The Tidewater Tales

by John Barth

  That evening, in the first ten minutes of her allotted fifty, she thanked the ASPS for their ingenious efforts and declared that inasmuch as they were convened not to confess life histories but to tell stories, she would not disclose which of their endings happened to be the “true” one. What difference would that disclosure make? Nor would she presume to judge which was the “best,” dramaturgically speaking (though like any storyteller, she had her opinion), since in this case nothing followed from that accolade.

  But tonight, my friends, she declared, much follows indeed. My life is not on the line, as in nights past, but my happiness, perhaps even my sanity, depends upon my finding exactly the right ending for an unfinished story that you see suspended before your eyes. I pray to Allah that one of you will hit upon that ending, so that I can return to the order of reality I recklessly forsook in pursuit of further stories. Never since my first night with Shahryar have I felt the stakes so high. But whereas if the king had been able to end that first story of mine for himself, I’d have been lost, now I shall be lost if you cannot end this one for yourselves and for me.

  Turning upon her wrist the gold-and-gemstone bracelet that Shmah had insisted she borrow back for the successful delivery of her story, Scheherazade here unzipped her hooded sweatshirt to display the new orange T-shirt beneath and launched into its legend, WYDIWYD: her change-of-life restlessness; her yearning for a voyage of some certain special kind. Her unsatisfying visit to Samarkand (at considerable expense to the dramaturgical integrity of her tale, she made no mention of her Month of Mondays with the Genie), which issued in Dunyazade’s dismal dictum. Her mulling upon those words, and her sudden transmigration to Genie-land, USA. Her expectation of returning after the customary fifty minutes and of revisiting for the same period at sundown on a series of Fridays thereafter—perhaps weekly for a while, perhaps once or twice a month—to carry home with her more stories from and about this world.

  She glanced at the timer: fifteen minutes to go. Her finding herself stranded here, and her growing alarm that WYDIWYD might prove a oneway ticket. The Genie’s confession and hypothesis: that she is a prisoner of dramaturgy. His thus far vain attempts to unlock that prison, for all their sakes, with the aid of his word machine . . .

  Five minutes left. Her move to Annapolis and alliance with May Jump, to whom she rehearsed her whole story thus far. Their hope—desperate now on Scheherazade’s part—that the ASPS assembled might be able to accomplish what neither she nor Djean nor the society’s executive secretary had been able to. She spoke faster: her decision not to take what would perhaps have been the more prudent course of telling them this story all at once, yesterday, to give them time to ponder it, but rather to bet all her chips on dramaturgy, dramaturgy, by coming to the end of her Story Thus Far exactly-at-the-moment-when-the-past-overtakes-the-present-ding.

  Ding?

  May Jump put down the old guitar with which she’d been strumming an occasional soundtrack to this tale. High G is as close as my Gibson girl can come to it, she declared.

  Damn, I wish I hadn’t missed that conference! Katherine pinged her middle finger at Wear and Tear, who were, however, sound asleep. You guys had better be worth it. It must’ve really been something else to see the woman go Bingo right before your eyes!

  Lee Talbott agreed: Frank and I have got to join that outfit. I’ve made up our mind.

  Carla B Silver puckered her black brows. Captain Donald Quicksoat fingered his beard. Peter Sagamore said Hum.

  That’s right. Mister Sagamore. May patted our children. The lock on the door of the prison of dramaturgy is not to be picked with Technicolorful gizmos and distractions. Babies aren’t brought by storks, and denouements don’t come from automatic timers. That dinger dinged; the dune fell silent on both sides of the microphone—but Queen Scher was just as much with us as before. I happened to be standing just beside and behind her, and sorry as I’d have been to lose my famous new friend, I was sorrier yet to see her still there. I put a hand on her shoulder and said Hold on, babe; maybe it takes a second or two, like satellite transmissions. We’re all with you.

  But after a very long minute we were indeed all too much with her, and she with us. Her shoulder under my hand was as solid as my hand on her shoulder. The tears came then, from more than one pair of eyes, and I got her off that podium.

  There ended Kitty Hawk Eleven. The ASPS dispersed, with many a headshake, handshake, and murmur. Plenty of them, like Princess Kiss here, thought the moment had been A-plus; they’d been on the edge of their dunes when that dinger dang. They promised to keep on trying, telling Scher’s story around the republic till somebody hit the jackpot. Most of them headed out that same night, in their campers and cars and pickup trucks. Shmah said good-bye to us and caught a ride home with a group headed over the bridge-tunnel to Cape Charles and the Eastern Shore; she promised to explain the feather and the shell to her husband if he couldn’t figure them out for himself. Scher was too wrought up to remember to give her back the bracelet, and neither Shmah nor I had the heart to remind her.

  That night, my friends, I held one mighty unhappy lady in my arms, and hoped every time I woke up that I’d find myself in bed alone; but such good bad luck was not to be. On the Monday morning, all the stragglers went their ways, as we-all here will do mañana. Scher and my pilot friend and I hung around to clean up the loose ends of the conference. A few others pitched in: some who were going on with late beach-vacations on the Outer Banks; one or two new or prospective members still auditioning for their green belts or just reluctant to let the story go. While we cleaned up camp, they tried farther-and-farther-fetched endings, hoping they might just score and see Scheherazade disappear before their eyes.

  But she didn’t. Toward lunchtime, the work was done, and we joined the handful of diehards at the monument on Kill Devil Hill. They were telling along, naturally, and I hoped a few good stories might distract Scher from her problems. They were tactful enough to lay off her story for that last hour together, but her example had inspired them to a clutch of stories about other travelers out of time. The fellow just then holding forth claimed to have met Odysseus the sailorman and his mate Nausicaa sailing up the Intracoastal Waterway, which they said they’d reached by crossing the Atlantic east to west so fast that time went backward and then stood still. Like Scheherazade, they were stuck in an everlasting Now, and they’d been stuck in it for three thousand years. But luckier than she, they were shipmates in an endless summer, where Limbo is just the name of a Caribbean dance.

  Sit tight there, Sagamores. The teller of this tall tale then declared himself to be another such traveler out of fiction into fact: not so young as Odysseus, and not so lucky as to have Nausicaa for a shipmate. Matter of fact, he hadn’t started out as a sailor at all, though he’d ended up as one. Like our friend Scheherazade, but a lot less urgently, he was looking for the way back to where he came from: not a key, in his case, but a dangling line. . . .

  And that, declared Captain Donald Quicksoat, is as far as I got, mates, ‘cause at that moment a bright orange T-shirt and a jeweled gold bracelet fell kerplop into the sandy middle of our circle. We all turned ‘round to see what was up; whether our famous unlucky visitor had decided to hell with it and was shucking her duds for a swim. Perdóneme for interrupting, Miss May.

  De nada y pues nada, said May Jump, which is what this story comes to. Scher had been standing beside me, wiping her eyes with the neckband of her T-shirt, and then she stepped a step behind me, not to distract Mister Capn Don here from his story with her sniffling. Just as I was turning to put my arm around her, the shirt and bracelet dropped out of the sky, so it seemed. Where was Miz Scher? Gone into thin air. Not faded, as we’d first expected and later hoped, but blinked out like a soap bubble. Not even a poof or a click! Presumably topless, presumably back with her husband and family in the Islands of India and China. But since nobody we know of has heard a word from her since, who can say?

  I hung
around Kitty Hawk for as long as I could that afternoon, until my pilot friend flew me home to Annapolis: one sad executive secretary. Capn Don Q., I’m told, took his new green belt back to his boat and made his way down the ICW. Not so long ago, I gave that orange T-shirt to Marian Silver, to pick her up when she was down, and I found that it must’ve changed sizes in flight: It had fit Scher like a second skin, and she was a trim enough little number, but as has been seen, it’s way too big for our Miss Mims. The bracelet Miz Djean told me I should keep, since I’d been closer to the Prisoner of Dramaturgy than she’d been. Her souvenir of l’affaire Scher was her husband, thank you—who she said had put aside his fancy word-machine and gone back to his faithful though leaky fountain pen, but was otherwise mum on this whole subject.

  And that, comrades, is the end of the unfinished story of Scheherazade’s unfinished story. No questions, yes? ‘Cause I’ve got no answers.

  Whoa, now! complained four of the six of us who still sat up (Irm Sherritt and Joan Bass had reluctantly packed it in just before Kitty Hawk; Donald Quicksoat had been there, and Carla B Silver seemed privy to the tale). Late as was the hour, we couldn’t quite let go of a story so undone. No one actually saw the woman disappear?

  Nadie, said Capn Don. She couldn’t have faded, Q.E.D. She couldn’t have peeled off her shirt and bracelet and run away, or we’d’ve seen her. We say she blinked out like a light, but nobody saw it happen or heard a sound, except the plick of that bracelet on the sand and the pfft of that T-shirt fluttering down. They dropped down, you understand: as if she’d thrown them over our heads or lifted off like Wilbur and Orville when she went.

  Protests disgruntled Peter That prisoner of dramaturgy wasn’t released; she broke jail. If that ding wasn’t enough to spring her, that pfft of an ending never would have. Some ASP on the way back home to Appalachia must have hit the right ending at just that moment.

  We don’t know for sure she’s back where she came from, Lee Talbott reminded us, and her husband said Maybe she’s waiting for Capn Don in the Cave of Montesinos.

  If I ever get back there, C.D.Q. promised, I’ll send a postcard. I don’t like an unfinished story any more’n you do.

  I’ll tell you what Carla B Silver thinks, that lady declared. If we all agree that the story as is—or the lady as isn’t—is as whatyoucallumly unfinished as a story can be, then maybe the woman didn’t really disappear. Maybe she only appeared to disappear.

  Yes! said Katherine Sherritt Sagamore. She changed persons the way her shirt changed sizes. She turned into Maisie Jump, and by Allah, we won’t let her go till we’ve heard the end of her story!

  Grinned May Don’t count on it, Kisserino.

  Peter Sagamore seconded his wife’s first proposition. As to the second, however—for Katherine’s sake, mainly, but for his sleepy own as well—he asked When did Scheherazade ever finish a story the same night she began it? Tomorrow, friends, tomorrow.

  Do not count upon it, May Jump rewarned, and we dispersed to our several dreams.

  NOW IT’S TOMORROW: TODAY,

  well into the forenoon of Sunday, Day 14, which we reckon to be Day 266± a couple. P closes these log-notes with May’s injunction, goes over certain passages of his other manuscript once more, tucks it into the orange distress-flare canister he has earlier emptied for this purpose, tucks the canister under his arm, and sticks his head into the other world, the real one, to see whether Step ‘n’ Fetchit have turned into Get Up and Go.

  No. There being no wind, Chip Sherritt has rigged his Windsurfer on a long line off Katydid IVs fat transom to give Simon Silver Lesson One: how to stand up on the thing and pull the rig out of the water without capsizing. Sy’s doing badly and much enjoying himself, loudly encouraged by May Jump and Katherine Sherritt in the Boston Whaler, Chip in the water, and the crew of Katydid here and there. Splash! he goes again, copper bracelet and all, and May calls Yay for Simon! and he laughs with them as he clambers walruslike to try again.

  Well, now, thinks Peter.

  From above and to his right (K IV’s high awninged cockpit), his mother-in-law says Look who’s come up for air. From behind and to his left (Reprise’s awninged cabin top), Lee Talbott says There he blows; get a line on him before he sounds. Kath hears all such references to Peter as a mother hears her baby’s breath; she turns her paisleyed head Story ward and lights up.

  P taps his wristwatch; raises the Alert-and-Locate canister in his left hand; removes the borrowed boina and crowns the canister therewith; points to Reprise’s cockpit. All concerned parties get the message.

  But first go say good-bye to Captain Donald, Katherine instructs him across the water. He and Mim Silver are ready to leave, but he waited for you.

  He and Mim Silver?

  Says Franklin Key Talbott We’ll explain. Go on over—and then come back fast.

  What they’ll explain, presently, is that while Peter scratched and scribbled, and Frank/Sy/Captain Donald overhauled the Talbotts’ anchor windlass, and others of our raft pursued other pleasures through the sticky morning, significant crew-changes were worked out between Reprise and Rocinante IV. Though Carla B Silver and Donald Quicksoat understood themselves to be no longer a couple, they were still friends; Capn Don had assumed, over pawls and springs and ratchets, that he’d be ferrying her back to Middle River and Baltimore, where he’d ferried her from—and Simon with her, for the general peace—after which, at his leisure but not long hence, he would bid them all hasta la vista and head on up the “D and C” Canal, as it lately pleased him to call it, in pursuit of his legendary and missing amigos. Marian Silver, still pouting about last night’s ruckus, three-quarters wanted to go with them, rather than back with rejected May to Annapolis to pack up her and Sy’s things for moving to Fells Point; her fourth quarter busily nursed that grudge against the child she had once nursed.

  No problem, May Jump volunteered: Let Frank and Lee drop her off at Kent Narrows to collect her car and go home alone. Let Maid Marian go back to Baltimore on Rocinante with her mother and her son, and come down when she pleased to retrieve her stuff and Sy’s. She was going to miss them, all right; she’d had big plans, no doubt cockeyed ones. But what she’ll do is what she’ll do. Don’t worry ‘bout May.

  Me, said Capn Don, I keep my stuff with me; that way I don’t have to go back and retrieve it when the story’s over. Only things he ever left behind, he said, were Sancho Panza and the last three Rocinantes; only thing he’d consider going back for is a certain rope in a certain cave.

  May Jump agreed: Traveling light is traveling right. Maybe she’d just let her old Volvo rust there on Kent Island and hitch a ride with him up the ICW. Swap a few lies? Play Sancho to his C.D.Q.? Declared Captain Donald Rocinante Cuatro is a nag you’ll never be unwelcome on. Then added gallantly But you’ve got more knight than squire in you, says I.

  Damn straight, and enough of this, then objected Carla B Silver and Leah and Franklin Talbott, with Katherine Sherritt’s strong silent second: The tail of solicitude, it seemed to them, was wagging the dog of common decency. Sy Silver’s feelings, made explosively plain last night, are of course important; meshuga Marian’s are not to be disregarded, either. But good May Jump must not be treated so cavalierly! Miss Mim will damned well go home the way she came (her mother, sister, and brother-in-law resolved as one); Simon too: to Annapolis, damned well behaving themselves en route, and will pack their own duffels and move themselves out of May’s apartment pronto, if that’s the way things stand. No jumping ship in this raft on such ungenerous grounds! Well, considered Carla, but perhaps she’d go with them, as insulator and supervisor, if Reprise could hold them all and if Capn Don didn’t mind going it alone—whether back to Carla’s Cavern or on his way. To hell with rushing home to Fells Point in time to open shop tomorrow: Let the winos miss a Monday. Let’m miss a month of Mondays! Okay, May?

  Well: Frank Talbott had been about to propose, only half jokingly, that Marian Silver keep May Jump�
��s apartment and May and Sy move in with Carla to help her run the Cavern (Simon, by the way, has properly apologized to May this morning, and sincerely: His mother’s final rejection of him seems to have cured his animosity in that quarter. In his grandma’s company he likes May fine; he now directs his grievance toward his aggrieved mother only). You following us, Peter? Simon’s being bigger about things than Mim, who really wants to get the fuck away from Tidewaterland and head for parts unknown with . . . somebody new, however old.

  At about this point—mid-morning, maybe, windlass reassembled and Sy off splashing with Andrew Sherritt—Señor Capitán Donaldo Quicksoat said Shit, amigos, here’s how we’ll do it: You folks go down to Annapolis and square things away—Carlissima included, who can oil anybody’s troubled waters. I sail this tub back to Baltimore solo, as is my custom. I open the old Cavern for business as usual tomorrow morning and mind the store till all smoke’s cleared and all bags are packed. After which, adiós: say, Wednesday?

  At which proposal Marian Silver then mustered enough something to declare, surprisingly, she was going with him. She could run the kitchen again—as she had in fact done with some competence till Lascar Lupescu put his Rumanian paws in her pants while she was scrubbing mussels—and Mister Captain Don could run the bar, and obviously Sy’s happier with his grandmother and even with May Jump nowadays than he is with his mother.