Hatteras Light

by Philip Gerard

  In the course of time, Patchy retreated to the island and married old Fetterman’s granddaughter, who was neither pretty nor especially kind, but who owned a house near the sea. No one was pleased by the union but no one remarked it, either, for old Fetterman commanded enough respect that they would keep their objections to themselves so long as he sat carving on that throne at Littlejohn’s.

  Patchy had few clear memories of his mother, only that she was very blonde and used to take him to the seashore almost every day in fair weather. She had helped him gather seashells and held his arms when he waded in the breakers. Afterward, her hands had toweled him gently dry. He could not save any more than that of her. As far as Patchy was concerned, his father had done the right thing.

  12

  IN THE LATE AFTERNOON, Ricky Oman stood in a bloody apron at the cleaning counter, whipping the heads off channel bass and carving fillets with a dexterity that would have made old Fetterman proud.

  1

  MALCOLM ROYAL DIDN’T breakfast with his men. Instead, he sat outside, watching the weather come in over the ocean. It would be a minor squall, probably. The sky changed in a matter of minutes, as it often did, from clear and blue to roiling dirty clouds scudding up from the south.

  Malcolm decided to go home for a while.

  He was in good spirits now. There had been no incidents in the night, Toby Bannister had carried out his long night’s watch, and now Keith had taken his first great step toward becoming a surfman. When Malcolm got home he’d ask Mary for a good strong cup of coffee. He had drunk enough tea. Maybe he would take her walking on the beach.

  It seemed a long time since he had done anything special with Mary. When she used to paint, set up on the dunes in sight of the station, he would take beach patrol just to walk by the place where she sat, to wave a clumsy hand at her. He admired that she could do something fine. His own dexterity was limited, his fingers just too big for most delicate things. He had watched her brush paint onto the canvas in light, graceful strokes. There was magic in it.

  Malcolm hurried his steps home now. It was only a little farther, and he had things he wanted to tell Mary. But he had always been a little thick of speech. Once, tentatively, he had tried to explain about a rescue he’d made in which one of his men had almost drowned. But there weren’t words for it, and whenever he tried to tell a story like that she would be gloomy for days afterward, brooding.

  So they did not talk much and Mary did not paint anymore. Often she walked the beach alone, or now sometimes with Keith. They were drawn to one another, Malcolm knew, but Keith had always been a good boy, and now that he was back everything would come around. The three brothers would work together, just as Malcolm had always imagined. Jack could be a sonofabitch, but all it would take to straighten him out was for him to get a station of his own. There had been talk that at the end of the war the Coast Guard would add a station on the bight, where Halstead’s boat slip was. It was a good location. If Malcolm could have Keith, he would surrender Jack, let him run his own show, pick his own men.

  At the house Malcolm realized Keith’s motorcar was gone. Probably down at Littlejohn’s, or down at the village. Keith was certainly proud of that damned thing. Malcolm opened the door to his home like a suitor, but Mary was not there.

  2

  HAM FETTERMAN SHIFTED in his seat. These days his bones tended to stick out in awkward places. He accepted discomfort as the price he paid for seeing all he’d seen these many years. In younger days, his bones had been padded with healthy muscle and fat earned in ports all over the world—Singapore, Djakarta, Istanbul, Sydney, Calais, Hong Kong. He had sailed on most of the ships he now modeled, or their cousins.

  But not this new, gray thing. He turned it in his hands. The shape was still not right, not sharp enough. And the tower—he could not get the tower detailed exactly. He was used to being exact.

  “Are you coming to the meeting?” Littlejohn wanted to know. He was limping very perceptively now, with the weather.

  “Your pin acting up again? So’s mine. Couple of gimps.”

  “It’s all this excitement. When I get anxious, you know, it comes back.”

  “See that you don’t strain it too much.”

  “I know to take care of myself.”

  “That’ll be the day,” Mrs. Littlejohn said from the back room.

  Fetterman absently turned the model in his hand. He was looking out the window. There were clues he had missed.

  Littlejohn limped from behind the counter and sat in an old rattan chair next to Fetterman, whose hands immediately quieted and laid the model aside.

  “How’s the missus keeping?” Fetterman asked just loud enough for his voice to carry into the back.

  “Better than she deserves. Do you know how old that woman’s getting?”

  Mrs. Littlejohn emerged then and said: “Never mind that. In a previous life, I lived to be a hundred and four.” And disappeared stiffly, like a figure on a Swiss clock.

  Littlejohn said, “I got to ask you, Ham. Is there any hope for Al Dant? Is there any way that salty rascal can find his way home again?”

  “Shh,” Fetterman said, resuming his work. “Don’t be speaking ill of the dead.”

  3

  JACK ROYAL FELT the full spray in his face and at his elbow that puffed-up martinet Halstead, a man fool enough to think a couple of ash cans on the stern and searchlights in the cockpit had transformed the boat into a deadly subchaser. The kid reminded Jack of stories his Scottish relatives told of submarine patrols on the channel coast at the very start of the war: Picket boats of men armed with hammers and burlap sacks plied the coast, and the strategy was to spot a periscope sticking out of the water, sneak up on it from behind, bag it with the burlap sack, then knock out the periscope glass with the hammer. Like killing a chicken.

  Nobody knew what he was doing these days, Jack reflected, not even Malcolm. He was pretty sure Malcolm was responsible for getting him assigned to this nonesuch. What did Malcolm have against him?

  Cross said: “The German’s been seen north of the Light. This morning. It came over the wireless—a mail plane spotted him making for the open sea.”

  “That’s dandy,” Jack said. Maybe now there would be an end to any more crazy heroics. Let the real Navy fight that guy. Jack was as brave as the next man, but he had no wish to give up his life for his country. For Virginia, yes; for his father, his family, for his island. But not his country. “Maybe we’re rid of the bugger, then.”

  “I doubt it,” Cross said.

  “I think,” Halstead said, “that he’s just hiding from the plane—I mean, wouldn’t you? He’s a little far from home, gentlemen.” Halstead thought the “gentlemen” sounded effective. It was what they said at the Academy. He would remember it and use it again.

  Jack studied the clouds rolling in behind them.

  4

  THE SQUALL BLEW down on them in one driving gust. Rain lashed them and the seas churned lead-gray and held deep troughs. “Face her to the wind,” Halstead commanded. Sealion was riding too heavily. Her new hardware kept her stern low and reduced her freeboard to almost nothing in this kind of sea.

  “Weather, Mister Halstead,” Jack Royal said.

  “It’ll blow over,” Halstead said. But he was amazed that such weather had come up so fast. They had watched it a-building, so far off it was, and now they were smack in it with nothing to do but try to ride it out.

  “We’re shipping water!” the new engineer called. “The engines are swamping—”

  Halstead threw in the throttle. They had one chance—to plane at speed. He took her up to twenty knots and held her there, riding each wave recklessly, gripping the wheel in bloodless hands.

  Jack Royal had his cork vest well fastened. He had no illusions about rescue so far out in such a heavy sea. Even Malcolm would concede defeat on this one, he thought, but it did not cheer him.

  The boat nosedived into each new wave but, because of the sealed superstru
cture—proof against the prying eyes of revenue cutter boarding parties—the boat stayed afloat. Halstead drove Sealion like a spear into the teeth of the gale as he ran for the bight.

  They might make it at that, Jack Royal thought, they just might. And then he thought: Let this goddamned boat go down, let this nonsense end. But let’s get closer in first.

  5

  KEITH, Dorothy, and Mary braved the rain and wind in the open car and headed back to Buxton. The backseat was stuffed with groceries, and Rufus was hanging his shaggy head over the side and nosing into the wind. Keith felt sheepish for getting the ladies drenched, but there was something undeniably pleasant in feeling the wind and rain.

  As a boy often, he had salvaged a catboat on the Sound side of the island and refurbished her for sea. He used to hell around the Sound after school, and half a dozen times Malcolm had hauled out somebody’s powerboat to track him down, becalmed or, more likely, barely holding his own in a squall. He never ventured too far out, and the danger wasn’t all that great, but Malcolm would come for him just the same, grave and determined.

  “Don’t tell the old man about this,” Keith would say, and of course Malcolm never did. It got to be a game almost, though Keith knew now that Malcolm had never seen the lighter side of it.

  The motorcar’s windscreen wasn’t much help. The squall was blowing directly off the ocean and coming at them broadside. Keith was smiling at memory, Mary was content, and only Dorothy seemed to mind the weather. Keith suddenly surrendered his smile: Of course—her father was still out there.

  In this weather, he thought, the U-boat was safely hiding under the waves. This was not good hunting weather.

  Keith thought briefly about Halstead’s patrol boat, about Jack, an islander, serving on her. It was bad luck for one of the islanders to drown—it portended a sudden, violent end for someone on shore.

  When Mary’s father had died, though, it had been the reverse of tradition: Dennis Dant disappeared soon after Dorothy’s mother passed away in childbirth.

  All at once Keith Royal knew something. It was something you’d have to go away and then come back to see. What if the coincidence of Dennis Dant’s death so soon after Dorothy’s mother’s was no coincidence at all? What if Dennis, not Alvin, was Brian Dant’s father?

  It was apparent now that the storm was not just a minor squall. The sky was dark as evening and the wind kept forcing the light car sideways off the road. Twice the wheels spun in deep sand and Keith maneuvered it carefully back onto the road.

  “How about if I drop Mary and come back for awhile?” Keith asked when they reached Dorothy’s house. “It won’t take me very long.” He half wished she would say no, but he felt obligated to stay with her at least some of the time.

  “You’re sure?” she said. “I wouldn’t want to keep you from anything.”

  “No, it’s all right.”

  “Of course,” Mary said to her. “He’ll be back. Now run along and get in out of the wet.”

  Dorothy stood poised on the top step of her porch for a long second, then turned quickly and slammed the screen door behind her.

  Mary gathered her wrap around her shoulders and huddled against the storm while Keith drove on, his headlights barely any help at all in finding the way.

  6

  WHEN MARY ROYAL OPENED the door to her house, her heart leapt. She had a sudden, overwhelming sense of Malcolm’s presence, and she welcomed it. His vacuum bottle was on the kitchen counter. “Malcolm!” she called. But of course he wasn’t there. He had left her a note, and he hardly ever wrote notes. She felt as though she had done something terribly wrong.

  7

  “PUT YOUR ARMS AROUND ME,” Dorothy said. “I want to feel you being strong.”

  Keith was trying to account for her radical shift in mood, and couldn’t.

  She had toweled and brushed her hair, and it shone dark gold. She looked more a woman than he remembered. She had more weight, more substance to her now. Her eyes went deeper. He kissed her mouth and from time to time her damp hair.

  “I’ve decided,” she said abruptly. Her head was tucked into his shoulder the way he liked it.

  “Decided what?”

  “I buried them today. I made up my mind before we left Oman’s. I made it up, Keith Royal, and you’re not going to change it.”

  “I’m not trying to change it.” Very matter of factly he unbuttoned her shirt. She did not help him at first. He knelt in front of her and burrowed his face into her lap, felt her hands finally touch his ears and temples, as if she were sculpting him.

  Later, they lay on the floor listening to the rain pelt the roof like handfuls of gravel, and she said, “I’m leaving. If you won’t take me away, I’ll find someone who will.” She twisted a strand of hair between her fingers.

  “I get it,” Keith said. “But why do you need someone at all. Can’t you do that little thing by yourself?”

  “That’s not the way it works.”

  Keith got up to go out on the porch.

  8

  ALVIN DANT HELD the wheel. His boy stared out the window, waiting.

  “You should have let me get them all,” he said.

  “Don’t you understand, boy?” Alvin shouted. They had been having this conversation off and on ever since the U-boat retreated and the weather moved in. Alvin had a sustained urge to beat Brian. He held the wheel instead. “Don’t you realize? Don’t you get it?” Brian had always been a good boy, the kind you take for granted and rely on around the house.

  “They are the enemy,” Brian said.

  “Have you no sense of honor? They trusted us!”

  “They are the enemy. They would as soon killed us as not.”

  “And I won’t blame them when they do. They came as gentlemen, and you shot one of them.”

  “Do gentlemen lie up underwater all day, then sink merchant ships without warning?”

  Alvin shook his head. The boy was stubborn, but it was a good thing that the boy had some backbone. It had not bothered him to blow off the back of a man’s head after talking civilly to him only minutes before, and fully expecting to be killed in reward. Alvin was proud of the boy in spite of himself. When had he grown up? He opened a bottle of brandy—no sense wasting it, if the Hun came back. May as well meet the Maker with a smile and a hail-fellow-well-met.

  “Have a full glass, boy. Apparently you’re old enough.”

  They drank while the boat quaked in the weather. Alvin thought it funny, and the more he drank the funnier it got. Brian didn’t smile, but Alvin could see he understood the humor of it. They had beat the Hun at his own game, and now they were hiding from him. The wind and the currents were pushing them all over the place, Alvin knew, and for once he didn’t care.

  They toasted Alvin’s brother Dennis, whom Brian resembled more than ever with the glass in his hand, and Alvin was sure he could die happy if only he could save the boy. He was a good boy.

  He asked him: “What went through your mind when you pulled the trigger on that Heinie?”

  Brian looked puzzled.

  “Did you hesitate? Were you afraid? You were afraid, weren’t you.”

  “Yes,” Brian finally answered. “I was afraid. The boat kept moving, and I was afraid I would miss.”

  Alvin stared at the boy. “You’re not a fisherman. I don’t know what you are, but you’re not a fisherman.”

  The light left the sky. The rain was so thick and incessant Alvin fancied it was saltwater. They were pushed a little south and a little west, right into the shipping lane. They were both drunk by now and didn’t care about anything. They were toasting Brian, shouting at each other to be heard above the wind, hanging on to the wheel while the deck pitched under them.

  The first they saw of the tanker Proteus was a black wall reaching from sky to sea on the starboard side, close enough to prod with a gaff. Their bottle shattered on the deck as they were thrown off their feet. The Pelican pitched violently, and the noise of the tanker’s engi
nes was like pneumatic hammers. Alvin looked up to see a propeller as tall as his own pilothouse churning through the black water.

  9

  UNDERWATER it was calm. Captain Stracken tried the periscope twice, but the weather was too bad and there were no lights to take a bearing by. With his radio mast gone he could not pick up the signals of other vessels even on the surface. He summoned Max to the periscope bridge just to sit there and stare at the charts over a cup of coffee.

  Max Wien had not had real coffee in over a month. Still, it tasted sour. He finished it only for the captain’s pleasure.

  Captain Stracken stabbed a finger at the chart.

  “Where is the gemeine Hund? Where? You find him. I don’t care if the whole American fleet is upstairs. We will blow that fisherman out of the water and hang his head on our jackstaff.”

  Max thought: I know where he got that, he’s showing off his history. Robert Maynard had impaled Blackbeard’s head on the bowsprit of his sloop Ranger. A pirate’s fate.

  Max pondered the charts, Kraft standing by. He looked at the horn of the island, marked the arrows that showed the Labrador and the Gulf Stream, and took in the pattern of the vessels they had sunk—the names, the tonnage, the whereabouts.

  “There,” he said, pressing a finger to a spot where no ships were tallied for tonnage. “Dort ist er, dein Fischer.”

  The captain studied the chart, nodded. “We’ll see, Max. That’s the first order of business. If you’re right, you will have the honor of boarding.”