The Sea is a Thief (26 page)

The
Louisiana
was badly in need of repair after her long deployment.  She sailed to the Philadelphia Navy Yard in mid-December.  Chincoteague no longer required her services.  The single ill-considered rebel assault on the island had faded into memory.  The word from the Department of the Navy to Captain Sharpe was brief:
mission accomplished
.  The Captain hoisted anchor in time to spend Christmas in Providence.  

Before he took his leave of the island, Henry Sharpe made it his personal business to distribute twenty-one licenses entitling merchants to ship and sell oysters.   The first went to Edmund Bagwell; many of the remaining twenty did as well, through roundabout routes.  The licenses were the reward that Bagwell, and those of like mind, had earned for their loyalty to the Union in the face of a serious threat to their lives and fortunes.  The risk had paid off handsomely.  Without the licenses, no shipping could penetrate the strangling blockade that Union warships enforced up and down the coast.  

The main intention was to cut off the supply of arms to the South.  The effect was to cut off anything that travelled by ship.  That included all the most common things used in everyday life—oysters among them.  With shipping licenses in place, a dry spell in Chincoteague commerce was over.  Oysters could travel safely over water without the risk of seizure by Union ships.  They were among the few commodities that could.  Not a jar of jam, a bolt of cloth, or an ingot of steel could reach the mainland without Union Navy approval, and in the rebel South approval was not forthcoming.  When Edmund Bagwell loaded the first barrel of oysters onto a ship bound for New York he knew that good times had begun.  Wartime prices would only rise.  Thanks to his clandestine voyage to Hampton Roads many months ago, his oysters, and those of his friends and associates, would be the only Eastern Shore oysters available in the restaurants of the northern cities.  Everyone knew that Eastern Shore oysters were the finest.  The rest was a foregone conclusion.  Edmund Bagwell would thrive and prosper.

He gave thanks.      

 

As Edmund Bagwell calculated how he would profit from the Union blockade, John Grinnald already made a good living evading it.  Reclusive as he was, he was no fool; when the storm robbed him of his home and the few possessions he could claim in the world, he knew he had to recover quickly. With his still ruined, his whiskey money was gone.  The remainder of duck season didn't look good.  He was too old to live like in a tent like an Indian for long, and he would not stoop to thievery.  

Blockade running looked like the best choice.

Blockade runners filled the role that daring individuals always fill when the law denies people the things they want.  When Operation Anaconda closed Southern ports, the captains of fast ships defied their Northern gatekeepers by sailing under their noses—usually by night—with the goods that their Southern neighbors would pay most dearly for.  The profit in blockade running was far greater than any lawful commerce, and it wasn't nearly as dangerous as it appeared.  Though ships would be fired upon, a fast one would never be caught.  Large schooners were the main players in the game of cat-and-mouse, but tiny one-man boats could find a place at the table as well.  John Grinnald decided to try his hand.  

He had no boat, no money to buy one, and no supplies to build one.  He would have to borrow one.  Many had taken damage in the storm.  In exchange for help with repairs, a captain might be persuaded to offer the use of his vessel after hours.   

The arrangements proved easier than he expected.  Grinnald knew a fellow named Bennett Stott, a man with deep-set little eyes and a nose disfigured in some long-ago quarrel.  He was known for a lack of principle and a thirst for whiskey. Stott lived alone on a small boggy plot at the edge of Wildcat Marsh.  He fished to keep body and soul together; from time to time, his fishing trips led him to John Grinnald's cabin, where he would barter a good portion of his catch for white whiskey.  Most customers took their jug and left quickly, but Stott would linger for a few hands of cards over a pot of chowder.  Grinnald liked him, as much as he liked any man.  

Stott's boat, a New Haven Sharpie called
Rahab,
was well-suited for blockade running: twenty-five feet, with a broad beam and a shallow draft.  She boasted a single lug-rigged sail and could be poled silently through the shallows. When loaded lightly she was fast as all getout.  A light load would do; John Grinnald would carry only cargo that commanded the highest price per pound.

The two men took six days to patch up the boat, slowed by bouts of drinking and frequent headaches.  Afterwards, she wasn't pretty, but when she proved seaworthy Grinnald loaded
Rahab
with patent medicine, sewing needles, and the remnants of his whiskey.  He intended to sell most in Crisfield and the remainder at Lookout Point.

The plan was a thing of beauty.  The
Louisiana
was easily avoided; everyone knew the comings and goings of its crew.  At twilight Grinnald sailed northwards, past Wildcat Point, crossing the channel just out of sight of the anchored gunboat.  Then he swung south, keeping a close eye out for the ships that haunted the Chesapeake Bay.  If he was spotted, his plan was to set sail and run, hiding the boat in one of the countless inlets that pockmarked the coast.  Let the Yankees try to find him.  

His caution proved unnecessary.  He was a tiny and elusive target, and the Union ships were otherwise engaged. Grinnald swapped his minimal cargo for a surprisingly heavy pouch of silver coins, returning with an empty boat and a light heart.  Two to three times a week the
Rahab
made her circuit, each trip more profitable than the last, as Grinnald tailored his cargo to reflect demand.  He had no trouble finding merchandise. Sympathetic neighbors sought him out with goods to offer.  They got a warm feeling knowing that had helped their compatriots on the mainland and an even warmer feeling from the coins that jingled in their pockets.  

He continued all winter and well into the spring. During the week the money accumulated, and on Saturdays Grinnald spent it.  Lumber and hardware piled up at the site of his former cabin on Assateague while he planned for its replacement. He would make this one more comfortable, with a tar-paper roof and a porch with a rocking chair.  He found a new dog.  The dog ate well.

Very late one ink-black night, with the smell of rain in the air and thunder rolling overhead, it all came crashing down for John Grinnald. He pulled up to his customary landing at Point Lookout. When he stepped out of his boat he was met not by his usual contact but by a dozen Union soldiers.  He tried to flee, but the soldiers were far too quick for the old gunner. He didn't go without a fight. Three of them wrestled him down, nearly drowning him.  They blacked his eyes and knocked his hat into the ocean, but they felt no need to fire their weapons, and his life was spared.  

He was court-martialed that morning by officers of the USS
Cumberland
and was remanded to the federal prison camp at Point Lookout, a few miles distant.  It was a hellish place, filthy and almost unimaginably overcrowded: ten or twenty thousand prisoners—no one kept much of a count—jammed onto forty acres in open tents. The water was putrid, and stank. The food rations served as a slow sentence of death.  Each day men were carried to their graves, but John Grinnald was among the toughest of the lot. When the war ended he was released, ragged and emaciated, to find his way home.  

Every stick of lumber and supplies, down to the last three-penny nail, had disappeared while he suffered at Point Lookout.  No one seemed to know anything about it.  Forced to start afresh, Grinnald did the only thing he could: he bargained for an old gun and took up hunting ducks again.  Not many weeks later a telltale plume of smoke rose from the mosquito-infested clump of cedars where his still had stood.  When he sat in the evening sipping the fresh white dog that dripped slowly into its waiting reservoir, Point Lookout faded to a memory.

A very bad memory, but a memory nonetheless.   

 

Anna Daisey continued her trips to Assateague.  Elizabeth Reynolds was missing; Sam Dreher was gone.  When either might return was not hers to know.  The island was a very different place.  The bright empty seashore that had always been her comfort seemed dreadfully lonely now.  So many of the wild plants reminded her of Elizabeth. She recalled their names, their uses as medicine, and where Elizabeth had kept her stores of them.  All that had been blown away by the wind.  She saw visions of Sam Dreher in the places that were their own.  She could not sit in a certain grove of cedars, or on a particular grassy spot by the seaside, without sensing him beside her and feeling his arms around her.  The loss of being there without him was akin to physical pain.  Still, she could not keep herself away from the island long.  Despite the ache that it brought to her, Assateague was part of her spirit.  Its land and its creatures fed her eyes and inspired her hands to draw.  She searched diligently for new subjects, though she knew that the same drawings that sold before would easily sell again.  Mr. Breckenridge's visit had meant more to Anna than he could possibly know.

The sneak skiff was lost somewhere in the channel between the islands.  Beau borrowed a rowboat that was kept behind the Bagwell Waterfowl and Provision Company and rarely used.  Bagwell said that he would come to get it if it were needed; for the time being, he was just as happy to see it moored on the creek behind the Daisey home.  

 

As soon as Anna recovered her strength, Beau took her to Assateague to look for Elizabeth.  The day was cold, strangely quiet and still, and soft low rollers lapped at the shore.  A few ponies were about, foraging.  Willow was in good health, uninjured in the storm, and welcomed his Anna.  She threw her arms about his neck and thanked God that he was spared.

The lighthouse was empty.  Beau laid his shoulder to the door of the little cabin where Elizabeth normally spent the winter, and forced it open.  Dampness and a musty odor greeted him.  The wind and water had left chaos in their wakes.  Her few pieces of furniture were smashed and scattered about.  Shards of broken crockery crunched underfoot.  Sand coated the floor and mud was caked in the corners of the room, slowly drying and cracking in long, jagged furrows.  No attempt had been made to undo the damage.  Clearly no one had stayed there since the storm passed.  Not a trace remained of the linen tent under whose blessed shade Anna had passed so many hours.  Elizabeth's favorite bench, a lone witness to what had been, lay buried in the shifting sand many yards from the place where it belonged.  

Anna entered the cold, dark lighthouse, ascending the winding brick stair as she had done so often with Elizabeth.  She could sense immediately the odd angle at which the tower now leaned.  She clung to the wall to lessen her feelings of vertigo.  Drawings still hung on the rough bricks, stuck there by their creator.  Anna gathered them up one by one, sliding a finger gently beneath the paper to release the grip of the pine pitch that held them.  When she was close to the top of the stair she paused at the loose brick that concealed Elizabeth's store of money.  The best thing to do would be to take it back with her and hide it somewhere in her home.  She slid the brick loose, only to discover the space behind it empty.  

She stopped, staring at the empty hollow that Elizabeth had kept filled with coins.  What could it mean?  No one was aware of the hiding place.  It was impossible to tell that the brick was loose simply by looking at it.  Why would a passer-by think to remove it?  She must have taken her money along when she fled the storm—but how did she leave Assateague, and where was she?  Anna smiled to herself.  This was just like Elizabeth.  

She is alive,
she thought.  Joy flooded through her.  The lighthouse was all but destroyed, and with it most of Elizabeth's living, but she had left to seek solace somewhere else.   When and where she might see the medicine woman again, Anna did not know, but she was sure that she would see her.  They would draw and laugh together again.  No storm could divide them forever.  

Anna rolled the drawings into a tight bundle and held them close as Beau rowed back home.  She would keep them just as they were, a reminder of her friend.  She decided to believe that they still walked the earth together, now on separate paths.

 

There was not one moment during the years of the war that Anna Daisey despaired of Sam Dreher's return.  Often, her mind was not her friend; it reminded her of the many reasons that she might never again hold her love in her arms.  She dreaded most strongly the possibility that he might be killed in the fighting.  That possibility was not small.  Word often travelled to Chincoteague of battles that had been fought, and the thousands that had perished on both sides.  As time passed, it became undeniable even in the south that the Union armies had gained the advantage, but it was gained at the price of lives lost.  How could she assure herself that her Sam was not among them?  The war dragged on for more than three years after he was taken from her.   

Still, her hope lived.

Even if he survived the conflict, what prevented another girl from catching his eye, just as she had?  They had known each other such a short time when he sailed away.  He could find a girl in any port he chose—a prettier one, eager to make the acquaintance of a handsome young carpenter.  How could he resist such a temptation?  Why should he?  She received not a single letter from him; this was perhaps the most difficult of her trials.  She knew that his writing was poor, and that few letters of any kind reached the island.  Confederate post carried Confederate mail, and Union mail did not reach Virginia.  But not one letter?  She could hardly imagine circumstances so bad and luck so fickle that she did not receive even one.