Chesapeake (130 page)

So the watermen prayed for a cargo of farm produce to Baltimore and a load of fertilizer back, or coal to Norfolk, or pig iron from the blast furnaces north of Baltimore. Best of all was a load of watermelons from far up some river, for then, with a crew of three—Turlock, Caveny and a black cook—the skipjack could earn real money, passing back and forth across the oyster beds it had worked during the winter.

At the start of this unexpected bonanza Jake was in such a good mood that as the lines were about to be loosened, he impetuously called for his dog to come aboard, and when the Chesapeake leaped across the open water to scramble aboard, Caveny asked, ‘What goes?’ and Jake said, ‘I got a hankerin’ to take my dog along.’ Before the sentence was finished, Caveny had leaped ashore and was bellowing, ‘Nero! Come here!’ And his voice was so penetrating that almost at once his Labrador dashed up, prepared for whatever adventure was afoot.

It was a pleasant cruise. The skipjack sailed slowly up to the far end of the Choptank to Old Man Twombly’s farm, where they found Greef and the watermelons waiting. His first cry from the rickety wharf concerned the gun: ‘How’s the big one doin’?’ And before he threw a line, Jake yelled back, ‘We’re gettin’ about seventy-seven ducks a go,’ and Greef replied with some contempt, ‘You ain’t usin’ enough shot.’

While the loading took place, the skipjack’s black cook caught himself a mess of crabs from the stern and fried up some crisp crab cakes. Greef brought down some cold beer and sat on deck with the watermen and their dogs, remembering old storms. Greef made the men a proposition: ‘Five years ago I planted me a line of peach trees, just to see. They’re producin’ major-like, and I want to risk a hundred baskets stowed on deck. You sell ’em, you keep half the cash.’ But when the peaches were aboard and the skipjack was ready for sailing, the old man took Jake aside and whispered, ‘With that gun, you load her right, you tamp her right, you ought to catch ninety ducks on the average.’

The passage across the bay was aromatic with the smell of peaches, and when the cargo reached the Long Dock, the A-rabs were waiting with their pushcarts, pleased to receive fresh melons but positively delighted with the unexpected peaches.

With their windfall profits, the two watermen trekked to the Rennert for a duck dinner, then visited Otto Pflaum and his wife, loaded up with fertilizer and sailed for home. As they quit the harbor they chanced to find themselves at the center of a triangle formed by three luxurious bay
steamers, now lighted with electricity, and they admired the scintillating elegance of these fine vessels as they set out to penetrate the rivers which fed the bay.

‘Look at ’em go!’ Jake cried as the vessels went their individual ways, their orchestras sending soft music over the water.

‘Classic ships,’ Caveny said, and for most of an hour the Choptank men regarded the ships almost enviously.

The oystermen could not have imagined that these large ships would one day disappear entirely from this bay, as the Paxmore schooners had vanished and the Paxmore clippers. The classic ship that night was not the gaudy steamer but the quiet little skipjack, the boat conceived on the Chesapeake, tailored to its demands and adapted in every part to its conditions. It would endure after everything on the bay that night had gone to rust, for it was generic, born of the salt flats and heavy dredging, while the brightly lighted steamers were commercial innovations useful for the moment but bearing little relation to the timeless bay.

‘They disappear mighty fast,’ Caveny said as the lights merged with the waves.

Now the watermen were alone on the bay, and before long the low profile of the Eastern Shore began to rise in the moonlight, a unique configuration of marshland and wandering estuaries. ‘We really have the land of pleasant livin’,’ Turlock mused as his skipjack drifted in the night airs, but when they approached Devon Island he fixed his gaze at the western end of the island, where a multitude of trees lay wallowing in the tide.

‘I never noticed that before,’ he said. ‘That island’s gonna wash clean away, one of these storms.’

The watermen inspected the erosion, and Caveny said, ‘I read in a book that all our land on the Eastern Shore is alluvial …’

‘What’s that?’ Turlock asked suspiciously.

‘Land thrown here by the Susquehanna, when it was fifty times as big. You know what I think, Jake? I think long after we’re dead there ain’t gonna be no Eastern Shore. The land we know will wash into the ocean.’

‘How soon?’ Jake asked.

‘Ten thousand years.’

Neither man spoke. They were sailing over oyster beds for which they had fought, beds whose icy catch had numbed their hands and cut their fingers, bringing blood to their frozen mittens. Beyond that spit, barely visible in the night, the
Laura Turner
had capsized, six men lost. Over there the
Wilmer Dodge
had foundered, six men gone. Around the next headland, where ducks rafted in winter, the
Jessie T
had driven off the invaders from Virginia.

Softly the skipjack entered the Choptank. Jake’s Chesapeake still patrolled the bow, ready to repel invaders, but Caveny’s Labrador lay prone on the deck, his head close to Tim’s ankle, his dark eyes staring up at the Irishman with boundless love.

A BASIC TENET OF QUAKERISM WAS THAT IF A MAN
or woman tended the divine fire that burned within each human breast, one could establish direct relationship to God without the intercession of priest or rabbi. Songs and shouted prayers were not necessary to attract God’s attention, for He dwelt within and could be summoned by a whisper.

Nevertheless it became a custom in all meetings for certain devout souls to be recognized as possessing special devotion, and they became known as ministers. In the traditional sense of this word they had no right to it, for they did not attend seminary, nor were the hands of some bishop placed upon them, bestowing a divine gift, the legitimacy of which extended back to Jesus Christ. In all other religions, the priest thus legally ordained could expect to be supported economically by his parishioners, and to do their spiritual work for them.

In the Quaker faith the minister had no legitimacy other than his or her own behavior, and no fixed income other than what he or she could earn by hard work. A Quaker acted like a minister, then became one.

During the Great Depression of the 1930s the Quakers of Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania discovered that they had in their midst another in that majestic line of Quaker preachers. Woolman Paxmore, then in his fifties, was a tall, gaunt, prophetic man with an unusually large Adam’s apple that jutted forward as if he had two noses. He had spent his life as a farmer, but his commitment to God was so overpowering that even while young he began traveling to various towns, and wherever he appeared at First Day worship the congregation let him know that they would be disappointed if he did not speak.

He had been aptly named after one of the first Quaker ministers born
in America. John Woolman had been an inspired man, a humble New Jersey tailor who from the age of seven had known himself to be called by God. Each year his simple rustic life gave further evidence of his exceptional faith: he ministered to the poor, elevated the status of blacks in his part of New Jersey, traveled up the Susquehanna to check on the government’s treatment of Indians, and went on his own meager funds to England to study conditions there, always evidencing a simple belief in the goodness of God.

His namesake, Woolman Paxmore, led much the same kind of life. He, too, ministered to the poor, finding homes for no less than thirty orphaned children. He had gone to states like Oklahoma and Montana to see what could be done to help the Indians. And in his fifty-sixth year his thoughts turned to Berlin, the capital of Nazi Germany.

He was working in the field one day, harvesting corn on the north bank of the Choptank, when a powerful, straightforward thought occurred to him: Jesus Christ was a Jew, a real Jewish rabbi with a long nose, and no living man ever accomplished more on this earth. For Adolf Hitler to persecute the spiritual descendants of Jesus is wrong. It is all wrong.

That week he began preaching this simple message: to discriminate in any way against the Jew is to deny the heritage of Jesus Christ. He took his message to the rural meetings of Pennsylvania and down into New Jersey, where John Woolman had preached, and to all the meetings in Delaware. He drove a small Chevrolet, and on Saturday afternoons Quakers in out-of-the way places would see him coming, a tall, ungainly man, hunched over the wheel of his car, peering sideways as he moved slowly into town, looking for some address which he remembered imperfectly.

He would stop the Chevrolet anywhere, leave the motor running and walk about the streets, importuning strangers, ‘Could thee perhaps tell me where Louis Cadwallader lives? There’s no such person in this town? Could it be Thomas Biddle?’

When he found the person he sought he was greeted with warmth, and other Quakers in the neighborhood were summoned to an informal supper. Some of his finest preaching was accomplished in these quiet Saturday nights when Quakers met over a cold ham dinner to hear the reflections of their distinguished minister. Such gatherings often ended with slabs of apple pie and glasses of milk, and the rural folk would listen intently as Paxmore brought his discussion to an end: ‘I believe that if three or four of us went to Herr Hitler and pointed out to him the grievousness of his behavior, he would understand. I think God would show us a way to rescue those tortured people, and bring them out of Germany as He once brought their ancestors out of Egypt.’

‘Does thee think Herr Hitler would listen?’

‘He has not succeeded in gaining control of Germany by being a stupid
man. And wise men listen. He will listen to us if we approach with simple testimony.’

He became obsessed with the idea of going to Germany and talking directly with Hitler, and as he moved about the eastern states he convinced two other Quakers of the practicality of his plan: a merchant in Pittsburgh said he was prepared to go, and a renowned schoolmaster from a small town in North Carolina said he had an inner conviction that Hitler would listen. So in October 1938 these three elderly Quakers assembled in Philadelphia and discussed plans for their visit to Berlin.

Woolman Paxmore, as the acknowledged preacher, laid the spiritual groundwork: ‘We shall tell him in plain words, but without rancor, that what he is doing is wrong, that it can in no way aid Germany, and that it must be an affront to the Christians of the world.’

It was the Pittsburgh merchant who assumed responsibility for the logistics of the trip: ‘Well-minded Friends in Philadelphia have contributed generously. We’ll go to New York this Friday and sail on the
Queen Mary
to Southampton. British Friends will meet us there and we’ll spend three days in London. We proceed to Harwich and cross the Channel. In Berlin a group of German Friends will house us, and we have already applied for a meeting with Herr Hitler.’

And so they set out, three tall Quakers with no credentials other than their simple faith. The third day of their ocean trip was a Sunday, and the schoolteacher proposed that they hold a Quaker meeting in one of the cabins, but Woolman Paxmore protested, ‘It seems ostentatious for us …’

‘How ostentatious, if we meet in private?’

‘Because there is a formal meeting in the salon,’ Paxmore replied, ‘and we should support it.’

The three Old Testament figures, dressed in black, added grace and color to the services conducted by an Episcopalian minister from Boston, but were surprised when at the end of prayers the clergyman said, ‘We are honored this morning by having within our congregation one of the distinguished religious leaders of America, Woolman Paxmore, the Quaker preacher from Maryland, and I for one would consider it an honor if he and his two companions would hold a Quaker service for us this afternoon.’

This proposal met with enthusiastic support. At the Sunday meal many of the first-class passengers came down to the tourist class in which the three Quakers were traveling to urge that Paxmore conduct the services. ‘We’ve never attended a Quaker meeting,’ the passengers said. ‘It would be a rare privilege.’

So in the late afternoon a group of some sixty people assembled in the salon which had been used for the morning services. Three chairs had been arranged at the front of the room, and it had been supposed that
Woolman Paxmore would occupy the middle chair, as a place of honor, but it was his custom always to award that chair to whatever man or woman had assumed the responsibility for the housekeeping details of the meeting, and now he insisted that the Pittsburgh merchant take it, for he had provided funds for the trip.

For ten minutes the three men sat silent. After twenty minutes there was still no sound, and visitors who had never participated in a Quaker meeting grew uneasy. They did not shift or shuffle, but it was plain that they expected something to happen. There was no singing, no collection, no prayer, no sermon. Thirty minutes elapsed, and forty. Then the Episcopalian clergyman rose and said briefly, ‘Brother Paxmore, we do hope you will feel called upon to speak with us. We have heard that your messages are inspiring.’

This was very un-Quakerish and it caught Paxmore by surprise; he had been overawed by the responsibility he had assumed, that of serving as the conscience of Christianity, and had felt that it would be intemperate of him to speak at such a hallowed moment. The journey was engaged; the obligation had been assumed; there could be no turning back; words were no longer needed.

But he was a true Quaker, a man of total simplicity, and whereas he had felt it improper to speak, it was not intemperate of the Boston clergyman to point out that the assembled group had hoped to hear what a Quaker preacher might be like. His personal inclination was not to speak, but if others demanded that he do so, he would.

Nodding gravely to the clergyman, he rose, but the ship was moving through vast and easy swells and was unsteady, so he grabbed at the chair and stood behind it. Tall, black-suited, gray of head, angular of face and bony-handed, he stood in the swaying salon and said, ‘Women and men must meet the challenge of whatever specific time they have been chosen to fill, and the inescapable challenge of our time is the treatment Herr Hitler is according the Jews of Germany.’ He predicted that if Hitler were allowed to mistreat the German Jews, he would soon extend such acts to the Jews of Austria, Poland and France. ‘And then he will turn his attention to other non-conformists, like the Seventh Day Adventists and the Quakers. And pretty soon the malignancy will encompass thee, and thee, and thee.’ With these words he pointed his massive right hand at specific members of the congregation, and three passengers with German backgrounds, who felt that Hitler had done much to restore the dignity of Germany, rose in anger and left the salon.