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

with a stone hearth and short chimney on the north end layered with cinder block. The logs were joined with pitch. Gaps in the roof spilled the late afternoon light. The door was gone. The spoor of racoon and fox lay on the floor.
    The cabin seemed smaller than it had been in his mind. And then he measured twelve steps from its front door due south toward the Dorchester marsh, and then six steps near due west toward the sun. Breaking a thick branch off one of the pines, he began to dig into the damp ground. He dug about a foot deep and began to widen the circle. After a while he struck something hard. He dug around it and knocked away the soil. It was the old steel box, sealed with a frozen combination padlock. Working it out of the earth, he set it aside and filled the hole with loose dirt and leaves. He then carried the box back to the beach and out into the river, hoisting it over the side of the boat. Once on board, he stashed the box in the cabin and got under way. The current ran swift in the cut between the island and the Eastern Shore.
    It was late afternoon when he pulled into his shortcut home, thechannel at Knapps Narrows that separated Tilghman from the broader delta above. He tied up at Morrison’s, went inside, and sat at the bar to order fried clams and beer. Afterward the waitress refilled his thermos with hot coffee. He went to pay his bill. Behind the register stood Buddy Morrison, the proprietor.
    â€œYou’re George Wakeman’s son, Clay.”
    â€œYessir.”
    â€œSorry about his disappearance, son. He was good company.”
    Clay thanked him and waited for his change.
    â€œHard on the family. For a good waterman to lose himself awash like that. And then not be found.”
    â€œYessir.”
    Morrison counted out the bills. “She takes some slow and some sudden, but she takes all who give themselves over, don’t she?”
    Clay nodded and accepted the money.
    â€œHe may wash up soon. Most do. But I am sorry, son. Truly am.”
    Outside, the air had stilled and the sky was clear. Clay breathed in deeply. Angling southeast, the bateau pierced the mirrored surface. Off the mouth of Broad Creek, he cut the motor and coasted into the current. He used the crowbar from the engine locker on the metal box. The lock held, but he was able to pry open the steel top, bending it back. Inside lay his father’s Navy Cross, wrapped in stained brown paper. There was a photograph also, of his father and him, and his mother, Sarah. Pappy was seated on a chair and Sarah was kneeling next to him, her arm around their young son. He turned it over. There was no inscription. In a brittle envelope there was money—five hundred dollars—and folded up behind the bills, the chart his father had made and showed him, years before. Pappy had marked the chart where he had found the wreck while tonging for oysters, where he’d pulled up the antique battle-ax. Clay remembered the books Pappy brought home from the library in Washington, convinced they proved the wreck was a Spanish frigate. Pappy had written its name and the date it was loston the chart. “The
Buena Ventura,
1688.” The ax had disappeared en route to New York for study by the Peabody Institute, an offense that Pappy had often recounted and never forgave. Still, Pappy had kept the chart, and when the mood struck him he would spread it across the dining room table, swearing to find and salvage the sunken ship. But the Bay had not provided for that.
    Clay folded the chart back up, returned all of the contents to the box, and stored it above the cabin berth. It wasn’t the chart he’d been after. That had been Pappy’s pipe dream, or one of them, though it was a pleasant enough fancy. Rather than the chart, rather than the money, he had hoped for a letter. From his father to him. Or even a note.

3
    â€œI’m thinking about going on the river,” Clay said. He sat holding his beer, looking back at