Mary’s Present
by Bud Sparhawk
Illustration by Christopher Bing
A warm southeast breeze was rising as Mary Kelly parked her car and walked across the thin ridge of sand that divided the marshy pond from the open Bay. The tall cattails and pampas grasses waved like a field of wheat, their movement making a reedy rustling symphony beneath the chirping of the frogs and the occasional bird song. She searched the edge of the grasses for the spit of sand projecting out into the dark, brackish waters that would mark the beginnings of the path to Jake’s shack. A few steps into the jungle of growth was enough to reveal that the path was clear, however, and she soon encountered the first plank on the long walk to Jake’s shack.
Once among the grass, any cooling that she had from the breeze disappeared. In late August the marsh was redolent with life and the heady smells of rotting fish and decaying vegetation, all vital to the cycle of life in the Bay. A swarm of buzzing flies and mosquitos rose about her, their thin keening cries a bothersome noise in her ears. It was their larvae that fed the aquatic life of the marsh. They were the bottom rung of macrolife at the start of their lives and fed on the top rung as adults. Without the halo of insect life the marsh would die, and the Bay would soon follow. That was one of her responsibilities; to see that all the essential forms were preserved and cherished.
When she was younger she had heard of communities pouring oil on marshes such as this to kill the mosquitos. Some had filled them in with fly ash or construction rubble. Naturally the frogs, minnows, and larger game fish had disappeared as well. Eventually, even the ducks and Canadian geese wouldn’t stop on their annual migrations. Some people regretted the loss, but at least they didn’t have to worry about the mosquitos any more. Damn egocentric fools, she thought.
Jake’s shack had been built on the edge of a small feeder stream between the center of the marsh and the pond, as he called it. The shack was typical of many of those built by fishermen around the Bay; its bare wooden siding a uniform gray from years of exposure. Twenty crazily angled stilts, searching in the rich black goo beneath for solid ground on which to lean, supported the floor of the shack and held it above the high tide.
The rambling walkway from the end of the sandy path ran to Jake’s doorway. The walkway was as ramshackle an assortment of driftwood as she remembered. The wide gaps between some of the boards still offered a danger of a misstep, since the boards had been set to the length of Jake’s own stride. This made her keep her eyes on the walk rather than view the wonders of this small inlet marsh.
She noted that all of Jake’s boats were tied up beneath the small shack, indicating that he was at home and not out tending his crab traps, fishing, or drinking coffee with his buddies across the way. Chessie, his mongrel retriever, barked a welcome as she emerged from the covering grasses and made the assortment of cats scavenging the fishing boat scurry for cover.
A long black box covered part of the shack’s roof. It was a shallow affair, its interior a mass of convoluted hose, covered with Plexiglas. The hoses emerged from the box to connect to an oil drum reservoir. The entire assembly was painted a matte black. The components had been her present to Jake in return for his help on her initial survey of Bay grasses. Jake had assembled them into a solar hot water heater for his modest home using plans from one of his magazines. He was handy that way.
An assortment of solar arrays, chargers for his batteries, she supposed, lay on the roof beside the heater. Above that, near the peak was something new. It looked like a 55-gallon drum sawed open and the halves placed side by side. Some new solar gadget, she supposed. Jake had a penchant for assembling gadgets out of things that came his way. It was no wonder he had opted for the simple life, she thought; if he had been in the thick of civilization he would have gone into overload with gadgetry. Or maybe that had been his problem: had he been a scientist or engineer of some sort? Maybe he had been one of those on some failed defense program that was made obsolete by the fall of the Soviet empire. He never said much about his former lives and she would never pry.
“Hello,” she shouted when she got closer. She had to stoop to pat Chessie on her oily head as the big retriever wriggled toward her in a shameless display of affection. The two of them had become fast friends after their first startling encounter. She called again. There was no reply.
As she drew closer to the shack she noted that the door and window were shut tight; a strange thing to do in such heat. Maybe he had gone out and shut the place up. But why would he not take the dog with him? She rapped lightly on the door. “Jake, it’s Mary. Are you in there?”
The door swung open almost immediately. “Come in. Come in. Quickly, now,” he said by way of greeting and waved her into the cramped interior.
A wave of cool air hit her face as she entered, startling her. “What…?” she exclaimed. “When did you get air conditioning?”
Jake laughed and waved her to the one chair in the room, flopping onto his bed to face her. “Gadget’s on the roof,” he said by way of explanation. “Got the idea from a man over to Eastport. Split a drum and fitted some mirrors to the insides. Got a pipe runs along the focus that’s filled with ammonia and runs into a water tank. The sun heats the ammonia—makes it boil, you know. I run it through a little water tank and let it condense.”
Mary gave a little start of surprise. This was straight out of her physics lab. “And the condensation draws heat from the water and cools it!”
Jake beamed as if his prize student had gotten the right answer. “Yup. And I also run it through the solar heater to gather some more of the waste heat. The whole rig gives me about a hundred pounds of ice a day, if I need it to keep the fish fresh. Chessie likes her fish cold, you know.”
“But where does the cool air come from?”
“Oh, I just have a fan that blows across the ice. Makes it real nice in here, don’t you think?”
Now that she was used to it she realized that the initial feeling of coolness was just the change from the outside. Jake’s primitive air conditioning put the cabin at a warm eighty plus degrees, not the frigid seventies she found in most homes and offices. Still, even a few degrees of cool was some relief from the stifling August heat outside. “Very nice,” she replied.
After finishing the chicken and biscuits that she had brought for dinner, they sat on the pier outside and watched the huge red orb of the Sun sink into the smudge on the horizon that was the western shore of Chesapeake Bay. A scattering of clouds was being painted by the lowering Sun in golden hues that turned to rose and finally to dim gray as the light faded. It was a show unmatched by any other in the world.
The conversation went as most do, wandering about through the lives of both of them. Mary related her battles with the budget folk to get more funding for environmental studies. Jake responded by telling her about the half dozen herons that fished the shallow waters nearby at low tide. Mary mentioned the frustration she had in gaining recognition from her male coworkers. Jake pointed out the spot where he had seen a large snapping turtle surface the previous day. Mary spoke with feeling about the ongoing rebuilding of an improved relationship with her parents. Jake mentioned that old Sands, who had helped design his little sailboat, had passed away last year. Each mentioned the important things in their lives; each related the scale of the arena where they chose to live.
“Heard tell one of your floats was down by Eston,” Jake remarked. “Doing well, are they?”
“You mean you didn’t know?” Mary exclaimed with surprise. “Jake, they were your idea. I had no idea you hadn’t even seen one yet.” Somewhere along the line Jake must have been forgotten. She was sure that invitations to their construction and launching had been sent to him.