Read Death in the Polka Dot Shoes Online
Authors: Marlin Fitzwater
Tags: #FIC022000, #FIC047000, #FIC030000
Death in the Polka Dot Shoes
D
EATH IN THE
P
OLKA
D
OT
S
HOES
â
A Novel
â
by
M
ARLIN
F
ITZWATER
Death in the Polka Dot Shoes: A Novel
Copyright ©2011 by Marlin Fitzwater
ISBN-13 978-1-926918-69-3
First Edition
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Fitzwater, Marlin, 1942-
Death in the polka dot shoes [electronic resource] : a novel /
written by Marlin Fitzwater. â 1st ed.
Electronic monograph in PDF format.
ISBN 978-1-926918-69-3
Also available in print format.
I. Title.
PS3606.I89D42 2011a 813'.6 C2011-904638-5
Cover Art by Judy Ward
Cover Design by Mari Abercrombie and Isaac Fer
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, architecture and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination, or are used fictitiously.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the express written permission of the publisher.
Publisher: CCB Publishing
British Columbia, Canada
www.ccbpublishing.com
Dedication
For All Those Men And Women Who
Make Their Living On The Water.
Other books written by Marlin Fitzwater
Call the Briefing!
A Memoir: Ten Years in the White House
with Presidents Reagan and Bush
Esther's Pillow: A Novel
Sunflowers:
A Collection of Short Stories
“Listen for the oyster music.”
--Shady Side, Maryland waterman
Contents
His shoes were never found. My brother apparently was leaning over the side of his thirty-six foot fishing boat about two miles off the coast of Cape Hatteras, sweating from having to work the giant blue fin tuna for nearly an hour, almost sick from the ache in his arms, yet about to land the biggest catch of his life. With a gaff hook in his left hand, ready to tear into the side of the two hundred pound fish, he twisted his right wrist into the last few feet of leader line for one final hoist of the fish into the boat. But facing the certainty of death, the tuna gathered itself for one final whack at freedom. Its gills began to heave and its marble eye focused on Jimmy's cap, which read “Cedar Winds Boat Works.” In that instant, Jimmy must have known the violence to come because he started to shift his weight lower in the boat, but he never got to his knees. There was a mighty jerk, and a flash of green and blue scales above a white tee shirt, then nothing. The tuna went straight to the bottom with Jimmy in tow.
The charter captain later testified at the inquest that he was sitting high on the tower, watching the big fish weave its way through the water to the boat, with the heavy filament line flashing where the sun picked up its break with the surface. It was headed straight for the boat, he said, when he glanced down at his depth finder, reading a hundred and thirty feet. When he looked back for the tuna, Jimmy was gone. Simply vanished into the stillness of the day.
The captain said he circled the site for hours and nothing surfaced. He called the Coast Guard and they searched for the rest of the day, but found nothing. No clothing. No fishing gear. Nothing.
Jimmy had been on a bus man's holiday from his regular life as a waterman on the Chesapeake Bay, running an old bay-built crab boat out of Parkers, Maryland, at least on those days when crabs were plentiful and selling for eighty to a hundred dollars per bushel. On other days, he scrubbed up the boat and took city slickers from Washington, D.C. on half day outings for striped bass or bluefish. Fishing had been our family's life for five generations, going back to the great Virginia oyster wars of 1878. Back then, our great-grandfather would end the crabbing season in October, refit the boat with a culling board, pull his hand tongs out of the barn, and spend the winter oystering. Even at the young age of 31, Jimmy had given up the oysters. Too much strain on the shoulders. Instead, he crabbed in the morning, took tourists fishing in the afternoon, and made enough money to give up oystering completely. Next season, he planned to give up crabbing as well, especially if he could convince me to help him buy a new boat. And I probably would have helped, just because I knew how much he loved being a waterman.
Jimmy and I spent our youth on the crab boats of the Bay, helping our father run his trotlines or harvest his crab pots. We liked leaning over the gunnels of our dad's deadrise, the
Martha Claire
, hooking the float lines as the hydraulic winch pulled the crab pots from the bottom of the bay. We eagerly grabbed the pot as it surfaced and pulled it into the boat. The “pot” is a square wire mesh cage that lets crabs check in but they can't check out. They are trapped. As teenagers, we Shannon boys were solid and our shoulders offered the power of a diesel winch. A full crab pot can weigh forty pounds or more and Dad ran nearly three hundred of them. Jimmy and I would flip the screen of the pot open, tip it and shake it until all of the sideways scavengers could scramble onto the deck and into bushel baskets. I used to imagine that every bushel basket was a hundred dollar bill, and that helped ease the shoulder ache as the stack of baskets grew over my head. Then I would shove an alewife or handful of razor clams into the bait box and slide the pot over the side. With the same motion Jimmy would reach for the throttle and power the boat on to the next pot. We loved it when Dad let us drive the boat and help with the catch.
It was a simple repetitive exercise that mirrored assembly lines the world over, except that it was on the water, in the midst of a lonely yet beautiful theatre where you paid the price of admission with every pot lifted. And the old men of the Bay whose bodies were scraped and twisted by the sharp edges of crabbing, could never turn their backs on the delight, regardless of the cost. It was their stage, their sense of freedom and independence, their manhood and their pride.
I never quite inherited those qualities, but my brother did. He absorbed all the family instincts for the water, rowing into the fog on a dreary day, just so he could meet the challenge of a safe return. Our mother would stand on the family dock, watching for Jimmy to come back out of the fog with both oars slowly moving the water, while his head and shoulders were stretched over the side as if he was smelling or listening to the water. His eyes scanned low, under the fog, following the surface and searching for birds, or boats, or landmarks or whatever it was that always brought him safely home. He scared our mother to death, and she told him stories of ships lost in the fog to discourage his interest. But instead of being afraid, he loved the stories and begged for more, until mom finally gave up. She knew he was a waterman.
When I left for college, my family walked me to the car. They stood in the yard like soldiers, with their arms around each other, as if I might never return. Yet all my life my mother had urged me to stay off the water. Even my father, who loved the Bay, lectured me on the magnetic pull of easy cash from a day of crabbing, and urged me not to yield to it. He had given up on Jimmy. But he never stopped urging me to seek another life, away from the water.
Today, when I get really sick of the law library and the pompous clamoring of my partners at Simpson, Feldstein and James, I look back at those wonderful days on the water, colored by the distance of time and the glory of youth. I forget how much I wanted off the water, out of the Town of Parkers, and into a white collar world of fancy cars and exotic travel. I look back at a culture that honored truth, loyalty and the absorbing drama of a sharp bow on a silent bay. Then I remember the cuts on my hands from the crabs, and the heavy rubber gloves that were caked with salt, brine and mud and hung like barbells from my fingers. They never kept out the cold, the water, or the crab's bony pinchers. I had worked for years to escape that occupational fate. So why would my brother's death now draw me back to the water? Why would it start me thinking about the glories of a simpler life and a different culture?
My brother's body didn't come up. The old watermen around Parkers said the tuna no doubt figured out his predicament, and wrapped the line around some bottom debris until it broke, leaving my brother tethered to a fate I didn't want to contemplate. Jimmy's death left me shattered. I could not shake the idea of young life ended, fatherhood extinguished, all the dreams of a wife and daughter vanished. I also felt great guilt for all the inequities of life that my brother faced, and for my treatment of him. He was two years younger, and not nearly so competitive. I would force him to play basketball with me, and then beat him in every game of one on one. I would ridicule him for not wanting to play baseball with me, even though I would always hit the ball over his head and make him run for it. We would argue, get angry, and he would run from me. When I think today about the competitions of youth, and how much I owe him for the normal inequities of youth, my guilt is overwhelming. And sometimes in the days since his death, I mourn so violently that I lose my breath and have to stand up to breathe. Then I walk to the refrigerator, lean against the door with my arm under my forehead, and cry out with pain and anguish for my lost brother, and for myself. I intended to make it up to him. But now I can't. He is simply gone forever.
We had a memorial service at Christ Church, a quaint little wood frame structure built in the 1800s of heavy timbers from nearby trees. The sanctuary looked like the hold of an ancient schooner. It was built on the crest of a hill, surrounded by tall pines, with a sloping graveyard on three sides so steep that you wondered how the dead could possibly get any rest. As a boy, I dreamed that the bodies behind Christ Church were all buried with their heels dug in to keep from sliding down the hill. Surely not a peaceful recline. The stone markers were mostly from the seventeen and eighteen hundreds, often with short biographical references, or poems, about the deceased. Many carried the title of “Captain” as a tribute to their life's work. If you owned your own boat, no matter the size or condition, and it worked the waters of the Bay for livelihood, then you were a Captain for life. Most of the crab boat captains had a crew of one, usually a son, sometimes an old partner who had shared the catch and all their troubles for decades. There were a few “big boat” captains behind the church, men who had guided the tall merchant ships for long months at sea, out of Baltimore or Annapolis. I noticed their headstones often looked like the Washington Monument, with small cast iron fences around the graves. Some of those fences had been standing, by the way, for 200 years, as compared to my townhouse fence in Washington that was knocked down about three times a month. The measurements of life are different in Parkers, Maryland, and the monuments are respected.
I bought a burial plot and small headstone for my brother that was still being chiseled with the appropriate dates. As I wandered among the markers after the service, I noticed dozens of flat stones with the simple etching: waterman. Some with flat bottom work boats drawn below the name. The watermen always had been on the lowest wrung of the economic scale, even below farmers, who at least could rise to the top by accumulating enough land. It appreciated. There simply was nothing about crabbing that would appreciate in value. In the area around Parkers, by the year 2009, the farmers had become owners of horse farms or at least landlords and real estate speculators, while the watermen were still struggling to find markets for their ever dwindling catch. Although a crabber who had graduated to using his boat for charter fishing, with some skillful internet marketing, could do pretty well. But the crabbers' fiercely independent trade, involving the lone captain who secured his catch and delivered it directly to market at a local pier, was the occupation most pure and true to its origin, and a source of great pride to the watermen families. I was proud of my dad and my brother.