Martha Claire Shannon’s name appeared on the bow of two boats in Jenkins Creek, one a thirty-foot bay-built docked at the Bayfront’s pier, and the other a fourteen-foot Boston Whaler that my brother kept on a trailer at this home. One was his profession; one for recreation. He bought the smaller boat and twenty horse motor when his daughter was born, with the distant dream of taking her fishing near the marshes of the Bay, floating aimlessly on a warm summer day and showing her the patterns of life on the water. He knew she would enjoy seeing the long legged blue herons, with their necks stretched tight as a clothesline, skim across the water, then raise their heads and bring down their legs just like a jet airplane preparing to land. Already, at age one, the little girl would cry in the night when she heard the fractious, angry cry of the heron, such an ugly foghorn of a sound to come from such an elegant bird. And Jimmy wanted to show her how the herons came to the marsh at low tide, pranced around in the mud with such satisfaction that they finally drew that long neck down into their feathers, and in a final act of hauteur, raised one leg into their wheel well, and went to sleep, so motionless that they might be mistaken for a Florida yard sculpture. He also wanted to show her how natural enemies like the Osprey, growing in numbers in their big nests on the man-made channel markers, would attack the heron for no apparent reason, forcing them out of the sky in violent battles until the heron could find refuge in the tall marsh grass. None of that would happen now.
My brother had married Martha just two years ago, but they had known each other for several years. She had worked at the Bayfront when he started crabbing on his own. But it took eight years for the spark to catch, and then they wondered how they could have ignored each other for so long. Jimmy always figured it was because his mother was also named Martha, so he avoided her, at least subconsciously. But names seem to have a special niche in the culture of Parkers. Every waterman has a nickname, like Muskogee or Tank or Pirate, that usually comes from some experience on the water. The wives’ names are often on their husbands boats, sometimes with middle names never used in other circumstances. And waitresses seem to call everyone Honey, or Sweetie, or Darling.
The anomaly for Jimmy was that his wife and mother had the same first name, but different middle names. However, since he inherited his Dad’s boat, and since everyone knows that changing a boat’s name is bad luck, he simply kept the Martha Claire on the boat and everyone assumed that meant his wife’s middle name was Claire. It was complicated, but in the end nothing changed.
Now Martha was alone again, and seeking comfort where she had always found it, the Bayfront on a Sunday morning. The Bayfront Inn exists in every waterfront fishing community between South Carolina and Maine. It’s always dark and carries the same worn and splintered façade as the fishing boats. Both the bar and the boats are painted every year, never with all the old paint scraped off, so the surface is thick with coats that build up on door frames and window ledges. And the first day after painting, heavy rubber boots leave sliding marks on the floor, and grease from the diesel engines leaves dark smudges around the door handle. It’s only a matter of weeks before the spiders and dust mites have added their special touch of décor. And that’s when the watermen feel the most comfortable. The Bayfront wraps her smells of stale beer and eggs around you like a bomber jacket with a fur lining. It’s warm and comforting like a dear friend that has known you sick or drunk or foolish and still welcomes your presence.
Martha carried her Irish daughter Mindy in a plastic car seat into the Bayfront bar, set her on a round stool with red cover, wedged the seat in some practiced fashion against the bar, and tied it to a brass rail just under the ledge. It seemed unlikely Mindy would fall from that perch, yet most of the fishermen at the bar left an open seat between themselves and the child, a margin of safety as it were.
Vinnie Tupelo, the first mate on my brother’s boat, moved through the outside door to the bar, let his eyes adjust to the dim, and took the open stool beside the sleeping Mindy. Vinnie had been with my brother for six years, and now would have to find another boat unless I picked him up, which I probably would. He had been with the Marine police for 20 years and had arrested every waterman on the Bay at least once for violating one of the many fishing regulations. Vinnie was a very optimistic fellow for a policeman, and he used to brag that in twenty years of issuing tickets for violations, he seldom made arrests or got a conviction. The reason, of course, was that local judges around the Bay would seldom find a waterman guilty of any water-related infraction. The judges figured life on the water was tough enough, and a day of fishing lost to a court appearance was punishment enough. Besides, they were neighbors and friends. It’s one of the few breaks watermen get in their dealings with the government. Vinnie came to appreciate that fact, played his role in the drama, and after twenty years he joined the opposition. He became a first mate. Plus he knew that the old days of casual justice were dwindling and law enforcement wasn’t so much fun.
“Hi Vin,” Martha said, reaching across her daughter to tuck in her blanket so Vinnie wouldn’t accidentally pull the whole thing off the stool.
“Hello Miss Martha,” Vinnie said in his usual way. “Haven’t seen you since the service. Real nice.”
“Thanks Vin,” she replied. They both took a drink of their tomato beer, the only concession anyone made to breakfast. Martha hadn’t been a regular at the bar since she quit working at the Bayfront, but she was the wife of a waterman, and one who kept his boat at the Bay-front, so she was known to everyone. As the bar started to fill up, the boys filed by Martha, expressed their regrets, often with just the word, “Sorry,” then took a stool.
Vinnie decided to move the conversation away from sadness by commenting on the Redskins, the Washington football team that was the real reason for the Bayfront’s fast gathering crowd. It paid to arrive early on Sunday if you wanted a bar stool for the game at one o’clock. There would be standing room only by game time, which meant tradesmen and watermen three deep around the bar, a sound level equivalent to a diesel engine at daybreak, with people trying to reach between each other to pick up beers or shout orders to Simy, who was tending bar. It was important to be “on stool” by eleven o’clock.
“We may need another new coach,” Vinnie said, looking at Simy as she walked to the back of the bar. “The Skins can’t gut it up. They choke.” No one answered, mainly because the other guys at the bar were reading the sports page of the Sunday Post, and hadn’t quite assimilated the prevailing wisdom of the day.
“Vinnie,” Martha said, “I never really knew how Jimmy put that fishing trip together. Do you know?”
“No mam,” Vinnie said, shaking a pinch of salt into his beer. “I heard his talk about it, but I didn’t hear that. He was real excited about going, though.” Vinnie was still wearing his baseball cap with the logo for St. Mary’s Seafood on the front. Caps were a part of the uniform, mainly because they were always free. As Vinnie says, nobody in his right mind buys a cap anymore. And it gives you a little sun protection. Even so, caps always fall off when you’re working the crab pots or the trotline, so it’s best not to wear one at all. Hats with brims would be better protection from the reflections off the water, but you can’t keep them on at all. Just the speed of the boat will blow them off. But if you walk in the Bayfront restaurant or bar at lunch time, every man in the place has his cap on, and no two will have the same logo. If you ask someone to remove a hat, well, Vinnie never heard of that.
“Vinnie,” Martha continued, “who was on that boat with him? I was just told it was the local captain. I keep thinking someone could have grabbed him.”
“Now Miss Martha,” Vinnie said, “these things happen. There’s no sense crying over the water. It goes with the business.” Vinnie and the boys didn’t like to talk about deaths on the water; it’s too capricious. Always happens too fast. Some boy falls in. By the time you turn the boat around, he’s gone. Just vanished below the water. It had never happened to Vinnie, but he almost went overboard many times, and he knew the feeling of losing your footing, or dropping a hand net overboard, or having the captain give his engine a quick thrust and the boat lurches out from under you. Happens nearly every trip out, and Vinnie didn’t like to think about it.
“I just can’t believe it,” Martha said quietly. Simy heard the conversation and knew she didn’t want in, so she picked