Free The Waterman: A Novel of the Chesapeake Bay by Tim Junkin

himself and passed it back.
    â€œBay air might help some with that.”
    â€œI think maybe you’ve gotten too much air.”
    Clay kicked a stone off the porch. “We’d make good partners.”
    â€œYou got a college education. Think with all that learning you’d know enough not to throw it away.”
    â€œI want to be outdoors. I don’t like working inside.”
    Byron took another drink. “Yeah, I know.”
    â€œWhat do you got to lose?” Clay asked. “Could be like when we were kids.”
    Byron raised the whiskey bottle and held it up to the light. “Not much left. There or here, right now.”
    â€œWell?”
    â€œI ain’t really right, now, Clay. And I ain’t sure I want to be. I just don’t know.”
    â€œWell, will you think on it?”
    Byron gulped down the remaining whiskey. “Sure,” he said. “Course I will. I’ll think on it. But don’t hold your breath, now.”
    Clay, satisfied, turned to watch the snow geese swirling over the amber land. White petals free-falling, awhirl in a vortex.

7
    The Bay-built workboat rested on crosses of seasoned hardwood, having been hoisted and wheeled in the day before. The barn was womblike, dark, warmed by a torpedo space heater that glowed red-hot in the shadows. Shrouds of tobacco leaves hung drying from the rafters above, emitting a sweet, torpid aroma that mixed with the creosote and varnish used on the boats, the smells of river decay, brine, flesh, urine, and sweat. The power spray had knocked loose the bone and barnacle fragments grafted to the bateau’s hull, along with the slime and matted cockle hair. The lead copper underpaint was gone in places. Even the color of the wood had been leached away by time and salt, leaving scoured streaks smooth as oil.
    Clay had been sanding since morning. He put his hand on the transom of the bateau and began to walk her line. Built on Tilghman Island for his father when Clay was a boy, she was solid mahogany, ran thirty-six feet to her bow, and needed three feet of water for her keel and single propeller to clear bottom. Driven by an oversize 280-horsepower GM gas engine set just aft of center and enclosed in a large engine box, she had speed greater thanmost workboats of her size, the majority of which used diesel power. A canopy top running from midship forward offered ample headroom above the cockpit, which stepped down into the fully enclosed bow cabin, with icebox, bunk, and marine toilet and sink. A marine radio, depth finder, and compass were set in the cabin, above the wheel. The boat could be run from inside the cabin or from the open cockpit at midship, where a full set of engine controls and a tiller post were fixed to the port side, adjacent to the engine box. For one man to run pots or a trotline by himself, he had to be able to maneuver the boat from midship, where he dipped the crabs or pulled the pots.
    He walked outside and sat dangling his legs from the wharf his father had once owned and lost. Shafts of sunlight streamed through the porous clouds, creating halos that shimmered across the cold, clear skin of the river. The watery breeze cooled his face, sweaty from his work. He shaded his eyes from the wind and the shifting light.
    He tried to remember Paula Firth and how she looked in his car that night, so smooth and bare. It was Friday. He had finally reached her, and she had told him to meet her later at a party down Wye Neck. He realized he hardly knew her and wondered where they would go from where they had been.
    Another day of sanding, he figured, and he could begin to patch and paint the bottom. Then he would work on the sides and rails. He planned to spend some time on Saturday in Cambridge looking for used pots and a bait supplier. He figured he could bend a few pots himself as well. He also had to find a hydraulic pot puller and attach it to his port rail. That would cost him and would be done last,