Letters

We returned to the lodge through a cleanup detail supervised by Drew, observed by the last contingent of Intelligence Types, and filmed by Prinz’s cameraman. Cook’s place was spacious, airy, simple, comfortable; I was invited to stay for dinner and the night. No hard feelings, he trusted, about our disagreement in the Marshyhope affair? Clearly he bore no grudges: witness his hospitality to the disrupters, whose shameful behavior on Commencement Day he nonetheless still deplored. With Lady Amherst and her friend Mensch, too, he had for his part made his peace: they’d spent last night as his guests in the caretaker’s cottage, where he hoped I’d oblige him by staying tonight. He was satisfied that “those lovebirds” had been properly disciplined for their misdemeanors, and was ready now to support their reinstatement to the faculty.

We sipped Canadian ale in his long screened porch and regarded the activity outside. I said I understood that Baron André Castine was his near relative: half brother, was it? So he likes to claim, Cook jovially replied: one wouldn’t guess it from our faces or our politics, eh? And the truth, alas, was buried with their parents. But again, he bore that chap no ill will — though he’d be relieved when he and his were gone from Barataria, and the navy stopped breathing down his neck!

Hm. Castine, then, was some sort of political radical? One of your high-society lefties, Cook affirmed: cast in the mold of FDR and Averell Harriman, but without their money — he winked — at least till his coming remarriage, eh?

I wondered aloud whether Jane Mack was aware of her fiancé’s politics. Cook laughed: his cousine was no fool; I might rest assured there was nothing about her groom-to-be that she did not know. Anyhow, added Drew (who here stepped casually out from the cottage living room, ale in hand), only such a crusted troglodyte as our host would call Roosevelt and Harriman radicals. Cook saluted with his glass: only such a card-carrying subverter of Old Glory as Harrison Mack’s misguided son would regard the Red Baron as a moderate liberal.

Such affability. Castine, then, I inquired, had not himself been present at all during the Burning of Washington? Cook winked again: the lucky fellow had seen his betrothed back to Cambridge instead; but he would return tonight or tomorrow, Cook devoutly hoped, to retrieve his yacht and begone to the upper Severn, where Drew’s mother was buying property in expectation of a favorable settlement of her late husband’s estate.

This last was an obvious but not ill-humored gibe; Drew merely saluted with his glass again. Where, I wondered, was my short-fused young adversary of old? What was all this amiable ecumenicism? I asked Drew his immediate plans. He’d be staying there at least until Castine returned, he supposed; they had “wrap-up” shots and other business to finish (Monkey business, Cook snorted) before moving on to “the home of the Home of the Brave” for more footage on Defenders Day, Sept. 12, anniversary of the British attack on Baltimore. The Tidewater Foundation, after all, had a large investment in the film; he felt a responsibility to monitor the expenditure of his father’s money. Hah, said Cook. And your mother knows all about these things? I pressed. Drew shrugged: Mack Enterprises had its own Intelligence Types, whose competence however he could not vouch for.

I did in fact stay for dinner — a cold buffet for the whole remaining company, served by Cook’s cook and caretaker — and the night, hoping I’d see Castine again and ask him a few polite questions. The caretaker’s cottage included a guest apartment — a clean and welcomely air-conditioned respite from O.J. — where but for brief confused dreams of the “Red Baron” and Jeannine, I slept more soundly than one ever does, or should, single-handed on a sailboat.

And next morning (Tuesday 8/26, a blazing, airless, equatorial day) I lingered about the premises till near noon, making a long business out of odd-job maintenance on the boat, in hopes of remeeting the owner of Baratarian. Who, however, did not appear. The man makes his own timetables, Drew said, and he Drew makes his. How about mine?

It was a plain, albeit cordial, invitation to leave; and indeed it was time I got on with, back to, done with my much-disrupted voyage de bon voyage. He and Cook, still chaffing each other, bid me farewell — Drew’s handshake was solid and serious, his expression gratified as mine by our new, not altogether clear rapprochement — and aided my undocking, calling advice about shoals and bush markers as I swung clear of Castine’s trawler and powered gingerly out. I waved good-bye to the people on the wharf, to the lodge, the limp unmoving flag, Bloodsworth Island generally and Drew Mack in particular — but began to suspect already that my quietus might have to be postponed till I’d seen that young man again (perhaps at Fort McHenry?) and I learned What Was Going On.