Back in 2012 St. Padraic's Day was blessed with spring weather. The next day Sunday was even warmer, as I traveled south to the Northern Neck of the Potomac to meet with Ms. Carolina. She was not faring well and wanted to see me one last time. Her husband Charles thought it was a good idea.
I flew to Ronald Reagan airport and rented a car. Once free of the Beltway I-95 the traffic eased on the interstate. It was smooth sailing to the Fredericksburg, where the 20th Maine had been massacred by the Rebels attacking St. Marye's Height. I turned east onto Route 3 headed to Ms. Virginia's beach house. This was the South under the reign of Barack Obama. Confederate flags hang from the poles in the town squares. That was to be expected in Dixie, but it was peaceful.
Charles and Ms. Carolina's summer house was on the Neck's northern shore. Ragged Point Beach lay on the Potomac. Maryland began at the high water jetsam on the sand. I pulled before their house. The two were waiting at the end of a dock. No boat in the water. A super-sized moon rose over the eastern horizon of the Chesapeake Bay and the equinox sun set to the west below a screen of yellow pines. The lilting breeze promised an early spring. Ms. Virginia did not look well and she moved with pain. The blonde huntress confided that she might not make the autumn.
The cancer had torched her body and she showed me how bad.
"Guess winter is over." I stared into the Potomac. The temperature was in the 70s. The water had to be much colder. The spring equinox was two days away. There was no backing out. This was for Ms. Carolina.
"Hush your mouth," Ms. Carolina's dog, Spot, barked at her side. Her husband and she had lived in Virginia over thirty-five years. Her childhood was spent in the Adirondacks, where winter holds onto the cold and snow for a month longer than anyplace else in the North, except Fort Kent, Maine.
"I have a good feeling for new season." I flexed my knuckles. They had been weapons in the hundreds of fights waged over the decades. No cracking meant dry weather. Snap, crackle, pop was a good indication of wet.
"You goin' in now, Yankee?"
"Naw, but tomorrow for sure."
"You hungry?"
"Very."
Mrs. Virginia was a great cook. She went to bed early. Charles and I drank whiskey. We didn't say much. Men like us were good at that.
My knuckles were right about the moisture, however the temperature had dropped through the night. Frozen dawn dew glazed the lawn. My better judgment argued against the plunge, but after a suburb breakfast of sausages, eggs, and grits, Ms. Virginia, Charles, her dog and I walked to end of the dock. Maryland was across the Potomac. I lifted the thermometer from the river.
39 degrees Fahrenheit.
Cold
I stripped to my bathing suit. Ms. Virginia held a towel for after my swim. Charles a glass and a bottle of Dewars.
"Are you going to do this, Yankee."
"Hell, yeah." The Maine side of my family had fought in the Civil War. Where I didn't know.
He filled the glass and I down the whiskey. It burned down my throat. I returned the glass to Charles.
"I want another once I'm out of the water."
"It will be waiting." Charles was a friend. We never talked about Ms. Virginia and me. He was a gentleman that way and I was happy to see he wasn't carrying his .38. leapt off the dock.
The water was more than cold. My fingers went numb.
My arms scratched frantically at the water. I scrambled up the dock. I had been in the water
Ms. Virginia laughed, Spot barked, and Charles , who had timed my immersion, said, "Crazy Yankee, you lasted seventeen second." I scrambled up the ladder and Barbara handed me the towel. Charles was quick to offer the whiskey. It went down even quicker.
"You one crazy Yankee," repeated Charles.
"Anything for a laugh."
"How long you think you could have survived in that water?" Charles had been an officer in the Navy during WWII. His friends had cruised the North Atlantic in warships. Not all of them returned home to Newport News.
As a child I had lived on Portland Harbor. Fishing boats docked at the and of my street. Every winter the fleet lost a boat. I had heard tell of some people lasting up to forty minutes.
My grandfather had a friend on the Titanic. He drowned in the Atlantic. My grandfather traveled to St. John’s to identify the body. It had been battered by the sea.
"I think I might be able to last five minutes, but not today." I shook off the chill from my core, but the extremities were still cold.
"Once was more than enough."
It had been worth seeing Barbara laugh and she said, "Be my eyes on your travels."
"That I will." It wasn't a promise. Only the truth. The following day I drove back to DC on Ms. Virginia's suggestion up US 301 across the Potomac. Maryland wasn't Virginia, but it was still the South. She was a good traveling companion during out affair in the 1990s. Wyoming, Montana, the Blue Ridge Mountains, Death Valley, Guatemala and Peru.
Back in Fort Greene, Brooklyn the sweep of the season reversed from spring to winter. Snow fell on Tuesday night and Wednesday evening was a melange of hail, snow, and rain. I wore heavy tweeds impervious to the cold and wet. Even my knuckles were safe from the chilly damp in cashmere-lined gloves. Ice pellets bounced over my Donegal cap. I was ready for more winter, but not another two months of it and the next weekend the forecast was for more snow.
Barbara lasted till the autumn. I asked if I should come down. She said no. That as the last word I heard from her. Charles lasted longer. I visited him in 2015. We went to her grave. We said nothing and that night drank Dewars.
"You crazy Yankee."
"That I am."
We spoke on the phone every week. About football. His Redskins and my Patriots. He passed in 2017. I miss them both
But not that damn cold.
To see my plunge
