Chesapeake Tide

by Jeanette Baker

  “Are you willing to give it all up and buy me out of half my store?”

  “Not a chance.”

  She nodded. “You have your answer.”

  Nine

  Russ removed the pencil tucked behind his ear, made an adjustment to the weekly report, entered the numbers on the adding machine and frowned at the result. To say that the books were in bad shape would be an understatement. The late Mitch Hennessey had no head for business. The most Russ could hope for was to break even. More than likely he would operate at a loss, dipping into his own retirement savings. For how long was the million-dollar question. He left the thought hanging. Billy Dupree, baseball cap in hand, stood in the doorway of the office.

  Russ grinned. It was time to teach these dinosaurs how to fish. “Where’ve you been?” he asked Dupree. “I thought you’d never get here.”

  Billy pulled a toothpick from his mouth. “We’re all waitin’ on you, Hennessey. Two trawlers and their crews. You still know how to crab, or am I doin’ all the work? Could be that fancy degree of yours made you soft.”

  Russ grinned. “Up yours, Dupree.” Shrugging a faded gray sweatshirt over his head, he preceded Billy out the door.

  They climbed into a long, narrow workboat. Russ pulled up the throttle to full speed, signaled two other boats to follow, and headed toward Irish Creek, steering the thirty-five-foot workboat through the heat and shrouded stillness of water and woodland. Two hours later, he slowed down to a two-knot crawl and began laying out his first trotline with the ease of a master. When two were in place, he began the harvest. At a regular, almost mechanical pace, he pulled his bait up from the depths and passed it over the roller, allowing it to submerge in the water behind them. A crab clung tightly to each piece of brine-pickled eel. Like clockwork, before the crab broke water, he slipped a net under it, superficially glancing to see if it met legal size requirements, five inches across the back shell. Sure enough, almost every bait had a crab attached, hanging on with powerful claws and chewing on eel. With practiced ease, he plucked them off the line and tossed them into baskets.

  “You were right, Hennessey. I never would have thought to look on this side of the water,” Billy said, nearly four hours later. “There’s a powerful lot of crabs in this creek. Most of ’em over six inches. This size’ll fetch top prices at the wharf.”

  Russ lit a cigarette and leaned against the bait tank. “Hell, I’m just warmin’ up. Stick with me, Dupree, and see if your take isn’t twice the size you’re used to.”

  Billy lifted his hand in a mock salute. “Aye, aye, Captain. Lead the way. You won’t find me complaining.”

  When the baskets were filled to the brim, the men pulled up the nets and turned their boats toward Marshyhope Creek. Russ was tired and muscles he’d forgotten he owned, ached. He rubbed the back of his neck and stared out across the bay. Splayed across the horizon like a penny on the railroad tracks, the sun’s rays had turned the channel into a river of gold. Pilings and an occasional trawler stood silhouetted against a blazing sky. Behind them, a purple dusk dogged the boat’s wake. Ahead, a copper-splashed path beckoned. Summer on the Chesapeake, the promise of heaven, or as close to it as a man had a right to see. For years, Russ had taken it for granted. He never would again. “What are the chances you can unload the catch today?” he asked.

  Billy maneuvered the boat close to the mooring and waited while Russ jumped out on the dock. “I’ll call ahead to make sure,” he said, “but I don’t think you’ll have any arguments about fresh crab whatever the time of day. I’ll inspect the catch tonight, check to be sure they pass muster and see you tomorrow.”

  The call came before dawn the following morning. Russ fumbled for the telephone through a sleep-induced fog. “Holy shit, Dupree,” he snarled when he heard the waterman’s voice. “It’s four o’clock in the morning.”

  Dupree’s words were terse, angry. “There’s something I gotta tell you.”

  “Now?”

  “This can’t wait. I’ll meet you at the dock. If I’m wrong, I’ll buy you a beer. Hell, I’ll buy you ten beers.”

  Russ stared at the phone, groaned and climbed out of bed.

  Less than twenty minutes later, the two men faced each other on the dock. “This better be good, Dupree,” Russ said.

  The waterman pulled his cap down low over his eyes. “Good is hardly the word I’d use.”

  Russ controlled his temper. Billy, a brawny independent young Frenchman, wise in the ways of his ancestors, would not be hurried. “Are we going somewhere?”

  “Shad Landing and we’re going alone.”

  Russ’s eyes narrowed. “Shad Landing’s closed to trawlers. It’s illegal to fish there. The quickest way to close us down is to operate in illegal fishing grounds.”

  “We won’t be taking no trawler, and whatever the government says, it’s still the best place to pick up a cross sampling of crabs.”

  “All right. Let’s get to it.”

  “You’re the boss.”

  Russ kept his thoughts to himself as he watched the waterman expertly maneuver the craft through the shoals, back across the bay and into outlaw waters. Billy pulled in his trotlines and unhooked the crabs, tossing them into baskets.

  Russ set his teeth. Crabbing off of Shad Landing was strictly prohibited. They would be arrested on the spot if anyone reported them. Still, Billy had worked the waters of the Chesapeake islands with his father since he was four years old. If anyone knew what he was doing, it was Dupree.

  Without a word, Billy turned the boat and motored back to the docks. He jumped from the boat to the pier and secured the lines, all without a word of explanation. Then he picked up the basket. “Come with me. I want you to see this.”

  Twenty minutes later, Billy had the crabs laid out execution style so their underbellies were exposed. Russ stared in shock. From stunted claws and suspicious-looking lumps to oozing abscesses, every one, without exception, was horribly mutated. “What in the hell is going on here?”

  “I don’t know.” Billy took off his cap and wiped his brow with the back of his hand. “At least thirty percent of yesterday’s catch looks like this, too, I think.”

  “What do you mean, you think?”

  Dupree wet his lips. “I buried the diseased ones, otherwise I wouldn’t have dragged you out this morning to show you what they look like. I was hoping Shad Landing would be different.”

  “You’re not telling me anything.”

  “I sold off most of the catch without inspecting ’em.”

  Russ felt like he was choking. “You did what?”

  “I’d sold about a quarter of ’em without even looking at ’em. It’s the way things are done now. The wholesalers and restaurants come by and order, then the flunkies come in and pile the crabs into buckets. No one looks at them until the cook drops ’em into boiling water.” Sweat rolled down his forehead. “You’re gonna be getting some calls on this. I was hoping Shad Landing would be different. There’s no way we can sell ’em.”

  “You got that right. Put these on ice,” Russ ordered. “Call the lab in Salisbury and tell them to send someone out here. Meanwhile, I’ll call the distributors and tell them we can’t deliver our orders until this is straightened out.”

  “Have you thought about what it’s gonna do to us, Mr. Hennessey? Even if we spread out the crews on the shrimp boats, we’ll have to lay off the crab skippers.”

  Russ rubbed his temples and swore. All this before six in the morning. “We have no choice. These animals could be poisoned. I can’t be responsible for that.”

  Russ crushed his cigarette under the heel of his shoe, then he sat down behind the desk and switched on the lamp. Posted on the wall was the phone list—mostly on-call numbers of the local seafood distributors. He started at the top with Angelle. Offering as little explanation as possible, he moved down the list, smoothing the waters, promising future orders, wondering how long it would be before every supplier on the shore knew he’d supplied stunted
crabs to the Cove and if the honest business practices he prided himself on were ashes on the wind.

  He was on the Ds, methodically checking off names, his speech so rehearsed it sounded genuine, when he came to an unfamiliar name. Nothing much changed in Frenchman’s Cove. Family businesses were generations old. Diedrich. An odd name on this side of the bay. He pulled the file, opened it and skimmed the page. It was his brother’s medical record. John Diedrich was Mitch’s oncologist.

  Russ frowned and began to read more carefully, paying particular attention to the dates, leafing backward until he came to the beginning. His hands shook when he closed the file, turned off the light and walked to the window.

  He stared out at the darkening sky. It would rain tonight. Mitch had never liked rain, not like he had, not like Libba, either. Strange that she should come to mind at defining moments of his life. Maybe it wasn’t so strange. She’d been there for all of them. The three of them were inseparable. Mitch, Russ and Libba Jane, people would say, almost as if the three names were one word.

  Mitch had been a sun-worshipper, refusing to wear a hat on the boats even when his freckled Irish complexion had burned to a painful red. Russ, blessed from birth with an extra dose of melanin that darkened his skin to a bronze glow, had teased him, calling him Rudolph and Pinkie and every other cruel, ego-shriveling name brothers forced to compete almost from the hour of their birth often do.

  He thought of Mitch as he’d last seen him, bitter, edgy, hard-drinking, desperate for a cure for a disease that had none. Mitch, his brother, his nemesis, his shadow, his womb-mate, riddled with and battling cancer for five years until he’d succumbed six months ago. Russ blinked away the moisture gathering at the corners of his eyes. Why hadn’t anyone told him sooner? Why had Mitch downplayed his illness? They were brothers, dammit, twin brothers. Whatever their differences, they were family, flesh and blood. Who had decided that Russ, the oldest, would be the one to leave, the banished brother, excluded from the family legacy? The answer was a rhetorical one and banishment was too strong a word. He had never seen eye to eye with his father, and unlike Mitch, he had a good head for the books. It was logical that he should be the one to go on to college, make his way doing something else. Hennessey Blue Crab and Fishing couldn’t pay the bills for more than two families. Even that was stretching it. Still, Mitch was his brother. If he had known, he would have come home sooner, when it could have made a difference.

  It was after nine when Russ climbed into his Blazer. He pressed down on the clutch and shifted into first gear. The day had been long and he was tired, but he didn’t want to go home. Home. When had Hennessey House last been home? The answer was immediate. When he’d lived there with his parents and Mitch. Now his family was gone, with the exception of Tess, and her mother kept her under lock and key at the judge’s big white house outside of town. No, he wouldn’t see Tess tonight. He wasn’t in the mood. He needed a drink and a smoke.

  Leaving the town limits, Russ followed the back road toward Frenchman’s Bend and Cybil’s Diner. Pulling into the gravel parking lot, he rolled to a stop. Strains of Reba McEntire drifted through the night. He turned off the engine. Leaving the keys in the ignition, he walked inside. It was darker than a tar pit at midnight. Russ leaned against the doorjamb, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the gloom.

  Cybil’s Diner wasn’t really a diner, it was a bar. The name was a holdover from the prohibition era when liquor was traded, gambled, sold and consumed in the back room behind the eating area. Eventually the wall had been knocked out, a pool table installed, and the last patron who remembered ordering food from Cybil died of old age. The fact that it was the only bar between Frenchman’s Cove and Marshyhope Creek and every man in town, professional and blue collar, frequented its sagging, vinyl-covered booths and bar stools, kept it from becoming seedy.

  Russ walked in and hesitated briefly, allowing his eyes to adjust to the gloom. It was a blinding ninety degrees of wet humidity outside in the evening heat, but here in the bar the shadowy darkness was the same at noon as it was at midnight. He looked around and experienced a rush of nostalgia. The same uneven, cleat-gouged floor, the hazy tobacco-filled air, the hard click of cue against ball, the occasional shout of laughter from a hard drinker who’d tipped one too many.

  Some things were different, of course, a testimony to the passage of time. The gray-green, black-and-white RCA featuring Walter Cronkite had been replaced by Peter Jennings on a color Toshiba. The big news was the Middle East, not Vietnam. A We Accept Personal Checks and Credit Cards sign sat on the bar, and there were women in the room. Women who wore their skirts long and their hair short, women with monogrammed T-shirts and painted toenails peeking out from silver-and-beige mules, women who sipped pink-and-green drinks with umbrella-studded fruit. Russ missed the old days of peanuts and beer. He didn’t recognize anyone, but it was still early.

  Something soft and deliciously curved pressed against him. “What’ll you have, stranger?”

  Russ looked down at the inviting female rubbing her breasts against his arm. “Beer.” His voice was huskier than usual. He cleared his throat. “Whatever’s on tap.”

  “You got it,” she purred. “Don’t go away, now. My break’s in ten minutes and I want to spend every little bit of it with you.”

  “I’ll be here,” Russ promised.

  True to her word, exactly ten minutes later the barmaid slid under his arm, leaned against him and stuck her tongue in his ear. “Wanna dance?” she asked breathlessly.

  Russ, experiencing a similar change in his breathing pattern, decided that dancing was better than what she obviously had in mind. He swung her out into the middle of the floor and pulled her into his arms.

  “I’m Rosalind,” she said before plastering herself against him. “Who are you?”

  “Russ.”

  “You must be new in town. I’da noticed if you’d been in before.”

  Russ was recovering his equilibrium. “It’s been a while.”

  “Where you from?”

  “Marshyhope Creek.”

  “That’s right around the corner,” she protested. “How come you never been here before?”

  Russ grinned, a flash of white in the dark room. “I have, honey. But it was long before your time.”

  She pouted and tossed her long, bottle-blond perm. “You’re not that much older than me. Besides, I like older men. They’re better in bed.”

  Russ, who’d guessed her age to be just past jailbait, didn’t contradict her. Let her think what she wanted. The little lady had drop-dead curves and a voice like honey, but he wasn’t planning on harvesting her crop. He made a point of staying away from schoolgirls. He preferred women nearer his own age. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy the dance.

  Insinuating his leg between both of hers, he tightened his arms and dipped her backward. The music changed. Willie Nelson’s You Were Always On My Mind blurred the edges of his resolve. He pulled her close again and pressed her head against his shoulder. Locked together, they barely moved until the song ended. Someone dropped another quarter into the jukebox.

  Russ’s eyes adjusted to the gloom. Two women walked in and sat down in a corner booth. The dark-haired one turned and looked directly at him. He winced and then realized her eyes probably hadn’t adjusted to the dimness and she couldn’t see well enough to recognize him. What was Libba doing in a hole like this?

  “My break’s over, handsome.” The blonde laved his ear. “If you’re still here at closing time, I promise it’ll be worth it.”

  She was cute, but he knew he’d regret it. “It’s not that you aren’t tempting,” he said gently, “but I’m afraid not.”

  She sighed. “Why is it all the good ones are already taken?”

  He tweaked a curl. “Don’t give up.”

  “I won’t,” she promised. “It’s my ticket outta here.”

  Russ walked off the floor and took a seat at the end of the bar. The night promised to be interesting.
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  Libby sipped whipped cream off the top of her Irish coffee. She was definitely uncomfortable. The diner had never appealed to her. She wished Shelby had chosen another place to catch up on old times.

  “Libba Delacourte, are you hearin’ a word I said?” Shelby Sloane asked indignantly.

  Libby smiled. Shelby had been her oldest friend. They’d known each other since birth and hung out with the same crowd in high school, but it wasn’t until after graduation that their friendship deepened. Libby believed, although Shelby denied it, that they’d both been in competition for Russ. After he left town, Libby needed a friend and Shelby stepped in to fill the gap. Flame-haired, blue-eyed, reed-thin and gorgeous, two parts loyal to one part crazy, she spoke her mind and was a self-proclaimed gossip. Still, she was the only one from her high school crowd that Libby still considered a friend. Years could pass, but when they reconnected it was as if they had seen each other the day before. “Why don’t we go someplace else?” Libby suggested.

  “Good Lord, Libba Jane. This is the only place in town that has a liquor license. I’m askin’ if you think Fletcher’s cheatin’ on me. I think that deserves a drink.”

  Libby sighed impatiently. “Fletcher is not cheating on you, Shelby. He’s crazy about you. Just because a man joins a baseball league does not mean he’s tired of you. If you’re really worried, why don’t you watch him play?”

  Shelby’s long manicured fingernails clicked against the tabletop. “I hate baseball. Fletcher knows I hate baseball. If I went down there to the field, he’d know somethin’ was up. He’d probably think I was checkin’ up on him.”

  “Well?” Libby said pointedly.

  “For Pete’s sake, Libba Jane. I can’t have him think I’m jealous. It gives a man a terrible advantage.”

  “You’ve been married for fifteen years. Don’t tell me you’re still keeping score. Give the guy a break, Shelby. He’d be flattered.”

  Shelby’s perfectly shaped eyebrows quirked. “You really think so?”

  “I do.”