The Watermen: Selections From Chesapeake

by James A. Michener

  At all the nests in the Arctic this restlessness developed and birds bickered with one another. Males would suddenly rise in the sky and fly long distances for no apparent reason, returning later to land in clouds of dust. No meetings were held; there was no visible assembling of families. But one day, for mysterious reasons which could not be explained, huge flocks of birds rose into the sky, milled about and then formed into companies heading south.

  This southward migration was one of the marvels of nature: hundreds, thousands, millions of these huge geese forming into perfect V-shaped squadrons flying at different altitudes and at different times of day, but all heading out of Canada down one of the four principal flyways leading to varied corners of America. Some flew at 29,000 feet above the ground, others as low as 3,000, but all sought escape from the freezing moorlands of the Arctic, heading for clement feeding grounds like those in Maryland. For long spells they would fly in silence, but most often they maintained noisy communication, arguing, protesting, exulting; at night especially they uttered cries which echoed forever in the memories of men who heard them drifting down through the frosty air of autumn: ‘Onk-or, onk-or!’

  The wedge in which Onk-or and his family started south this year consisted of eighty-nine birds, but it did not stay together permanently as a cohesive unit. Sometimes other groups would meld with it, until the flying formation contained several hundred birds; at other times segments would break away to fly with some other unit. But in general the wedge held together.

  The geese flew at a speed of about forty-five miles an hour, which meant that if they stayed aloft for an entire day, they could cover a thousand miles. But they required rest, and through the centuries during which they had followed the same route south and north they had learned of various ponds and lakes and riverbanks which afforded them secure places to rest and forage. There were lakes in upper Quebec, and small streams leading into the St. Lawrence. In Maine there were hundreds of options and suitable spots in western Massachusetts and throughout New York, and the older geese like Onk-or knew them all.

  On some days, near noon when the autumn sun was high, the geese would descend abruptly and alight on a lake which their ancestors had been utilizing for thousands of years. The trees along the shore would have changed, and new generations of fish would occupy the waters, but the seeds would be the same kind, and the succulent grasses. Here the birds would rest for six or seven hours, and then as dusk approached, the leaders would utter signals and the flock would scud across the surface of the lake, wheel into the air and fly aloft. There they would form themselves automatically into a long V, with some old, sage bird like Onk-or in the lead, and through the night they would fly south.

  Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania! The states would lie sleeping below, only a few dim lamps betraying their existence, and overhead the geese would go, crying in the night, ‘Onk-or, onk-or,’ and occasionally, at the edge of some village or on some farm a door would open and light would flood the area for a while, and parents would hold their children and peer into the dark sky, listening to the immortal passing of the geese. And once in a great while, on such a night, when the moon was full, the children would actually see the flying wedge pass between them and the moon, and hear the geese as they flew, and this matter they would speak of for the rest of their lives.

  No goose, not even a powerful one like Onk-or, could fly at the head of the wedge for long periods. The buffeting of the wind as the point of the V broke a path through the air turbulence was too punishing. The best a practiced bird could do was about forty minutes, during which time he absorbed a considerable thrashing. After his allotted time in the lead position, the exhausted goose would drop to the back of one of the arms of the wedge, where the weaker birds had been assembled, and there, with the air well broken ahead of him, he would coast along in the wake of the others, recovering his strength until it came his time again to assume the lead. Male and female alike accepted this responsibility, and when the day’s flight ended, they were content to rest. On especially favorable lakes with copious feed they might stay for a week.

  During the first days of October the geese were usually somewhere in New York or Pennsylvania, and happy to be there. The sun was warm and the lakes congenial, but as the northwest winds began to blow, bringing frost at night, the older birds grew restive. They did not relish a sudden freeze, which would present problems, and they vaguely knew that the waning of the sun required them to be farther south in some region of security.

  But they waited until the day came when the air was firmly frosted, and then they rose to form their final V. No matter where the lake had been upon which they were resting, the geese in the eastern flyway vectored in to the Susquehanna River, and when they saw its broad and twisting silhouette, they felt safe. This was their immemorial guide, and they followed it with assurance, breaking at last onto the Chesapeake, the most considerable body of water they would see during their migration. It shimmered in the autumn sun and spoke of home. Its thousand estuaries and coves promised them food and refuge for the long winter, and they joyed to see it.

  As soon as the Chesapeake was reached, congregations of geese began to break off, satisfied that they had arrived at their appointed locations. Four thousand would land at Havre de Grace, twenty thousand at the Sassafras. The Chester River would lure more than a hundred thousand and the Miles the same. Enormous concentrations would elect Tred Avon, but the most conspicuous aggregation would wait for the Choptank, more than a quarter of a million birds, and they would fill every field and estuary.

  For more than five thousand years Onk-or’s lineal antecedents had favored a marsh on the north bank of the Choptank. It was spacious, well-grassed with many plants producing seeds, and multiple channels providing safe hiding places. It was convenient both to fields, so that the geese could forage for seeds, and to the river, so that they could land and take off easily. It was an ideal wintering home in every respect but one: it was owned by the Turlocks, the most inveterate hunters of Maryland, each member of the family born with an insatiable appetite for goose.

  ‘I can eat it roasted, or chopped with onions and peppers, or sliced thin with mushrooms,’ Lafe Turlock was telling the men at the store. ‘You can keep the other months of the year, just give me November with a fat goose comin’ onto the stove three times a week.’

  Lafe had acquired from his father and his father before him the secrets of hunting geese. ‘Canniest birds in the world. They have a sixth sense, a seventh and an eighth. I’ve seen one smart old gander haunts my place lead his flock right into my blind, spot my gun, stop dead in the air, turn his whole congregation around on a sixpence, without me gettin’ a shot.’ He kicked the stove and volunteered his summary of the situation: ‘A roast goose tastes so good because it’s so danged hard to shoot.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ a younger hunter asked.

  Lafe turned to look at the questioner, studied him contemptuously as an interloper, then explained, ‘I’ll tell you what, sonny, I know your farm down the river. Fine farm for huntin’ geese. Maybe a hundred thousand fly past in the course of a week, maybe two hundred thousand. But that ain’t doin’ you no good, because unless you can tease just one of those geese to drop down within gunshot of where you stand, you ain’t never gonna kill a goose. They fly over there’—he flailed his long arms—‘or over here, or down there, a hundred thousand geese in sight …’ He startled the young man by leaping from his chair and banging his fist against the wall. ‘But never one goddamned goose where you want him. It’s frustratin’.’

  He sat down, cleared his throat and spoke like a lawyer presenting a difficult case. ‘So what you got to do, sonny, is pick yourself a likely spot where they might land, and build yourself a blind—’

  ‘I done that.’

  Lafe ignored the interruption. ‘And hide it in branches that look live, and all round it put wooden decoys whittled into at least eight different positions to look real
, and then learn to yell goose cries that would fool the smartest goose ever lived. And if you don’t do all these things, sonny, you ain’t never gonna taste goose, because they gonna fly past you, night and day.’

  The attractive thing about Lafe was his unquenchable enthusiasm. Each October, like now, he was convinced that this year he would outsmart the geese, and he was not afraid to make his predictions public at the store. ‘This year, gentlemen, you all eat goose. I’m gonna shoot so many, your fingers’ll grow warts pluckin’ ’em.’

  ‘That’s what you said last year,’ an uncharitable waterman grunted.

  ‘But this year I got me a plan.’ And with a finger dipped in molasses he started to outline his strategy. ‘You know my blind out in the river.’

  ‘I stood there often enough, gettin’ nothin’,’ one of the men said.

  ‘And you know this blind at that pond in the western end of the marsh.’

  ‘I waited there for days and all I got was a wet ass,’ the same man said.

  ‘And that’s what you’ll get in that blind this year, too. Because I’m settin’ them two up just like always, decoys and all. I want that smart old leader to see them and lead his ladies away.’

  ‘To where?’ the skeptic asked.

  Lafe grinned and a deep satisfaction wreathed his face. ‘Now for my plan. Over here, at the edge of this cornfield where everythin’ looks so innicent, I plant me a third blind with the best decoys me or my pappy ever carved.’ And with a dripping finger he allowed the molasses to form his new blind.

  ‘I don’t think it’ll work,’ the cynic said.

  ‘I’m gonna get me so many geese …’

  ‘Like last year. How many you get last year, speak honest.’

  ‘I got me nine geese …’ In six months he had shot nine geese, but this year, with his new tactics, he was sure to get scores.

  So when Onk-or brought his wedge of eighty-nine back to the Choptank marshes, dangerous innovations awaited. Of course, on his first pass over Turlock land he spotted the traditional blind in the river and the ill-concealed one at the pond; generations of his family had been avoiding those inept seductions. He also saw the same old decoys piled on the bank, the boats waiting to take the hunters into the river and the dogs waiting near the boats. It was familiar and it was home.

  Giving a signal, he dropped in a tight, crisp circle, keeping his left wing almost stationary, then landed with a fine splashing on an opening in the center of the marsh. He showed his five children how to dispose themselves, then pushed his way through the marsh grass to see for himself what feed there might be in the fields. His mate came along, and within a few minutes they had satisfied themselves that this was going to be a good winter. On their way back to the marsh they studied the cabin. No changes there; same wash behind the kitchen.

  As the geese settled in to enjoy the marshes, the young birds heard for the first time the reverberation of gunfire, and Onk-or had to spend much time alerting them to the special dangers that accompanied these rich feeding grounds. He and the other ganders taught the newcomers how to spot the flash of metal, or hear the cracking of a twig under a gunner’s boot. And no group must ever feed without posting at least three sentinels, whose job it was to keep their necks erect so that their ears and eyes could scout all approaches.

  Eternal vigilance was the key to survival, and no birds ever became more skilled in protecting themselves. Smaller birds, like doves, which presented difficult targets for a hunter, could often trust to luck that an undetected human would miss when he fired at them, but the great goose presented such an attractive target either head-on or broadside that a gunner had the advantage, if he were allowed to creep within range. The trick for the geese was to move out of range whenever men approached, and Onk-or drilled his flock assiduously in this tactic, for any goose who frequented the Turlock marshes was threatened by some of the most determined hunters on the Eastern Shore.

  By mid-December it was clear that the geese had outsmarted Lafe Turlock once again; none had landed at the blind in the river and only a few stragglers had landed at the pond. By the end of the first week Onk-or had spotted the cornfield trick, and Lafe had been able to shoot only three geese.

  ‘Them damn honkers must of got eyeglasses in Canada,’ he told the men at the store.

  ‘You was gonna feed us all this winter,’ one of the men reminded him.

  ‘I will, too. What I got to do is make a few changes in my plan.’

  He assembled his five sons, plus four other crack shots, and told them, ‘We are gonna get ourselves so many geese, you’ll have grease on your faces all winter. We do it this way,’

  An hour before dawn he rowed his youngest son out to the river blind, before which they strung a dozen decoys haphazardly. He told his boy, ‘I want for the geese to see you. Make ’em move on.’

  Another son he placed at the pond, with the same careless arrangement and the same instructions. ‘Of course, son, if you get a good shot at a goose, take it. But we ain’t relyin’ on you.’

  At the cornfield he posted yet a third son, expecting him to be seen. The six other men he took on a long walk through loblolly, ending at a cove where he said the canny geese would have to land. ‘The trick is to think like a goose. They’ll leave the cornfield, fly in a half-circle, see the decoys beyond the pine trees and come down here.’

  When they came down, they were going to land in the middle of a fusillade from the four fastest guns, followed immediately by a second round from the three slower guns, during which time the first four would load again to pick off the cripples, by which time the slow guns could reload to do any cleaning up.

  ‘This is guaranteed to get honkers,’ Lafe promised, ‘if’n that damned big bird don’t catch on.’

  The geese were slow this morning in going to their feeding stations. There was fractiousness among the younger birds, but the elders did not protest, for mating time was approaching and there were many second-year geese who had not yet selected their partners, so that confusion was inescapable. But toward six-thirty Onk-or and another old gander began making the moves that would get the flock started. Restlessness ceased and eighty-odd birds began moving into positions from which they could take to the air.

  Onk-or led the flight, and within moments the flock had formed into two loose Vs which wheeled and dipped in unison. They headed for the river south of the marsh, and Onk-or saw that some hunter was still trying vainly to lure geese into the old blind located there. The big birds landed well upstream, fed for a while on grasses, then took off for better forage. They flew to the pond, where there was futile gunfire, and then toward the cornfield, where Onk-or quickly spotted the lone gunner stationed there. He swung away from the corn, flew left, and saw some geese feeding in a stream lined by pine trees. Since the geese already down proved that the area was safe, he would land his flock there.

  The geese came in low, wings extended, feet ready for braking, but just as Onk-or prepared to land, he detected movement among the pine trees lining the shore, and with a brilliant twist to the north he swung out of range, uttering loud cries of warning as he did so. He escaped, and those immediately behind made their turns, too, but many of the trailing geese did not react in time; they flew directly into the waiting guns and furious blasts of fire knocked them down.

  Seven geese were killed, including two of Onk-or’s children. It was a disaster, and he had been responsible. It must not happen again.

  At the store Lafe basked in his victory. ‘To catch a honker you got to think like a honker,’ he told his listeners, but his glory was short-lived, because for the rest of the season he got no geese from his own marshes, and only two when he led an expedition farther upstream.

  ‘I never seen honkers so cagey,’ he snarled. ‘I’m goin’ to hire me them trolls from Amos Todkill.’ So in January 1823 he sailed up to Patamoke to dicker with Todkill, who specialized in combing the marshes for wounded young geese, which he domesticated, using them as living lures t
o bring wild geese directly into the muzzles of waiting guns.

  Todkill said he’d allow Turlock to rent fifteen of his tame geese, three days for a dollar and a half. ‘Pretty steep,’ Lafe complained.

  ‘But you know they’re foolproof. “Never-fails,” we call ’em.’

  Turlock tied their legs, tossed them into his boat and sailed back to the marsh. ‘I want me fifteen or sixteen reliable guns,’ he announced at the store. ‘I laid out real money for them damned trolls, and I expect some honkers in return.’

  He enlisted a veritable battery, whose members he stationed at strategic spots so that the crossfire from the muzzle-loaders would be impenetrable. He then spread four dozen of his most lifelike wooden decoys, after which he released Todkill’s fifteen live ones. ‘As pretty a sight as a honker ever seen, and as deadly,’ he said approvingly when all was in position.

  Then he and the sixteen other hunters waited. Nothing happened. Occasional geese from the marshes flew past, ignoring the trolls, who cackled to lure them down. Once or twice substantial flocks, headed by the old gander, came tantalizingly close, then veered away as if in obedience to a signal, and the three days passed without one good shot at a honker.

  Onk-or from the first had spotted the bizarre assembly of wooden decoys and live trolls, and it was not long before he discerned the guns hiding among the rushes. He not only kept his own geese from the lethal area; he also alerted others, so that Lafe and his artillery could not possibly get themselves the geese he had promised.

  At the store one of the hunters said, ‘Them trolls fooled me, and they fooled Lafe, but they sure as hell didn’t fool that old gander.’

  ‘What they did,’ Lafe said, ‘was waste my dollar-fifty. It was only through the help of prayer that I kept from stranglin’ them birds before I gave ’em back to Todkill.”