The Watermen: Selections From Chesapeake by James A. Michener
The red Chesapeake, sensing the geese ahead, was growing restless; Amos hadn’t even taken out the short paddles, and the dog feared something might spook those geese. He made soft noises to indicate his displeasure at the sloppy methods being pursued this night, but Amos growled at him to keep silent. He wanted to talk with the boy.
‘Man’s got only three obligations, really. Feed his fambly. Train his dog. Take care of his gun. You do them jobs properly, you ain’t got no worries about such things as mortgages and cancer and the tax collector. You take care of the gun, God takes care of the mortgage.’
‘Won’t the law …’
‘The law takes this gun away from us, Rafe, when it’s smart enough to find it. I been guardin’ this gun for fifty years. You’re good for another fifty.’
‘But Hugo Pflaum was practically standin’ on it that other mornin’.’
‘That’s why us Turlocks will always have this gun.’
‘Why?’
‘Because we’re smart, all of us, and game wardens is stupid, all of ’em.’
The dog whimpered, eager to get on with the hunt, but he was astonished at what happened. Amos Turlock was climbing gingerly out of the skiff that carried The Twombly and inviting his grandson to take his place with the short paddles.
‘Time you learned, son,’ he said when the delicate transfer was completed.
‘You want me …’
‘Two things to remember. Aim the skiff, not the gun. And for Christ’s merry sake, stay clear of the stock, because it kicks like hell.’ With a gentle and loving push he launched the skiff toward the rafted geese, then reached for his dog’s head. Pulling the Chesapeake to him, he clutched him nervously as the boy disappeared into the darkness. The dog, sensing that this was an unusual night, stayed close to his master and waited for the great explosion that would project him into the water in search of geese.
It was a long wait, but neither the man nor the dog grew restless; Amos could remember nights when it had taken him an hour of working with short paddles before he had been satisfied with his position, and Rafe had been trained to be meticulous. In the blind, Amos remembered admiringly, Rafe had been the boy with guts to wait.
At last he began to tremble, hoping desperately that his grandson would handle the skiff properly, and the great gun, and the traditions of this river. ‘It’s a baptism,’ he whispered to the tense animal, and the fingers of his right hand twined in the dog’s hair so tightly that the Chesapeake whimpered and withdrew, going to his accustomed place in the bow, where he could stand with forefeet on the gunwales, peering into the darkness.
‘Blessed God,’ the old man prayed, ‘let him do it right … so he gets the taste.’
Forty minutes passed, and Orion, failing as ever to catch his prey, roamed the heavens. But when the tension in Amos’s skiff became intolerable, the night sky exploded, and geese cried, and the dog was gone.
Seven different homes called Hugo Pflaum’s office next morning to report illegal gunning on the Choptank. ‘I know they were out there, Mr. Pflaum, because two dead geese drifted to my shore. Besides, I was lookin’ at the Late-Late Show and remarked to my wife, “That gunfire wasn’t on TV.” ’
The reports were so circumstantial that Pflaum climbed into his pickup and roared out to the Turlock trailer, but as he had anticipated, Amos was absent. Distributing geese up and down the river, he supposed. Midge was gone too, doing her shopping at the Steed store in Sunset Acres. Only a boy, not more than eleven, stood at the corner of the lawn, watching suspiciously as the big, hulking warden moved among the seven dwarfs.
‘Who are you, son?’
‘Rafe.’
‘You can’t be Amos’s son?’
‘Grandson.’
‘You wouldn’t know where your grandfather is?’ No response. ‘You wouldn’t know where he was last night?’ No flicker in the pale-blue eyes.
Hugo was perplexed by the Turlocks, even though his mother and his wife came from that clan; always they seemed stupid, but always in a crisis they mustered just enough brains to outsmart their betters. Look at this boy! Blond hair almost in his eyes, cut in back with the aid of a bowl, vacant stare, heavy woolen pants held up by torn suspenders, didn’t even seem to know that Pflaum was a relative of sorts and the game warden. Perhaps, Hugo thought in a misbegotten moment, I can trick this lad.
‘Your gran’daddy out huntin’ last night?’
‘What?’ The boy refused to leave his position at the corner of the lawn.
‘Does he ever hunt with that big gun?’
‘What?’
‘Where’s he keep it, Rafe?’
‘Keep what?’ the boy asked, a kind of stupid glaze over his face.
‘You tell your father—’
‘My father’s in Baltimore.’
‘I mean your grandfather,’ Pflaum snapped.
‘Tell him what?’ the boy asked.
‘That I was here.’
‘Who are you?’
‘You know damned well who I am. I’m Hugo Pflaum, your uncle more or less. You tell him I was here.’
‘I’ll tell him. Hugo Pflaum.’
With disgust, the game warden kicked at the sod, gingerly retraced his steps through the garden sculpture and drove back to town.
When he was gone, and well gone, with the pickup far around the bend, Rafe Turlock slumped against the trailer and would have fallen except that he caught hold of a coping. Keeping himself more or less erect, he began to vomit, not once or twice but seven times, until his stomach was empty and his body racked.
Midge found him there, still retching, and thought he might have whooping cough, for the boy would give no explanation for his spasms. She insisted that he go to bed, and he lay there with wet packs on his forehead, waiting for his grandfather’s return.
Amos was absent for a long time distributing geese, but when he reached the kitchen and heard the rambling report of his grandson’s seizure, he could guess what had caused it. Slipping into the sickroom, he asked, ‘Hugo Pflaum here?’
‘Yep. He was standin’ right on the gun, askin’ his questions.’
‘About last night?’
‘And the gun.’
‘And what did you tell him?’
‘Nothin’, but when he kicked at one of the rings I almost vomited.’
‘Midge says you did. All over the place.’
‘That was after.’
Amos did not pat his grandson on the head, or congratulate him in any way. The boy had done only what was required, but he did want to let Rafe know that he was pleased, so he whistled for the Chesapeake, and to the dog’s surprise, the door was opened and he was invited into the trailer. Quickly he sought out his young master, and realizing that the boy was ill, stayed by his bed, licking his limp fingers.
Amos, closing the door on the room, offered no explanation to Midge. He walked out onto the lawn to survey his twenty-one sets of sculpture: the deer were lined up behind Santa, the purple flamingo spread its concrete wings toward Sunset Acres, and the seven dwarfs trailed along behind their mistress in seven distinct styles of cuteness. Looking to where the three stood in line, Amos could visualize the great gun nesting at their feet.
‘Safe for another fifty years.’ he said.
Turlocks survived because they adjusted to their environment. From the moment Amos discovered what those newfangled tape recorders could do, he was satisfied that his goose problems were solved.
He had always been supreme with the goose call, luring birds when others failed, but even at his expert lips that stubby instrument was chancy, and on some days he accomplished nothing. So he drove across the bridge to De Soto Road in Baltimore, where radio shops proliferated, and there bought himself a pair of powerful loudspeakers and a rugged tape recorder built in Sweden.
When he reached home Midge bellowed from the kitchen, ‘What in hell you gonna do with that crap?’
His intention was to record the calls of female geese as they came in he
He mastered it so well that hunters from distant counties assembled to observe his miracle. As the wildlife reporter for the Baltimore Sun explained: ‘Forty minutes before sunrise Amos Turlock and his men move quietly to their blinds and hide themselves beneath pine branches. As dawn approaches and the big geese begin to fly, Amos turns on his Tandberg and through the sky float the sounds of a female goose signaling to the gentlemen aloft. The males, delighted to hear the mating call, wheel in the air and descend swiftly into the muzzles of the Turlock guns.’
Amos enjoyed his monopoly for only one season, then others began to copy it; but it was the legislature that delivered the deathblow. To it came game wardens like the Pflaums, complaining that the Turlocks were destroying the balance of nature: ‘Give them three more years and we’ll have the old days back. Not a goose along the Choptank.’ The lawmakers, most of them hunters, responded with a tough edict—you can read it in the Maryland Statutes, Turlock’s Law they call it: ‘No hunter may seduce male geese by means of electronic devices.’ And the tape recorders were confiscated.
But a Turlock never quits, and in September of 1977, just before hunting season began, Amos came up with the ultimate stratagem: he rented five cows.
When he fenced them in right beside the creek where geese assembled, he attracted more birds into his field than anyone on the Choptank had ever done before, and Chris Pflaum asked his father, ‘What’s the old man up to?’
I don’t know,’ Hugo said, ‘but we better find out.’
Together they drove out to Turlock’s spread, and what they saw astounded them. There were the five cows. There were the geese. And on the ground lay more yellow grains of corn than the average outlaw would dare to scatter in four seasons. Whenever Turlock wanted a goose, two hundred would be waiting as they gorged on his illegal corn.
But was it illegal? As Amos explained to the judge, ‘All I do is feed my cows extra generous.’ By this he meant that he gorged them on whole corn sixteen, eighteen hours a day. His rented cows ate so much that a large percentage passed through their system untouched by stomach acids, and there it lay on the ground, an enticement to geese for miles around.
‘I can’t find this man guilty,’ the judge said. ‘He didn’t scatter the corn. The cows did.’ And when the season ended, with Turlock iceboxes crammed, old Amos returned his rented cows.
BY JAMES A. MICHENER
Tales of the South Pacific
The Fires of Spring
Return to Paradise
The Voice of Asia
The Bridges at Toko-Ri
Sayonara
The Floating World
The Bridge at Andau
Hawaii
Report of the Country Chairman
Caravans
The Source
Iberia
Presidential Lottery
The Quality of Life
Kent State: What Happened and Why
The Drifters
A Michener Miscellany: 1950–1970
Centennial
Sports in America
Chesapeake
The Covenant
Space
Poland
Texas
Legacy
Alaska
Journey
Caribbean
The Eagle and the Raven
Pilgrimage
The Novel
James A. Michener’s Writer’s Handbook
Mexico
Creatures of the Kingdom
Recessional
Miracle in Seville
This Noble Land: My Vision for America
The World Is My Home
with A. Grove Day
Rascals in Paradise
with John Kings
Six Days in Havana
About the Author
James A. Michener, one of the world’s most popular writers, was the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Tales of the South Pacific, the best-selling novels Hawaii, Texas, Chesapeake, The Covenant, and Alaska, and the memoir The World Is My Home. Michener served on the advisory council to NASA and the International Broadcast Board, which oversees the Voice of America. Among dozens of awards and honors, he received America’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 1977, and an award from the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities in 1983 for his commitment to art in America. Michener died in 1997 at the age of ninety.
James A. Michener, The Watermen: Selections From Chesapeake
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