“…not everyone so happy. Mel Hutchins says the rain we got last night was too much for his spring rye and not enough for his tomatoes. Course Mel wouldn’t be satisfied unless God rearranged the whole upper atmosphere every day to reroute the right weather patterns over ever’ one of Mel’s seventy acres. Last time I known Mel to praise the weather was when the remains of a hurricane struck here one October after he’d harvested everything, but Jack Pillitson had half his crops still in the ground. Mel and Jack don’t get along too well, and Mel said the hurricane showed good timing.
“It’s getting towards sign-off time. I sure hope the Russians stop their messing around over there in Arabia. Izzy Klein says people thinking there may be a war cleaned out half his A&P this morning— and that was before he opened. Just joking, friends. He did say it appeared that everyone in town seemed to be expecting guests this weekend and had to stock up on three times the normal amount of food. Well, as for me, if I thought there was going to be a war, you wouldn’t catch me buying canned baked beans, and you wouldn’t catch me sitting in a fallout shelter next to anyone who had. That’s sure enough not the way I want to go. But I don’t expect to die for a while yet, so I’ll be talking to you again on Sunday. This is Charlie Wittner signing off.”
When Wittner’s voice died away, Neil smiled and stood up. At least there was one man who was showing no panic.
Up on deck, under the star-studded sky, Jim was waiting for him, dressed like Neil in jeans, sport shirt, and deck shoes. Jim hadn’t shaved since they’d left Fort Lauderdale, and his slight beard, longish hair—salt and sun-streaked—and bronzed skin tone gave him precisely the salty air he probably was trying to achieve. He looked as pleasantly excited as he had when they’d entered the Chesapeake sixteen hours earlier.
The only bar in Tangier was a fisherman’s hangout rather than a tourist trap, so there were no fishing nets on the walls or stuffed fish, but instead dart boards, video games, pool tables, and a television set. There were half a dozen men sitting at the bar and two old men playing chess at a table. Neil led Jim to a booth next to the bar; through the window they could see Vagabond’s masts and cabin top above the docks and pilings.
“Where you fellas in from?” a large bearded man with a pot belly asked them from his seat at the bar.
“Fort Lauderdale, Florida,” Jim answered proudly. “We made it in five and a half days.”
“That’s pretty good,” the bearded man replied promptly. “That must be one hell of a powerful dinghy engine.”
While Jim looked startled and uncertain, Neil and the men along the bar all burst out laughing. Jim, realizing they’d seen Vagabond’s entrance, soon joined them.
“Once or twice we cheated and used sails,” Neil said, and remembered he had to phone to get a message to Frank.
“Don’t blame you,” said the man.
Neil stood up, went to the bar to order two beers, and then went over to the pay phone. The wife of the marina owner answered, and Neil explained the situation to her and asked her to tell Frank to take the ferry to Tangier. When he returned to his table, he was glad the television set wasn’t on to remind Jim of the outside world.
“Well, mate,” he said to Jim after he’d taken a long swallow of beer, “I’d say we’d made a damn good passage, even if we did fall a little short.”
“Vagabond’s a great boat, isn’t she?” Jim said.
“She even tows well,” Neil replied with a smile.
“I like crewing for you,” Jim went on. “It’s a lot better when there are only two of us. With Dad and his friends I feel like a passenger. I never get to do anything. But being alone at the helm, especially at night, or when she’s surfing down a big swell…” He stopped, smiling, flushed with the pleasure of the memory. “Anyway, I really enjoyed your putting me to work.”
“I wish all my crew would say that,” Neil commented, smiling.
“Blast ’em, I say. Hit ’em first,” came a voice from the bar.
“You tell ’em, Charlie,” another voice countered. “And don’t forget to duck.”
“Hey, my friend,” Neil said to the large man at the end of the bar, hoping to change the subject. “Are there any women on this island?”
“Oh, yes, there’s women all right.”
“You keep them locked up?”
“Don’t have to,” the bearded man replied. “We keep ’em so tired from screwin’ they ain’t got no energy to go out.”
Laughter tumbled along the length of the bar.
“Must be all the oysters you fellas eat,” Neil suggested.
“Eat oysters!?” the bearded man exclaimed, grinning. “Shit, us baymen can’t afford to eat oysters. Too expensive.”
A few men laughed.
“Still,” said Neil. “It’s too bad you don’t have a few women in especially good shape to greet tired sailors returning to land after a long stint at sea.”
“We got two or three ladies like that,” a little man next to the bearded man said. “But they always get themselves laid by tourists in speedboats from the Eastern Shore—men who tell ’em they’re all pooped from motoring ’cross the bay.”
The quick burst of laughter at this remark made Neil think it was an allusion to some actual women they all knew. He finished his beer and went to the bar to order two more. As he was standing there a pudgy woman came in and complained to the bartender, “The TV don’t work.” Could he fix it? After handing Neil two bottles of beer and making change, he followed her through a doorway into what were probably living quarters.
“See what we mean?” the little man at the bar said, turning to grin at Neil. “Ol’ Jake’s going back there now to give her a quick one. That TV business is all a front.”
But Jake returned almost immediately with a frown on his face. He went up to the television set above the bar and turned it on. Neil and the others were all watching him. The screen remained dark for a few seconds, but the voice of the talking head that appeared on the screen immediately began in a tense, hurried voice:
“…I repeat, this is not a test, this is not a test. The Emergency Broadcasting System announces a national war alert. All precautionary measures should be taken immediately to prepare for the possibility of an enemy attack. This is not a test. Civil Defense workers are to report immediately to their assigned posts. Police, fire, and emergency medical personnel on standby for national war alert should also report to their assigned posts. I repeat, this is not a test, this is not a test. The Emergency Broadcasting System is announcing a national war alert. All precautionary…”
It was only when he realized that the announcer was not going to say anything else that Neil became aware of himself standing next to his table, still holding his beer bottle, his mouth open in stunned bewilderment. As the bartender lowered the volume and began switching channels—and Neil could see the same announcer flash by on all the operating channels—he also became aware of the total silence in the room.
Finally someone at the bar spoke.
“Oh, good Jesus,” a tired voice said. “Wow what the fuck are the silly bastards trying to prove?”
Then the television picture disappeared, the lights in the bar went out, and the whole room was in total darkness.
Frank flung his lanky body back and forth across the end of the ferry dock at Crisfield with an impatience unusual even for him. Everything was running late. Traffic had been so bad going out to La Guardia that afternoon that the twenty-five-minute drive had taken over an hour, and he’d arrived ten minutes after his plane was supposed to have taken off. But La Guardia was a madhouse, and his plane was delayed forty minutes, so he’d made it. Then it was delayed another half-hour on the runway awaiting takeoff, the long line of taxiing planes reminding him of sailors outside a Bangkok whorehouse.