Hatteras Light

by Philip Gerard

  He pictured the sun rising behind him as he made the final mile to the Inlet, casting him in heroic silhouette. He thought of old Fetterman’s approval and his wife Pat’s joy: Now she could hold her head up with all the Royals of this world. She would be easier on him from now on, he was sure.

  He envisioned long rainy nights around Littlejohn’s stove with a bottle of good stout beer in his hand, telling his story in all its delicious detail with scarcely an exaggeration. They could gibe him all they wanted about fibbing. They would know the truth when they heard it, whether they said so or not.

  Life was good. Anything was possible—he had proved it. He steered for the Light, to make landfall a little south of it. He hoped his bilges were deep enough to last that far.

  15

  ALVIN AND BRIAN SPOTTED the Light just after Patchy did and hugged one another. The hawser held. They rode the Labrador south now, and it pushed them in so close they knew that whatever happened they were within reach of Malcolm’s boat. Alvin kept his lamps burning bright.

  16

  JACK ROYAL STRODE into the station and assumed some kind of command. “I’m sorry, Malcolm,” he said. “It’s time for action.” Seamus stood at his elbow, and Malcolm thought his old rifle looked more foolish than ever. Jack had called Toby Bannister down from the catwalk, and now he herded him against the wall with Malcolm’s crew.

  “You don’t know what you’re doing,” Malcolm said to them.

  Chief Lord crossed his arms. “Whatever you decide, Malcolm,” he said, and the rest of the crew lined up with him.

  “Not like this,” Malcolm said. “Not like this.”

  Keith elbowed his way into the station. “What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” Mary waited behind him on the porch.

  “Shut up, boy,” Jack said. “You’re coming with me.” He turned to his men. “Keep them all in here. I’ll be right back.”

  Roughly, Jack ushered Keith past Mary, through the rain, and into the lighthouse and pushed him up the spiral staircase. “What do you need me for?” Keith said. “I’m not going to help you.”

  Jack had a handful of Keith’s sou’wester. “You don’t know what you’re going to do till I tell you.”

  At the catwalk deck Jack paused to get his wind back. Then he bullied Keith up the last stairs, opened the door to the carousel room, and shoved him inside. “You’re the one to do it,” Jack said. “I’ll show you how.”

  17

  DOWN BELOW in the stationhouse, Malcolm started for the door. Four men grabbed him, steered him to a chair, and held him there. Old Fetterman stood aloof, listening to the storm.

  Seamus Royal paced. “Malcolm,” he said. “Malcolm!”

  Halstead came softly downstairs and lingered on the landing, trying to decide whom to shoot. He fired his pistol twice into the ceiling, and everybody but Fetterman dived for cover. Then the men were on their feet and throwing punches. Halstead dropped his weapon and joined the fray, and in the commotion Malcolm broke free. He shouldered his way out the door, ran inside the tower, and threw the bolt behind him. Mary stood in the rain.

  18

  ALMOST THE SAME instant that Alvin recognized the silhouette of a big ship, two things happened: The Hatteras Light went out, and Patchy’s boat exploded and disappeared.

  19

  IN THE LAST MOMENTS Patchy’s bilges were so heavy that the foredeck was awash constantly now. He headed gamely for the Light. The next he knew, the pilothouse was carried away in a flash of lightning and he was left on his knees with a broken wheel in his hands, the water rushing around his feet. He was deafened by the explosion, and suddenly the Light was not where it had been. He must be blind as well. Hope expired in him, and he made no move to save himself. What was the use? He felt the water around his shins and then the Hermes submarined into the next sea, with Patchy still at the helm.

  20

  THE HAWSER WAS pulling them under. Alvin scrambled onto the foredeck with ax in hand but took a header on the slippery deck and lost the ax over the side. There was no time to lose. He lifted the single cork life ring off its hook, rescued the last bottle of brandy, took Brian’s hand, and catapaulted them both into the water as far away from the boat as he could.

  21

  WHEN HE HAD GAINED the top of the staircase, Malcolm stood giddily surveying the gloom. There were lights on the staircase all the way up, and his eyes had to adjust to the sudden absence of light outside the iron door. He pushed it open, stooping by habit to fit through it easily, tentatively emerging into the carousel room.

  “Jack?”

  A shadow loomed on the other side of the glass reflector, against the window. Malcolm had never been in this room when it was not full of light. “Jack?”

  “Get out, Malcolm.”

  “Stop this, Jack.”

  “It’s done.”

  Malcolm began his routine of relighting the lamp, a routine he knew by heart and in the dark, until Jack grabbed his arm. “Let go!” Malcolm said, and shook him off so hard Jack stumbled against the window. He got to his feet and jabbed a fist into Malcolm’s eye. Then Jack grabbed Malcolm around the waist and tackled him in the doorway. He knelt across Malcolm’s windpipe until Malcolm started to black out, then dragged him down the short stairway to the catwalk deck. Then, as Jack broke loose to go back upstairs, Malcolm recovered and hauled him down by his ankles.

  Keith watched from the doorway to the carousel room.

  Jack struck Malcolm again and escaped onto the catwalk, Malcolm following. On the waffled iron deck of the catwalk, Malcolm knelt over Jack, gripping him by the throat, and hit him in the face again and again.

  “That’s enough, Malcolm!” Keith said, tugging at Malcolm’s hunched shoulders. Malcolm kept on hitting Jack. Keith tugged harder. “Malcolm!” he said, “I did it. I did it!”

  Malcolm turned his head, his fists hanging loose on the ends of his arms. Then he stood up, heaving for breath. Without a word, he went inside to light the lamp. Outside on the catwalk, in the wind and rain, Keith sat with Jack and waited for Malcolm to return.

  1

  KRAFT WATCHED the lights go out to the east and congratulated Bergen. Down below, Captain Stracken heard the report and sat up in his berth, glassy-eyed. He had dreamed of men burning, on fire with a flame that not even the sea could quench. Max was at his side, saying good-bye. Stracken misunderstood and thought he was dying. He clutched Max’s hand and then released it for the sake of dignity. Then Max left him.

  2

  KRAFT WOULD BE cold-blooded and sure. He had a moment of panic when the Light went out, but, as the troopship was only 300 meters off, he ordered the torpedomen to fire two at once. He counted off the seconds from his order. When he got to three, the front end of U-55 ignited with a great gush of water and white flame, vaporizing the forward crew.

  The sea door being jammed, the torpedo had detonated inside the tube.

  Max did not recall diving off the conning bridge, but from the water he watched successive small explosions rip out the back of U-55 like chain geysers. The light was intense and short-lived, illuminating the troopship that bore down on him now, her bows a plowshare with giant blades. Pieces of the forward gun rained down nearby. An arm landed on the water next to him and sank. When the conning bridge blew, a long flame shot straight up out of the hull, like the flame of a welding torch, and he imagined it was all that bad air igniting in one blow.

  U-55 was gone. Max Wien drifted on the oily black sea while the troopship passed a dozen yards off, then disappeared.

  On shore the Light burned again.

  3

  MALCOLM, Jack, and Keith watched the explosion together. Malcolm carried Jack downstairs fireman-fashion behind Keith. Jack was in no shape to go out, so Keith would take his place.

  Chief already had Homer in harness, and they were away in good order, the brawl forgotten, the crew wearing bruised lips, black eyes, and skinned knuckles, pulling toward the last light they had marked.

>   “There’s the troopship!” Malcolm shouted. “I don’t understand—” The great shadowy bulk was already disappearing.

  “Pull,” Chief Lord said, “there’s somebody else out here.”

  It was only the sheerest accident that they found Max Wien. He hailed them in German when they were nearby, and using a paraffin lamp they spied his glossy blond head bobbing among the flotsam. They hauled him into the boat roughly and dumped him at their feet.

  “It’s a goddamn Heinie!” Cy Magillicutty said, elated and troubled. It meant that the U-boat was sunk.

  “Please,” Max said, “there’s another vessel.” He made Malcolm understand that they had spied lights to the east, and the crew made for the spot as best Max could direct them. Amid the chop of the sea and the dying wind, Malcolm heard it. He ordered the men to ship oars and listen. A dozen strokes away, Dant and his boy were clinging to a ring buoy, drunk as lords, singing bawdy songs. Alvin sank the empty brandy bottle in sight of Malcolm’s crew.

  “It’s a miracle,” Chief Lord said.

  “Where you been?” Malcolm asked.

  “What do you do with a drunken sailor—” Alvin sang. His boy said: “Patchy Patchett brought us in.”

  Malcolm was all for searching for the Hermes, but Brian finally convinced him it was no use: “I seen him go down, Mister Royal. All of him.”

  They pulled for shore and watched the Light sweep the sky ahead of them, the sun still hours from rising.

  4

  EVEN IN SUNLIGHT, to Keith, Mary’s portrait looked like no one. It was the figure of a man, standing, looking out to sea—his back to the artist, his head lifted to the wind like the muzzle of a dog, his hands raised as if to embrace someone who wasn’t there.

  When Keith stood over her, appraising it, the blacks and grays took on a funereal potency. “This is what you see?”

  “I can’t help it.”

  He looked at the painting harder, feeling a knot behind his tongue. He was so close to Mary he could smell her. “Then it’s finished?” Hands on her lap, shoulders narrowed like the folded wings of a bird, Mary wept.

  5

  AT NOON KEITH took the tower watch, and no one objected. He circled round and round on the catwalk and watched the island spread out far below, the ocean side limned by surf. It reminded him of one of old Rusonovsky’s geopolitical maps--the boundaries were just as clear. The wind whistled through the iron railing and beat across the dunes to the southwest. North, the road ran through Kinnakeet. Salvo, Chicamacomico, then off the map, all the way to Cambridge, and beyond.

  6

  FETTERMAN THOUGHT he might as well die this year, although he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to get off that easy. He felt he had about a decade left in him, give or take a few months, and that depressed him. He was unhorsed, as he had not been since Littlejohn came to the island buoyed up by strong spirits. Just when he had thought he’d seen the whole performance, there was a change in the program. He wondered if he had the energy for it.

  He held the finished model in his hand. Patchy had conferred upon him great honor. His son-in-law, who probably hadn’t realized even at the end exactly what he was doing out there. Nevertheless, his legacy would do Patricia more good than the man himself ever did her alive. Fetterman knew this.

  And some of the glow would inevitably reflect back on him, warming him in his senility, if he ever got it. He felt a real fondness for Patchy now. God bless him. He had stuff. But who could have known?

  No one else was at Littlejohn’s. They were still out on the beach, where Fetterman imagined Patchy would wash up tomorrow morning or so, hardly looking dead, a common beachrat resting on his beach at last. He would. Ah, Patchy …

  No sentimentalizing, he warned himself, taking a long pull at a fresh beer. He was what he was.

  He settled into his chair, enjoying the solitude. He had no more use for this model. He balanced it across his good knee like a seesaw board and jostled it to get it rocking. How had he known? He couldn’t say even now. One afternoon like other afternoons he had just had a vision of war, what war would really be like next time it came to the island, and this ugly vessel was what he got. He carefully laid a hand on bow and stern and, knee levered underneath, pressed until he snapped her spine and let the pieces fall to the floor.

  Just then Littlejohn walked in. He had a confession to make, and Fetterman would hear it whether he wanted to or not. “I’m ashamed of myself, Ham,” he said. “I watched. Again, I stood by and watched.”

  “That’s nothing.” Fetterman said. “So did I. Were we supposed to do something else?”

  “That’s the trouble, all right.”

  Littlejohn fussed behind the counter and came up with his meerschaum. The two men smoked awhile. Fetterman said, “I think I’m going to do the Gloriana next. She was a racing sloop, you know. I saw her pass the Lizard Light under a full suit of sails, gorgeous lady. A spoon bow and overhanging stern counter, enormous flat cotton sails, a bowsprit that could pierce your heart.”

  “Now you’re talking,” Littlejohn said, noticing for the first time the mess on the floor. “Do her right.”

  Mrs. Littlejohn entered at that moment. “I dreamed I lay in the shadow of the gallows last night,” she said.

  Littlejohn said: “Goddamn it, woman, the only thing hanging is your tongue. Now go and find some useful work.”

  She laughed. “Go ahead, die young. See if I care.”

  “She’s a comfort,” Fetterman said, after she had left.

  “She surely is that.” They hoisted their beers together.

  7

  HALSTEAD ROAMED the beach. He jettisoned the empty holster—he couldn’t recall where he’d left the gun. Must have been at the stationhouse after the ruckus. He wasn’t an officer anymore, that much he knew, and that comforted him. He was still in the Navy, but he was sure they’d let him out quietly when the war wound down. Maybe they’d ask him to resign right away, once they took a hard look at the way he’d handled his first command. How could he know they would promote him?

  In the future he would try something more in his line. He flung away his hat and ran his fingers through his mussed hair, feeling the fresh air on his scalp.

  He walked hatless down the beach, shedding the various parts of his uniform as he went. Maybe he could get hold of a sailing scow and get lost on the Sound for a few weeks. Maybe he could get detached down here until the war was over and they forgot about him in the places where it mattered. He would see Dorothy, take care of her, marry her eventually. But not right away. Give it time, take it easy, let all the pieces settle back to earth into some kind of order. Let the fever of ambition subside. Let humility fill him up. How had he ever had the arrogance to command? How had he ever supposed he had the stuff of history in his sinew, the blessing of destiny? He bent and unlaced his shoes, slowing a little to shuck one, then the other, and lob them onto the sand like dead fish. He hopped on one foot at a time and peeled off his socks, wadded them, and discarded them in the same offhand way. Good Navy socks, virgin wool and hardly worn. He took off his shirt and tied it by the sleeves around his waist, rolled his trouser legs to the calf, and approached the water.

  He bent and splashed the cool spume on his face and neck, rubbing it on like ointment. He closed his eyes, feeling the sun strong on the outside of his eyelids, hearing the gulls complain. When he opened his eye, he watched pipers wade into the surf, flirting with the waves. He felt weary, overcome. He felt like going on a long drunk. He felt like sleeping in the shade and letting his beard grow. He stroked a hand along his chin and was rewarded with a prickle of stubble there. He smiled. A beard would be the thing.

  Out on the water he could see no boats or ships, no threat or emergency. He could hear no call to duty.

  He continued south along the beach, from time to time wading in and out of the breakers. Once he waded in as deep as his chest and felt the gritty salt foam stirring under his trousers, not an unpleasant feeling. He discovered
a bright pied rag washing in the surf, wrung it out, and wrapped it around his temples Indian-style. He rather liked it. It rather appealed to him. He decided there was a host of things to discover on a beach like this one. He smacked his salty lips in anticipation.

  He would stay on the beach all way to the inlet and the village. He sank his bare toes into the wet sand and curled them luxuriously, padded on with a light step. He would do that. Walking, it might take days.

  8

  WHEN ALVIN and Brian Dant marched up to the house leaning on one another for support, Dorothy could not believe her eyes. She hugged them and cried, brought them dry clothes and hot food, and sat with them while they sobered up and told their tale.

  “Who would have thought?” Alvin said over and over, and Brian agreed.

  “You should have seen it, Dot,” Brian said. “You should have seen what went on out there.” She had never heard him sound so cocky.

  “I bet you gave up on your old man,” Alvin said, and fished out a bottle to share with Brian. “Didn’t you? Well, happy birthday, Dot. Have a snort.”

  “No, thanks,” she said.

  “You’re a good girl. I’ve got myself a good girl.”

  But she wasn’t listening. They were saved, but it was not possible. She had already imagined her future.

  Soon both Alvin and Brian were dull from drink and exhaustion, and she helped them to their beds, where they lay on their backs fully clothed as she tucked the blankets around them. Rufus setded down at Brian’s feet.

  Then, as she hung up their wet clothes on a wooden dryer in the kitchen, she found a soggy roll of bills. She counted it out—two hundred dollars—and put it in her sewing basket. Dorothy doused the lamp and sat in the parlor in the dark, listening to them snore. In a few hours, she would make breakfast and listen to her father talk about getting another boat. Brian would take Rufus out to the beach to comb for wreckage. And one day soon she would haul a single slim bag out to the road and hitch a ride with the mail truck, north.