The Waterman: A Novel of the Chesapeake Bay (18 page)

“Thermos of coffee's in the cockpit. Help yourself.”

Byron found it and filled its upturned cap. He took a long drink.

Clay watched him. “You gotta get out of this rut. It's a dead end.”

Byron hiccuped. “Bein' sober's for those who can't handle liquor.”

Clay put the bateau into neutral and let her drift. He looked out at the Bay. Whitecaps were combing the mouth of the Choptank. The clouds in the eastern sky had been building and now looked like a vertical steel wall approaching in the distance.

“I don't like this weather, Byron.”

Clay pointed eastward. Byron brushed his hand away. “Looks like a summer front. Blow over tomorrow.”

“From the southeast? Not typical.”

Clay went into the cabin and turned on the shortwave. The reception was broken up by static. He turned to the Bay weather channel. Byron came over, and they listened.

“Chance of storm warnings for the evening and morning depending on the course of Agnes. Still two hundred miles southeast of Cape Hatteras. Expected to veer out to sea. Moving at ten miles per hour in a northerly direction.”

Clay turned off the radio. “I'm thinking we should pull the pots.”

Byron eyeballed him, frowning. “Pull the pots? Fuckin' no way, man. You just put the new ones down. We'll lose two days of crabs. Fuckin' break our asses too. That storm's not comin' this way. There're a ton of 'em every year and they all go out. We're fine, for Christ sakes. It'll bounce off the jet stream like a beach ball.”

“It's a hurricane, Byron. It could scatter the pots everywhere. Blow the buoys loose. Water could rise and snap the lines. We should pull.”

“Here, have some coffee.” Byron refilled the thermos cap and gave it to Clay. “Sober up. You heard the radio. Fuckin' storm's two hundred miles from Hatteras. Relax. Even if it were to come in this direction, it would take days to get here. Christ, Clay.”

Clay's expression was unchanged.

“Look, Clay,” Byron implored, “let's at least wait until tomorrow. The pots are fully baited and catching crabs faster'n a . . . a grunt on shore leave. If the storm gets closer, we'll consider pulling tomorrow. I'll help. Okay?”

Clay swept the sky with his eyes. “Tomorrow. I suppose. But I feel something coming.”

Byron nodded. “It'll be fine. Let's finish gettin' our crabs for today and head in. We can watch the weather on the TV.”

Clay shifted the throttle into gear. “I hope I'm wrong, Byron.” He accelerated in the direction of the remaining pots, watching the easterly wall of cloud, which seemed to be holding in place. It started in the upper sky and rose like a cliff face, disappearing into a gray darkness across and over the delta.

In fact, Hurricane Agnes veered westerly overnight, picked up speed and force, and by Wednesday morning was threatening to hit the North Carolina coast. She boasted winds of over 150 miles per hour. Clay had listened to the reports
all evening. He took a short nap after midnight but rose early to check the news. No change. Outside in the dark morning, the screen door was banging, and it had started to rain. He waited anxiously for a while and then decided to go after his pots. He dialed Laura-Dez's house, trying to find Byron, but got no answer. He called Mason's. Blackie answered the phone half asleep. Byron was not there either. Clay went outside several times and finally decided he wouldn't wait. It was just after four when he left for Pecks.

The morning was coal black, and the rain streamed through the headlights of his Chevrolet as he drove the back roads, bumping over the potholes in his hurry. As he traveled down the oyster shell drive, he noticed that cars were parked askew. The lights from the wharf were on, and the floodlights lit the dock and spotlighted several men working the boat lift. Jed Sparks was hollering to a man on a pleasure yacht to back out of the way. There were four or five boats, lights ablaze, backed up in a line in the creek, and general commotion everywhere.

Clay patted him on the shoulder. “Can you save me a spot for a lift about midday?” He had to speak loudly over the din.

Jed regarded him for a moment. “I dunno, Clay. I got forty-some pulls promised already. All good winter customers. Never make that, probably. I've turned down as many. Maybe the storm'll turn.”

Clay understood. It would take as long to pull his three-thousand-dollar boat as it would to pull the thirty-thousand-dollar yachts already in line, and there wasn't time enough for everyone. The yard was already crowded and the confusion increasing.

“We get hit direct, this wharf gonna look like a junkyard anyway.” Jed shrugged. “We only got so much cable.” He looked at the sky and the water. “The river'll take what she wants. You know that better'n most.” He eyed Clay. “Don't forget your daddy's diesel mooring.”

Clay patted him once again on the back. “Don't worry. But if you see Byron, tell him I'll be unloading pots at Boone's Landing. Tell him to get his pickup there.”

Jed grabbed his hand. “Careful out there. And good luck.”

“Yes, sir. To you too.” Clay turned and walked down to the
Miss Sarah
. He climbed aboard and felt her sturdiness. She started up on the first turn. He untied all of her lines from the pilings and stowed them aboard and eased out of the slip. He passed by the yachts, all backing and churning, trying to maintain their positions in the creek, and was out in the open river, aimed at the Benoni light, which marked the distant black horizon with the four-second beacon he knew so well.

In the streaming rain and with the steady drum of his engine, he worked his way out of the river, the wind sharp across his bow, the waves rough and rolling. He passed Benoni Point, and as the lighthouse receded behind him, he made out the first streaks of grayish light spearing the horizon, and underneath them gradually spread a haze of granite and brass. He angled south along the dim shoreline, found his pot lay, and began to work, pulling and then yanking open each pot, emptying the crabs into the river and the bait into the bait barrel. He wound the warp line and buoy around the pot, securing the buoy underneath the last coil, set the pot on the floor, and moved to the next. He worked with utmost concentration and was only peripherally aware of the awakening day. After he had coiled about fifteen pots, he stacked them and lashed them tight using a line running to the canopy top. Stepping down off the rail he slipped and caught himself on the stanchion. He realized he had almost gone over. The bateau was tossing more in the waves, which had been building with the wind. The color of the day was slate from river to sky, and the Bay was beginning to whip with whitecaps. He was soaked. He found a towel in the cabin and dried his face, then moved on to the next pot. He worked until the aft deck was stacked high and full.

He had not brought a watch, but he figured it was late morning when he turned the bow east for Boone's Landing. The wind, though uneven, was averaging about twenty-five knots, he figured, and out of the southeast. The rain had eased. Pointing east he advanced through the waves, which pitched against his starboard bow. He was carrying not quite half of his pots and believed he could complete another run if the weather held steady. He turned on the radio. The news was unchanged. Agnes was moving in. Hurricane warnings stretched from the Carolinas to New York. The storm was predicted to make landfall somewhere along the coast after dark.

Boone's Landing was a small, neglected public dock, next to a ramp used occasionally by the locals to launch boats from trailers. The dock was unprotected, jutting out from the northern shore of the Choptank, near the mouth of the Tred Avon. It was buckled from past ice floes. The water was deep enough for the
Miss Sarah,
though, and adjacent to the landing were some thick woods. As he approached, Clay looked for Byron's truck, but the dirt lot was empty. The waves were pounding the pilings and the shore, and Clay had to dock her with the propellers in reverse to counteract the violent thrusts of water. Once she was tied, he looked back out toward the Bay, which heaved in the braying wind. Unleashing the pots, he was able to carry four at a time onto the shore and into the thrashing woods, then partly up a bank to higher ground, where he found a place to stack and tie them, binding them together with their own warp lines and securing them to a stand of young poplars surrounded by other larger trees. He worked fast. His arms and legs ached from the effort, and his hands were raw. With each trip back to the boat, he felt the wind was strengthening, and he noticed the shearing of the tops of the whitecaps offshore.

When the last pots were set in the woods, he returned to the bateau and took her two Danforth anchors out of the forward
locker. He brought them and a third anchor, which he had taken from Pecks, to the bow and coiled the lines for each so they would be ready. Casting off, he backed away from the dock in full reverse throttle with the spray battering the stern. Turning west, he ran the wind and waves with a slow lurch and bucking of the bow. Salty foam whipped across the water. The rain had started again and flew laterally across and against the bateau. From underneath the cabin bunk he retrieved his rain slicker and put it on, then took a dry towel and wrapped it around his neck. The Choptank had turned dark, and visibility was minimal. A steady whine filled the amphitheater of the river, overlaying the crashing of the waves as they toppled over themselves. Rising over each crest, the bow dropped into the next trough and rose again, waves threatening from behind, the progress forward wet and slow. Seeking any changes in the storm's course he turned on the radio and, finding static, moved through the channels. As he did so, he could hear “Mayday, Mayday.”

Though it was breaking up, the message still came through over the static on the shortwave. It was the
Mood Indigo
. She was caught aground off Benoni Point, her mainsail shredded. Clay listened and cursed to himself. He needed to get his pots. He listened for a rescue response, perhaps from the marine police. Nothing. He heard “Mayday” again. He continued his forward course. Someone else would have to hear it and come to their aid. Then he heard it once more, a cry of fear and panic over the radio. Still there was no reply. He wavered. Then he turned the wheel and changed course moving northeast toward the foundering boat.

Rain and wind now came from out front, the wind having veered easterly. Angling off the waves, he was able to increase his speed as he broke across the channel rip of the river. Locking the wheel in position he went forward and gathered the dock lines from the bow. He attached them each to the other and tied one end to the aft port cleat. If she was stuck off Benoni Point, he'd
have to work the east wind without being pushed farther into the bar. Returning to the cabin he tried to peer into the slate fury of the storm: nothing but wind and pellets of hard rain slashing across his view, melding into a gray, cascading tumult only yards ahead of the bow. The tips of the waves were shearing. Pushing forward across the running storm tide, estimating his position, counteracting the side drag, he saw in his mind's eye the sailboat aground. A pealing bell off to his starboard told him he was nearing the lighthouse, though it was not visible through the rain. He angled farther to port. The shore seemed too close when he saw it, and then, like a ghost ship silhouetted in the storm, the sailboat appeared, just as he had seen it in his mind. She was jerking spasmodically between the waves and the river bottom, and her crew was huddled in the cockpit, though Brigman stood and started waving his arms when he saw the bateau. He wore green waders that came up to his chest, with suspenders running over his shoulders. Fall overboard, they'll fill with water and take him down, Clay thought. A good way to drown.

The boat was heeled over away from the wind, her mainsail shredded and snapping above the boom, which groaned with the wrenching of the keel against the bar, the storm jib bunched and tied at the bow. From the starboard winch, an anchor line went out, but it was not far enough out to allow any purchase. Clay came around to her leeward side, surveying the emerging catastrophe.

Brigman was shouting, “You can pull us off with your diesel. Take Amanda and Joanna aboard first. Then pull us off. Use your diesel, for God's sake.”

Clay knew she was deep into the bar, and to pull the keel through it would be impossible.

“What do you draw?” Clay shouted.

“Just throw me a line,” Brigman pleaded.

“Goddamn it, what do you draw?” Clay shouted back.

The other man had gotten up and stood next to Brigman. “Almost six feet,” Brigman shouted.

“Six feet,” the other one screamed.

A surge knocked Clay off balance. Grabbing the stanchion, he regained his footing, reversed his propeller, churned back, and then idled in closer. The rain, coming flat across the water, bit into his eyes. Clay cupped one hand to the side of his mouth, shielding his voice from the wind. “There ain't no time,” he hollered back, “so you do what I say, and maybe I can get you off.”

“Just get us out of here, will you?” Brigman pleaded. “Take us off.”

“Do what I say, and maybe I can clear you off the bar. If it doesn't work, you'll have to leave the boat. Understand?”

Both men motioned that they understood.

Clay cupped his hand to his mouth again. “Okay. Start your engine and leave her in neutral.”

Brigman bent over the controls of the lurching yacht. Clay heard the inboard motor turn over and start.

“You”—Clay pointed at the second man on board—“take that halyard that runs to the top of the mast and slip it on the end of your boat hook, and pass it over to me.” Clay had to point to the line and repeat his command. The man nodded, and Brigman helped the man attach the halyard to the boat hook.

Clay worked the bateau, which was pitching like a bronco, as close as he dared. Using his own boat hook, he managed to snag the halyard as Brigman extended it. He quickly tied a bowline to attach the mast's halyard to the tow line he had secured to the stern of the bateau.