John Barth - Letters

Profoundly to be wished, said I. Very discreetly, then, so as not to spoil our new rapport, I brought up the names of his prospective stepfather and of Andrew Cook; also the nature of his own involvement in Reg Prinz’s film. On the former matter Drew would say nothing except that while he did not believe me to be a C.I.A. or F.B.I: informer, I had gravely thwarted him once before, in the matter of the Choptank River Bridge, and he was determined not to be thus thwarted again (which was, it seemed to me, saying a great deal!). As for the film: suffice it to say that the media’s tactic of co-opting the revolution was, so to speak, a coaxial business: they in turn could be co-opted, subverted without their even knowing it. The hearts and minds of the American middle class, especially the kids’, could be won in neighborhood movie theaters and on national networks, under the sponsorship of Anacin and Geritol…

He began to say more, caught himself up with a grim smile, said he’d had too much to drink, emptied his glass, and bid me good night.

A big southwesterly next morning kept the sky cloudy, but as the P.O.P. was favorable, we made a fast beam reach of the 24 miles down and across the Bay to Bloodsworth Island. Drew loved the ride; he smoked cigars (properly mindful of sparks against the Dacron sails) and railed animatedly against those “fingerprints of the Hand of Death” on our navigation chart (1224): Targets. Prohibited Area. Unexploded Bombs: Keep Clear. Navy Maintained. Prohibited. Restricted. He chuckled at the radio news report that exhumation of Mary Jo Kopechne’s body was regarded as doubtful; the Pentagon’s projection of an all-volunteer army for Viet Nam escalated his chuckle to a derisive laugh. For all his contempt of such capitalist toys as cruising sailboats, he handled the skipjack deftly while I made lunch. By one o’clock we were in the straits between lower Dorchester County and Bloodsworth Island — flat, featureless marshes both — whence Drew threaded us expertly through an unlikely-looking maze of stakes marking a channel not given on the chart, to a pier in a cove on the island’s north shore (Barataria Bight, Drew called it). He rounded up smartly alongside Castine’s Baratarian at the ample dock, where we made fast with spring lines and fenders.

Much activity was afoot: a brace of Drew’s shaggy cohorts caught our heaving lines admiringly while he gave the raised-fist salute; others moved about the white clapboard lodge and buildings nearby. Skiffs and motor launches — some painted battleship gray and manned by uniformed navy people — buzzed about; a big navy helicopter blasted low over us (fortunately all sails were down) and inland, toward where from some miles out we’d seen smoke rising; official-looking folk in summer suits and navy suntans came from the lodge to meet us, filmed by one of Prinz’s assistants. No sign of Jane, the baron, or Marshyhope’s new Distinguished Visiting Lecturer in English, who owns the spread. The Stars and Stripes flapped northeastwards from a pole in the sandy dooryard.

Navy Intelligence and F.B.I., Drew’s friends alerted us cheerfully, adding that we’d missed some crazy footage the night before.

I don’t know yet exactly what-all happened, Dad; but it seems that the half-ad libitum “Burning of Washington,” filmed on the Sunday night, had got out of hand. Lady Amherst and her friend Ambrose Mensch were involved — both returned now to the mainland, as were Jane and Baron Castine before the whole thing started. The scenario had involved some manner of personal combat, allegorical I presume, between Mensch and Reg Prinz (also now flown, leaving his assistants in charge of the filming), each of whom had, in the event, done physical injury to the other. As the thunderstorms moved in after dark, the sets representing the Capitol and the President’s House had been fired, coincident by design with a night aerial gunnery exercise on nearby Pone Island (regarded as contiguous with Bloodsworth and maintained by the navy as a target area). While nature’s fireworks combined with the navy’s and Reg Prinz’s, the Bernstein girl had run off the set into the marshes, toward the Prohibited Area, pursued by (of all people, and don’t ask me why he was there) Jerome Bonaparte Bray, the madman of Lily Dale, cast aptly in the role of “Napoleon escaped from Elba”! In time Ms. Bernstein was retrieved, in shock but apparently unmolested, on the margin of an Absolutely Prohibited Zone sown with unexploded naval ordnance. She’d been fetched back to the lodge, where she remained under medical supervision — her distress augmented, this same Monday morning, by Prinz’s deserting her as he’d deserted Jeannine. Sic transit!

Bray, however, never had been found. It was feared he had strayed into the Target Area and lost his way; was possibly a casualty of that gunnery exercise: hence the massive navy presence at Barataria Lodge. After midnight, squally weather had suspended both the firing exercise and the search; the latter had been resumed at dawn, without result, and was just now about to be abandoned.

Drew’s people took for granted that the operation was mainly an exercise for the “Intelligence Types” to harass and scrutinize their activities: two young men had indeed been arrested as known draft evaders and one as a Marine Corps deserter, on warrants conveniently preprepared. I was impressed by Drew’s good-humored ease in conversation with these same “Intelligence Types”; neither intimidated nor provocative, he was altogether in command of himself. He had, clearly, turned some important corner in his life. A. B. Cook VI, on the other hand, protested indignantly that Mr. Bray had made his way safely out of the marsh, if he had ever been there; had appeared in Cook’s office in the lodge not two hours since to bid him good-bye, and was gone now back to the mainland with the rest. That the U.S. Navy was to its discredit harassing him, a man whose patriotism and conservatism were celebrated and unimpeachable; had been harassing him for years to surrender his title to Barataria, the last such private holding on the island.

Andrew Burlingame Cook VI: that florid fellow came down now from cottage to dock to greet us, protesting flamboyantly (but not, I thought, in very genuine outrage) as he came. He welcomed Drew and me with equal ebullience, regretting we’d missed yesterday’s entertainment and today’s luncheon. He cordially identified Drew to the Intelligence Types as a flaming commie they’d do better to bother with than himself; me as a misguided pinko liberal whose heart however was in the right place. Drew grinned around his cigar; the I.T.‘s were unmoved. I wondered. Now that I had seen Jane’s Baron Castine, Cook’s resemblance to him struck me as real but slight: one would neither guess them to be half siblings on that basis nor much question the allegation. Drew thanked me for the ride and excused himself to confer with “his people”; Cook expansively showed me about his property and the still-smoldering remains of the movie set (little more than a few charred “flats”), recounting in his fashion the events of the night before. Mosquitoes swarmed. Why he’d ever lent himself and his premises to such a cockeyed project, staffed by godless free-loving commie dope fiends, would be a mystery to him, Cook declared, were it not that he knew too well his penchant for theatricals. What’s more, he was a leading spirit of the Maryland 1812 Society. Therefore he had not only offered his property and his historical expertise to the filmmakers, but had been pleased to play the role of his own ancestor and namesake, Andrew Cook IV, a participant in the Battle of Bladensburg and a casualty of the 1814 assault on Baltimore. But the film was a farce, a travesty! Look what he had brought upon himself (he waved with a laugh at a passing helicopter, on its way back to the Patuxent Naval Air Station)! He would think twice before accepting their invitation to “do” the Fort McHenry scene in September!