Death in the Polka Dot Shoes (5 page)

“Vinnie,” Martha continued, “who was on that boat with him? I was just told it was the local captain. I keep thinking someone could have grabbed him.”

“Now Miss Martha,” Vinnie said, “these things happen. There's no sense crying over the water. It goes with the business.” Vinnie and the boys didn't like to talk about deaths on the water; it's too capricious. Always happens too fast. Some boy falls in. By the time you turn the boat around, he's gone. Just vanished below the water. It had never happened to Vinnie, but he almost went overboard many times, and he knew the feeling of losing your footing, or dropping a hand net overboard, or having the captain give his engine a quick thrust and the boat lurches out from under you. Happens nearly every trip out, and Vinnie didn't like to think about it.

“I just can't believe it,” Martha said quietly. Simy heard the conversation and knew she didn't want in, so she picked up a dish rag and wiped the counter, which meant leaning forward until her already stretched blue jeans were tight as tape across her fanny. Vinnie said nothing, but he watched. Simy scanned the growing crowd for trouble, as she watched every customer for every emotion from crying to fighting, and she set another beer in front of Martha.

I arrived at the Bayfront about eleven, and the bar was full, but the drive from Washington was slow and pleasant, with little traffic and the mid summer air filled with seagulls and the whine of bicycle tires. The Maryland bicycle club surrounded me at the last stop sign outside of Parkers. One of them was very pretty under her helmet, and I wished she would have turned her bare shoulders toward me, but she didn't. She just signaled permission to go in front when the intersection cleared. I wished she had been going to the Bayfront with me.

I was surprised to see my sister-in-law there. It seemed too soon after Jimmy's death for her to be going to bars, even if it was the Bay-front. I closed the door behind me and noticed the poster of seventeen women in bikinis and high heels, with their bare fannies staring right at me. Then I turned to join Martha, silently calculating what I would say to her. She was the one who had called me about Jimmy's death, and we had cried together over the phone, then again when I arrived at their home. That first day we stayed together till late into the night, talking about her future, and Mindy's future. We talked about the will, about the land, and about the insurance policy that would allow her a comfortable life, if she didn't blow it all. She was a little bitter about Jimmy leaving me the boat and half the land, but she and Jimmy had talked about it before, and she understood the boat had been my father's and should go from father to son. I had promised to take care of little Mindy, at least to see to her education, and generally we had worked things out.

Still, it was disconcerting to see her and Mindy at the bar. I thought about the psychologists who advocate the playing of Brahms lullabies around young children, even in the womb, to impart a feeling of warmth and security. I wondered what messages Mindy was soaking up today, surrounded by sentences without verbs and shouts of “Go Skins.” Maybe she would become a linebacker.

I took the only stool open, which was next to Martha, and ordered a beer. Although I had been to Parkers several times in recent years to visit my brother, I hadn't been to the Bayfront in a long time.

“I see they've added a trellis over the front door with fake ivy. Trying to make this place look like a country cottage.”

“No,” Martha said, “just trying to hide the drunks coming out of the john and still zipping up their pants.”

“Is that a problem, here?” I asked.

“Every day,” she said.

“Hello Vinnie,” I said, leaning forward to see around Martha. “I haven't seen you in a long time. I understand you're taking care of the
Martha Claire
.”

“Go out there this morning, turn the key, and she'll purr like a kitten,” Vinnie said. “Want to take her out?”

That's what I wanted but was afraid to admit. Driving to Parkers on a Sunday morning seemed like a weekend outing. I wanted to see the boat, but I hadn't really thought about taking her out, which would have involved calling Vinnie, getting the key, and if I had to go alone I might run the whole thing aground. I hadn't been in the Parkers channel for years, where several new marinas had emerged from the banks like marsh grass, and I hadn't run a single screw, thirty-foot, work boat in years. But now it had all come together by accident, so I said, “Yes, let's go.”

“After this beer,” Vinnie said.

I was looking at Vinnie, so I didn't see where the voice came from, but I heard someone shout, “Hey, you Jimmy's brother?”

The Bayfront Bar was really two long bars facing each other, with taps on both sides, and a barmaid who paced continually from one end to the other. The back end led into a storage room for kegs and cases of beer, and the front end was closed by a swinging door with a sizeable latch on the inside, suggesting that more than one drunk had tried to enter the runway without authorization. I noticed Simy and heard the guys call her by that name, but I had never focused on her before. She had coal black hair streaked with grey, giving it a tint the local car dealer might call “smoked salmon” silver, but it was vibrant, and somewhat unexpected on a woman who appeared to be in her early thirties. Too young for grey hair, even prematurely, but interesting in that she went for the mature look and not for the youth.

I looked across the bar at a large man wearing a red plaid shirt, a hat that said something about plumbing and heating, with loose ends of brown hair sticking below the cap like celery sticks. After a couple of beers on a Sunday morning, he was already loud, but my Parkers instinct said that after a couple more beers, this was the classic belligerent who would be threatening, even with a baby on the premises.

“Yes I am,” I said with a smile, hopefully disarming.

“I knew your brother, didn't I Martha,” the plumbing man said without waiting for an answer, “and he was a good man; a good waterman who wasn't afraid of hard work. And I'll tell you this, I can't believe he let that tuna get him.”

Oh God, I thought. How could he bring this up right in front of Martha?

“Let's talk about this later,” I ventured.

“I'll tell you what I think really happened,” he said.

I turned toward Martha and she stared straight and hard across the bar, a confused look on her face, unsure of what she heard or how much credence she should give it.

“Neddie,” she said quietly, “what's he mean by ‘what really happened?' Is there something I don't know?”

“No Martha,” I said reassuringly, “he's just blowing off. You know these guys. Every waterman thinks he's infallible.”

“I'm leaving,” she said, reaching over to untie the car seat, and tuck the blanket around Mindy. “Stop by the house if you get a chance.”

“Thanks. I will if we get back with the boat in one piece. If I don't see you, I'll call later,” knowing I probably wouldn't stop by the house.

Martha picked up the car seat with one arm and was out the door even before I could follow. It would have been polite to escort her across the street to her car, but she had never had an escort before and I was still paying the bill when she vanished. The plumbing man gave me a shrug, knowing his comment had probably upset her, but he didn't care. These kinds of people somehow mistake rudeness or insults for straight talk and honesty, thereby bestowing themselves with a mantle of satisfaction, even general helpfulness. In fact, they were just rude slobs who wanted attention. I ignored the comment, and turned to Vinnie.

“Vin,” I said, “I would like to take the boat out, not to crab, but just to see how she feels, to know the water again.”

“Will do, Captain,” Vinnie said. “Pay the lady and let's go.”

“Captain,” I repeated, realizing no one had ever called Neddie Shannon a captain before. It sounded strange, like he might be talking to someone else, or making fun of me, except that watermen never take the title of ‘Captain' lightly. It was Vinnie's way of recognizing that the Martha Claire was mine, and a boat is a proud thing, a way of life deserving of the title “Captain.” That's why watermen don't like to sell their boats to the “pleasure crafters” from Washington, as they're called, because the weekend owners don't respect the spirits that live in the timbers, the lives that are chronicled in every crank of the engine. When Vinnie called me Captain, he watched my eyes to see if I respected the title, just as he would watch me aboard the Martha Claire to see if I appreciated the chime of the boat and the way she cut through the quiet waters of Jenkins Creek. That's when the waterman is quiet, leaving the pier, when he feels a oneness with the Bay, a man in his role as ecological cog with the fish and the birds and the water. That's when the waterman's focus on the clouds and the weather is so intense that the roaring engine in the middle of the boat is but a whisper in his mind, because he is so much a part of the shimmering world of wind upon the water. I wanted to see if I would feel that power.

“Come on Vinnie,” I said, “let's go to work.”

The big John Deere diesel roared to life with the first turn of the switch. It belched a small cloud of carbon, coughed a couple of small explosions, then settled into a bottom-of-the-belly roar that smelled like power. These John Deeres would run forever, hour after grinding hour, whether through a heavy storm with the Bay's pounding chop, or across a Maryland tobacco field. It was comforting to know, of course, that Vinnie could pull the box top off the engine and repair about any external part in a matter of minutes. Vinnie eased the
Martha
out of her slip without ever touching the rub rail on the pilings, made the gentle turn into the channel, and said under his breath, “She's all yours Captain.”

I took the wheel without saying a word, unbuttoned my cotton shirt so the wind would luft my shirttail, and scanned the creek for the green and red channel markers. “Right on red returning” is the first rule of the road my dad ever taught me, meaning take the red marker on the starboard side of the boat when returning to port, and the reverse is true when leaving. That marks the channel, where the water is deepest. I eased Martha to the right side of the channel and headed for the red marker barely visible in the distance. I had stood in this very boat for hours at my dad's side, yet today it seemed like a new experience as I tried to recall all the lessons my dad had casually bestowed. The first step would be to cut this right and left business. It's port and starboard, I knew.

Vinnie stood with his arms folded under his chin and resting on the sill over the galley doorway, his eyes glued to the water, not in search of trouble, but because that was the magic: the mouth of the creek opening its arms to release us into the bay and the welcoming jacket of morning sun that stretched across the water, ready to warm the bow of the boat. That's the moment when the spirits of the Bay settle into your bones, and for a lifetime, draw you back to the water. I waited some time before easing the throttle forward. Then felt the thrill as the wake lifted and spread out behind us like water over a dam.

“Vinnie,” I said, “what was that plumber saying back at the bar?”

“You mean about Jimmy?”

“Yeah.”

Vin was reluctant. “There's been some talk Ned. I don't know what it means. A lot of the boys think it's strange about Jimmy. How it happened.”

“What do you mean, strange?”

“Well,” he began, “we just don't see how he'd get his arm caught in that line.”

“But, you know Vinnie,” I countered, “I read a couple of years ago where that happened to some guy over at Ocean City. Catching tuna. Reeled him in for hours. Had a gaff on the fish. The big son of a bitch opened his eyes, saw the boat, and lunged for the bottom of the sea, taking the guy with him. It has happened.”

“I know it has,” Vinnie agreed. “I guess some of the boys just wonder, that's all.”

“Well,” I said, “I wish they'd keep their ideas to themselves. Now Martha's all broken up about it.”

“I'm real sorry about that,” Vinnie said. And I knew he was.

“Listen Vinnie,” I said, “if you hear anything else, let me know. But could you pass it to the boys to cool it. We gotta help Martha get back on her feet.”

“I'll do it, Ned,” he said. “I surely will.”

I shoved the throttle forward, noticed the compass at 250 degrees, and figured maybe we could get lunch at Harrisons on Tilghman Island. The open water was easy to navigate. I watched for other boats while Vinnie kept an eye on the crab pot markers. He knew if we tangled the prop in one of the pot lines, he would be the one to go overboard, untangle or cut the line, and spend the rest of the day wet. My main concern was the shipping lane from the ocean up to Baltimore. I didn't want to get in the way of a tanker, probably Liberian, carrying oil or containers and rising about eight stories above the water.

“You know how long it takes a tanker going twenty knots to stop?” Vinnie asked.

“About l0 minutes,” I guessed.

“Six miles,” Vinnie said, “however long that is.”

I didn't see any tankers, just a few fishing boats and some sails gathering in the distance.

I let the sun and wind fall flush on my face, a breeze stronger than expected. Sometimes even when the sky is clear, the wind whips up the waves on the Bay and tosses the boat. The waves crest close in this situation, and it's easy for a wave to catch the bow and throw the boat. Just for a moment, you lose balance and move your left foot to the side for better balance. The wind today was starting to pick up. I couldn't see it, but I could feel it, and remembered the old waterman admonition that a good work boat should be at least 28 feet long, so the boat will reach from the crest of one wave to another. As a boy, I tried to reach two crests at once, but it never seemed to happen that way.