Cody Treat

Cody Treat was a very wealthy man before he had reached his 26th year.  A native descendent of fishermen or as long back as anyone could remember, men who hardly made enough living for their families and drank the rest, Cody was a person of interest. He had purchased a gently used fishing boat, fixed up and added a wing onto the old family home for his mother's comfort, and his own need of solitude. Cody was aware of derision from the close knit club of fishermen, and even fear.  These hard bitten seamen were courteous enough when doing necessary business with him, but he had no friends among them.  That this was fine with Cody Treat. He had no intention of sharing his methods with any of them, or anything else for that matter.

The granite foundation of the Treat family residence had been on the bluff on land deeded to the family in perpetuity since the late 1600s. The great irony is that the land belonged from the beginning of time the Wampanoag Tribe, whom the English called Redmen. Generation to generation that land was passed down to the women of the tribe as was the Wamanoag custom. The land encompassed A forest thick with Pines called The Grove. It was always a sacred place where the sachems danced and performed their rites.  Beyond toward the sea large sandy spits, called by the English The Fingers, is The Sandy Landing place, made for a calm haven for water craft from canoes to English war ships. 

In the time before time Onkwam was a spiritual place of beauty, tranquility and peace of soul. Massasoit erred in thinking an alliance with the English would forge a lasting peace.  What the alliance did was cause the Wampanoag Tribe to lose much of their land.  Wars broke out, The Massachuttsets Bay Colony claimed much of Native land for the growing colony of settlers.

Still the Spirits never left the land.  In 1877 The Grove, as the lush pine forest came to be known, was formally dedicated to the "principals of spiritualism".  Some bogus 'spiritual' rites were practiced. Flim-flam men came to hold their séances, read fortunes and mostly empty the pockets of the gullible. The town fathers violated the age old rule of not parading holy secrets in public for profit.   Small wonder that a Victorian crazy woman Geraldine Vallier Perle in 1891 wrote a series of popular articles which were published by The New England News Company of Boston, The Vampires of Onset. Other journalists wrote to expose the fakery of Spiritualism geared to sell papers.  And sell they did.  None of the reported events ever took place in Onset but the general public believed the place was a haunted dangerous place no longer a good place for family vacations.

Onset further descended in popularity as a tourist mecca with the rise of a shanty town.  It became a party town, known to be full of bars, cheap eating establishments, and gambling and even murder. Onset's had become a place good family people stayed away from.

Weeta Weems Treat named by her Native mother, was born in 1945.  She lived on the 100 acre piece That had remained in private ownership for some 300 years. The Native women married Englishmen to keep the sacred piece whole.  By the time of Weeta' s birth an Onset Association had been formed by men who had grown up hearing stories of the magic place Onset once was. They voted to tear down the shanty town. Weetta Weems joined the effort and while still in her teens she began to speak at public meetings.  Owning a large tract of some of the finest and most valuable land in Onset she was heard.  By her 20th birthday she had met Nelson Treat at various town meetings, fallen in love with and married the man who alone she found to be a man like her ancestors: "a lusty man, grave of countenance, spare of speech, a man with quiet strength."

Weetta was the perfect counterpoint to Nelson Treat.  To his great amusement the woman he loved talked ceaselessly to any and all who would listen as she painted a picture of Onset where the sachems walked and sang and danced sacred dances among the pines, of a time when the land was treasured and cared for by women who had the aid of good spirits that had time before time inhabited the land.  So eloquent she was she convinced wealthy businessmen that Onset could once again be a sacred Eden. Of course for the businessmen that translated to condos, parks and golf courses, and of course money tourism would bring.  Weetta Weems was fully aware these men were in it for profit. She saw a way of compromise. Wise and popular outgoing woman she was, she rallied their wives to include homes for the disabled and indigent, hospices and food pantries. 

The battle for the Treat property goes on to the present as the land is much coveted by prosperous businessmen for condos and inns or even shopping malls to accommodate the booming tourist trade.  Cody had no intercourse with any of them - not because these fancy men didn't try heir damnest to lure Cody and his mother with offers of  money and prospective to administrative power to oversee their projects.

To Cody Treat and his mother all of their promises were as tobacco and beads. Weetta Weems Treat had taught her son well the ways of men such as these. They would not make the mistake of trusting these white men. or trying to placate them that their Wampanoag ancestor the great king and Sachem of the Wampanoag tribe Massasoit, had made. And anyway, following Wampanoag custom the land belonged to Weetta Weems as had all Wampanoag land from the beginning of time belonged to the women of the tribe. These daughters of Massasoit had wills of steel, they had the Sight and the gift of expression the People of the Dawn and The Sandy Landing possessed. Weetta Weems Treat managed to keep her land, as had all the women of her line before her.

Her husband died at sea when Cody was twelve.  He remembers his dad Nelson Treat as a large man in body and spirit with deep set eyes that betrayed little of what he was thinking or felt.  In Cody mind he remained an anchor of a man who held fast no matter which way the wind blew or how hard.  He knew how to gauge the tides by the moon, and could predict storms by the movement of clouds and winds, and the very smell of the air. People said he had a sixth sense about the sea. The morning he left before dawn he came to Cody bed, woke him and told him to remember he was a man, to  always be a help to his mother, to keep his mother's council and to never sell the land.  Cody took that message as important, presaging something bad.  His dad only spoke like that when it very much mattered.  He pressed his son's shoulders hard and then he was gone.

 By the time of his dad's death Cody Treat was as wise in the ways of the seas as his dad, and was as much a part of the sea as if the very brine of it ran in his veins. And most of all he knew the seasons when the big fish moved and where. He knew where the monster Bluefin Tuna found their favorite  Striper and Snapper Blue food. Cody Treat was in truth a Sachem of Onkowan, the Sandy Landing Place. Locals little knew or cared about history.  They simply whispered of him, "A strange one, that."    

When Weeta lost Nelson, she lost her soul's mate.  And her son the very image of her husband was both her great joy and her reminder of her loss. By the time Nelson died and Cody was entering his teen years, Onset by then had been transformed into a charming village of replica Victorian houses and cottages.  There were twenty three new buildings in all. And a spa that offered any service of skin, hair and nail that man or woman could possibly want. The walks everywhere in town were Belgian block lit by black replica gas lanterns.  Window boxes filled with bright flowers and foliage hung on the sills of each window in town.  Signs were painted in dark colors and lettered in gold.  The entire town spoke prosperity and peace.

But for Cody Treat the bounty of Onset was the sea. Cody only felt really alive on the sea.  He was a quiet secretive boy who was described as a loner. To the more astute, he presented himself as historians who had met and written about the great Massasoit:  "a lusty man, grave of countenance, spare of speech".  Cody was tall, over 6' feet.  His skin summer or winter was always a light copper color. He was  lean and fit and He had not cut his straight black hair since his dad died and now at age twenty six he plaited it to hang almost to his waist. His facial feature were already chiseled by his ancestry and the elements of the sea which was his home. His forehead was creased giving him the appearance of thoughtfulness or menace depending on how you looked at it.

Cody had none he called friend; he had many who respected him, and some who feared him. At age 16 he had almost killed a bully who started a fight with him in high school.  It started when he was called a faggot because of the thick black braid he wore.  After the fight but carefully out of his hearing his schoolmates called  him the crazy Redman.

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Annie Copeland at age 23 was back in Onset after graduating from Boston College.  She was her widowed father's great disappointment.  Mr. Copeland had forced her to go to college.  Annie thought it was because as an important man in town affairs and a leader in The Onset Bay Association he was determined at all costs to have an educated daughter as befitting her father's station in upper class Onset society.  Her mother ill with cancer, what Annie most wanted was to stay in Onset and care for her mother who had been her loving and wise parent and her best friend. However she gave in to her father's rants and enrolled in Boston College so as not to cause further stress in the household. Annie's mother died in the middle of her sophomore year.

Annie had defied her father by majoring in psychology and social work. His weekly calls to her in Boston were to ask her what her grades were and to warn her sternly that to get any kind of decently paying job in that field she would have to go on to get at least a Master's Degree.  There was never any mention of her mother unless Annie insisted in tears.  Her father never once asked her if she was alright or how she was doing emotionally. Annie came home to see her mother those first year and then spent holidays with roommates families, or simply stayed in the empty dorm going back and forth to the library to read.  She was perfectly content to be alone.

Her brief home stay for her mother's funeral convinced her of a few important things.  She would not pursue an advanced degree, and she would not leave Onset. After graduation she hadn't bothered to even look for a job. She couldn't tell her father how heartsick she was for her mother, the comfort of home. She gave excuses why she couldn't come home for holidays.  She wanted to avoid however she could the arguments she knew would go on unabated if she went home.  Annie didn't tell her father what she knew for certain: that she had no intention of getting any further degree, or that she had no intention of finding job which would require her to leave Onset.

 Her father beamed at her graduation.  Annie only felt relief that the four year ordeal was over.  It was April, the beginning of Spring. Annie felt it was the beginning of her life- a life she chose and not a life that had been chosen for her. She packed up her things, loaded the car and her dad drove her home the evening of graduation.  She had few people she needed to say her goodbyes to.  A professor or two, and a couple of roommates she had liked, and then they were off.

Annie had no choice but to move in with her father. She unpacked and settled into her old room which looked the same as it had when she had left for Boston four years before.  She wasted no time applying for a job at the Spa.  With her major in psychology and a convincing interview she was accepted.  She learned massage therapy.  All of this caused her father's disappointment to boil over into rage, and he and Annie fought almost daily. Annie sought solace, to no avail, in affairs with a number of local boys that mostly ended unsatisfactorily. Once she was hit hard enough to cause purple bruises she couldn't hide with sunglasses or makeup.   She began to smoke a little dope down at the beach at night. Weed was a refuge from life's disappointments.  It took the sting away, and allowed her to forget for a time.

After one particularly terrible argument where hateful hurtful words about how she was murdering her mother's memory were said, Annie found a small two room apartment and moved in while her father was at an Association meeting.  She took little.  Some clothes, mostly  jeans, favorite books, and some tapes of her favorite music ranging from Bach to Ian and Sylvia.  She signed on for as many extra hours at the Spa they would give her.

There was no end of bereft, depressed, lonely, lost women who came to the Spa to be pampered, massaged, fed healthy food, made over. It was calming for Annie to feel their flesh under her hands, to knead the hurt out of the skin and soul of these woebegone women which in turn lessened her own pain.  Annie took her lunch breaks in the employee cafe.  It was there she met Weetta Weems Treat.  Weetta as outgoing and loquacious as ever came right over to the table where Annie was picking at her lunch and plunked herself down next to the girl.

"My name is Weetta Weems Treat.  You can call me Weettie.  They all do. You work at the Spa, am I right?"

Annie was wary.  It was like this tall woman had a force field around her.  She managed a weak, "Yeah."

"Just a slip of a girl, ain't ya?  What? Just shy of 5 feet and I bet you don't weight but a hundred pounds.  You should eat something, lovey."

"Don't feel much like eating these days."

"As bad as all that? A pretty one like you? Well, the hours you are working you need some meat on those sorry bones of yours."  Annie jumped as a deep laugh burst from somewhere up from Weettie's solar plexus.  Weettie seemed not to notice the effect she was having and went on.  "I work at the hospice, assistant to the dietitian.  Have lunch about the same time as this most every day.  Next time I'm bringing you something I cooked myself.  You won't be a pickin' at it I can tell you!" And then lunch break was over.  Annie thought, how strange.  I never would have believed how very much I like this woman. 

For all the work Annie did at the Spa, she suffered insomnia.  It didn't worry her a bit.  She looked forward to those dark sleepless hours.  That was when her imagination painted its best works of art, told the best tales, shifted Annie's shape to whomever and whatever it had a ken to, took her on phantasm journeys.

One sleepless night at 2:30 am Annie pulled on her jeans and a jacket and headed down the bluff to the sea. A stiff breeze sang through the Grove, carrying its healing pitch blood smell. Below she sank into the yielding sand track to the death and life smell of the sea. The sound of the sea this night was applause as the surf swept over the rocks, the sight in half waxing moonlight a simmering black living thing laced with white at the crests.  Untidy halyards played mast chimes. 

Annie had to sink down to her knees at the miracle this always was.  She finished her joint, buried the dead roach in the sand and finally reclined in the lee of the marina shed, not a living being apart from herself in sight.   Somewhere out of her dreaming she heard someone whistling.  She stood up too fast and almost toppled over.  Arms tightened around her body, the wool of his jacket rough on her cheek. Annie thought right then how strangely calm she was, given that she had no idea who this was hugging her. His voice was deep, "Steady as she goes there!" A hint of concern, and yes amusement. 

He held her a moment at arms' length, then released her. Almost a foot taller than she he dipped his head a bit and touched his cap to her and turned his back to go.  Annie laughed right out loud then. Peal after peal. It was as if the laughter and joy pent up for so long finally made a break for it.  The breeze brought words from Cody Treat back to her.  "Gnight Annie."

She stood a moment and listened.  Rumble of a diesel engine, sound of heavy lines being cast on the dock beyond, clink of a chain, thud of what sounded like crates being stowed.  Boat in gear now, steady thrum heading out and away. A black shape sailing the moon's silver path to the sea.

Later back in her bed Annie could still feel rough wool on her cheek.  Cody Treat.  Hadn't seen him since high school where he was a year ahead of her.  Always the mystery man.  Never seemed to socialize with anyone, travel in any clique or crowd.  Never played sports even though every coach of every team begged him to play. The girls took bets on who could get him.  They all lost.  The sea was his passion.  That was all there was to it Annie thought.  What a treasure to have passion of any kind like that. She dreamed that Cody Treat's strong arms stayed around her all the night through.

Annie woke to the phone ringing.  It was her dad.  Once again ranting about all the money he wasted sending her to college, ranting that she was ungrateful, that she was spitting in the face of her dead mother working for slave wages at the Spa, then weeping. Please come home.  She hung up on him. Of course he called again and again leaving messages for her to come home.  She knew what he really wanted was for someone to take care of him.  She stopped answering her phone.  Home for her now was her two room apartment. She came and went as she pleased.  And here she was a short walk from the sea which held her mother's ashes and her heart.

Weettie was true to  her word. She showed up almost every lunch time with something so delicious that Annie could not refuse to eat. Blueberry pie, Dump Cake, Indian Pudding. And always a joke in salty language, a story about various townspeople, and events.  All made hilariously funny.  One day Weettie became uncharacteristically quiet.  She gave Annie the eagle eye.  It was unnerving to say the least.  Then, a hint of a smile.  Just the barest movement at the corner of Weettie's mouth.  "You've met my son." 

It was a statement pure and simple.  Not a question, or a judgment, or loaded with any discernible meaning.  Just a statement of fact.  Annie was taken aback.  Now what the heck?  In a gentler tone Weettie said, "You are a good girl Annie Copeland."  

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Cody began to appear as out of the air when Annie had gone to the beach nights she couldn't sleep.  Those first meetings they said little.  They lay apart on their backs in the sand and stared at the stars. Cody began to name them: Ursa Major and Minor, Lyra with its bright Vega, Quila the Eagle, Bootes the Herdsman With Arcturus in the southwestern end and Izar residing in the middle of the Belt of the Herdsman figure.  Scorpius, the long, snaking line of bright stars clustering at its head and sting, with the brightest star Antares Cody said means the rival of Mars.  He said they would watch the Perseids in mid July to late August after midnight.  "And we will wish on those shooting stars."

Annie was filled with such calm peace and wonder at Cody knowledge and reverence for the heavens she felt faint.  No one knows him. "See the grand W over there?" Cody continued.  That's Queen Cassiopeia.  She was banished to live forever in the heavens because she was so beautiful.  The five stars we see are Caph meaning Open Palm.  Shedar, Full breast.  Tcih, Warm thigh; Achird, Desirous Womb; Sagin, Legs" 

Annie thought, you artful deceiver, slip slider man, shape shifter.  Who are you?  Where did you come from?  "Legs," Cody whispered after a few minutes.  They must decide to go....or stay."  Annie was praying as never before that they would stay, and never take this man from her. 

In days to follow Annie asked him, "Are you ever lonely?" Cody told Annie, "My liking for being alone is not loneliness."  He touched her head as if in blessing saying, "I am not lonely." This she fully understood.  It was her life he was talking about. "I've had troubles with my father." she said. "He has said hateful words about how I am killing my mother a second time by not using my education well. He said I am no daughter of his and that he wished I had never been born. We have cut off all communication.  I feel very guilty. Terribly guilty.  Not because I feel that the things he said about me are true, but because I feel freed by them in some way. I feel guilty because I am not lonely.  I am simply and joyfully alone. Alone to be who I will be."

Cody put his arm around her. "Like it or not you have a parent, he said."  Annie frowned and dipped her head in question.  "You have a mother,"  Cody repeated. Annie began, "Yes, but she's..."  Cody spoke over her, "You have a living mother.  Mine."  It was as great loving arms squeezed all the pain and hurt out of her.  As though she had been reborn. 

In June Annie's day began a pink cotton candy dawn.  She woke thinking of Cody as she had fallen sleep. When she brushed her hair in the morning it was his face she saw in the mirror. At work the flesh she kneaded was his.  Cody was a constant dull ache like she had never before experienced.  It was as if she her every waking thought came back to Cody Treat.  Everything she did and everywhere she went Cody Treat was there. It was as though she was possessed by him.

She called the Spa to say that she would not be in that lovely June morning, that she was not feeling well.  And that was not in truth a lie. The sun rose hot on the sea grass smelling like wheat toast as she headed down the bluff path to the marina.  Something was going on down there.  A murmuration of gulls diving and soaring all around and their maniacal laughter filled the air.  There was a huge tanker parked in the lot and little men in grey wrap jackets were doing something around the tanker.  Closer, Annie saw they were Asians.  Standing apart from them was another Asian man dressed in what looked to be a dark Italian suit, linen shirt, gold cufflinks, and a silk tie knotted at the man's throat Windsor style. Shiny Gucci style tasseled loafers.  Not a scene one saw every day in Onset.

Further down the ramp to the dock there was Cody's boat. A new 28' Mako with a center console, and transom door.  Cody was standing knee deep in red blood. Annie watched in wonder as Cody tipped up to the sky, lifted both arms dripping with tuna blood and began to voice something like a chant.  

An enormous Blue Fin tuna had been hoisted up on the crane and then swung over to be weighted. Must be 900 or a thousand pounds or more.  A true giant tuna.  To Annie all of this was almost unbelievable sight.  The Asian men made some notes. Cody stripped off his bloody fisherman's bib and boots, stood in his shorts ankle deep in tuna blood Annie watched in awe as he raised his bloody arms to the sky and appeared to be saying something.

He began stowing gear.  A large gaff in the holder, a harpoon, a couple of rods, heavy tackle from which Cody was removing large two spike hooks.  He took his time.  Placed the crates on the dock, some light and empty, and some heavier.  When Cody had cleared the cockpit he unreeled the marina hose and turned on the water full blast and proceeded to hose down every square inch of his boat.  Transom door wide open the water ran in a blood red river out of the boat.  Then the river turned salmon pink, then lighter, then clear.  He sprayed his oils and boots on the dock. Cody hosed himself next, even putting the nozzle over his head and down his shorts.  Cody wet skin looked like burnished copper.  His braid looked like a glistening serpent against his back.  

A crowd had begun to gather.  Annie stepped back to the marina porch to get out of the way.  There was the Asian man in the suit, standing still and straight as a post. His men were lined up in front of the giant tuna which dock workers had lowered almost to ground.  And still Cody was unhurried finishing his clean-up.  A woman who looked like a reporter had appeared.  She was dressed in a suit and high heels and was perspiring this warm summer day.  She held a clipboard. Behind her stood a man with a professional looking camera.  In contrast to the stark still Asian man, the woman reporter was swaying her weight from one foot to the other and grimacing as though she were in pain.

Cody finally came up the ramp.  He had pulled on a somewhat rumpled checked shirt that he hadn't bothered to button and a pair of clean cargo shorts.  His feet were bare.   Cody waved off the reporter who had made to rush at him with her camera man in tow and stood before the Asian man who bowed before him.  They spoke briefly.  Cody gestured toward his fish.  Annie could see the Asian man take some kind of instrument out of his pocket, approach the fish, and plunge the instrument into the flesh about midway along its 10 foot length.  A stab, a twist yielded a sausage sized plug of meat which the Asian man immediately bit off, chewed slowly, and swallowed.  Another short exchange between Cody and the Asian.  Another bow as the Asian handed something about the size of a softball to Cody which Cody stuffed into his side pocket.  Cody stuck out his hand which the Asian shook. 

As the crew busied getting the fish maneuvered into the truck the reporter and her cameraman advanced.  She had some questions which she asked in a loud high pitch.  Annie heard her ask how long Cody had been fishing, who taught him how to fish, how old was he when he started, how do you catch the giant tuna. It was obvious by the look on the reporter's face that the interview was unsatisfying. Her machine gun fire questions were followed by mostly monosyllabic answers. When she asked,  Where do you find the giant tuna? When Cody said, "The sea", the reporter clapped her clipboard under her arm and hobbled off to the van, knowing full well that the bulk of the article would have to be filled with her own research about big tuna fishing.  The photographer took a few more pictures of the fish being loaded and then a close-up of Cody.  The reporter yelled to her camera man, "We're done here!"

Annie had to laugh. Cody walked back toward where his boat was docked.  Passing the marina porch he suddenly stopped and looked Annie straight in the eye and said, Wanna get out of here? She actually checked to see if it was she he was talking to before she hurried after him.

"Let's go to my place.  They'll leave me alone there.  Scared of my mother."  A quick chuckle and Annie knew he was only half serious.  "She's been at me to invite you for weeks."  Well Annie wasn't expecting that exactly. The path up the bluff was steeper here. Cody took her hand a few times but dropped it just as quickly when the going got easier.  Through the cool Pine Grove. And there was the house sitting on a newly pointed ancient granite block foundation.  The house was newly sided traditional white with wide corner boards and green panel shutters with hardware that looked like it really worked. High end circlehead windows along the front of the house. A  white railing of lathed spindles around the large porch.  And a genuine widow's walk atop the roof line perhaps resurrected from the original or a good reproduction.  Annie wondered if Weettie waited up there looking out to sea the day her husband Nelson was lost.

Cody led her around to a side door.  This is my part of the house.  You just sit while I take a shower and change.  Inside was a large room.  Cody disappeared though a short hallway.  Annie heard the water running.  She looked around. An enormous rubble masonry fireplace with a soapstone hearth dominated the room. Yellowed pieces of scrimshaw decorated the mantle, A bed against one wall looked like a  bunk for a schooner captain, carved head and foot with a double sized mattress. The pattern of the quilt on the bed was a pattern Annie knew as Stormy Sea.  A desk, old, carved, antique. Two antique harpoons hung on the wall, and a couple of seascapes of some importance by the look of them. What looked like strings of Indian beads hanging from a large tuna hook over the desk.  And ancient rusted anchor leaned in one corner of the room.  Sweetgrass mats on the floor perfumed the entire space.  Annie had just sat down in the only chair in the room- an upholstered Captain style chair when Cody appeared dressed in a clean T-shirt and denim shorts.  His hair wet, unbraided, tied back with a leather thong. He led Annie through the archway leading to his mother's part of the house.

Weettie was waiting at the door.  The interior of the kitchen was New England spare, not unlike Cody wing.  A heavy wood table and chairs, deep burgundy rag rug, a few very nice paintings of the sea, and one of a fisherman with arresting deep blue eyes.  Blown glass net floats strung on pieces of net.  Old by the look of the wavy glass.

Weettie already had a full lunch going.  Crab cakes, corn chowder, homemade bread and blueberry jam. Indian Pudding for dessert and heavy cream to pour over.  When Annie remarked about it all being ready Weettie laughed and pointed to the VHF radio on shelf right over the kitchen work area.  "Got em all over the house.  Don't miss a thing going on." punctuated by the Weettie wink.

 Annie watched Cody as he tucked into the food. There was little conversation.  Just as Annie began to feel a bit uncomfortable with the silence, Weettie winked a yes, that's my boy at Annie which chased the tension right out of the room as she began her own monolog. "Those Japanese are amazing, ice trucks at the ready the first news by VHF radio that someone had caught tuna and where it was going to be sold.  Always a cash transaction.  Fishermen, ya know don't take credit, or do much with banks either for that matter."  Cody is saying nothing.

Weettie ignores her son who looks like he might fall asleep.  "And the gear!  Bibs, slickers and Wellies, heavy gloves- heaps of those!  50 pound test lines, number 2 or 3 carbon steel hooks, heavy duty rods, gaff, harpoon, and a good big knife.  Cody uses fresh mackerel. Ya probly saw the crates.  That's an expense.  The fuel.  Not to mention the work."  Annie sees that Cody eyelids are sinking further toward sleep.  She gets up to go.

"Terrible hard work." Annie says.  "I should go."  To Cody, "You need to get some sleep."

"Ha!" shouts Weettie.  "Not so much work, hey Cody luv?  Them monsters come to you. Haha!."

At this Cody smiles.  Annie got up to go.  Gives her most sincere thanks to Weettie for the delicious meal.  And to Cody who has risen also from the table, "Thank you for letting me have a glimpse at your world, Cody. You have no idea how much I appreciate your sharing it with me."

Cody grins, "That mi mudder who's the big talker.  But  you're welcome.  Nothing really."

Before she reaches the door she says to Cody, "Yes it is.  It is very much something."

The paper came out the next week. The photo of Cody was black and white, the cove muted magic in the background, the figure looking like a painting. Features in bas relief. cheekbones, nose and body poignant, an expression of a person utterly grounded, not impressed by the attention he was getting.  And one remarkable tendril of Cody hair formed a perfect 'C' on his forehead. Annie's insides fairly leapt.

Annie didn't see Cody for a week after that. By the end of a week it felt like starvation had set in, as though she were stranded in the Mohave with not  drop of water to drink. She couldn't keep focused on anything going on in her life as thoughts of Cody crowded out the real world.  Gorgeous dawns, sapphire blue skies, cotton candy cumulus clouds, her beloved sea, its contractions were a mirror of the pain she felt in her gut.  She fully realized what was happening to her.  She told herself over and over to get on with it.  Cody is a dream.  You have a real life.  Pay attention to that.  And still her mind did not obey.  Cody washed into her every moment like the tide at full moon.  Pulsing, insistent, relentless.  Annie had to admit to herself that she was a prisoner as she had never been or wanted to be.  Besides wanting to see Cody, be bathed in the sight of him. How silly the words of Millay when she first read them: Love has gone and left me, and the days are all alike. Eat I must, and sleep I will--and would that night were here! But ah, to lie awake and hear the slow hours strike! Would that it were day again, with twilight near!  And this one said it all:

              The Want of You

The want of you is like no other thing;
It smites my soul with sudden sickening;

It binds my being with a wreath of rue-
This want of you.

It flashes on me with the waking sun;
It creeps upon me when the day is done;
It hammers at my heart the long night through-
This want of you.

It sighs within me with the misting skies;
Oh, all the day within my heart it cries,
Old as your absence, yet each moment new
This want of you.

Mad with demand and aching with despair,
It leaps within my heart and you are-
where?

God has forgotten, or he never knew-
This want of you.

”

—	Ivan Leonard Wright

 

God!  So desperate that!  How ridiculous it seemed to the 10th grader stuck in English class studying this drippy poetry.  And now Annie was living those poems.  She really had to laugh at the many things she once so easily and casually dismissed that had come back to bite her, and bite her hard. She wished so very much to talk to someone about him, as if talking about him would be as a substitute for his presence.  Of course the only person she could talk to about her obsession was Weettie, and Weettie, they said at work, had taken off to Maine on vacation.  They had no idea of where, and no one had seen her son either. His boat was not at the marina.  Annie checked every day.

One morning the second week of her misery she got ready for work.  At the bottom of her door was a piece of paper. She turned the paper over in her hand.  A piece of buther's paper, the kind the shops wrap meat in, but neatly trimmed to fit what was written on it.

"I think of escaping from all things
to be a hermit in a vastness
where a long wind comes from infinity - WANG WEI

 

She read it, and read it again.  And a sinking sickening feeling came over her that her had gone. What the fucking hell? Escape?  A hermit where the wind comes from infinity.  Fucking hell.  Is he dead?  Every as she thought that, she knew he was very much alive.  It was was though she could feel his breath on her cheek.

Another week went by.  Now almost the end of June, the very crown jewel of summer.  And Annie was furious at herself for letting this man, a man she barely knew, this childish crush of a man take over what should be the happiest days of her life. 

Another piece of paper appeared under her apartment door.  Hand written again. This time on linen stationary.

 How can feeling spread so far but be inside such a confined knitness of thought? One tiny strike on the flint can create the chaos of flame to warm or ward off…. friend or foe it be. The tiniest flick of light in the darkest of dark can create hope of personal gratitude of fortune in one’s mind and soul… or can be ignored for another day… Please my friend, take the temptation of love and run with it as far as it may take you… may it be round and back to where you once began. All and all, a day is a day, am I right? Go reap the lands you were found helpless and sorrowed… They will be generous beyond imagination. I will be there.

To say she was stunned would be the understatement of the year.  She read the card over and over.  Then she stopped at each word sucking meaning out of each, sweet, delicious, like a kid sucking the last drop of chocolate milkshake out of a straw. God!  Take the temptation of love??!! He has to be kidding.  We are eons beyond temptation. The temptation has devoured me. 

 Annie ran to the beach at every opportunity for solice, kicked off her sandals and stripped off her shirt to her tank or bathing suit top and sank down in the sand.  Warm nights she sat and listened to the pull of the sea.  One night, dark of the moon, only a gentle warm breeze, she felt him before she saw him.  He knelt down beside her.  Ran a rough hand down her bare back.  "We'll go sailing tomorrow if you're free."  Not a question.  Her heart almost stopped but she managed, "Say when."

They did go sailing every chance they could get away. Anchor set they plunged into the water to swim, to enjoy being alive together. She did ask Cody where he had been the past two weeks.  "I'm telling ya my secret love. Back and forth from Plymouth19 miles to and from the Stellwagen Bank, a shelf where the Stripers and the Blue Snappers feed.  And where the Blue Fins go to feed on them."

"Why Plymouth, why not Onset?"

 "Too much flap around here.  Plymouth they  don't expect me. Or Barnstable, though it's further out to the Bank from there." 

"Don't ever leave me again without at least a word or two. I thought I had dreamed you!, Annie sobbed.

"That's why I had to come all the way back here to leave them notes under your door."

 Cody grabbed her then, and swung her up in his arms, twirled her around, hugged her hard and kissed her harder.  At last, she thought.  At long last. "Slow learner," she kidded him. "Oh yeah?" he beamed.  They made love on the deck.

Back at the house typical Weettie saw them coming hand in hand.  "Well!" she roared.  "When is the wedding? I have to know to have time to make the cake."

July and August Cody came and went.  He listened to fishermen's reports on VHF.  And if there was a good one he threw some things in his ruck sack and was gone.  Not that Annie didn't worry, but she discovered that when you love someone,  you love what they do.  And you realize that what they do is an important part of who they are.  Part of the whole package.

They were married that winter in Cody wing in front of the fireplace by a woman chaplain Weettie knew from the hospice.  Weettie was the witness. Papers signed, she kissed hugged and kissed Annie.  "Hope you know what you've got yourself into!"  She placed her hands on each side of her son's face, drew his head down and kissed him on one eyelid and then the other.  "Your and Annie's babies will be the very light and life of my old age.  I will tell them the old stories."

Annie took over keeping the books, and administering the family's ever increasing portfolio.  The price of the giant Blues rose to over $20),000 per. Then the Japanese started a full out war paying over $700,000 for a big Blue. It would be suicide to continue fishing Blues with prices like that. All the fishermen Cody knew armed themselves with high powered rifles.

With Weettie's permission and help she hired the best Boston law firm to set up a trust for their land in perpetuity. It was specified that should no family member or their descendents wanted the land it be placed as trust land for the town of Onset, never to be built upon except for specified hiking and biking trails. 

Aimee W.Treat was born in August the next year.  Two years later Jonah C. Treat greeted the world.  And two years after that Ousa Blue Treat.  Ousa would become the family's next famous Blue Fin hunter.

Weettie loved her grandchildren more than her life.  She lived to be ninety nine years old.