park, whichever comes first. Uh, over.
Roger, Rocinante. Peter instructs the boy to instruct his skipper that we have them in sight; to look for a blinking flashlight on a raft of two boats. . . . Off their port beam now, Chip helpfully calls down. Off your port beam, Simon. I’m going to turn you over to my friend Chip Sherritt here; he’ll talk you in.
Chip takes the microphone, and in the fifteen minutes it requires for Capn Don to get the word to Franklin Talbott and for the two boats to circle to us, the boys become sort of friends. We decide, and pass the word along, to put Rocinante on Katydid’s port side and Reprise on Story’s starboard. We also bring the Boston Whaler up behind Story’s stern for the night. Should Katherine’s amnion burst or other imminent birth-sign come upon us. Hank will speed Jack Bass and Irma and us to Georgetown: a twenty-minute Whaler ride at an easy fifteen knots. Assuming prompt ambulance connection, his passengers can be in the Chestertown hospital forty minutes later or, if there’s no emergency, in Easton Memorial in another hour. In the morning, Bobby Henry will come up by car, returning Jack Bass if his work is done; the Goldsborough Creek flotilla will then either make its way home with available crew (Chip is already lobbying to manage Story singlehanded) or lay our boat up in a Georgetown transient slip to be retrieved later.
Says Kate, correctly, That’s about what we had in mind. Boyoboy, are we trouble.
Perfectly cheerfully, her father, mother, and obstetrician agree. We have also the genuine option of delivering aboard, on a rubber sheet on the queen-size berth in Katydid’s aft cabin. Barring complications, all would probably go well. But if he has to do a cesarean, as is quite possible, Dr. Jack prefers a proper delivery room and a few trained helpers besides good Joan. We shall therefore agree, shall we not, that tomorrow—our nominal D Day, our EDC—will be the last of our cruise in any case? That if we are still pregnant after the granary ceremonies, say, we shall move on up to Georgetown, berth our boat, drive home with Irma and the Basses in the car already scheduled to be driven up by Bobby Henry, and stay uncomplainingly put on Nopoint Point till the end of the chapter? Says Irma smoothly, and mostly to Katherine, It’s all arranged. Your dad and Chip will bring Katydid back on Monday, and Bobby Henry will drive Story home.
Chip reminds the world politely that he could bring Story home singlehanded. That Bobby Henry doesn’t even know how to sail, and would have to motor the whole way.
Katherine looks to Peter; he to her. We tuck in our lips. We smile. Sure.
WHY TO SASSAFRAS?
The moon is up and splendid on the Sassafras. Except for the dead and missing and the otherwise unfortunately engaged, we are all here now, snugly rafted for the night. Round about us the anchorage throngs with sociability: Japanese lanterns and fish-pennants, burgees, windsocks in the rigging; radios and guitars; laughter, splashes. Folks dinghy here and there; a raft of streetwise mallards paddles from handout to handout. Among our raft, too, once lines and fenders are secured and all hands introduced around, people settle out in amiably shifting groups to enjoy one another’s company. In all the period of their awareness, our children have never seen such a party.
This is what they do, Behold explains to her brother: They have fun. We shall, also. Lo wonders whether everybody does.
Between May Jump and Katherine Sherritt, grand abrazos. Holding K’s belly briefly like a beachball, May grumbles I wish to God they were mine, Kiss. And then, to Peter, Since they aren’t, I’m glad they’re yours. May’s looking nifty in white flared jeans, red polo shirt, white headband, brown bare feet. Peter both shakes her freckled hand and busses her freckled cheek. If Chip Sherritt is taken aback by the corpulence, precocious mustache, black Bermuda shorts, and plain white T-shirt of his radio pal Simon Silver, his good breeding and natural friendliness conceal the fact. He shakes the boy’s shy hand, introduces him around K IV’s cockpit, and takes him below to show him the yacht’s fancy electronics and engine room. In half an hour they’re motoring off together in Reprise’s inflatable dinghy to check out the whole anchorage. Captain Donald Quicksoat and Carla B Silver meet the Basses and the elder Sherritts, as do Leah and Franklin Talbott, whom we hug as friends now old and close. C.D.Q. is at his ease with sailors of any sort; C.B S. at hers with people of any sort; the Basses and the Sherritts share the admirable trait of being, with people quite outside their circle, at once entirely themselves and entirely disposed to cordiality. Peter Sagamore’s parents had not that gift. He sees his wife’s eyes shine, not for the first time, with love for her progenitors; he feels his glisten with love for her.
Lee Talbott looks happy and terrific in short shorts and faded blue workshirt, tails knotted. Sturdy brown bald gray-beard Franklin kisses Kate’s lips lightly and once again stirs her hormones. Hi, Frank.
You are hatted, he remarks to Peter, who replies equably I am, and want a word with you.
Says Franklin Key Talbott Likewise. Tonight, if we can get to it?
Tomorrow morning if we can’t.
Things are popping.
Yup.
Odd fellow out is Marian Silver. Though her mother, sister, and lover are all more than mindful of her, Mim doesn’t know what to do with herself, with the little party, with the full moon. Her skintight khaki shorts crease deeply between her labia; she cannot move without announcing in effect Voilà ma funfunette, and she moves often, self-consciously crossing and uncrossing her white legs. Her baggy orange T-shirt is lettered WYDIWYD. Says friendly Katherine Don’t tell us; let us guess. Marian fiddles with the silver prow of her punk cut; lights a cigarette; murmurs May gave it to me, day before yesterday. No: Wednesday. It’s a thousand times too big.
She crosses her legs.
The latecomers have snacked but not dined. Rather than make dinner now, Lee and Carla retire to Reprise’s galley to build eight tuna-salad sandwiches: two for Simon, whose mal de mer spoiled his lunch but has been quite cured. Katherine helps, in order to be with her women-friends. May Jump crosses Katydid’s deck to join them, leaving Capn Don, Frank Talbott, Peter Sagamore, and Marian Silver in Rocinante’s cockpit. Marian stretches her arms, yawns, says Excuse me, uncrosses her legs.
In answer to Peter’s question—Why to Sassafras?—Frank Talbott says For six or seven reasons, I guess. To give Mim and Sy a little outing and get to know May Jump better. (We like her, he assures Marian, who wanly smiles and shrugs and crosses her legs.) To ease our withdrawal-pains after four whole days ashore after a year afloat. To have a look at that granary ceremony tomorrow. . . . Does ceremony come from cereal?
Nope. Wax.
Pity. To swim without standing sea-nettle watch. To help you guys have your babies. To celebrate our new life, I guess: Lee’s and mine. Our new lives. Things look okay on that front. How many’s that?
Six or seven, Peter guesses.
To talk to you about a thing I might try to do after Kepone. Sort of a novel, actually.
Sort of?
A novel. When do I get my boina back?
Says Peter Everything in its place, my friend. You may have to take the long way around, back to where you first lost it.
Marian Silver asks Captain Donald Quicksoat Is there a toilet on this boat? Sure, and he’ll show her how it works. But he’s also listening to what’s getting said.
Franklin Talbott wonders: back to Wye Island or back to Spain? If you ask him, he and Lee have already taken the scenic route to Wye I.—via Tobago.
Says oracular Peter I mean the Tajo de Ronda. Donald Quicksoat pauses at Rocinante’s companionway, down which he is escorting Marian Silver. He whose boina falleth into the Tajo de Ronda, P declares, or whose protagonist’s boina doth, doth not simply stroll down and bring it back. Doth he, Capn Don? No more than Dante takes a shortcut out of the Dark Wood, or Quixote climbs right back up the rope from the Cave of Mon-tesinos.
Captain Donald winks. That is the truth, amigo. Come with me, young lady.
Hopes Franklin Key Talbott You’ll explain.
Yup.
IN THE GALLEY OF REPRISE,
and then in the cockpit, also on the foredeck, and here and there about the rafted foursome, as our company eat and drink and move about and mingle under the moon:
Marian Silver thanks Captain Donald Quicksoat for reminding her how to work a marine toilet. As he does not then promptly leave the cabin so that she can use it, she thanks him additionally for fixing her son’s earlier seasickness. Did Simon give the copper bracelet back? The boy can keep it, says C.D.Q., leaning easily against the pillar of the mainmast. It’s just superstition, but it seems to work. Then it’s not just superstition, Mim declares, and for some reason adds that she really likes and appreciates May Jump, all May’s doing for her and all. But it’s not the same, you know? Capn Don smiles.
Katherine Sherritt tells Leah Talbott that she’s looking more than merely terrific, dot dot dot. Carla B Silver agrees; her eyes meet her elder daughter’s. Laughing Lee sets down her sandwich to kiss her mother’s forehead.
Taking May Jump’s hand, Kath says Let’s emulate that wise old bird? And what else rhymes with crossed besides frost tossed mossed and lost? May promises to work on it and confides to Katherine—also, later and separately, to Carla—that in her opinion, Maid Marian is ready for another man, alas, whether she herself realizes it or not. Carla sighs and lays a hand on May’s forearm. That’s a pity. Thanks, says May; I think so, too. You’re good with her and good with Simon, Carla declares further. Thanks, May says; I suppose Sy needs a man in the house, too. You should’ve seen him hanging onto his Uncle Frank. But thanks. She pats Carla’s hand on her arm and grins: Forearmed is forearmed?
Says Katherine Who wouldn’t hang onto his Uncle Frank?
He was hanging onto Captain Donald, too, Lee points out. We like your new friend, Ma, what we’ve seen of him.
Yeah, well, says Carla B Silver.
Out on Katydid’s bow pulpit, Simon Silver confides to Andrew Christopher Sherritt that Marian Silver is not his real mother. That his Grandma Carla and his Grandpa Fred found him floating in a lifeboat from a sunken ocean liner in Baltimore Harbor when he was just a baby, and that they all pretend he’s Marian Silver’s son so people won’t think she’s nothing but a goddamn lesbian. That’s interesting, Chip says. I’ve got cigarettes hidden, Simon says; you want a cigarette? Chip guesses not. His Grandpa Fred, Simon says, was the biggest spy in the whole CIA. Just before he disappeared off Uncle Frank’s boat there, he gave Simon this special CIA bracelet? His Uncle Jon was tortured to death with chili. His mother was once kidnapped by a Hell’s Angel and tied up and stripped naked and burned with cigarettes and fucked for three whole days, and that’s why she’s crazy, but she’s not really his mother. He hates her guts. May Jump acts nice to him because she’s queer for his mother. When he grows up, he’s going to fuck a hundred naked women, but he’s never going to have any snot-nose bratty kids. How about Chip?
I probably won’t either, Chip says politely.
Mister Simon, May Jump calls from Reprise’s cockpit: Ask Mister Chip if he’ll have a tuna sandwich.
Says Simon lowly She fucks my mother with an arti
ficial cock that she straps on her hairy old pussy. I saw it in her dresser drawer.
If there’s a spare one. May, Chip calls back. Thanks.
Carla B Silver tells Leah and Katherine When I see a moon like that, I miss Fred Talbott so much I could howl. Lee kisses her mother’s left hand. May Jump rejoins them, bringing drinks to order from Reprise’s icebox, and asks Where’s our Mim?
Our Mim, says Carla grimly, is where the boys are. The big boys.
Peter Sagamore misses his wife. He and Frank Talbott having finished the first installment of their private conversation, he excuses himself, goes looking for her, meets her on Story’s cabin top coming to look for him. She has redonned Lee Talbott’s paisley scarf trouvée, again as a headband. The Basses and the Sherritts announce that they’re going for a moonlight swim. Franklin Talbott comes over to see whether Lee and May and Carla are in that mood. May’s game; Lee and Carla want to talk. We too decide to sit this one out. Katherine notes that Capn Don, two boats over, has managed to make Marian Silver laugh at something. So let’s swim, Frank says to May Jump. Andrew Sherritt says he’ll join the party. Coming in, Big Sy? Frank asks, laying a hand on each boy’s shoulder. Simon says Nah; he doesn’t feel too good in his stomach again.
On Katydid’s afterdeck now, Katherine tells Peter that Lee Talbott has told her among other things that our twin-naming habit has got her thinking about a new scholarly-critical study: twins, doubles, and schizophrenia in the American literary imagination, from say Hawthorne through Mark Twain to say Nabokov. Cracks P In two volumes, right? and asserts that if he were setting about to write the new novel that Franklin Key Talbott has just been discussing (also among other things) with him, inspired by Reprise’s Caribbean cruise, he would turn both the Silver sisters and the Talbott brothers into twins: twin twins. And he’d shorten the voyage from a year down to nine months, for obvious reasons but also because that’s a school year, and sabbaticals are for learning new things. But he’d begin the story in the last two weeks of the ninth month, when the couple reenter the Chesapeake Bay. And he’d frame it with the loss and recovery of the magic boina. Shut me up, Kath! It’s not my novel.
