A Solitary Blue: Chapters 7–9

The Professor’s brown seersucker suit was rumpled.

He could see what the Professor’s days had looked like to him: long, empty, to be endured until he could get used to things, day after day of waiting to get accustomed.

It wasn’t much of a boat, it only cost fifteen dollars. Plus five to tie it up at the dock. It was only a dinghy, not even painted.

Leeway about you. About school. About what we’re going to do about school. You can’t possibly pass the year, they told me that. So we have to decide what to do.

While January turned to February, and a week of warm weather was followed by sharp, sporadic storms of snow and sleet, the Professor didn’t do anything about Jeff.

It was at that point, in April, that they started looking farther afield. They drove out to the north, but that was being developed too rapidly; to the south, but Annapolis was too much like a city; and over the long Bay Bridge to the Eastern Shore.

The small area of lawn that circled the cabin was sparse and untended.

They had the cabin insulated, its walls finished.

When they had bought a little skiff, an eleven-foot wooden boat, painted white, with a seven and a half horsepower outboard motor and he took his father exploring up the creek, winding among the branches of fallen trees, staring up at the backs of little cabins or waterfront homes, or meandering across the marshes on one of the canals that ran into the creek—the water so shallow they had to raise the motor and pole the boat—he knew he had been righter than he’d thought.

When they had bought a little skiff, an eleven-foot wooden boat, painted white, with a seven and a half horsepower outboard motor and he took his father exploring up the creek, winding among the branches of fallen trees, staring up at the backs of little cabins or waterfront homes, or meandering across the marshes on one of the canals that ran into the creek—the water so shallow they had to raise the motor and pole the boat—he knew he had been righter than he’d thought.

A fish jumped off to starboard.

“I was serious.”
“Oh, so was I.” The Professor turned around to look earnestly at Jeff.

He’d bait five or six strings and dangle them over the side of the boat. He left them undisturbed until he saw, by the movement of a string on the gunwales, that a crab was feeding on the bait.

“I don’t know how you can’t,” Jeff answered.
“High natural ineptitude,” the Professor said.

Brother Thomas, who came to stay for a week in late August, took a more voluble interest in crabbing and in Crisfield, especially the workboats that moored up at the town dock, especially in the history, especially in everything.

Honestly, Horace, it’s almost pathological, your secretiveness.

Brother Thomas had a deep, stabilizing faith; although he didn’t talk about it, it was always there in him.

Jeff watched it, the great wings spread out smoky blue, the long neck tucked in until the bird seemed full of dignity, full of ridiculous dignity, looking pompously ahead, the long legs held stiffly out behind him.

But Phil was funny in a subtle way, which Chappelle, the teacher, didn’t always get, Jeff suspected, along with most of the rest of the class.

His hair shone white, his tie was slightly askew.

I’m just not very comfortable with having a book published. Maybe it will fade into immediate obscurity; I think I hope it will.

“I’m presuming you didn’t ever meet John Calhoun.”

His sarcasm was so clumsy it couldn’t frighten Jeff. And Chappelle wasn’t exactly angry, Jeff could tell, just super-patient and patronizing.

“Always somebody else pushed me. Even my book; Brother Thomas is the one who pushed me into submitting it—the man is implacable, once he gets his teeth into an idea. I’m very grateful to him.”

He walked to the glass door and looked out, across the marsh then down to the sweep of bay, larger now that the deciduous trees had shed their leaves.

He scraped and repainted the bottom and had the motor overhauled.

It took off, raising itself awkwardly from the tree, and flew up the creek, squawking its resentment as it disappeared into treetops.

Jeff liked Phil; he liked his sense of humor and the practical turn of his mind. Phil’s life was so normal, so practical—and Phil couldn’t see that. Phil figured, Jeff thought, that everyone was pretty much like him; he didn’t have the imagination or experience to see what differences there could be.

They culled out the very largest to cook and turned the rest loose, dumping the crabs overboard, like a living landslide.

But she wants to divorce me, she wants it uncontested, for incompatibility.

He says that if it goes through uncontested she could make a strong appeal for custody, at least half the year.

It’ll take a long time, of course. The law always does. Don’t brood over it.

What do you play, not rock, I can hear that. Country? Bluegrass?

“Play me something. I already heard you so there’s nothing left to be modest about.”

Jeff kept his eyes down, watching at the periphery of his vision the awkward and reluctant approach, as if the long legs were trying to move away from him but moved instead toward him.

Her presence affected his voice, which had settled down over the summer: she listened so intently he was confused; she stood so still he barely dared look at her.

He bet nobody could stop her when she wanted something or had something she had to do. Probably that was what appealed to him, her determination; opposites attracted, they said.

She didn’t expect to see him, and her chin went up when she did, so he spent his time talking with the owner while Dicey stubbornly swabbed down the floors.

She was scraping paint off the hull of a little boat, a sailboat he guessed from the deep curved keel, and he could see a mast laid on the ground over by some stalls.

She was scraping paint off the hull of a little boat, a sailboat he guessed from the deep curved keel, and he could see a mast laid on the ground over by some stalls.