The Watermen: Selections From Chesapeake by James A. Michener
Jake, seeing this tremendous target before him—more ducks in one spot than they had ever found before—decided that he would use not a pound and a half of shot but almost twice that much. ‘I’ll rip a tunnel through the universe of ducks.’ But to propel such a heavy load he required an extra-heavy charge, so into the monstrous gun he poured more than a pound of black powder. He also rammed home a double wadding. ‘This is gonna be a shot to remember. Rennert’s will owe us enough money to pay for our boat.’
Cautiously he moved his lethal skiff into position, waited, took a deep breath and pulled the trigger.
‘Whoooom!’ The gun produced a flash that could have been seen for miles and a bang that reverberated across the bay. The tremendous load of shot slaughtered more than a hundred and ten ducks and seven geese. It also burst out the back of Jake’s skiff, knocked him unconscious and threw him a good twenty yards aft into the dark and icy waters.
The next minutes were a nightmare. Caveny, having seen his partner fly through the air during the brief flash of the explosion, started immediately to paddle in the direction of where the body might fall, but the two dogs, trained during their entire lives to retrieve fallen birds, found themselves involved with the greatest fall of ducks they had ever encountered, and they refused to bother with a missing man.
‘Goddamnit!’ Caveny yelled. ‘Leave them ducks alone and find Jake.’
But the dogs knew better. Back and forth they swam on their joyous mission, gathering ducks at a rate they had never imagined in their twitching dreams.
‘Jake! Where in hell are you?’
In the icy darkness he could find no way of locating the drowning man; all he knew was the general direction of Jake’s flight, and now, in some desperation, he began sweeping the area—with almost no chance of finding his mate.
But then Lucifer swam noisily to the skiff, almost reprimanding Tim for having moved it away from the fallen ducks, and after he had thrown two ducks into the skiff, he swam casually a few yards, grabbed the unconscious and sinking Turlock by an arm, hauled him to the skiff, and returned quickly to the remaining ducks.
When Tim finally succeeded in dragging Jake aboard, he could think of nothing better to do than to slap the unconscious man’s face with his icy glove, and after a few minutes Jake revived. Bleary-eyed, he tried to determine where he was, and when at last he perceived that he was in Caveny’s skiff and not his own, he bellowed, ‘What have you done with the gun?’
‘I been savin’ you!’ Tim yelled back, distraught by this whole affair and by the mangled ducks that kept piling into his skiff.
‘To hell with me. Save the gun!’
So now the two watermen began paddling furiously and with no plan, trying to locate the other skiff, and after much fruitless effort Jake had the brains to shout, ‘Hey-You! Where are you?’
And from a direction they could not have anticipated, a dog barked, and when they paddled there they found a sorely damaged skiff almost sinking from the weight of its big gun and the many ducks Hey-You had fetched.
On the doleful yet triumphant return to Patamoke, Tim Caveny could not resist pointing out that it had been his Labrador who had saved Turlock’s life, but Jake growled through the ice festooning his chin, ‘Granted, but it was Hey-You that saved the gun, and that’s what’s important.’
The partners now had enough money for a serious down payment on an oyster dredger, but before they made a contract with any boatbuilder, Jake wanted Tim to sail aboard one of the Deal Island innovations, so they shipped with a mean-spirited gentleman from that island, and Tim came home convinced that no boat but one of that type would satisfy him.
But he had also learned that the best boats on the bay were those built by Paxmore’s, always had been, and he was not willing to settle for second-best. He therefore launched a campaign to convince his partner that they must do business with the Quaker, no matter what his idiosyncrasies. ‘Let him build the boat however he wants. He’ll do it right.’
Jake was obdurate. ‘The three boats I seen are just what we want. I won’t have no details sacrificed to any square-headed Quaker thinks he can improve the breed.’
For a week the two watermen could not even agree to take their big gun out for ducks, and no barrels were shipped to the Rennert. Then Tim counted their savings, concluded that it was safe to go ahead, and reluctantly agreed that since Paxmore refused to make what they wanted, they must give their commission to some other builder. Tim was not happy with this decision but was prepared to go ahead with it. And then one morning, as they argued as to which of the alternative builders they would employ, a boy came with news that Mr. Paxmore wanted to see them.
It was a strange but very Choptank trio that convened. Gerrit Paxmore was the youngest of the three—stiff, wearing black shoes, heavy black trousers and waistcoat. He suffered from a forbidding countenance that rarely broke into a smile, and he spoke precisely, as if recording every word against some possible future challenge, at which time he would be prepared not only to explain it but to fulfill it. Patrons soon discovered that to do business with Paxmore was not easy, but it was reassuring.
Jake Turlock had his family’s leanness, height and sour visage. He wore run-over shoes, baggy trousers, torn shirt and smashed hat, items which he rarely changed. He could read and write, having been well taught by the first Caveny from Ireland, but he posed as an illiterate. He hated Negroes and Catholics but found himself consistently thrown in with them, and much to his surprise, liked the individuals with whom he worked. He was, for example, convinced that Tim Caveny, as a Papist, was an insidious type, but he had never discovered any other man with whom it was so comforting to work. Tim had forced him to save money; had saved his life when the big gun blew out the back of the skiff; and up to now had proved reliable in emergencies. But Jake felt certain that when a real crunch came, Caveny would be found wanting.
Tim was much like his father, old Michael, the schoolteacher of indomitable optimism. He was inclined to be pudgy, lazy and preposterous. He loved his church and his family; but he loved even more the concept of sticking everlastingly to the job at hand. He was, in his own way, as much a puritan as Gerrit Paxmore, which was why these two men understood each other. Tim was invariably willing to bet his money that his nigger would outfight the other, that his dog would retrieve more doves, that his boat would outsail any other on the bay. He existed in a world of perpetual challenge, in which he constantly faced men who were bigger than he or had more money. But since he was Irish, a reliable margin of good luck hung over him like an aura. He strove for the best, and the best sometimes happened.
It was he who opened the conversation that morning. ‘Mr. Paxmore, we’ve decided—’
‘We’ve decided nothin’,’ Turlock interrupted.
‘Perhaps I can assist thee,’ Paxmore said gently. ‘I’ve consulted with my men, and we want to try our hands at one of these new boats. What does thee call them?’
‘Skipjack,’ Turlock said.
‘After the fish that skips over the water,’ Tim interposed. ‘And it does, Mr. Paxmore. This boat skims.’
‘So we’ve decided, here at Paxmore’s …’ He coughed, placed his hands on the desk as if confessing all, and said, ‘We’ll build thy boat.’
‘Centerboard in position?’ Turlock asked.
‘Of course.’
‘How much?’ Caveny asked.
“We think we can do it …’ With almost a visible shudder he looked at the two supplicants, who could not possibly have the money required, then said in a whisper, ‘We could do it for twelve hundred dollars.’
As soon as the words were uttered, Tim Caveny slapped down a bundle of bills. ‘We can pay five hundred and forty dollars on deposit.’
This was more than twice what Paxmore had expected, and with an astonishment he could not control he asked, ‘Where did thee acquire so much?’ and Caveny said, like a fellow industrialist, ‘We’ve been savin’ it.’
Jake Turlock hate
‘It would indeed!’
‘How much cheaper?’
‘Thee would include keel, mast, boom?’
‘You give us the length. We have the trees.’
Paxmore studied a paper which betrayed the fact that he wanted to build this boat no matter what the profit: he had a complete sketch of an improved skipjack, waiting to be transformed into a sleek bay craft. ‘Mast, at least sixty-five feet tall, two feet in diameter at the thirty-foot mark, to allow for trimming.’
‘I have my eye on just the tree,’ Jake said.
‘Boom fifty-three feet.’
‘That’s awful long for a boom. Longer than the boat itself.’
‘That’s the design. Bowsprit a good twenty-two feet.’
‘She’s gonna be very top-heavy, with those dimensions,’ Turlock said.
‘She’ll be ballasted,’ Paxmore assured him, but he had not yet said how much reduction he would allow if Turlock cut the timber from the woods behind his marsh.
‘The savin’s?’ Jake asked.
‘Thee will save three hundred and fifty dollars.’
‘Tim,’ the waterman said, ‘get us some axes.’
The work the two men did in the ensuing weeks was awesome, for not only did they chop down oaks and loblollies during the day; they also took their long gun out each night, because only by constantly supplying the Rennert with barrels of ducks could they discharge the remaining debt on the skipjack. In addition to all this, Tim Caveny, in any spare moments, was constructing something that was about to shock the bay.
He worked in secret with his oldest boy, hammering at pipes, spending hours at a forge in town. The only indication Jake caught that his partner was up to something came one dawn when he helped lift mallards and canvasbacks from Tim’s skiff. ‘What you doin’ with them extra struts?’
‘I got me an idea,’ the Irishman said, but he confided nothing.
And then one night as the watermen went down to their skiffs, Caveny revealed his masterpiece. From the front of his boat protruded not one but seven guns, each with a barrel two inches in diameter. They fanned out like the tail of a turkey gobbler, coming together where the triggers would normally be. There were no triggers. ‘That’s my invention. What we do is load the seven guns—powder, pellets and tampin’, all in order.’
‘How you gonna fire ’em?’ Jake asked.
‘Ah ha! See this little iron trough?’
Jake had seen it, and had wondered what purpose it served; he could not have anticipated the insane proposal that Tim now made.
‘The trough fits in here, just below the powder entrances to the seven guns. We fill it with powder all the way acrost. At this end, we light it. Whoosh! It fires each of the seven guns in order, and we kill so many ducks we’re gonna need two extra skiffs.’
‘It’ll backfire and scorch you to death,’ Jake predicted.
‘It ain’t yet.’
‘You mean you fired this battery?’
‘Three times. And tonight we fire it at the biggest mess o’ ducks we can find.’
They paddled down the center of the Choptank, seeking a strong field of ice across which they could push their arsenal. North of Devon Island, where the rivers penetrating inland clustered, they found some, pulled their skiffs onto it and started the long, patient movement inland. Hey-You and Lucifer, each in his own skiff, made no noise, and when the hunters reached open water, everyone remained quiet for about half an hour, adjusting eyes to the darkness and allowing whatever birds lurked ahead to quieten.
Hey-You’s hackles rose, and Tim whispered, ‘It’s a congregation!’
‘We’ll move together,’ Jake proposed.
‘But I’m to shoot first,’ Tim said.
‘Damned right. I’ll be there to catch you when it blows you apart.’
The plan was for Tim to ignite his powder trough and, at the explosion of the first gun, for Jake to fire his monster. They calculated that Tim’s seven guns backed up by Jake’s would fire so nearly simultaneously that a curtain of lead would be thrown across the bay; few fowl would escape.
Each man eased himself into his skiff, instructed his dog where to sit, and started to work the small hand paddles. One could barely see the other, but an occasional hand signal indicated the preferred course, and slowly they approached the resting ducks. There were so many that Tim could not even estimate their number; all he knew was that they presented a worthy target.
As the time for lighting his powder train approached he muttered a brief prayer: ‘Dearest God who protects watermen, don’t let nothin’ spook ’em.’
The ducks slept. The two skiffs moved silently into position. The dogs sat with every muscle tensed. And the men lay prone, their faces close to their guns. There was no moon, no snow.
Gently, but with his hands trembling, Tim Caveny spread the calculated amount of powder along his iron trough, checked it to be sure it nestled properly under the orifices of his seven guns, then lit the right-hand end. With a powerful flash, the powder leaped from gun to gun, and as the first one exploded, Jake Turlock fired his monster.
From the point of view of massacring ducks, the timing had been exquisite, for the powder had ignited three of Tim’s guns before Jake could fire his. This meant that at the first flash, hundreds of ducks had risen into the air, only to be knocked down by Jake’s great gun, then punished by the last four guns in Tim’s arsenal.
Never before had there been such carnage on the Chesapeake. In fact, the two dogs brought so many ducks to the skiffs that they showed signs of sinking; the watermen ferried dead birds to the ice shelf, stashed them and returned to fetch others. The dogs were exhausted.
Next morning, when the count was made, the partners had sixty-nine canvasbacks, thirty-two mallards, thirty blacks, twenty-nine teal and thirteen geese that they could ship to Baltimore. In addition, they had twenty-two pintails which they would sell for a few pennies each to the Negroes living in Frog’s Neck, and a score of mergansers, which no one would eat because they fed on fish. Tim’s imaginative arsenal, so dangerous to use, so lethal when used, had proved its merit, so the two watermen continued to fell trees by day and fire their cannon at night. Whatever money they obtained from Baltimore, they turned over to Paxmore.
As winter ended and the ducks flew north, Gerrit Paxmore finished building his first skipjack, and when it was launched he told the two watermen, ‘This boat will sail better than any in the bay.’ Turlock and Caveny were prepared to believe this, but they were taken aback when the Quaker added, ‘I’ve kept thy money in our office. I’m prepared to hand it back, because thee doesn’t have to take this boat … if thee doesn’t wish.’
‘Why wouldn’t we?’ Turlock asked angrily.
‘Because,’ Paxmore said quietly, ‘I’ve done something with the centerboard.’
The three men went aboard and climbed down into the hold where they could inspect the bottom of the boat, and there Turlock and Caveny saw the damnedest thing their eyes had ever met. Instead of placing the centerboard in the middle of the keel—cutting a slim hole fourteen feet long right through the heart of the oak, then building around it what boatmen called the trunk to keep out the water—Paxmore had left the keel untouched, as the tradition of his family required, but had cut a hole parallel to it, thus offsetting the centerboard some eight inches to starboard.
‘You goddamned fool!’ Turlock shouted. ‘This boat’s off center. It’ll never …’
‘Friend,’ Paxmore said gently, ‘thee has no need to swear. Thy deposit is waiting.’
‘But goddamnit, I asked you plain and simple about the centerboard. And you told me in your own words … Didn’t he, Tim?’
‘He sure as hell did. Why, this damned thing—it’s a cripple.’
‘Please, gentlemen. Speak less roughly. Thy money—’
‘To hell with our money! We want our boat.’
It was dark in the bowels of the skipjack and the three men seemed like angry ghosts. The centerboard was sadly awry; indeed, to call it a center anything was ridiculous. The whole balance of the boat was destroyed, and Caveny could visualize it sailing crab-wise down the bay. Tears came into his eyes, and he showed Paxmore his hands, blistered for months. ‘We chopped every goddamned timber in this boat. And what do we get?’
‘A—–washtub,’ Turlock said, using the foulest word he could conjure.
It was this ultimate obscenity that awakened Paxmore to the fact that he was in real trouble. He had assumed that by merely offering the men their money, he would be relieved of difficulties with his unusual craft; certainly he could peddle it to someone else, perhaps at a minor loss, and with the funds thus received, pay the two watermen for their work in felling trees.
‘No!’ Turlock said grimly. ‘We want our boat and we want it now. You take that goddamned centerboard out of there and you put it in here, where it belongs.’
‘That I will not do,’ Paxmore said, and as he spoke his right hand fell protectively upon the unblemished keel, and only then did Tim Caveny realize that this unpleasant Quaker loved the new craft as much as he and Jake did.
‘What we might do,’ Tim suggested, ‘is take her for a trial.’ Turlock did not want to do this, lest he like the results, but Paxmore encouraged the idea. However, Tim had an additional idea: ‘Suppose we do accept it, damaged though it is? How much reduction in cost?’
‘Not one penny,’ Paxmore said. ‘This is the finest boat on the bay, and if truth were told, thee should pay me an extra two hundred.’
‘You are a son-of-a-bitch,’ Turlock growled, and as he climbed out of the hold he said, ‘I want to be let off this boat. I want nothin’ to do with a goddamned washtub.’