Free Water Lessons by Chadwick Wall Page A

half-regretted bringing the truck up a few weeks ago. He refused to drive it through any salty snow during the winter months.
    Jim started the old rebuilt hunter-green '58 Chevy. His granddaddy Scoresby had driven it very sparingly during his years as a TVA officer in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. Jim let it warm up for a few minutes.
    "Is the engine supposed to be this loud?" Maureen said as she turned and spotted the thick tongue of black smoke swirling from the pipe.
    As they drove onto Hanover and southward onto Atlantic toward I-93, Jim let rip a roguish cackle. "This baby is perhaps the only specimen of its breed for a few hundred miles, I bet," Jim said. "The rest rusted out long ago."
    As Jim progressed down the interstate toward Cape Cod, he cranked his window down. At ten miles per hour above the speed limit in the rightmost lane, vehicle after vehicle rode his rear bumper one after the next, then whipped around him. Some honked their horns. Every few minutes, a driver would extend a middle finger skyward in a profane salute.
    "Not to fret, James. They really love you," Maureen said with a wry smile. "Maybe they're furious because this antique here is such a gas guzzler."
    "This is ridiculous, Maureen, no matter which way you slice it. You know, this rudeness is a symptom of something larger. I can't understand—"
    "I know, James Ewell! This argument will pertain to the erosion of manners and the family structure in Boston, and will be peppered with various references to the Civil War. And how the city of Boston lost 'the moral high ground' it once enjoyed one hundred and forty years ago, and about how your region was actually not the only racist and racially segregated one in the last century. And let me guess, it may end by touching on the years it took to allow Jackie Robinson to play baseball in Boston. By the way, I don't know if New Orleans has always been renowned for its 'moral high ground'."
    "Well, sure. And especially not the part of New Orleans the tourists frequent, I agree," Jim said.
    "Oh, Jim," she winked at him, her arms folded across her chest. "Why don't you switch to your auxiliary road trip discussion on these Cape drives? You know, your back-up discussion of Squanto and King Phillip's War and the struggles between the Native Americans and the colonists in southern Massachusetts and Rhode Island, maybe touching on Robert Williams and Anne Hutchinson and some other figures."
    "You're a psychic!" Jim said. "You know me too well. What y'all have put me through! But then again what I've put you through!"
    He was pleased to see her nod and smile. My, she was so sarcastic. He hoped he could endure it. Was there disdain mixed in? Did Maureen truly value him? Jim threw his arm around her neck, pulled her to him, and kissed the side of her head.
    "This move, Jim, I just know will be so much better for you. I'm happy for you."
    And this move, Jim thought, was a strange one indeed. He was leaving the side of his girlfriend to work and live with her father. Jim was shocked she was so fine with the situation—and even first suggested it.

   
    CHAPTER TWELVE

    Having both agreed to reach Osterville as soon as possible that morning, Jim and Maureen took the direct route. Yet normally, Jim elected the scenic route on his drive to Cape Cod. How he loved that drive.  
    Last fall, Bryce had taken them in his Jeep on that route to the Wellfleet Oyster Festival. That scenic way would take him from Boston, through the footsteps of John Adams in Quincy, through Scituate and Duxbury, and then through picturesque Plymouth.
    There he could once again marvel at its famous rock and how small and insignificant it looked compared to how it had loomed in his mind as a schoolboy. He could pass the stately early eighteenth century homes, along tranquil Manomet Beach with its gently rolling dunes and gnarled crabapple trees, over the Sagamore Bridge, then through charming Sandwich.
    The route cut south,