Letters

That week I’ll sail through swiftly, though sailing through it slowly was the heart of my enterprise. From Annapolis I reached seven miles up the high-banked Severn to Round Bay, thence into Little Round Bay, past St. Helena Island (where lay a fine new motor yacht whose name—Baratarian

—reminded me of Jane’s crank cousin A. B. Cook and of the film from which Jeannine had been dropped. Nota bene,

Dad), to my Favorite Anchorage on that splendid, busy river: Hopkins Creek, snug, private, still unspoiled. No swimsuit needed; few nettles that far upriver; mild phosphorescence when I swam that night. Incest be damned, I wished Jeannine were there again! Next day out through the Sunday mob — wall-to-wall sails in Whitehall Bay! Adieu, Annapolis! — and down to the next river, the South, itself less imposing than the Severn but with finer creeks and coves. Rode out a thundersquall in perfect peace, all alone in a certain nameless, turtled cove off Church Creek: chicken breast with wild rice, a light cucumber-and-onion salad, and a bargain Lalande-de-Pomerol, steady as the eponymous church while the crashing storm merely cooled the cabin. Good-bye Church and Harness creeks, twin beauties! Down to Rhode River’s single spot worth a farewell visit: the anchorage behind Big Island (Sunset like a Baroque Ascension. Fluted jazz on the FM. Shrimp w. cashews & Beaujolais — no ice to spare for chilling white wine),

airy but secure, where handsome Herefords graze down to the waterline. Straight across then to Eastern Bay and my Eastern Shore to say goodbye to its sweetest pair of rivers, the Miles and its sister the Wye: five full days required of sun and rain, wind and calm, to touch only my favorite places therealong! Tilghman, Dividing, Granary, Skipton, Pickering, Lloyd, Leeds, Hunting! Sweet bights and creeks and coves, deer and ducks and herons, gulls and cormorants and ospreys, blue crabs and bluefish and rockfish and oysters and maninose — good-bye!

Now it is Friday again, Day 14, August 22. From Hunting Creek I reach down the Miles (up

on the chart) to St. Michaels for provisions, laundry, lunch ashore, good-bye to that dear town and harbor, and a 10 A.M. phone call to the office. Which I log, ponder, and relog thus: 1330: HM’s shit nowhere to be found. Could Jane be staging a diversion? Pursue, discreetly. Her fiancé: one Baron André Castine of Castines Hundred, Ontario, 1/2-brother (so Buffalo reports) of A. B. Cook VI! May be involved in C.I.A. or counter-C.I.A. activity! Foreign? Domestic? Interagency? Buffalo doesn’t know: was “seriously warned off by C.I.A./F.B.I. types.” Reports Castine “somewhere in west N.Y.” since Bermuda cruise. Cook himself at home at Barataria Lodge, B’wth I. Hunch: check out that Bray fellow in Lily Dale, N.Y. “Casteene” of Ft. Erie may be unrelated to Jane’s friend: name not uncommon in Quebec, though usually w. the “Baron’s” spelling. Too much coincidence: inquire further. Jeannine has left Ft. Erie; whereabouts uncertain; no one seems to care. Inquire, inquire! Buffalo suspects “drug tie-in”: C.I.A. people moving dope under pretext of monitoring V.N. war resisters, instead of vice versa. A very big fish, which he hopes he has not hooked and refuses to reel in, even discreetly.