The Keeper's Son

by Homer Hickam

  “You really know how to sweet-talk a girl, don’t you?”

  “It’s part of our training. Semper Paratus is our motto, you know. That means—”

  “ ‘Always ready.’ You told me that at the Hammerhead, remember? You Coast Guard boys need to get another line. Anyway, I made an A in Latin. But don’t get yourself all pumped up, mister. I’m just here to celebrate the lighthouse, not the lighthouse keeper’s son.”

  “Did I tell you how great you look tonight?”

  “No, but I’m listening.”

  “You’re gorgeous. I love that dress.”

  “All the ladies tonight are knockouts,” Dosie replied. “All the orders to Sears Roebuck came in just in time. I noticed Amy Guthrie even wearing white pumps.”

  “They’re all jealous of you.”

  “Not Willow. Now, there’s a pretty girl.”

  “Pretty but not right.”

  Dosie’s smile faded. “You know what she told me the other day when I was in to see Doc?”

  “Why were you in to see Doc?”

  Dosie snickered. “I’m not pregnant, if that’s what you’re worrying about.”

  “Not a bit,” he lied. “I just hope you’re not sick.”

  “I’m not sick. I just went in with Herman to get his stitches out. Do you want to hear what Willow said?”

  “If I said I didn’t, I bet you’d still tell me.”

  “You’re right. Do you remember she said I ought to protect the sand?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well, this time she said I would find him in the sand.”

  “Him who?”

  Dosie finished her punch and borrowed Josh’s flask. She took a long drain. “My, that’ll put hair on your chest.”

  “I sure hope not, in your case. Him who?”

  Dosie whistled out a breath. “You know Willow. That’s all she said.”

  Josh and Dosie fell silent and watched for a little while longer the shipping lights sliding past. Then Josh said, “We’ll be fighting soon, and just out there.”

  Dosie was a little drunk. She shrugged, then put her arm around Josh’s waist. “That’s what you’ve been training for, I guess,” she said. “Give ’em hell.”

  “I guess I might,” he said, oddly encouraged even though he still didn’t have any depth charges or ammunition for the machine gun.

  “You know,” Dosie said, “if you had something with a picture of a Trojan warrior in your pants pocket, I might consider seeing if that lock on the lantern room works.”

  “Who told you?”

  “Mrs. Mallory saw her mister slipping you certain supplies.”

  “You women think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?”

  “No. We know we are. Eighty thousand candlepower, you say? That would shine right through your clothes, I’ll bet.”

  Josh grinned and draped his arm around her shoulders while she leaned in tight. “It might, but if it doesn’t work, I have another solution.”

  “You have a dirty mind, Josh Thurlow,” Dosie said. “It’s one of the things I like about you.”

  Preacher was first up on the stage to give the invocation. He had managed to get a snootful of the doctored punch and some folks would later say that it made him a bit resentful as a result. He’d also been spending a lot of time out on the Stream aboard this workboat or that and had developed a great empathy for the hardships of fishermen. A bandage on his thumb indicated a recent accident that probably wasn’t helping his attitude. Whatever the reason, his invocation was a bit testy.

  “Dear Lord,” Preacher said, “on this island, we are ever mindful of your miracles because they are always near us. We go out each day and dodge your storms and try to make a living, hard as it is at times. We fish for your fish and You knock us around to make us earn them. Your clams we go stomping for and sometimes you have a stingray throw a barb in our legs. We catch Your crabs and they pinch us.”

  Preacher continued, “We thank You for all of it, don’t think we don’t, the days of clear skies that you occasionally give us and the days of storms that are Your usual. All of it fits within Your plan, yea, we know that well enough, though we might not understand any of it, including that sometimes an unworthy preacher hits his thumb with a hammer while trying to patch up Your church. All is according to Your design, I’m sure, and we humbly accept it, I swear we do.

  “But we ask You, dear Lord, to bless this assembly as we celebrate something we did pretty much by ourselves some fifty years ago by the piling up of bricks to make a light that shines across Your tossing seas and Your awful shoals. All we wanted to do was keep those ships out there safe. That’s not too much to ask, is it, Lord? I hope You don’t think so. So bless us, dear Lord, and stave off the other things You like to test us with, at least for this evening. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.”

  Somebody helped Preacher off the stage and the church choir came up and Queenie O’Neal came out and stood in front of them. “Next thing we’re going to do is sing the national anthem,” she said.

  The choir began to sing. Everybody joined in except for the little boys and girls who were mindlessly playing tag on the fringes of the crowd. Josh and Dosie sneaked back during the anthem, having finished their tour of the lighthouse cupola. Josh climbed up onstage and sat beside his father.

  After the choir filed off the stage, Captain Potts, the commander of the Coast Guard patrol boat squadron in Morehead City, stood up and gave his speech. Captain Potts was a spiffy little officer who strutted around like a banty rooster. He had an elfin face that, under the dim glow of the lanterns, made him look thirty years younger than he was, which was forty-four. He extolled the virtues of the Lighthouse Service and all the good work it had done before being absorbed by the Coast Guard, which, according to him, had been a good thing because there was no better service than his.

  “Now we are here to celebrate the Lighthouse Service’s finest moment,” Captain Potts said from his boy’s face. “That was when it built this grand edifice behind us, the Killakeet Lighthouse. The Killakeet Lighthouse has a magnificent record of service.” Then Captain Potts went on a lot longer, into the history of the lighthouse and a lot more besides. The crowd became a little restless. He sensed it and ended his speech by saying, “But what do I know? I’m just a dit-dot begomer.” Because of his last reference, he got not only tremendous applause but a chorus of agreement.

  Captain Potts sat down and Keeper Jack stood up. “Fellow Killakeeters,” he said. “I am honored by all of you today, especially my good friend Captain Potts, who is not a begomer or scarcely a dit-dot, either. We agree with him on how important it is to protect this coast, and to rescue those who find misfortune along it, and to maintain all the equipment necessary to keep the lanes open and the ships moving so that disasters can be avoided.

  “You know the history of the Thurlows. We’ve been on this island for two hundred years and maybe more. We were wreckers at first, like most of your families were, and were considered outlaws. But when the Lighthouse Service came, it changed us. It made us into better people by offering us a chance to serve, and by God, we’ve served ever since.

  “My family are the keepers of the light on this island. But every man, woman, and child who lives on Killakeet is a keeper of the light, too. You keep the light when you’re at sea in your workboats, watching what’s going on and reporting what you’ve seen. You keep the light when you look out your windows while you’re washing the dishes or when you’re hanging out the laundry and take note of what’s happening in our front yard, which is the ocean. This light”—the Keeper raised his arm in the direction of the lighthouse— “as magnificent as it is, is merely a symbol of the greater light, the light of the people of Killakeet . . .”

  Phimble appeared out of the darkness, crept up to the back of the stage, and tugged on the cuff of Josh’s pants. Josh looked down between his knees. “Whatever do you want, Eureka?”

  “Sir, something to see.”


  Josh slipped off the stage and followed the bosun to the lighthouse and up the spiral staircase, emerging on the parapet. Phimble didn’t have to tell Josh where to look. There was what appeared to be a fire on the sea. While his father was talking about everybody on Killakeet watching the ocean, only a Hatterasser had actually been on the job.

  Josh looked down at the glowing lanterns, the people clustered around the stage. There was applause at something the Keeper had just said. At sea, the fire suddenly flared, followed by a long rumble.

  “She’s been hit again,” Phimble said.

  At what sounded like a thunderclap, Keeper Jack stopped talking and everyone stood still for a moment, then moved toward the beach. A fire seaward burned bright, then was seemingly quenched, only to brighten again. Preacher stumbled through the crowd and fell to his knees. The flames jumped before his eyes and he called out in a wailing voice: “ ‘And I stood up upon this sand, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea. And all the world worshiped the beast, saying, Who is able to make war with him?’ ”

  While everybody looked at Preacher in shocked silence, he tore open his shirt as if daring the beast to plunge its fangs in his chest. “The revealed truth,” he said, then pitched face-first into the sand.

  28

  As soon as the U-560 arrived off Cape Hatteras, it caught a freighter slipping past Diamond Shoals. Krebs turned over the attack to Max, who used a single torpedo from the stern tube, and the freighter went down fast. When a double explosion was observed west of the island marked on the chart as Killakeet, Krebs crept in closer. After idling the diesels, the tower watch began to hear terrible screams, different from the ones they’d heard coming from the merchant sailors. These were the cries of women and children.

  Krebs leaned on the fairing of the tower and listened across the dark water. “What do you make of it, Max?”

  “A passenger vessel, Kaleu,” Max said in a grim voice.

  There was another flash of light and then more thunder. Just for a moment, Krebs thought he could make out the silhouette of the ship being attacked, a sleek ocean liner. “Whoever did this is still working her over.”

  “Look there, sir,” Max said, pointing. “A light coming from shore. Let’s hope it’s a rescue vessel. It is a terrible thing a German U-boat has done this night.”

  “Unless it carried a neutral flag, it was a fair target, Max,” Krebs observed.

  “Maybe so, Kaleu. But there are so many other targets! Why a passenger ship?”

  Krebs said aloud his suspicions. “Kapitän Vogel may have his own reasons.”

  “Vogel,” Max said with distaste. “He should be brought up on charges for this.”

  Krebs rounded on Max. “Keep your voice down,” he hissed. “Or it could be you who’s brought up on charges.” He nodded toward the lookouts. Although their posture indicated massive indifference to what their Lieutenant Max had just said, who knew their true feelings? The potential for party spies amongst a crew always existed, even though it was unlikely, considering the death toll aboard U-boats. Why bother to ferret out disloyal U-boat men? They were all eventually going to die, anyway.

  “You think Vogel found out we were heading down here?” Max asked.

  “No. I suspect it was his intention all along. The others will probably end up down here, too. It’s an obvious choke point.”

  “But Doenitz approved Vogel’s idea of concentrating on New York.”

  “The Admiral has always recommended flexibility. He won’t complain when he sees the score.”

  The Chief brought up the shipping register. “I’d put her as the Lady Morgan, sir. A Canadian passenger ship.”

  “Unforgivable!” Max snapped.

  Krebs started to reprimand Max again, then decided it didn’t much matter. If a Nazi informant had heard, the damage was already done. He went back to studying the light coming out from the island. “It may be a rescue ship,” he said. “But it may also have teeth. In any case, there’s no reason for us to stick around. Chief, take us out a few miles. Let’s see who we can catch coming around Hatteras or up from Lookout.”

  The Chief had a bit of bad news. “Hans wants to inspect the coupling on the port shaft before we move again.”

  “Dammit! Can’t you fix that thing?”

  “We don’t even know what’s wrong with it,” the Chief replied with a shrug.

  Krebs sighed. “All right, Chief. We’ll sit here for a while. But keep the electric motors on-line. I want to be able to maneuver if necessary. I don’t trust that vessel coming from shore.”

  The screams across the water suddenly increased. “She’s going down,” Max said of the Lady Morgan.

  The boys of the Maudie Jane toiled on the heaving, oily sea. Although she was dead, lying spent on a bottom of sand at twenty fathoms, the remains of the Lady Morgan kept surfacing. Deck chairs, life rings, coils of line, and bodies popped randomly to the surface. Nearly everything that floated had to be inspected to make certain it wasn’t a survivor or a body. Bobby manned the searchlight but the narrow beam barely penetrated the smoke that covered the sea.

  At Josh’s order, Ready began to fire a Very gun every ten minutes, lofting a flare into the sky to burst into a bright ball of light before falling back. The smoke hindered the effect of the flares, and the result was a confusing kaleidoscope of shifting light and shadow patterns across the choppy sea. Most of the boys were spaced around the deck with boat hooks, all straining to see.

  Phimble slowly maneuvered the Maudie Jane, placing her alongside each bobbing piece of debris, lifeboat, or floating body that the boys called out. The eighty-three-footer was not a stable platform. She dipped and wallowed at slow speed, then rocked and pitched when stopped.

  Over and over, the hollow thumps of boat hooks striking the gunwales were followed by the sound of water falling back into the sea as something was hauled out. Bodies were laid out between the two empty depth-charge racks. At first, blankets were used to cover the bodies, but they were soon needed to warm the survivors huddling in shivering clumps. When a woman became hysterical, Josh sent Again to take care of her. Talking to her all the while, the Jackson twin helped her below. The galley was filled with men, women, and children, all soaked and miserable and some of them groaning from wounds and broken bones. Millie had his firstaid bag open, doing what he could do, which wasn’t much.

  The first of the rescued had established the identity of the torpedoed ship and the sad news that she was a Canadian passenger vessel out of Caracas. Although her captain was among the lost, the first mate, found clutching a life ring, told Josh what had happened. A thin, hook-nosed man, he kept his tie knotted primly and his navy blue wool suit buttoned even while he dripped seawater on the Maudie Jane’s deck. The Lady Morgan was riding the Gulf Stream off Killakeet looking to round Hatteras, he said, when a torpedo had arrived off her starboard side. It had started a fire amidships. The captain had immediately ordered the engines stopped and the lifeboats lowered. Just as the first boat was being let down the falls, another torpedo had struck the stern. Then a third torpedo caught them amidships again.

  “That was when the carnage truly occurred, Captain,” the mate said as he gratefully accepted a blanket and a steaming mug of coffee from Fisheye. He wrinkled up his nose. “I would have preferred tea,” he said, and then went on, “If we could have pushed away while the old girl sank, all would have been well. But the U-boat skipper wanted to make sure of his kill. The lifeboats were still hanging in their davits when he struck us again. All we could do was jump. I was lucky to come up near a life ring.”

  “How do you know it was a U-boat?” Josh asked.

  The mate gave Josh a petulant look. “What else could it be?”

  “A mine? Explosions from your boilers or cargo?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Captain. I saw the second and third torpedoes coming in. What I can’t figure is why the U-boat attacked us. There was a tanker not a thousand yards away, a much better target, and more coming up
behind. We had our running lights off, too. No, I’ll tell you what I think, strange as it may seem. I believe we were chosen. Somebody out here likes the idea of killing women and children.”

  The mate craned his neck as Ready fired the Very gun from the bow. “I must say your light discipline here leaves something to be desired. The U-boat that sank us can’t be far away. What would happen if a torpedo hit you?”

  Josh thought about it. “You wouldn’t be able to find us with a microscope.”

  “I daresay.”

  Stobs stuck his head out of the wheelhouse. “Chief Glendale is bringing the Doakes workboat out, Skipper.”

  Josh nodded, then took a tour of the deck. It was covered with the stink of oily seawater and the sharp metallic odor of blood. The smell, combined with the low groans and whimpering of the suffering, made the deck a nightmarish place.

  Josh saw Millie come up for a tour of the passengers, then kneel to peel a man’s oil-soaked coat away. A bone, slick and pinkish white, pushed through a tear in the bloody sleeve of the man’s shirt. “Jesus H. Christ!” Millie exclaimed.

  Josh knelt beside him. “What do you need?”

  “Doc Folsom.”

  “You’re going to have to do your best until we can get back to Doakes.”

  “I could use a splint, I guess.”

  Josh saw Again turn away from something mushy and red dangling from his boat hook. “Again, go see if you can come up with a splint for Millie to put on this man’s arm. Look forward in stowage.”

  Again gratefully threw down his boat hook. “On my way!”

  Millie drew a morphine Syrette from the canvas medical bag. He spoke to the passenger. “Sir, I can’t set your arm but we’ll splint it. I’m going to give you some morphine, which should keep you until we get to shore.”

  The man, his face pale and scared, nodded.

  Millie bit off the plastic tip and plunged the needle into one of the passenger’s legs. He squeezed out its contents and the man’s eyes fluttered. “I’m down to six Syrettes, Mister Thurlow,” Millie said.