Page 156 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue #3 - December 2015

While the watermen were

dredging and tonging oysters,

fishing sturgeon and trout and

netting crabs, the first oil in North

America gushed forth from deep

beneath the land far upstream in

Pennsylvania. At that time, the

Civil War raged through the land:

men cutting each other down over

stories of power and domination, economics and ownership. The land-dwelling men were soon

beguiled by the energy from coal and oil, but the Bay’s watermen remained under sail well into

the twentieth century. Eventually, even they could not compete with other vessels powered by

the dark energy of the Underworld. Under pressure to continue feeding their families, one by

one, they began retrofitting their boats, taking the heartbreaking step of cutting into wood-

planked bulkheads to install loud, stinking engines.

“Civilization” spread like a crust over the land and suffocated the life out of it.

Despite their enslavement to coal and oil, the watermen still treasure their kinship with the

Chesapeake herself. Skin of leather from hours under the merciless sun. Arms and backs

sinewy from scraping for peelers in eelgrass. They speak of the wily Jimmy* with respect, as of

a complex relation whose mysterious ways can be observed, sometimes anticipated, but never

fully comprehended.

On the soft sandy bottom where the grasses wave in the tide, golden light filters down from the

close surface. When the usually fierce Jimmy encounters a Sook half-hidden and ready to mate,

! ! %!