John Barth - Letters

We returned to the lodge through a cleanup detail supervised by Drew, observed by the last contingent of Intelligence Types, and filmed by Prinz’s cameraman. Cook’s place was spacious, airy, simple, comfortable; I was invited to stay for dinner and the night. No hard feelings, he trusted, about our disagreement in the Marshyhope affair? Clearly he bore no grudges: witness his hospitality to the disrupters, whose shameful behavior on Commencement Day he nonetheless still deplored. With Lady Amherst and her friend Mensch, too, he had for his part made his peace: they’d spent last night as his guests in the caretaker’s cottage, where he hoped I’d oblige him by staying tonight. He was satisfied that “those lovebirds” had been properly disciplined for their misdemeanors, and was ready now to support their reinstatement to the faculty.

We sipped Canadian ale in his long screened porch and regarded the activity outside. I said I understood that Baron André Castine was his near relative: half brother, was it? So he likes to claim, Cook jovially replied: one wouldn’t guess it from our faces or our politics, eh? And the truth, alas, was buried with their parents. But again, he bore that chap no ill will — though he’d be relieved when he and his were gone from Barataria, and the navy stopped breathing down his neck!

Hm. Castine, then, was some sort of political radical? One of your high-society lefties, Cook affirmed: cast in the mold of FDR and Averell Harriman, but without their money — he winked — at least till his coming remarriage, eh?

I wondered aloud whether Jane Mack was aware of her fiancé’s politics. Cook laughed: his cousine was no fool; I might rest assured there was nothing about her groom-to-be that she did not know. Anyhow, added Drew (who here stepped casually out from the cottage living room, ale in hand), only such a crusted troglodyte as our host would call Roosevelt and Harriman radicals. Cook saluted with his glass: only such a card-carrying subverter of Old Glory as Harrison Mack’s misguided son would regard the Red Baron as a moderate liberal.

Such affability. Castine, then, I inquired, had not himself been present at all during the Burning of Washington? Cook winked again: the lucky fellow had seen his betrothed back to Cambridge instead; but he would return tonight or tomorrow, Cook devoutly hoped, to retrieve his yacht and begone to the upper Severn, where Drew’s mother was buying property in expectation of a favorable settlement of her late husband’s estate.

This last was an obvious but not ill-humored gibe; Drew merely saluted with his glass again. Where, I wondered, was my short-fused young adversary of old? What was all this amiable ecumenicism? I asked Drew his immediate plans. He’d be staying there at least until Castine returned, he supposed; they had “wrap-up” shots and other business to finish (Monkey business, Cook snorted) before moving on to “the home of the Home of the Brave” for more footage on Defenders Day, Sept. 12, anniversary of the British attack on Baltimore. The Tidewater Foundation, after all, had a large investment in the film; he felt a responsibility to monitor the expenditure of his father’s money. Hah, said Cook. And your mother knows all about these things? I pressed. Drew shrugged: Mack Enterprises had its own Intelligence Types, whose competence however he could not vouch for.

I did in fact stay for dinner — a cold buffet for the whole remaining company, served by Cook’s cook and caretaker — and the night, hoping I’d see Castine again and ask him a few polite questions. The caretaker’s cottage included a guest apartment — a clean and welcomely air-conditioned respite from O.J. — where but for brief confused dreams of the “Red Baron” and Jeannine, I slept more soundly than one ever does, or should, single-handed on a sailboat.

And next morning (Tuesday 8/26, a blazing, airless, equatorial day) I lingered about the premises till near noon, making a long business out of odd-job maintenance on the boat, in hopes of remeeting the owner of Baratarian. Who, however, did not appear. The man makes his own timetables, Drew said, and he Drew makes his. How about mine?

It was a plain, albeit cordial, invitation to leave; and indeed it was time I got on with, back to, done with my much-disrupted voyage de bon voyage. He and Cook, still chaffing each other, bid me farewell — Drew’s handshake was solid and serious, his expression gratified as mine by our new, not altogether clear rapprochement — and aided my undocking, calling advice about shoals and bush markers as I swung clear of Castine’s trawler and powered gingerly out. I waved good-bye to the people on the wharf, to the lodge, the limp unmoving flag, Bloodsworth Island generally and Drew Mack in particular — but began to suspect already that my quietus might have to be postponed till I’d seen that young man again (perhaps at Fort McHenry?) and I learned What Was Going On.

I had meant to bid adieu to certain tributaries of the Potomac — St. Inigoes on the St. Mary, for instance, near where white Marylanders first landed — but I had digressed too long and too far with the heirs of Harrison Mack. Through binoculars I could just make out, as I entered the Bay, Point No Point Lighthouse, ten miles to west-southwestward, and I felt another proper pang, not unmixed with exhilaration, as I turned northwest instead, back up the Chesapeake, toward home. Goodbye, Point No Point, fit title for the story of my life. Good-bye to all things south of Bloodsworth: I shall not pass your way again.

No breeze but what came under the awning from our headway. Trolling a Hopkins Spoon for bluefish (I caught only one; we were moving too fast), I motored all day through glass-calm water, past Hoopers, Barren, and Taylors islands, 30 miles up the Bay and ten more into the Little Choptank to Church Creek, in whose mouth I anchored at sundown. There was neither light nor water enough to go the mile and a half farther to my destination, near the creek’s head; anyhow there were fewer bugs and more air where I was. Perspiring through my insect repellent every hour or so, I spent the evening trying vainly to draw the connections that had teased me through the day’s navigation, and found myself at bedtime with no more than a list of names— Harrison Jane Castine Cook Drew Jeannine Bray —between which I made less meaningful associations than between the dinner entries in my log: cold artichoke broiled bluefish French bread rosé.

After breakfast I dinghied up to Old Trinity Churchyard and said good-bye to that tranquil place (maintained in part by foundation funds) which presently my remains shall say hello to. I will not join the family, Dad, in Plot #1. If I cannot manage to recycle my body to the crabs and fishes on which it has so long and gratefully fed, it will go into this venerable, quiet ground, so near their haunts that I heard the minnows plashing from my grave.

I had dreamed again that night. Through the day — an easy glide on prevailing southerlies out of the Little, and into the Great, Choptank, my river — I mused upon those dreams. They had been local geographical teasers, inspired no doubt by Point No Point. That name figured in them, as did Ragged Point, Cooks Point, Todds Point, which-all I left to starboard during the day: my subconscious is as unsubtle as our Author. There now lay home, so close I could scan the property with binoculars; but I had two bases more to touch, and planned anyhow to end my cruise and the week in Cambridge, with a stop at the office, before coming full circle to Todds Point. The mild breeze died in midriver, at slack tide, just off the Choptank Light. I lowered sail, kicked the engine on, and chugged up the wealthy Tred Avon past Oxford to my parking place: snug and unspoiled Martin Cove, not named on Chart 551.