Letters (140 page)

Nor can I blame him, Dad. These placid Maryland waters, these mild English-looking swards and copses, are too close to Our Nation’s Capital not to have been the secret
mise en scène
of fearsome hugger-mugger since well before C.I.A. and O.S.S.—back at least to 1812. The very charts I navigate by reflect it:
Restricted Area, Prohibited Area, NASA Maintained, Navy Maintained.
Our gentle Chesapeake is a fortress camouflaged, from Edgewood Arsenal and Aberdeen Proving Grounds at its head to Norfolk Navy Yard at its mouth, with Andrews and Dover air force bases on either side and God knows what, besides Camp David, in the hills behind. Nerve gas, napalm, nukes; B-52’s above, atomic submarines below, destroyers, missile frigates, minesweepers, jet fighters, and every other sort of horrific hardware all about—and these but the visible and declared! While in the basements of certain handsome Georgetown houses, or on horsey-looking farms along the Rappahannock, even in the odd Wye Island goose blind for all I know, the real dirty-work is done, authorized by some impeccable Old Boy in a paneled office in Arlington or Langley. We do not blame you, Buffalo, for saying good-bye to
that
fish before he says hello.

But oh my: those of us who happen to have reached our story’s last chapter anyhow, or its next-to-last—did
we
ever want to get back to our office now and play Deep-Sea Angler, as we could not from any literal
Osborn Jones!
I sailed the sixteen miles from St. Mike’s (’bye) out of Eastern Bay and down to Poplar Island, a good spot from which either to end or to continue the cruise. Here in 1813 the British invasion fleet gathered in the fine natural harbor (deeper then) for provisioning raids and repairs; Franklin Roosevelt used to cruise over in the
Potomac
for weekends with his cronies in an old Democratic club on one of the three islands. All are uninhabited now except by snakes, turtles, seabirds, and a crew of biologists (one hopes and supposes; there
is
a NASA beacon off to westwards…) from the Smithsonian, which now owns the place and maintains a “research facility” in the former clubhouse. For all one knew they might be counterespionagists, interrogating spies whisked in from Embassy Row or the other side of the globe…

But bye-bye, paranoia. They truly
could
be something sinister, those young neat-bearded chaps who waved from their dock as I anchored in the clean sand bottom of Poplar Harbor; Jane’s fiancé, likewise, truly
could
be something other than what he represented himself to be—and
very
probably they and he were not. They were biologists. He was a Canadian gentleman of leisure. Buffalo’s “C.I.A./F.B.I. types” were part of our
government’s
paranoia about the antiwar movement and the traffic of disaffected youngsters across the Peace Bridge into Ontario. And Harrison Mack’s freeze-dried feces would turn up in an office safe or the archives of Marshyhope State. Time to shorten scope on my imagination; in the morning I would flip a coin (as I did once on the Cambridge Creek Bridge on June 21 or 22, 1937, very near the end of 13 L) to decide what to do.

A restless night.
O.J.
pitched a bit in a surprise southerly that fetched across the low-lying island and the open harbor; I was on deck every few hours to check for drag by taking bearings on the “clubhouse” lights, which for some reason burned all night. In the morning, a fresh pretty one, the air was back where it belonged, NNW 5-7. My head was muzzy; Todds Point was but a quick eleven-mile run through Knapps Narrows and across the mouth of the Choptank; I could eat lunch in my cottage, put the cruise away, and hit the office fresh after the weekend. Heads I keep going—to certain haunts on Patuxent and Potomac, to Smith and Tangier islands, then home to my dearest and closest, the Tred Avon and the Choptank—tails I pack it in. I flipped my nickel and got, not “the skinny-assed, curly-tailed buffalo” who in ’37 had bid me chuck certain letters into Cambridge Creek (concerning Harrison Mack
Senior’s
pickled poop) and let the Macks go whistle for their three million dollars, but that buffalo’s ’69 counterpart: Monticello.

Home, then.

But I am, Dad, and will be for some days yet, Todd Andrews, and this is 13 R: no more to be dictated now than then by a “miserable nickel” (worth, three decades later, half as much as its Indian-headed, buffalo-tailed predecessor). I upped anchor, bid good-bye to Poplar Island and Whatever Goes On There, and set my course for 200°: an easy, lazy, self-steering all-day run straight down the Chesapeake, wing and wing under
O.J.‘s
long-footed main and jib, whisker-poled out. Past the nothing where Sharps Island used to be, on whose vanished beach Jane Mack and I once coupled (Restricted and Prohibited areas to starboard: Naval Research Lab firing range); past vanishing James Island off the Little Choptank, where some 1812 invaders once came to grief and where Polly Lake and I, many Augusts, came to joy; 30-odd gliding miles down through a hot late-summer Saturday, listening to the Texaco opera
(Tosca)
and rereading the story of my life in
The Floating Opera;
to where (in this nonfictional rerun) the
Coast Pilot
turns into a catalogue of horrors—
204.36: Shore bombardment, air bombardment, air strafing, and rocket firing area. U.S. Navy. 204.40: Long-range and aerial machine-gun firing, U.S. Naval Propellant Plant. 204.42: Aerial firing range and target areas, U.S. Naval Air Test Center. 204.44: Naval guided missiles operations area… Air Force practice bombing and rocket firing… Underwater demolitions area, U.S. Naval Amphibian Base… Air Force precision test area
—and where
I
turned into the Patuxent, seven peaceful hours later, and anchored for the night behind Solomons Island, intending to say goodbye next day to Mill and St. Leonard creeks.

Instead of which, I said hello to Jane Mack and Baron André Castine. It being the weekend, a great many yachts were in the anchorage already, large and small, power and sail—so many that I had my hands full finding a spot with room to swing, running forward to drop the hook at the right moment and then back to set it with the engine full-reversed. I had of course conned the anchorage first, and had vaguely noted, among several other yachts I’d crossed wakes with in the two weeks past, the big Trumpy-built trawler I’d seen up in Little Round Bay. Indeed, I’d moored
O.J.
between her
(Baratarian,
remember?) and a 50-foot ketch from Los Angeles, both of which rode on plenty of scope, rather than going in among the cluster of smaller boats. When I shut down the engine and went forward to adjust my rode, rig the anchor light, and watch how we swung, Jane Mack merrily called my name across the space between us.

That is, a lean tanned lady in fresh white linens did, from
Baratarian’s
afterdeck, where she sat with a less tan but equally turned-out gentleman, sipping something short. I waved back, then recognized her with a proper pang and wondered whether… But now her voice came amplified through a bullhorn brought her by a white-uniformed crewman.
Toddy. Just in time for dinner. Come on over and meet André.

Small world, I megaphoned back from
O.J.‘s
bows. Let me wash and change.

I cannot say even what my feelings were, except that if not self-canceling they were anyhow canceled from the future, 13 R’s end, and meanwhile overriden by shrug-shouldered curiosity. I washed the day’s salt sweat off, dinghied over in my go-ashore seersucker, and was introduced to André, Baron Castine: a mustached, ruddy, virile fellow in his mid-fifties, with a broad smile, good teeth, an easy winning manner, and a fine cultured baritone voice softly accented
a la Quebec
(though the family estate was in Ontario). What they sipped was cold Mumm’s Cordon Rouge, fetched up by their steward in buckets of ice, along with caviar-and-cream-cheese canapés, from the air-conditioned galley. Jane as always was utterly at ease, as if we hadn’t humped aboard
O.J.
in May and again in the Todds Point cottage in June; as if I hadn’t seen those photos of her and her friend in spectacular flagrante delicto. Castine as well, with better reason: an immediately likable chap, who indeed looked to me less like the fellow in those photographs than like a better-bred relative of A. B. Cook (as Buffalo had reported).

Ah, well: people change. Their ease put me at mine. Castine informed me that the yacht was Jane’s gift for his 52nd birthday (younger than he looked, then); that he thought it a bit, ah, baronial, and was unfortunately prone to
mal de mer
—he’d even missed a few meals aboard the
Statendam
in Bermudian waters! But he was determined for her sake to acquire sea legs, and so had committed himself to the sport of deep-sea fishing. Was I an angler?

Toddy
always
has an angle, Jane declared, not especially meaningly. He’s probably been following us to see whether we deep-six Harrison’s
merde.

I was astonished. Castine asked about the verb “to deep-six,” but clearly understood the general sense of Jane’s allusion. That tone prevailed through dinner (I surprised myself by accepting their invitation; all envy, guilt, and jealousy slipped away in their easy company, lubricated no doubt by the fine champagne; and after two near-solitary August weeks afloat, the air conditioning and the company were irresistible. Fresh roses on the table! Conversation! A steward to cook and serve!): the good-humored implication that they knew more about certain of our common interests than they were telling. I asked where in fact that minor but notable item of Harrison’s estate reposed. Jane was (smilingly) damned if she knew, and damned if she’d tell me if she did; things were too hectic at m.e. for her to bother with such foolishness until my subpoena, which she quite anticipated, obliged her to. Castine asked my opinion on the danger of being hijacked in these waters, or on the Intracoastal Waterway, by narcotics smugglers: one heard rumors of piracy and of Coast Guard cover-ups. We all doubted there was any danger. I inquired about his vessel’s name. Both his own forebears and Jean Lafitte’s, he declared, were Gascon; perhaps he would take up piracy himself if Mack Enterprises fell upon hard times and if he could learn to do without Dramamine. Did I know Longfellow’s poem about his (Castine’s) progenitor?

Artichokes vinaigrette. Escalope de veau and fresh asparagus, perfectly steamed. Had I heard anything from her wayward daughter? Jane wondered mildly. I considered; then reported my understanding that Jeannine had broken off with Reg Prinz and left the film company; that she was unhappy with the Fort Erie establishment and frequently disappeared from it; and that she was drinking too much. Castine tisked his tongue and regarded his fiancée. Without looking up from her sauce bearnaise Jane declared crisply that she knew all that; but Jeannine was her own woman and must find her own way. She Jane had been rebuffed too often by both of her children to do more than wish them well and hope for the best.

Then she brightened. As for that movie: that’s what they were doing there! Shooting was already in progress farther up the Patuxent, it seemed, and tomorrow Prinz & Co. were going to “burn Washington” on Bloodsworth Island—but André must explain; she had no head for history.

The baron explained that before they’d learned (on their return from Bermuda) of “Bea Golden’s” falling out with Mr. Prinz, they’d agreed for a lark to ferry the film crew tomorrow from Benedict, sixteen miles upriver—where footage was being shot of the British invasion of August 1814—down the Patuxent and across the Bay to Bloodsworth Island, a 40-mile trip. There Prinz had built a set for the Burning of Washington, 155 years to the day from that regrettable event. They had expected, of course, that Jane’s daughter would be there; in any case her son would be, who with his radical friends (and, presumably, the director’s consent) was using the occasion to protest U.S. “involvement”—Castine’s tactful euphemism—in Southeast Asia.

Come with us, Toddy! Jane cried with imperious enthusiasm. Drew made her nervous with his childish politics; André could talk to him, but she’d feel better yet if I were there too; Drew had always respected me. I must come. She herself would miss the Sunday night fireworks—she had to get back to Cambridge and Cap’n Chick—but André or Buck (their combination captain, cook, and steward) would be happy to redeliver me to my boat on the Monday morning.

His pleasure, Castine assured me. Peach sherbert and Armagnac. “Heat lightning” to north of us, from where now stirred a rain-smelling breeze. I had a number of questions yet to work diplomatically into our talk—the baron’s relation to A. B. Cook, for instance; “Buffalo’s” mention of the F.B.I.; maybe even the matter of the blackmail photographs—but the evening was evidently over, and I was sleepy from the long day’s sail and the champagne. Jane politely invited me to use the guest stateroom, but—among other reasons for declining!—I wanted to be aboard
O.J.
if a squall blew through. As for the trip upriver, I’d let them know in the morning. My own Patuxent destination was only half a dozen miles up, where I had certain bases to touch. On the other hand, I was powerfully curious to see a bit more of my old love’s new lover, now that my heart was proven truly clear of her. We’d see.

Sunday dawned hot, hazy, and still. 70% chance of late-afternoon or evening thunderstorms. Knowing that the anchorage would soon be empty, I paid out plenty of scope, battened everything down, and made ready after all to go aboard
Baratarian.
But the baron, smiling cleanly, dinghied over with a different plan: they had radiotelephoned Mr. Prinz at Benedict after I left them, and mentioned my presence; he was particularly anxious to film
Baratarian
en route to “Barataria,” and though period detail was irrelevant to his production, it would please him too to film
Osborn Jones
coming downriver under sail. What’s more, they could use the extra deck space. I would of course be remunerated; and Jane—whom Castine understood to be “entirely familiar” with my vessel—had volunteered to serve as my crew. He himself, alas, could be of small assistance. We were to rendezvous off Benedict at noon, where Prinz was filming the Withdrawal scene.