The Tidewater Tales Read online

  THE

  TIDEWATER

  TALES

  A NOVEL

  JOHN BARTH

  G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

  New York

  Copyright © 1987 by John Barth

  All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof,

  may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Published by G. P. Putnam's Sons,

  200 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016

  Published simultaneously in Canada by

  General Publishing Co. Limited, Toronto

  The text of this book is set in Times Roman

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Barth, John.

  The Tidewater tales.

  I. Title.

  PS3552.A75T5 1987 813'.54 86-25486

  ISBN 0-399-13247-3

  Printed in the United States of America

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

  FOR SHELLY

  CONTENTS

  OUR STORY

  Katherine Sherritt Sagamore, 39 Years Old and 8½ Months Pregnant, Becalmed in Our Engineless Small Sailboat at the End of a Sticky June Chesapeake Afternoon amid Every Sign of Thunderstorms Approaching from Across the Bay, and Speaking As She Sometimes Does in Verse, Sets Her Husband a Task

  Peter Sagamore, 39 Years and 8½ Months Old, an Author with Certain Difficulties Though Certainly Not a Difficult Author, at the Tiller of Our Little Sloop Story, Responds in Prose

  Blam! Blooey!

  Set Me a Task!

  Nopoint Point

  Well!

  Do the Woman

  Now Do the Man

  Take Us Sailing

  B♭Overture

  B♭

  Do Old Hank There

  The Next Hour or So

  A Few Pages Back, Vis-à-vis Henry Sherritt's Grain-Land Speculations up in Kent County, We Used the Adjective Nostalgic

  Nostalgia

  Nostalgia

  Why Are We Telling Us All This?

  Done?

  Time for Lunch

  Lunch Maybe; Lunchtime No

  In Advanced as in Early Pregnancy, a Woman's Appetite May Be Capricious. But Why Did Peter Sagamore Eat No Lunch, Either in the Main House or in the First Guest Cottage?

  Ah So. Even the B♭ Then, As We Had Feared . . .

  Check the Intercom. Check the Intercom

  Katherine Sherritt Sagamore Considers Deeply for Some Moments, Then Speaks to That Same Distension

  Peter Sagamore Considers, Too

  Let's See Andrew Christopher "Chip" Sherritt

  On With the Story

  Having Mildly Distressed Her Father, Whom She Loves, with the Depth of Her Continuing Aversion to His Firstborn; Having Thrice in Small Ways Offended Her Mother, Whom Too She Loves—by Not Joining in the Family Luncheon, by Misbehaving on the Video Intercom and Obstructing Its Checking Out, and Now by Virtually Promising a No-Show at Irma's Deniston Alumnae Tea—and Having First Embarrassed and Then Disappointed Her Beloved Younger Brother, Katherine Sherritt Sagamore Settles Down to Enjoy Our Private Little Daysail

  Tell Me a Story

  A Story

  39

  Another Version of the Old Prison Joke

  Peter Sagamore Laughs a Lot for the First Time in Months, Really

  Well, We Do, Despite the Fact That Not Far Northwest of Where We Float Are the U.S. Naval Academy and the Naval Ship Research and Development Center and the National Security Agency’s Espionage City at Fort George G. Meade. And Not Far North of Us Are the Army’s Edgewood Arsenal for Chemical and Biological Weapons Development and the Aberdeen Ordnance Proving Ground. And Just Northeast of Us Is Dover Air Force Base with Its Heavy Hardware. And Not Far Southeast of Us Is the Wallops Island Rocket Research and Test Firing Center. And Not Far South of Us Are the Bloodsworth Island Naval Bombing Target, the Norfolk Navy Yard, Langley Air Force Base, and the Army’s Forts Eustis and Story. And Not Far South-Southwest of Us Are the Army’s Camp Peary and the CIA’s Isolation Training Camp and the Patuxent Naval Air Test Center and the Naval Electronics Testing Facility. And Just Southwest of Us Are the Naval Research Laboratory Firing Range and the Naval Surface Weapons Center and the A. P. Hill Army Reservation and the Blossom Point Proving Ground. And Not Far West-Southwest of Us Are the Indian Head Naval Ordnance Station and the Quantico Marine Reservation. And Just West of Us Are Andrews Air Force Base and the Army’s Fort Belvoir. And Not Far West-Northwest of Us Are the Headquarters of the CIA, the DIA, and the NRO, Not to Mention the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps—All More or Less Laws unto Themselves, Very Imperfectly Answerable Even to the Imperial Presidency Just Across the River or Down the Street, to Say Nothing of the U.S. Congress Ditto, Which Presidency However Has the Power and Authority to Mobilize the Fourscore Pentagon Facilities on Chesapeake Bay Alone and All Related Forces and with Those Forces Destroy All Human Together with Most Nonhuman Life on Earth. Nevertheless, Bucolic Tidewater Maryland Holds Its Breath on This Placid Presummer June Late Afternoon As If the Year Were 1880 or 1780 or 1680 Instead of 1980. We Do Not Believe That What We See Around Us Will Be Here in Any Agreeably Habitable State for the Children of the Children We Are About to Bring into This World. We Do Not Believe That the World We Value Will Much Survive Us. For That Matter, We Have No Tremendous Confidence That Our Children Will. Yet Nevertheless, Nevertheless the Fair Tred Avon Pauses in the Hazy Sunshine; Nothing Stirs; Story Slides Seaward Sidewise Now at Less than Half a Knot on the Glassy Tide; and Peter Sagamore, Who Has Not Told a Proper Tale for Longer Than We Like to Remember, Clears His Throat and Begins for His Wife’s Entertainment and His Possible Own Salvation “The Ordinary Point Delivery Story”

  THE TIDEWATER TALES, or, Whither the Wind Listeth, or, Our House's Increase: A Novel

  OUR STORIES:

  THE NEW CLOTHES HAVE NO EMPEROR

  DAY 0: NOPOINT POINT TO DUN COVE

  The New Clothes Have No Emperor

  We Reach Harris Creek in No Time

  Solipsisme à Deux

  Day Zero in Dun Cove

  Part of a Shorter Work

  The Point

  Shoal Point

  Shorter Point

  That's the End of Our Story?

  Uh-Oh

  DAY 1: DUN COVE TO DUN COVE

  Python and Chickens

  A Delicate Moment in Any Venture

  More on This Subject, but Not from the Same Source

  Apocalypse

  The Story of Our Life Is Not Our Life. It Is Our Story

  Back to Dun Cove, Okay?

  The Parable of the Python and the Chickens

  SEX EDUCATION: Play

  Act I: The Confluence

  Scene 1: Shooting the Tube

  Scene 2: At the Confluence

  Scene 3: Onward and Downward

  Once Upon a Time There Were Two Locked Caskets

  DAY 2: DUN COVE TO MADISON BAY

  The Container and the Thing Contained

  Yes!

  Huck Finn on the Honga, Part One

  The Unfinished Story of Penelope's Unfinished Web

  The Long True Story of Odysseus's Short Last Voyage

  The End of That Story

  DAY 3: MADISON BAY TO RHODE RIVER

  The End of That Story

  Huck Finn on the Honga, Part Two, or, the Mark Twain

  All This While We've Been Sailing, Sailing

  Things We Not Only Never Saw Before in Our Peaceful Chesapeake, But Hope Never to See Again Ever Anywhere

  The Doomsday Factor

  The Doomsday Factor

  The Doomsday Factor, or, At Last: A Final Reason for Peter Sagamore's Late Incre
asing Silence

  The Doomsday Factor

  Yes

  Yeah

  DAY 4: RHODE RIVER TO SEVERN RIVER

  The Forest-Green Recrayoning of Mrs. Porter Baldwin, Jr.

  The Story of Peter Sagamore's Meeting Himself Forty Years Later Seventeen Years Since

  Yeah, Well

  Over Tournedos Rossini with Okay Pate, Katherine Sherritt Sagamore Explains What We're Doing Here

  Whether Herpes Simplex Can Affect the Brain

  DAY 5: LAY DAY, ANNAPOLIS

  The Mysterious Library Book

  The Message Light Is On

  Bookmarks

  Chesapeake & Potomac

  Let's Get Going on This Lay Day of Ours

  Gay May

  This Is Our Story

  Peter Sagamore in the Cave of Montesinos

  I Want Everything Explained Right Now

  Here, Reader, Is What This Woman Is in Our Story For

  Our New Friend Carla B Silver Fires Up a Final Downwind Shipboard Cigarillo, Reads Our Minds, Makes a Speech, Utters Prophecy

  DAY 6: SEVERN RIVER TO CHESTER RIVER

  Get Us out of Here

  Nope

  Open the Damn Thing

  Act II: Downstream

  Scene 1: The Swimmer

  Scene 2: May Fuses

  This Time We're Going to Back Up and Narrate Kath

  Hello There, Story

  Ready for Another?

  DAY 7: CHESTER RIVER TO WYE ISLAND

  The Story of Those Seven Several Dwarves or Nine

  Pass Me That Boina

  The Story of This Old Hat

  Shit: There Goes My Story

  A Story Is Not a Child

  Time to Pass the Hat

  Would You Mind Winding Up This Story?

  The Opinion of Us Sagamores

  The End Whereto One Is Fetched Forth into the Parlous World

  Dr. Sagamore Prescribes

  What Peter Knows

  Women

  Bomb in Attaché Case

  The Parable of the Airplane with Twin Bombs on It

  OUR STORIES:

  THE CLOTHES' NEW EMPEROR

  DAY 8: WYE I.

  A Whole New Ball Game

  It Begins Serenely Enough

  The Point of Frank Talbott's Parable of That Airplane et Cetera

  Operation BONAPARTE?

  The Mystery of the Brandy Roses

  Kepone and Kepone

  Shit Approaches Fan

  Hits

  Splat

  May Andrew "Chip" Sherritt Please Say Something?

  What We've Done Is What We'll Do

  DAY 9: WYE I.

  What Chip Sherritt Told Peter Sagamore Yesterday

  A Pretty-Good CIA Story

  Part One of a Possible Three-Part Don Quixote Story

  What Pregnant-Fancied, Guilty-Conscienced Peter Sagamore Did with the Rest of Day 9

  What Did Katherine Sherritt Sagamore Do While Her Estranged Husband Was Doing All of the Above?

  DAY 10: WYE I.

  Part Two of That Possible Three-Part Don Quixote Story

  It's Your Future Calling

  Push! Push! Push!

  Beep

  Okay

  The Key to the Treasure

  DAYS 11 & 12: WYE TO SASSAFRAS

  The Plot Thins

  The Town Queen of Swan Creek's Prints

  In Story's Logbook Table of Contents for This Novel, We Don't Even Award Separate-Chapter Status to Day 12, Though Before It's Done We Hear at Least Two Not-Bad Tidewater Tales

  What Is Carla B Silver Doing in Still Pond Creek?

  I'll Go First

  ¡No No No!

  Part of Part Three of That Possible Three-Part Don Quixote Story

  ¿Preguntas?

  Carla B Silver Stands Her Trick at the Narrative Helm

  The Story of Scheherazade's First Second Menstruation

  No Fair!

  Andrew "Chip" Sherritt Crunches the Numbers on Scheherazade

  Peter Sagamore Says Nothing

  DAY 13: WHY TO SASSAFRAS?

  Let's Emulate That Wise Old Bird

  Thank God It's Saturday

  Okay, Okay

  Scribble Scribble Scribble

  Sure

  Why to Sassafras?

  In the Galley of Reprise

  Spectacles Testicles Wallet and Watch

  DAY 14: ORDINARY POINT

  All Hands Dream

  WYDIWYD Begun: The Unfinished Tellalong Story of Scheherazade's Unfinished Story, as Put Together Last Night by the Seven Women in Our Raft, as Recorded This Morning by Peter Sagamore in the Log of Story

  Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

  WYDIWYD Continued: TKTTTITT, or, A Month of Mondays

  WYDIWYD Unconcluded: WYDIWYD

  Prisoners of Dramaturgy, or, Scheherazade's Unfinished Story Unfinished

  Now It's Tomorrow: Today

  Buen Viaje

  Sex Ed

  Act III: The Cove, or, Sex Education

  Summer Afternoon Cellardoor Theophany B♭

  Anchors Aweigh!

  THE ENDING

  Scheherazade Tucks Us All In

  That's It?

  On With the Poem!

  THE TIDEWATER TALES: A Novel

  OUR STORY

  KATHERINE SHERRITT SAGAMORE, 39 YEARS OLD

  AND 8½ MONTHS PREGNANT,

  BECALMED IN OUR ENGINELESS SMALL SAILBOAT

  AT THE END OF A STICKY JUNE CHESAPEAKE AFTERNOON

  AMID EVERY SIGN OF THUNDERSTORMS APPROACHING

  FROM ACROSS THE BAY,

  AND SPEAKING AS SHE SOMETIMES DOES IN VERSE,

  SETS HER HUSBAND A TASK.

  Tell me a story of women and men

  Like us: like us in love for ten

  Years, lovers for seven, spouses

  Two, or two point five. Their House’s

  Increase is the tale I wish you’d tell.

  Why did that perfectly happy pair,

  Like us, decide this late to bear

  A child? Why toil so to conceive

  One (or more), when they both believe

  The world’s aboard a handbasket bound for Hell?

  Well?

  Sentimentality, was it? A yen

  Like ours to be one person, blend

  Their flesh forever, so to speak—

  Although the world could end next week

  And that dear incarnation be H-bomb-fried?

  Maybe they thought that by joining their

  (Like our) so different genes—her

  Blueblooded, his bluecollared—they’d make

  A blue-eyed Wunderkind who’d take

  The end of civilization in his/her stride?

  What pride!

  Or maybe they weren’t thinking at all,

  But (unlike us) obeyed the call

  Of blind instinct and half-blind custom:

  “Reproduce your kind, and trust them

  To fortune’s winds and tides, life’s warmth and frost!”

  Perhaps they considered all the above

  (Like us, exactly)—instinct, love,

  The world’s decline from bad to worse

  In more respects than the reverse—

  And decided to pay, but not to count, the cost.

  Fingers crossed.

  Well:

  Tell me their story as if it weren’t ours,

  But like ours enough so that the Powers

  That drive and steer good stories might

  Fetch them beyond our present plight

  and navigate the tale itself to an ending more rich and strange than everyday realism ordinarily permits; a bottom line that will make art if not sense out of the predicament your sperm and my egg, with a lot of help from their producers, have got us into; in short, yet
another rhyme as it were for cost to end this poem with, even if we have to abandon verse for prose or prose for verse to reach it: a rhyme less discouraging, more pregnant so to speak with hope, than lost.

  Okay?

  PETER SAGAMORE, 39 YEARS AND 8½ MONTHS OLD,

  AN AUTHOR WITH CERTAIN DIFFICULTIES

  THOUGH CERTAINLY NOT A DIFFICULT AUTHOR,

  AT THE TILLER OF OUR LITTLE SLOOP STORY,

  RESPONDS IN PROSE.

  Blam. Blooey.

  Katherine Sherritt begs his pardon?

  BLAM! BLOOEY!

  Twin thunderstorms struck Chesapeake Bay at about the same hour two weeks apart in the last spring and summer of the eighth decade of the twentieth century of the Christian era and bracketed our story like artillery zeroing in.

  The first storm—Blam!—was born to a sultry low-pressure cell that squatted over Maryland all Sunday, June 15, 1980, last weekend before the solstice. At afternoon’s end she let go a squall below Baltimore that spun across the Bay like an uncorked genie and blammed the middle Eastern Shore of Maryland, in particular the lower Miles and upper Tred Avon rivers. Wondrous, thunderous, frightening lightning! Hail and mini-twisters: trees downed, roofs unroofed, doors unhinged, windows blown . . . and our story begun.

  The second storm—Blooey!—off sprang from a Canadian high that swept pregnant across the upper Mississippi and the Great Lakes on Sunday, June 29, 1980, first weekend after the solstice. Astraddle the Appalachian ridge she delivered a passel of young roughnecks, the roughest of whom tore into Druid Hill Park and the Baltimore Zoo at happy hour EDST, knocked down with a ninety-knot punch a big traveling crane at the Dundalk Marine Terminal, lost steam drowning two hubristic sportfishermen in small boats out on the Bay, and blooeyed the upper Shore at seventy knots plus before cooling off in the cornfields of Kent County. Near the old fishing village of Rock Hall, a big cruising sailboat in dry storage named Buy, Baby, owned by a Philadelphia investment counselor, was blown right out of its cradle. Farther up the peninsula, behind Ordinary Point on the Sassafras, some yachts dragged anchor, some others didn’t . . . and our story came ‘round on itself.