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 Increas
ing 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 a
nother 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.