Hatteras Light

by Philip Gerard

  “If she doesn’t broach to, she’ll make it,” Malcolm said. Chief nodded. If she got broadside to a wave, the boat would founder before he could even get his lifeboat down to the waterline.

  “She won’t,” Chief said. “Have a little faith. That’s Jack out there.”

  Sealion crested one last high wave. Both bow and stern were out of the water now, the single prop revving in thin air, the whole boat levered like a seesaw on the peak, and for an instant it looked like Malcolm’s worst fears would come true. The boat turned, ever so slightly, in the wind and current, then she slapped the trough hard and righted her course, and glided into the slip like a knife into an oiled sheath.

  The slip was a curving finger of the sea some dozen yards across in which the boat could be moored parallel to shore behind a low sandbank that was flat or humped, depending on the day’s wind.

  Chief Lord stroked Homer’s muzzle, and the surfmen watched Halstead’s crew tie up without a word.

  Halstead had lost his helmet. Jack stood at the helm in his surfman’s uniform, his face shiny with spray and sweat. He unbuckled his cork life vest with some difficulty. Malcolm tried to lend a hand, but Jack shrugged him off.

  “What happened out there?” MacSween wanted to know. Nobody said anything. Jack helped Halstead off the deck. They sat on the sand together, Halstead’s eyes a glaze of concentration. The torpedoman and machine gunner removed the mutilated body of the engineer, wrapped in a tarp. The deck was slick with grease and blood. Chief Lord opened the tarp and the others looked at the armless man and turned away. They just wanted to confirm what was true.

  The starboard hull of the boat was battered where the shell had hit, and the torpedo mount was wrecked. They would need another engineer, and a machinist besides, but Halstead would minimize the damage in his report. He didn’t care to be sent into drydock and relieved of his command. This was his business now, and he would finish it. He had lost his first man in combat. He stared out to sea and knew it was not over, not by a long sight.

  It took Malcolm a few moments to get Halstead’s attention. Finally he shook him, and Halstead looked up. “Mister Halstead, we are in for weather. Your tents may or may not stand it. Come up to the station and have some supper.”

  Halstead nodded. The sun was almost down now, and the beach was strangely tranquil. He wondered what fearful things the submarine would do tonight, what more he would be responsible for.

  And still he had not done Dorothy Dant any good, nor did he expect to, though just at that moment he would have given up his commission to have her arms around his neck.

  Chief Lord was already driving Homer back to the station when the Navy car labored through the cut in the dunes and made for them, followed by a loud, ungainly truck.

  “For you, I expect,” Malcolm said.

  “Mister Cross,” Halstead said, “tell them not to unload. We’ll billet at the Cape Station tonight.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Halstead’s crew climbed aboard the truck and squatted among torpedoes and ammunition crates. They rode up the dark beach toward the Light, the dead engineer laid across the tailgate like a trophy.

  7

  JACK ROYAL WALKED beside Malcolm and the surfmen and said nothing.

  “It must have been bad,” Malcolm said.

  “We’re lucky to be here. There’s no other excuse but luck.”

  “You brought her in just fine.”

  “Like you didn’t expect me to.”

  “Of course—”

  “Don’t say anything. You were standing by. You didn’t expect us to make it.”

  “We didn’t know who—”

  “It doesn’t matter, Malcolm. Not even you can save everybody.” He stopped and faced Malcolm, as if daring an argument. “Not even you.”

  Then Jack strode on ahead of his brother. He despised Malcolm for his gentleness, his protectiveness, but he guessed now that he had fought Malcolm all his life just because he was his brother.

  He let it go at that.

  He wanted to see Virginia, but that was impossible. No one would leave the station tonight.

  And anyway, what could he say to Virginia?

  8

  PETE PATCHETT SPENT the afternoon at Oman’s Dock, working on the Hermes’ engine. He had scavenged parts from a dozen sources, some of them willing, and was up to his elbows in grease, valves, and gaskets. He worked methodically and with purpose. He was not a good mechanic, but a dogged one.

  Oman drew on a meerschaum and watched him in wonder. “You haven’t done anything this industrious in years, Patchy,” he said. “What’s the occasion?”

  Patchy ignored him and went on working. When the squalls started blowing in, he packed his tools. Tomorrow he would fix the bilgepump and replace the head on the motor. The paint could wait. The sails were serviceable, but might not stand weather. Nothing he could do about that.

  In a couple of days, with luck, the Hermes would be well-found, seaworthy. He would have done that much.

  9

  DOROTHY DANT and Keith Royal walked hand in hand over the dunes, the wind pushing at their backs. They were cresting the cut when they heard the commotion behind them and turned to see the life-saving crew hurrying down the beach to the bight, where Halstead’s boat was kept. They watched, still holding hands, as the boat harbored safely and the men accumulated at the slip.

  Keith started to lead her down.

  “No. Let’s walk back.”

  “Don’t you want to know what’s going on?”

  “I know what’s going on. My father and Brian are out there somewhere, and no one will go out and find them.”

  “They’ll be all right. Maybe we ought to go down and talk to the Navy right now.”

  “They can’t go out again tonight. I don’t think they care, either.”

  In the failing light, she looked very young. She trembled a little, and he pulled her close. The wind stung their eyes.

  “It’s been too long,” she said, “and I don’t expect them to come back now, if you want the truth.”

  “Shh. That’s no way to talk.” He was afraid she would start crying.

  “Why did you come back? Not for me.”

  “It seemed right. It seemed like the time.”

  “Didn’t you enjoy being a college man? Didn’t you like it?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then why did you? Who made you? Who?” She looked at him accusingly. “I thought I wanted you to come back here more than anything … I dreamed you would come home and take me away. That’s what I dreamed. We could live anywhere you liked, I didn’t care. You could teach or study, or whatever it is historians do these days. I didn’t care—”

  “Take you away?”

  “Yes! It’s not natural, the way we live. Nothing ever lasts. Do I want my children to grow up to be what your brothers are?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with that! They’re good—”

  “Do I want to go through what their wives go through every time they go out?”

  “It doesn’t—”

  “No! I still want to get away, somewhere. Somewhere safe. You can have your beautiful sunsets and your goddamned lighthouse. I don’t want them for my children.”

  They were walking fast now, into the setting sun.

  “You always loved it here.”

  “Did I? Is that what you think? Listen. My mother died in childbirth because there isn’t even a hospital here. It wasn’t necessary! Don’t you see? This is all so backward, so primitive. And Uncle Dennis drowned because he had to make his living on a goddamned fishing boat. There’s nothing else here for men like that—”

  “Don’t get hysterical.”

  “I want to go. I hoped for you to come back and take me away. Did you? Is that why you came back? Tell me, and don’t lie to me. I won’t have you lying to me like they do to their wives, telling them everything is all right.”

  “Stop it. You’re upset about your father. You have a ri
ght to be.”

  “Oh, I’m upset about more than that. I’m upset because I waited for you all this time, and now I don’t know what to do with you. I used to sit on the beach and watch the ocean, and think that up in New England you might be watching the waves, too. Or at night, I’d watch the stars, picking out the constellations, and I’d imagine you were looking at them, too, out of the window of your dormitory room. Did you? Did you think the same thing, or was I wasting my time? Was I wasting my heart pining for a college boy with other things on his mind?”

  He tried to remember. He had thought of her, and often. But he had been afraid of coming back to her. Plenty of times he had deliberately put her out of his mind. Still, he had thought of her.

  He kissed her now.

  10

  LITTLEJOHN’S STORE remained crowded long after closing time.

  Fetterman had resumed his throne and was carving with a purpose, as if the afternoon encounter with the U-boat had clarified his design. The tower was taking on detail, and his hands worked slowly, careful not to cut too deep at once. He bored a socket in which to step the radio mast, nodding as if he were beginning to understand something.

  “They say that an armistice is coming any day,” one of the men observed.

  “Tell that to our Heinie friend.”

  “They say in the papers that the Kaiser is in the doghouse with the mucky-mucks in the army.”

  “The papers didn’t do the boy wonder any good this afternoon,” Seamus Royal said. “He’ll kill them all before he’s through.”

  “Aw, don’t be so hard on the boy. He’s only trying to help,” Littlejohn said.

  “He don’t know these waters, that’s plain.”

  “Jack’s with him.”

  “Jack brought her in.”

  “That’s so.”

  “It ain’t lucky to ship with a pissant like that. Who sent him here anyway, I’d like to know. He’s an outsider. He don’t belong on our boats. Now I hear he’s courting the Dant girl, with all the hardship she’s going through, and him not even a Hatterasman.”

  Fetterman listened awhile and said: “You fools. Don’t you know he’s not the problem? You don’t know anything, that’s all.”

  “Well speak, man,” Seamus said, “if you’ve got something to say. There are those of us who’d like to hear it before the beach is swarming with godless Huns.”

  Fetterman put down his work. “I don’t know if you’re ready to listen.”

  The murmuring stopped, and the place assumed a respectful silence. Ham Fetterman scraped his chair around to face them better.

  “He’s only trying to help, as Littlejohn pointed out. He’s a good boy, in his way. Not one of ours, but a good boy.” They waited for him to say more. “But it’s our problem, see. Not his. Not the Navy’s. Not the Government’s.”

  “We’re not at war, Ham.” It was one of the elder Bannisters. “The Government’s at war. It don’t concern us.”

  Fetterman stuck his knife in the arm of the chair. “That’s where you’re wrong. We are the only souls it does concern.”

  They didn’t know what to make of that.

  “We are alone out here. We are an island, or have you forgotten? There’s nobody to help us. When have they ever helped us? Can you name one time?” He swept the room with his eyes. “When they inoculated our cattle and killed half of them? When they dipped our sheep and did the same? When they taxed us for ferrying in our own supplies? When they bombarded our villages and sacked our homes because we wasn’t Yankees? Think about it. That’s all the help you’ll get from the Government. Any man who thinks different is a fool. Now they’re even bossing around the life-saving crews! And you expect them to take care of us?”

  Nobody said anything. They knew he was right, but they didn’t know what to do about it.

  “We can’t just evacuate, like in sixty-two,” Fetterman went on. “There’s just too many of us. We have too much to lose. We can’t do that now.”

  “You’re leading up to something,” Littlejohn said. “Stop pussyfooting around it and get to the point.”

  “You don’t have to listen to an old man half out of his mind if you don’t want to.” Fetterman turned from them again and stared out the window. It was dark now, except for the beacon of the lighthouse scything the sky, harvesting stars.

  Fetterman was reluctant to put it into words, but the moment had come. He pointed out the window and timed it just right. When the light flashed across the windowpane, he said: “We can turn it off.”

  Then, Littlejohn’s voice was thin and small, even in the silence, “And God help us.”

  1

  AFTER SUPPER, the men settled in to smoke and talk about the U-boat, but neither Malcolm Royal nor Lieutenant Halstead joined in. Halstead was discussing how to repair the boat with the mechanic who had come on the truck.

  “She needs to be lifted out, Mister Halstead,” the mechanic said. “I don’t think I can fix damage like that.”

  “We’ll fix her, all right. Tomorrow at daylight we start.”

  The mechanic shook his head. “But we’ve got to bolt that torpedo jacket to something that can stand the weight and the stress, that’s all. Otherwise, when you fire it, brother, you’re in for one rude surprise.”

  But Halstead thought he could do it. After all, he had been trained as an engineer at Annapolis, and if he couldn’t handle a little challenge like this, then he might as well get into another line of work. He made some preliminary diagrams and, satisfied they could be executed, turned to the logbook.

  He pondered the right words for half an hour before he made an entry, for this was the record that would stand about what had happened today, should anyone care to second-guess him. And if tomorrow he went out and didn’t come back, it might well serve as his epitaph. Halstead was already beginning to admire the native jealousy of the written word. He had examined the station log, whose last four years covered barely fifty pages.

  He wrote: Put to sea in pursuit of German U-boat, as it was shelling the Cape. Approached from SE, loosed one torpedo, a miss. Raked conning tower with machinegun at point blank range, effect unknown. Quarry submerged and eluded further attack. One casualty, Blotner, M., engineer, killed by direct hit from deck gun. Damage to starboard torpedo mount and armor hull. Will handle on station.

  Will handle on station, he thought. Let’s hope so.

  Cyrus Magillicutty saw him writing in the corner of the bunkroom for what seemed a long time. Certainly Malcolm never had that much to say. “A bit long-winded, eh?” He meant no harm, but Halstead’s stare arrested him: the lieutenant’s eyes caught the lamplight and seemed to burn in their sockets.

  Blotner’s body was installed in Littlejohn’s deepfreeze until the Navy could ship it to Portsmouth. Halstead would have to write that letter, too, but not right now. Tomorrow maybe, or the day after, when his head was clear and he himself knew what had really happened out there. In retrospect the action was much neater, a matter of triangulation, of geometry, of intersecting lines, mistaken trajectories, vectors, angles, planes, physics. Tomorrow he would calculate better.

  He knew this much already: Jack Royal, not Tim Halstead, had saved the day, and that rankled like a bad hazing. He still couldn’t bring himself to like or trust the man—he was just too offensive, showing no respect. It was difficult to inspire his own men to gallantry with one like that around. He wondered if they laughed at him behind his back, then thought of Blotner, locked away for good in Littlejohn’s deepfreeze, and he felt ashamed of himself.

  He closed the log and went downstairs.

  “They say you’re a ’Napolis man,” Chief Lord said, handing him a cup of tea.

  “That’s right.” But by now he hardly remembered what Annapolis looked like. He only had hazy visions of a fortress rising dark into mist, a hallowed place where consecrated men in white chanted military cadence and conjured dreams of glory.

  “My folks are up that way, some of them, that is. Up on
the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake. I been there many times. It is a beauteous place.”

  “I used to sail the Delaware Bay. We’d come all way down from Philadelphia and make a weekend of it.” He tried to remember who had been with him on those trips, but he couldn’t now. A girl, someone, a Cathy, perhaps, a Susan. That part of his life was unavailable to him now.

  “I hear you,” Chief said. “I can handle a sail myself when the mood is upon me. We run across the Sound to Hyde County now and again, and it’s a pretty trip. That’s where we get our spirits, don’t you know.”

  Halstead nodded. He was only half listening, his ears as full of surf as conchs, his eyes sore with the effort of focus, so that the surfmen, the room, his own crewmen, Chief Lord, all melded in a soft nebula of motion swimming in dense light, like iridescent fish schooling underwater.

  He had another thought: Chief Lord was a giant. There were lots of giants in these parts, he decided, starting with Malcolm Royal, who was sort of head giant. They must be a separate race almost. Even their horses grew to epic stature. And they acted with a kind of fated arrogance, every bit like creatures from a fairy tale out of some grim, preliterate past.

  “This submarine is the new beast in the forest,” Chief Lord said. “We’ve never had anything like her around here. It’s the novelty that’s frightening.” He hooked an arm around Halstead’s shoulders. “I have seen white men throw their mates overboard at sight of a right whale breaching under a full moon, his great black head horned with barnacles big as rain barrels, white as bone, sharp as obsidian. Jonah, they said, pitching each man over the rail in his turn, terrified to their bottom of a harmless whale.”

  Other men were listening now, quietly forming a circle around Chief Lord, gathering as men will at the edge of light.

  “The Norse marauders carved their prows to resemble sea serpents, to paralyze their enemies with fear at sight of them advancing over the waves, silhouetted against the strange, bellied moon of their sails, shields raised like scales along the flanks of the monster, tiller poised like a tailfin. And their enemies scattered, overwhelmed, even those who did not believe in sea monsters.” His eyes swept the perimeter of faces, and men looked away. The grandiose arc of his hands included them all. For once, Halstead, seated at his side, felt at the very center of things, included, somehow, in the irreducible core of truth.