Hatteras Light

by Philip Gerard

  “I was working,” Patchy said. “On the boat.”

  “I’ll be taking the children home. I don’t want them coming down with the croup from being out on a night like tonight on account of you.”

  “He was working,” Littlejohn said, between coughs.

  “I heard him the first time. But I always like to give him a chance to take back a falsehood before it sets.”

  “I was fixing the damned engine, woman—”

  “Hush! Don’t be cursing in front of the kiddies. This ain’t Littlejohn’s back room. Shame on you. You’d think a grown man would know better, you’d think. I’m going home, Patchy, and I’m taking the kids. You can’t stop me. And don’t be bending Mister Littlejohn’s ear till all hours, you hear?”

  And to Littlejohn: “He only does it for the beer. You ought to make him pay cash or nothing. It was always good enough for my people. But he’s a big man, likes to have credit. I’ll give him credit. I don’t know why I put up with it.”

  Parvis and Penny hadn’t said a word. Mrs. Patchett yanked them off over the dunes.

  “Patchy, it ain’t even the season for hurricanes.”

  “Lord, you don’t know,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Nothing wrong with my lungs.”

  “It’s the cold air of the grave, is what it is.”

  “My wife says that, too.”

  Malcolm’s boat was coming in now. They had smoked two bowls apiece. They went down to the waterline, and saw that the gunwales were all blackened. You could hardly make out the initials painted on the bows: U.S.L.S.S. for United States Life-Saving Service.

  The Light roved the sky over their heads.

  Littlejohn said, “I can tell you what this beach is going to look like by morning.”

  Patchy had already worked that out. Even now the swells were filmy with oil. By this time tomorrow, the waterline would be black from Kinnakeet to the inlet.

  “There ain’t any excuse for it,” Patchy said.

  Offshore the tanker still blazed. Malcolm’s crew went out for the third time, and Patchy felt a pang that he could not go with them. But he had his own things to do.

  2

  WHEN MALCOLM ROYAL FINALLY ENTERED the events connected with the rescue of the Abilene City in the station log, he contrived to be alone for a long time to get it down just right. He thought he would have a lot of trouble getting it down the way it had happened. He wished it weren’t necessary—surely nobody on the island ever forgot what happened. Or put another way: everyone on the island, together, remembered everything.

  As far south as Ocracoke, as far north as Kitty Hawk, anyone could tell you, for instance, how Captain Benjamin Dailey rescued six crewmen from the Ephraim Williams on December 19, 1884. They could tell you that the seas were cresting at seven and eight feet with weather, and that Dailey’s No. 1 man begged off to go to the bedside of his dying wife, and that his name was crossed off the logbook in heavy ink, as if that would eradicate memory of him.

  But they all knew who he was—he was Patch Patchett’s father, though the fact was never mentioned out loud on the island. Patchy’s annual application to the Coast Guard was never acted upon or acknowledged, and there were those who said it never even got into the mail pouch for Portsmouth.

  If you relied on what was written down, Malcolm thought, nobody would ever remember anything. On the island there was plenty of time for remembering, and your people told you what you had to know about all that had gone before. If you read about it at all, you read about it in the creases of their brows, or the knotty joints of their hands, or the pursed silence of salt-blistered lips.

  Nevertheless, he drew a great breath, let it go, and commenced to write, slowly, because his hands were still raw: Tower watch rptd. ship in distress just south of the Light. Put out in moderate seas at 2130 for tanker Abilene City which was burning badly. Took off 25 crewmen in three trips, secured boat at 0600. Abilene City sank in deep water, torpedoed in sight of land by Gmn. U-boat. Keith Royal volunteered to man an oar, acquitted himself well at risk. Ship’s master and engineer’s mate Geo. Bannister, of the island Bannisters, went down with the vessel. God grant them rest.

  He wondered if he should have put it in about Keith and Toby’s brother. Well, it was an official document, and if Keith finally made up his mind to join the Service, he would already have a record in his favor.

  Was it too personal about George, though? Maybe he should have mentioned the other dead men by name. Malcolm tried to imagine what it must have been like belowdecks where George would have been caught when the torpedo lanced the bulkhead. Almost all the men were burned, and he knew some would probably die of their burns by the time Halstead’s convoy got them safely to the hospital in Portsmouth. But what was it like down there, inside, trapped, welded into your own coffin by fire that burned so hot it had no color?

  Malcolm closed the log when the ink was dry. He laid a hand flat on the canvas cover and held it there. He felt, once again, he hadn’t got it down exactly right.

  He had rescued a lot of men in all kinds of circumstances—a millionaire who dismasted his yacht carrying too much sail in a blow, a smuggler running too close inshore at night in a fog, a Greek freighter that ran aground on the shoals in broad daylight with the captain so drunk he had to be carried off, and once even a Baltimore clipper in the worst gale Malcolm had ever put to sea in, certain he would never come back and risking only his brother Jack and two volunteers in the attempt—but he had never seen anything like the men who came off the Abilene City, their flesh peeling in strips, their faces boiling with welts, their eyes and noses sealed with pus and charred tissue. And most of them had swum through salt water in that condition.

  He had no honest idea how so many had survived, and he took no credit for it, but two weeks later they gave him the Gold Life-Saving Medal anyway.

  3

  MALCOLM SAT on the porch thinking, his hands clasped, his body bent, not even smoking.

  Toby Bannister sat down next to him and dragged on a cigarette, one of Halstead’s maduros.

  “Have you had any rest?’ Malcolm asked.

  Toby nodded but didn’t answer. He was lean for a surfman, with a long torso and short thick legs that lent power to his stroke. His right shoulder humped with muscles from handling a portside oar for years. He had been one of the volunteers in the clipper ship outing, along with Chief Lord.

  “They may find him yet,” Malcolm said, knowing it was a lie. There had been enough of a miracle already. He was sorry he had said it.

  “He was my twin,” Toby said through teeth closed on the cigarette just enough to hold it.

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Ah, well. We didn’t look much alike. He had the best of looks, you know.”

  Malcolm was silent. For something to do, he pulled his pipe out of his pocket and wiped the rim of the bowl thoroughly with a handkerchief dampened with spittle, then filled and tamped it. Toby offered a box of matches, and Malcolm lit one and held it between his hands over the bowl, breathing in the smoke slowly.

  “What I wanted to ask, why I bothered you …” Toby hesitated.

  “What is it, Toby?”

  “I want to take the tower watch tonight.”

  “You’re on from eight to midnight, or am I wrong?”

  “All night, Malcolm. That’s what I want.”

  Malcolm watched the lighthouse. As he watched, the Light went on, all at once, like an idea. That would be Chief.

  “Are you sure, Toby?” Malcolm looked to see what was in the man’s eyes. “Maybe you should go home tonight. We can call you.”

  “You know better than that. I’ve never left my duty yet.”

  “I know, I know.” He was wondering if that was as important now as it had been. The world was changing, things were getting more dangerous every day. Who knew where it would all lead? No, he decided—Toby was right: it was not the time to start making exceptions. “Do you want somebody to bring up coff
ee once in a while?”

  “Well, I’ve had enough of tea.” He flicked his cigarette into the sand and went inside, leaving Malcolm to sit for a while yet.

  4

  DOROTHY DANT BELIEVED her father and brother were dead. She did not see the point of Halstead’s going out after them now, and she said so.

  “We have to go out anyway.”

  “I know,” she said. “You men always use that line when it’s something you can’t wait to do.”

  Halstead’s boat was almost ready. With help from the crew, the new mechanic-turned-engineer had repaired the armor plate, trued the bent propeller shaft, and remounted the torpedo sleeve by bolting it through the deck onto a sheet of boiler plate under the deck planking. It stabilized the boat as ballast and slowed her down. She lost three inches of freeboard.

  They had also mounted two Y-guns on the stern, each capable of throwing a depth charge packed with TNT. And now two powerful searchlights braced the cockpit, for night patrols. To Halstead, the lights seemed more dangerous than anything else.

  “The weather’s been pretty foul,” he said. “I went over the charts last night with Seamus Royal—you know him?”

  “Uncle Seamus? He’s the grand old man of the island.”

  “Is he really your uncle?”

  “They’re all my uncles.”

  “Well, he may be a balmy old character, as the British say, but he knows this coast, all right. From what he tells me, your dad’s boat would have been well away from the German each of the times he was sighted.”

  “Please don’t be promising me anything.”

  “It may not be like your Uncle Dennis.”

  “All of them, every day, they all said he would come in, just wait and see.”

  “I know.” He liked being in her house all alone with her, but he couldn’t help thinking it was improper, that he was taking advantage of her misfortune. He never would have met her, she would never have come to him, except for her father.

  “Did you ever think that he didn’t drown? That his boat didn’t founder out there?”

  “That’s a bad joke.”

  “It’s not a joke.”

  “Then I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I mean, suppose he’d just had enough. Suppose he had a woman someplace, or a yen to travel, to get off this sandbar. Suppose he was just fed up with the whole damned place and anxious to get shet of it.”

  “Don’t you dare talk like that to me! My Uncle Dennis was an honorable man.”

  “I never said—”

  “Then say what you mean.”

  “I mean, suppose he just wanted to leave?”

  “Nobody leaves that way.”

  “His wife had run off—”

  “She was a goddamn shrew, Mister Halstead.”

  He smiled in spite of her outburst. “Mister? I thought it was Tim?”

  “Not if you’re talking like this. That damned hussy ran off with a fireman in Norfolk. She used to tell my mother she was visiting family up there, but we knew better.”

  “You couldn’t have known for sure.”

  “Her family was from Morehead City. That woman didn’t know a soul in Norfolk except that man.”

  “Oh.”

  “Satisfied?”

  “All I meant was, it would be a way a man could get a fresh start without having to explain himself and answer a lot of questions.”

  She thought about that, and couldn’t decide whether to be shocked and hurt or glad, accepting the chance that her Uncle Dennis had just slipped his cable and gone off to voyage in his private worlds. Or maybe grief and shame had driven him off. He had left soon after his brother’s wife, Dorothy’s own mother, had died birthing Brian. And Dennis’s affection for her had been outright, if honorable. He had probably loved her all the more because of what was shaping up in his own house.

  But there was another possibility she had never considered. “Tim? What if he did it … on purpose?”

  Halstead understood that the tables had turned. “He wouldn’t do that,” he said. “I bet he wouldn’t.”

  They held hands across the table and let their tea get cold while dusk filled the house like water. After a while they stood up together, and though he hadn’t meant to, Halstead led her into the bedroom. Sitting beside Dorothy on the bed, he told her he was falling in love with her. She didn’t believe in his love, but she didn’t care. She kissed him. For now, it was her chance to get away.

  5

  PATCHETT FINALLY HAD the pistons seated right. He fitted the head on carefully and torqued the bolts as well as he could by hand. It wouldn’t do to have the whole thing come apart under load.

  He had mended his extra sails and stowed them dry. His stays’l and mizzen were reefed and covered. There was coffee, sugar, dried fish, and even a bottle of rum on board. He wished he had some kind of weapon, but all he had was an old gaff. It would have to do, and he bolted a hanger for it next to the wheelhouse hatchway.

  Patchy went forward and started the engine, gradually increasing the throttle as she warmed up. The engine sounded so even and strong he was almost amazed. The plugs were clean, the points set, and a hundred minor parts replaced by scavenging with Oman, who had watched the whole enterprise with admiration and disbelief.

  Oman had given fuel on credit, as usual, and even let Patchy scrounge some charts, which he had squinted to read and could only make general sense of.

  Patchy spent the last two hours of daylight polishing the sparse brightwork on board and scrubbing whatever came under his hand. By sundown the Hermes gleamed. Her bilge was dry, her rigging in place, her wheelhouse shipshape.

  “Come here, Oman,” he said, wiping polish off his hands with a rag. “You are a landlubber till the last judgment, I reckon, but this here is a well-found boat. Take a good look.”

  Oman sidled over importantly. He gave her a good going over and listened to Patchy rev the engine. Oman folded his arms across his chest and nodded. “Well, it’s a pleasure to behold, Patchy,” he said. “It’s a goddamn pleasure.”

  6

  MARY ROYAL COOKED supper for Keith. He was feeling restless and his hands were in bad shape, the fingers cramped into hollow fists. He had small itching burns on his forearms and shoulders and was uncomfortable sitting around. Besides, he had not heard from Dorothy. The telephone lines had been restored, but she didn’t call and, calling, he didn’t reach her. He wondered if he had somehow offended her, or because he had gone out in the boat with Malcolm and the crew, if then she thought he would now stay on Hatteras forever.

  “How did it feel to go out with them?” Mary asked.

  “I don’t know. What kind of question is that?”

  “Malcolm never talks about it, any of it. So I’ve never known what it was like.” She realized she was jealous—all the storms he had weathered, all the grand things he had done. She was not even welcome inside the station. Yet she was so hopelessly proud of him that she fairly burst with it whenever she heard him talked about in the village.

  Keith shook his head. “It was a lot of hard work, mostly.”

  “Of course. I know that. You’re as bad as Malcolm.”

  Keith watched her. He couldn’t help noticing how pretty she was. “I can’t tell you what it felt like,” he said. He remembered how much it had hurt. He wanted her to know the curious elation that washed over him when at last they landed and fell on the beach at the feet of the crowd, but he couldn’t tell her. He said, “It was like nothing I’ve ever done before.”

  She waited for him to continue. “That’s all?”

  “We were saviors, for God’s sake. Those men were burning, and we saved them. I was scared to death.”

  “Of course, you had to be.”

  “No, that’s not what I mean. I mean, it was our choice and we saved them. It scares me to think about it, even now.”

  The look on her face told him she still did not understand.

  “Listen to me: I made up for all my sins las
t night.”

  She nodded, her hands steepled on the oilcloth of the table. Keith got up and lit a coal-oil lamp and trimmed the wick carefully, not to have too much glow. With both hands he set the lamp on the table so the flame just caught Mary’s eyes. He looked there and seemed to find a message and moved to take her in his arms.

  “No, don’t,” she said. “Not now, not tonight. We just can’t.” She had not flinched at all, nor moved away. He knew he could have her and she would neither protest nor tell. He was sure about that, had never been more sure of anything in his life. She might not even regret it later, but just then he knew that always he would.

  “Where are you going?” she said.

  “To see my brothers.” And then he was out the door.

  7

  KEITH SKIRTED BUXTON WOODS and felt good to be outdoors, walking. The woods was a stunted forest of gnarled scrub oak, pitch pine, and briars stubbornly rooted in sand bog that became treacherous after a heavy rainfall. He followed a path he had walked many times as a boy, and he entered the stationhouse feeling different than he used to, not like a visitor anymore. He had a right to be there, a right to help himself to the teapot and smoke in the company of the men.

  Toby Bannister was in the tower. Chief Lord and Joe Trent had the beach patrol tonight. The rest had retired to their quarters, and the Navy men were having a meeting upstairs that included Jack, going over the boat and their duties. The first officer ran the meeting, Keith recognized his voice and wondered where Halstead was. The mechanic had volunteered for sea duty, and the mate had cleared it with Portsmouth on the wireless.

  Cy Magillicutty left the common room with a great show of weariness. He had the early-morning tower watch. Jack came downstairs after the meeting to sit with Malcolm and Keith. It was the first time the three of them had been together, alone, since Keith had come back.

  Malcolm said, “How do your hands feel?”

  “Good enough to pull an oar if I have to.” He knew that was what Malcolm wanted to hear, and he wished right away that he hadn’t sounded so melodramatic. Jack scowled at him.