The Waterman: A Novel of the Chesapeake Bay Read Online Free Page A

strengthened and was throwing spray over the bow. He stood in the open cockpit and could taste the salt, and after a time he rode the waves by instinct, knowing where he was. He followed the Choptank’s north shore across the mouth of Irish Creek and pushed south to clear Tilghman Island’s southernmost tip, Blackwalnut Point, feeling his aloneness on this great watery plain, which was his and belonged to him as he belonged to it. It had always been so, from his earliest memory, since he had first recognized it as a boy, taken by and surrendering to the miracle of such water and its unfathomable mystery. Blue and deep beyond imagining, it filled him with a familiar wonder, as he knew it must have filled those who had come before, who had suffered the blow and the churning, the whipping white and darkening browns, the ghosts of the watermen before him, the sailors and sea captains, knowing the calm as well, and the feasts of crab. And before them and after them—the single Susquehannareturning in his canoe, hugging the shore to avoid the tidal wash, his nets laden with shad and mano, and innocent of any knowledge of the end of his world that was to come. Clay drove the sharp bow of the workboat into the swells and thought of those of his father’s generation who had known the Chesapeake pure and pristine, and of those who had known it first, known it perfect when it had no taint to its beauty nor limit to its abundance.
    He rode the waves out into the Bay with no sense of time, immersing himself in the solitude. A squall blew by to the south, and after it passed, fields of mist lay over the water. Blanketed in the fog but still knowing where he was, he turned northeast and ran the tide up along the veiled shore. Just off the southern tip of Poplar Island the breeze freshened and the fog banks cleared, swirling away. The swells burst sharp against the bow. Flocks of black cormorants, startled at his approach, careened off the waves, and long-necked mergansers pitched over the shoreline against the moving sky. Far out in the shipping lane a single tug pushed a weighted barge northward toward Baltimore. He had long since eaten his biscuits and finished his thermos, and as he angled the boat—which his father had affectionately called the bateau—toward the shallow half-moon landing cut by the winds and tides along the northeast edge of the abandoned Poplar Island, what remained was the taste of the brine that had dried and caked against his face.
    The tide was running and near high, and he figured he could get close to shore before grounding the bateau. He had prepared a forward and stern anchor and had sufficient stern line to play out. He checked the depth with the anchor. When he hit four feet, he gunned the engine to increase his forward momentum, then cut the propeller. He dropped the stern anchor and let the line play out as he coasted toward the black bank. With the engine off, he could hear the egrets and wrens crying from the trees. Scraping sand, he dropped the bow anchor and tied the boat secure.
    He pulled the waders out of the cockpit and put them on. He dropped over the side and waded ashore to the island, thick with loblolly pine, vines, and undergrowth.
    His father had built a cabin on Poplar Island, and two duck blinds along its northeast shore. Pappy had hunted the island for years and used the cabin as a sanctuary. He had brought Clay along many times to share its perfect isolation with him. That was years before. But Clay remembered the promises his father had made to him, and, of course, the buried ammunition box. He knew that it would be there for him if the time ever came.
    He climbed the sandbank, which crumbled under his weight, and stepped into the soggy undergrowth. He walked between the knobby pines, avoiding the thick clumps of leafless thorn, and after fifty yards or so saw the ruined shack ahead. It was a crude, one-room shelter, built of logs cut on the island with a hand ax,