Hatteras Light

by Philip Gerard

  When she finally slid out of bed, the fog was gone and the day was bright. She splashed cold water on her face and let it dry in the steady salt breeze coming in at the kitchen window.

  Then, outside, she mounted an old balloon-tired bicycle, and Rufus, a big mongrel retriever, bounded over.

  “Come on, Rufe,” she said, “we’re going to the beach.”

  And she pedalled off, Rufus trotting gamely behind.

  5

  ALVIN DANT STEERED his Friendship sloop into the fog, listening. He had converted her to a powerboat himself, cutting away the deep keel, then uprooting the thick wooden mast and installing a gasoline engine and a wheelhouse forward of the cockpit, now a covered well for storing the catch.

  He had heard of things happening to the north, off the Wimble Shoals at Kinnakeet, and wondered if he ought to turn south, out of harm’s way. Stay with the fleet, so Oman had counseled, and that’s where the fleet would surely be. He considered it. He packed his pipe and relit it behind the glass of the pilothouse.

  He was a man who had lost a brother and a wife and whose children were now nearly grown. Dorothy, he was sure, would soon marry that youngest Royal boy, Keith, the college man. Anyway Alvin hoped so. He was a good boy from a respected family, a Hatterasman. You had to be born here to be a Hatterasman. That would keep her here, if anything would. He owned his boat outright, as he had for years, and, for a change, he owed no one beyond the week.

  He would head north, following the fish, never mind the Heinies. A fisherman had to go by his nose.

  “Brian.”

  The boy appeared from the deck, where he had been folding nets.

  “Take the wheel.”

  Alvin went belowdecks and uncased his shark rifle and an old double-barreled shotgun his grandfather had used against the Yankees when they had invaded the island. It was a birdgun and couldn’t be counted on against a submarine, but it felt better to have something. Alvin broke it and loaded both barrels, then fed five shells into the magazine of the rifle. He took the weapons and a box of shells for each back to the pilothouse.

  He would give the boy the rifle, if it came to that: he was the better shot. Brian was used to the rifle and had killed half a dozen sharks with it during the past two seasons. If it came to that, he guessed it wouldn’t matter.

  The sun glowed weakly through the thin fog. To the northwest, Hatteras Light was just a flash. It burned dusk to dawn, and during storms or fog the Light stayed on even in daylight, blowing a fog signal every half hour to help blind sailors find their way past the shoals.

  Alvin stood over his son’s shoulder, watching him hold to course. Brian stood well at the wheel. They were twelve miles off the Light now, he reckoned, just about the place where his brother’s boat had foundered, another Friendship sloop, sister to his own. But watching Brian steer with sure, knowledgeable hands, it just didn’t seem possible.

  Alvin had always imagined sanctuary in sight of the Light, as though it were watching over him. The seas were flat now and there were fish out there, or something: he could smell it.

  “Here you go, boy. I’ll take her now,” he said, and stood at the wheel, his back broadening against his shirt, feeling ready.

  6

  THE FUTILE SEARCH for survivors abandoned, Malcolm stayed on at the station to ready the Light, which had to be done each day before eleven A.M., according to Bureau of Lighthouse Regulations. That meant hauling two five-gallon pails of kerosene to the top of the tower. Then cleaning the Fresnel lens, inspecting the four concentric wicks of the incandescent oil-vapor lamp that would radiate 80,000 candlepower for twelve hours, dusk to dawn. Last, using a hand crank, he must rewind the carousel “clock”—the mechanism that would keep the Light rotating in precisely timed circles through the night. Usually, it was a two-hour job. This day, it took him almost four, but when the sun went down again, the Light was operational.

  His hands were so blistered and swollen when he stood down and returned to quarters that Mary had to open the door for him. She wrapped his hands in grease and towels and put him to bed, then sat up with Keith, not talking.

  Finally, she said, “It’s worse when they don’t save anybody, isn’t it.”

  Keith pulled on a sweater and left her alone with her husband.

  7

  IN THE HOUSE he had lived in since boyhood and which stood on the only hill in Buxton Village, Seamus Royal, father of two of the best surfmen on the island, studied navigational charts by the light of a coal-oil lamp. He was seventy years old, and he knew these charts as well as he knew the birth records in the family Bible, but he thought he ought to be sure of his territory. If Patchett was right, if there really was some kind of submarine out there, somebody would have to find it, and he supposed he knew those shoals as well as any man. On a dusty shelf between sepia photographs of himself and his sons stood a plain teak frame that held the Gold Medal for Life-Saving, which he had won twenty-eight years before.

  He smiled sadly. Two, not three. Only two boys, he thought, carrying on his life’s work. Tomorrow he would call all his boys together and get drunk with them, all three now, and find if he couldn’t do something about Keith. Give him an oar. And get him married to that Dant girl, if he could. She had spunk. When a man gets only three nights a month alone with his wife she had better be lively as a whore, and be able to fend for herself the rest of the time.

  It would all come to pass, he was sure, it would all be arranged. There was never any escaping the right thing.

  Seamus got up from the kitchen table and, from a locker at the back of the house, brought a long oilskin case. In his oarhardened hands he carried it to the table and unlaced it for the first time in ten years.

  It was a Krag-Jorgenson, an old Army rifle he had bought at surplus from the Spanish War in ’01. He cleaned the heavy grease out of the barrel and swabbed the bore with solvent and oil. Seamus took his time. He paused to light another pipe.

  “There,” he said, raising it and aiming out the window, down the hill, onto the beach. He sighted on the lightship Diamond Shoals until the fog covered her. He worked the bolt without injecting a cartridge. He had a box of them somewhere. He worked it again. “There,” he said, reluctant to put away the rifle. He would just hold it awhile.

  8

  PATCH PATCHETT NESTED in a fold of sand dunes with a blanket pulled around him Indian-style, watching the thin moon over the ocean. The moon rode above a low fogbank, while the Hatteras Light pulsed out across the sea, casting fast shadows over Patchy’s square bales of lumber. He watched and finally, restless, slept.

  9

  LIEUTENANT (JG) TIM HALSTEAD and his crew of six motored up the Core Sound into Pamlico Sound aboard Sealion, a converted smuggler, and put in at Hatteras Village, the only navigable harbor on the island except for Oregon Inlet at the far northern tip. Sealion was a high-powered rumrunner shaped like a cigar with a chopped-off tail and an armored cockpit, recently taken in a raid in the Florida Keys.

  Halstead ducked behind the fairing and lit a maduro cigarette as the forty-two-foot speedboat roared between two anchored fishing boats, rocking them with a powerful wash. He cut his engines at the last minute—he wanted to make an entrance. He bloused his shirt and straightened his cap.

  Since the Hauppage, headed for Fort Dix with lumber for troop cantonments, had been reported sunk by a mine yesterday, it would be necessary to guard the coast. Sealion could throw two torpedoes, and she had a very accurate two-inch gun mounted forward, besides a .30-calibre Browning machine gun at the cockpit.

  The rumor in Beaufort was that a U-boat was hiding in the Diamond Shoals, the way U-boats had been showing up all over the coast lately, but he didn’t really believe that. It was too far from home and they were losing the war, now that America was committed. The Marines were in Flanders and the Kaiser was washed up, all right; it was only a matter of time. Waiting in Beaufort, attached to a communications station, Halstead had figured the war would be won without his help
, long before he ever got a combat assignment.

  But I’m a submarine chaser now, he thought. He was an Academy man, commissioned for exactly three weeks, in the right place at the right time. His men stood at attention at their posts, ready to berth. The fishermen who had not gone out today were all looking at him, but he did not allow himself to smile. Their safety was in his hands, and he must not seem too arrogant about it. He spit his cigarette into the drink, felt the thrill of command.

  He put in at Oman’s Dock to top off his tanks. He left Blotner, the engineer, on deck watch, and led the rest of his men ashore to find a mess.

  “The Marines have landed,” Oman said to nobody in particular as Halstead’s crew moved down the pier and into the village, thick with the smell of fish and salt. The Light Halstead must defend was farther north, near Buxton, but he must be prepared to defend the entire island, if things went that far, and a little reconnaissance wouldn’t hurt. The Navy would be trucking fuel down from the north, but in the meantime he must secure temporary provisions and materials to build a mooring and a bivouac.

  Halstead had no idea that wood, like almost every other commodity, had been an expensive import on Hatteras Island since the time of the Hattorask Indians, except for a few stands of gaunt pine milled locally and suitable for fencing, firewood, and not much else.

  “You want wood, go up to Buxton beach,” the storekeeper, one of Oman’s cousins, said with no hint of irony. “They’ve got plenty of that article, U.S. Government issue.”

  It took him an awkward minute of reflection before he understood what the fellow meant. He said something appropriate and went out, and within the hour they were plying Hatteras Inlet on their way to the Light.

  “They’ve got a strange sense of humor down here, sir,” Ensign Cross said. “They ain’t got any use for Yankees, neither.”

  “Never mind, we’ll manage.” Halstead vowed to be a little sharper when they landed next. What with all the preparations to get under way to his new station, he hadn’t slept at all in some thirty hours. But he was prepared, that was the main thing. He had four years of the best military training in the world, good people were counting on him, and he would acquit himself with honor. He was now in the kind of situation that made a man a hero or a fool, and he had no wish to be the latter.

  10

  THEY SURFACED IN FOG, and the captain swept all the horizons with a field glass, nodding, as if in approval. Max Wien stood at his elbow, watching the Light arc through the thick air. They heard the distant horn, each blast resounding like the hoarse lament of some great cave-bound creature.

  Captain Stracken nodded again. “And tell me this, young man: why have we seen no cutters?”

  Max looked blank. He had nothing to offer in the way of strategic advice, but the captain didn’t seem to mind.

  Stracken continued, quietly, “This is their highway, the big boats. With that Light, we can come and go as we please, and we will always know exactly where our quarry will pass. Wir werden den Weg nie verfehlen. We will never lose our way. We will hide when we please and strike as we will, and never miss. Gott sei Dank für das Licht.”

  They were in the heart of the Allied shipping lanes. Fuel from the Louisiana Gulf coast, grain from the Mississippi Delta, lumber from South America, munitions and troops from the southern posts, all passed off the Light, riding the current of the Gulf Stream close to the Diamond Shoals, the Graveyard of the Atlantic, with only the Light to guide them on their way.

  “From now on,” Stracken said, “the Light will betray them.”

  Max said nothing.

  With the Light, Max thought, the captain was right: now they could not miss. Even the blackest night they would know exactly how close they could go without running aground. They would destroy much for their country. They were der Haifisch—the shark.

  “Tonight we take the lightship,” Stracken said. “It is of no use to us, and it can report our position on the wireless.” The lightship stood farther out, a beacon to the deep draught vessels, an extra precaution against the shoals. Kraft, the first officer, looked for a moment as if he were going to protest. It didn’t matter now anyway, Max knew. They had already gone too far to be forgiven by men who still believed in anything.

  They cruised the surface for another hour, riding the slow swells and listening to the dull crash of far-off breakers. I could swim to there, Max thought. But he had never learned to swim. Papenburg had no warm ocean, only icy creeks running into an icy lake from the mountains. He felt the sun grow stronger on his filthy uniform shirt and wished he could feel it full on his naked back and shoulders.

  When they lost the fog, the captain took them down, and Max held his breath against the bad air, but he could not hold it for long.

  11

  DOROTHY DANT, Alvin’s girl, had her mind on Keith Royal. Why had he come back? She was pretty sure she was in love with him. Having him home again had been her ardent wish, but it was disturbing all the same to have him so close now. She had come down to the beach with Rufus again today to be alone outdoors and to prepare herself to see Keith later.

  This afternoon she would decide how to receive him when he came. He had been back almost a week now, and she imagined him working up his courage to call on her, though the times she’d gone north to steal a weekend with him while her father and Brian were gone with the fleet Keith had received her with little ceremony. It was hard to think about things with him around.

  From the beach, she watched a motor launch pass northward. A man in a white uniform saluted from the cockpit. She dove into the water running and swam a dozen long strokes from the beach. Out past the launch, now disappearing up the coast, was her father’s boat. And up where the Navy launch was headed, Keith’s brothers stood by a lifeboat. His brothers were men of courage, and their courage was so taken for granted it was hardly spoken of. She did not know if Keith had that kind of courage. She hoped not.

  Dorothy treaded water easily and looked toward the island. From out here it looked like desert. She would marry Keith, and he would take her away, that was that. The two of them could go back to New England, to Harvard if that’s what he wanted. Or anyplace else that lasted. She lingered in the deep water, and Rufus swam in little circles around her.

  12

  LITTLEJOHN PLAYED with the wireless and got details about the lumber ship.

  Old Fetterman carved.

  He could not get the shape exactly right, but it would come, it always did. His hands would understand the thing long before his head. Sometimes he built with miniature planking, so that the inside of the hull was hollow, ribbed for stiffness, but this hull he carved. This hull was a creature; he could not yet fathom what was inside.

  “You’re making progress,” Littlejohn said. “Though I can’t say I admire it. You should make a schooner. You can never have enough schooners.”

  “I’ve built all the schooners I’m going to for now.”

  “Have it your own way. Still, a man can’t have too many schooners.”

  The knife slipped into the meat of his knuckle, and Ham Fetterman didn’t flinch. He watched the blood come up dark in the sickle-shaped cut, let a single big drop fall to the floor and covered it with his boot. “Littlejohn, come here,” he said, almost amused. “I’m bleeding.”

  13

  LITTLEJOHN’S WIFE APPLIED the bandage on Fetterman. She had hair the color of old tin, parted exactly in the middle and kempt as a powdered wig, and a complexion dark as an Indian’s. No one knew her as anything but Mrs. Littlejohn, name enough for anybody.

  “A little drawing of the blood is good for you, especially at your age,” she said. “It goes all sour if you keep it bottled up.” She passed Littlejohn a knowing look. “But it’s a bad omen to do it by accident. Be on your lookout.”

  Littlejohn swore and went back behind the counter where he kept the beer, listening to his wife mutter as she went out: “The beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, a
nd shall overcome them, and shall kill them.”

  1

  JACK ROYAL was the kind of man who usually turns to soldiering: steady, physically competent, unyielding and resourceful in confrontation, unburdened by imagination. He stood six-feet two-inches tall and had jet, oily-looking hair combed straight back from a low beak. His beard was thick and short-cropped, his moustache heavy and combed to a rakish oxbow. His eyes were dark and sullen, though he thought of himself as untroubled and easygoing. It confused him that others seemed to find him a brooding, unhappy character.

  He sat on a whitewashed bench in the common room and whipped the frayed ends of a spare coil of line for the Lyle gun. He took longer to do it than Chief Lord would, and his product was not so stylish, but the ends were wrapped to last, and the line would part before the whipping unraveled. He worked with his feet planted like jacks, parrying the marlin-spike with his sailmaker’s palm as if he were dueling with himself. He judged his own integrity, as he judged other men’s, by the work of his hands, not his head.

  Chief Lord sat opposite Jack in a chair made of rope woven over a wooden frame. The Chief was playing his guitar, the music syncopated and bluesy, his head nodding time. He never took his eyes off Jack.

  Without missing a note, he said: “I know what you’re thinking, I know what you’re always thinking.”

  Jack didn’t bother to look up. “Oh, I forgot. You’re a mind reader. I’ve heard all that crap before.”

  “You’re thinking, the only reason he’s in charge and not you is that’s he’s so big.”

  It was true. Jack had always believed that size alone caused Malcolm to command. “Am I supposed to argue with you, Chief?”