The Keeper's Son

by Homer Hickam

  Worries over the ecosystem had not kept the island from turning into something of a playground for people who didn’t live there. In the mid-1970s, off-islanders had bought up the remains of Whalebone City, torn down most of the old houses, and built three-story monstrosities, each large enough to house ten Killakeet families in the old days. They were unoccupied for the most part, except during the summer months. After the old town was filled with massive houses, and the views of the sea well blocked, a new town started marching down the beach. It stopped momentarily at the Crossan House, inconveniently occupied by Dosie, who wasn’t selling at any price, then jumped to the other side and kept going nearly all the way to Miracle Point. There it stopped, the federal government having made the point into a national wildlife refuge. For now, at least, the point was off-limits to condos, high-rises, and ugly houses, but Dosie sincerely doubted that would last for long. She wasn’t even sure she wanted it to last. A move was underfoot to remove all the wildlife on the wildlife refuge and reintroduce only those animals that might have predated white settlers. That, Dosie supposed, would only leave the snapping turtles and maybe the seagulls.

  Dosie, in truth, was a bit tired. She had fought the good fight for the island, had done what she could to keep the old ways, to protect the sand, as she had come to think of it, but over the years she had become realist enough to know that eventually everything changed. She had also learned that if you tolerated it long enough, you could get used to anything. There was still much of Killakeet that remained as it always had been, especially the beach.

  It was July so the air was mild, the breeze gentle, the skies blue except for a line of low, puffy clouds on the ocean horizon, looking for all the world like a heavenly armada of sailboats. Mornings were when the light was best, when it would show Dosie’s practiced eyes all the treasures tossed up on the beach by the sea.

  She rolled up her loose khaki pants and kicked off her house slippers and went barefoot onto the sand, savoring the feel of Killakeet between her toes. She knew she was spry for an old lady and was proud of it. She hoped she would never know the day when she couldn’t walk on the beach. When the day came for her to die, she hoped it would be during one of her morning excursions and it would be quick. She prayed for that every night after she had finished praying for the ecologist who’d gotten rid of the wild horses to live forever in hell.

  She passed under the taut lines of several obese fishermen who had baited their hooks, tossed them out beyond the surf, then flopped into lawn chairs. One of them was already drinking a beer and Dosie admired him for that, at least. She spoke to each of the men in turn but they ignored her. She knew she was not much liked, being viewed as an impediment to progress. Because she had put in the paperwork to place her house on the National Historic Registry, there was a possibility that it might be against the law to ever tear the Crossan House down. It amused her to think she would continue to frustrate the people who were after her property, even after she was dead.

  The roar of the waves was loud enough that it smothered another nuisance to Dosie, the traffic along the asphalted road that went down the inland edge of the beachfront property. During the summers, there was the constant traffic of daytrippers, come across on huge ferries from Morehead City to visit the Lighthouse Park, then trundling south for a look-see at the Miracle Point Refuge. Girls, dressed in shorts and halters, walked back and forth, trying to attract the eyes of boys in sport utility vehicles. Dosie liked to hear the girls laugh, but didn’t much care for the revving of the engines by the boys who confused horsepower with sexual prowess.

  These days, hardly anyone knew or cared what had happened off the coast sixty-plus years ago, when once the U-boats had come and poorly armed little boats had gone up against them. Legends abounded that the Germans had even landed on Killakeet and other Outer Banks islands, but there was nothing to substantiate it beyond anecdotes, surely much embellished by the old grayheads still around. Historians laughed up their sleeve at the whole idea that an invasion had occurred. They wrote up the technical details of the German U-boat attacks, listed the hundreds of tankers, freighters, destroyers, trawlers, and patrol boats sunk, and the few U-boats as well, and left it at that. World War II history was too grand to pay much attention to a battle along sandy islands populated by poor fishermen and lighthouse keepers. Anyway, Americans simply could not believe such a huge battle had occurred along these shores. It was hard to find a high school or even college history book that even mentioned it.

  Dosie looked north to the lighthouse. It had been moved back a hundred yards from its original location after the ocean had encroached on its base. That had been something to see, the entire lighthouse jacked up, put on giant rollers, and carted inland. When Dosie had seen it, she tried to imagine what the celebrators at the fiftieth anniversary of the light might have thought had they seen their lighthouse lifted into the air and brought drifting back, like some gigantic magic trick. Of course, there had been little magic about that night when the U-boats had come. Perhaps it was just as well nobody cared. Who wanted to recall the terrible waste of lives it had caused?

  But it had also led to life. Harro was no longer the keeper but he’d taken the job in 1952 and kept it until the lighthouse had ceased operation in 1980. By then, he and Willow had a family of three boys and two girls. Willow had died in 1982, leaving Harro alone. He had never remarried but he was a grandfather, and a loving, doting one at that. There was no sweeter man in the world than Jacob Thurlow, whom Dosie still couldn’t help but think of as Harro Stollenberg. These days, he was a guide to the visitors of the lighthouse, which had become a tourist attraction.

  Dosie turned away from the lighthouse and kept walking. She spotted a sport-fishing boat coasting by, filled with tourists on their way out to the Stream to angle for wahoo or tuna. No commercial fishing went on these days. The Killakeet workboat existed only in museums. Then she saw another boat that contained sport scuba divers. They would dive the remains of the German U-boat that was out there or perhaps one of the many tankers and freighters with huge torpedo wounds in their sides. At least, they could guess a little of what had happened in 1942.

  She thought then of Josh, of course, though not much ever stopped her from thinking of him, anyway. Josh Thurlow lived in her heart and never left it. Even though their time together might have been considered short by some folks, their love had been as vibrant and bright as sunrise. Dosie was content with Josh, and her memory of him, though she wished that he might have resolved the sadness that came back to him, ever so often, about Jacob. She wished he could have known what had really happened to his brother, one way or the other, even though he always said he didn’t want to know.

  The sun was perfectly angled for her to see things on the beach, even given that her eyes were failing her these days. She was always looking for beach glass. She had taken to making jewelry with it over the years, though she’d slowed since her fingers had become too arthritic to comfortably bend the silver wire.

  A flash of gold caught her eye and she hurried to the spot. There was something protruding from the wet sand. She knelt and dug around it, then felt a bit faint as she lifted it into the sun. She sat down, the sea flushing up around her legs. After a while, she found her voice. “Well, hello, Captain Krebs,” she said. “Where have you been all this time? Were you afraid I would shoot at you again?”

  Dosie could see Krebs still, standing there on his cold steel tower, with a bemused smile and a tangled reddish brown beard, looking for all the world like some ancient Viking warrior. She clutched the object for a long time while the sea tumbled across her legs. Finally, she rose and hurried back up the beach. She accidentally ran into the line of one of the fishermen, who said something rude to her. She untangled herself and kept going up the steps to the pizer, thank you, and into her house. She went immediately to the art studio she’d constructed off the parlor, where the morning sun had warmed her while she had made her jewelry over the years. On the shelve
s were the cigar boxes she’d accepted from Harro and Willow after Keeper Jack had died. When they had decided to convert the old art room into a place for the children to play, they had offered the old boxes to Dosie. She had gladly taken them. Shortly afterward, she’d started making jewelry. For years, Dosie’s work had been popular in souvenir shops all along the Atlantic coast.

  Dosie carefully laid her find on the worktable and studied it. It was a gold cross with empty tines on each of its tips. The tines in the center, however, had held and were clasping a small piece of smooth red glass. She opened a drawer in the desk beside the table and retrieved a large manila envelope that contained a secret she’d kept for over sixty years. A month after the U-560 had been sunk, Rex had found a shredded gray leather jacket on the beach and showed it to her. She had looked a little closer and found a letter within its folds. Not only had the writing within been terribly blurred by the sea, it had been in German. She recognized, however, the name on the envelope: Kapitänleutnant Otto Krebs.

  Although she had first thought to hand over the letter to Naval Intelligence, she’d decided it was most likely of a private, personal nature. She also hadn’t much cared for the high-handed ways of the intelligence officers during their stay on the island. A few months later, she’d decided to have the letter translated. Not trusting Doc to do it since he’d proved himself less than trustworthy, she’d gone into Morehead City and found a high school German teacher. It had been torturous work but he had finally worked his way through it. As she suspected, it had indeed been a very personal letter.

  Dosie left the old, water-blurred letter in the envelope and withdrew the translation to study it anew.

  Dear Otto,

  Miriam is gone and there is nothing I can say that will bring her back. I imagine you are finding it as hard as I am to let her go. She was a beautiful woman and we miss her greatly here. The children ask about her all the time. What can I say to them except she is in God’s arms? Otto, it is so sad. Yet, you know me well. I believe God has a plan and tragedy is part of that plan. Something good must result. That is why I don’t want you to give up the idea of having a family. I want all of my children to live full lives despite what might befall them.

  The priest had written a full page on his concept of family and how a man could not be complete without one. The children of the orphanage, he wrote, were his family and he was so worried that something horrible might befall them. It broke Dosie’s heart every time she read it. Father Josef had not survived the war and neither had his orphanage. Fighting back a tear, she skipped ahead to the part of the letter she needed now to recall.

  You ask about Miriam’s cross. I know she would be glad that you are wearing it every day. The teardrops of amber on each tip represent Christ’s wounds. Be mindful, Otto, that we all suffer loss and sorrow but we can find ourselves reborn and renewed by it.

  In the center of the cross is a piece of red glass representing the sacred heart of Christ. This I found in the clothes of one of the orphans I took from the orphanage in Kiel. I am not certain of its origin but I was struck by its beauty and kept it. This is a boy who was a particular favorite of hers. It is a boy whom you know well, Harro Stollenberg. It is fitting that you have both the cross and Harro to keep safe.

  Otto, I pray for you every day, but not just for God to keep you safe. I pray that you will keepMiriam in your heart and remember not death, but love.

  Yours in hope of peace,

  Fr. Josef

  Dosie folded the translation and put it back in the manila envelope with the original letter.

  This I found in the clothes of one of the orphans.

  When she had read that passage for the first time, Dosie recalled that Josh had once told her Jacob was forever putting things in his pockets. On the morning he was lost, Josh had retrieved Jacob from his mother’s art room. He had been playing with some beach glass. Rose of Sharon glass.

  Dosie ran her finger across the glass in the cross, then looked at a box on her shelf, a box from Trudelle Thurlow’s art room. It was marked in faded letters Alexander Hamilton. Inside it was the glass from the Rose of Sharon wine bottles. “You always believed the sea would give us the answer, Josh,” she whispered. “Well, let’s just see if it has.”

  Rising, she took the box from the shelf, put it on the table, and sat down again. She took one of the pieces and placed it beside the cross, then swung over the magnifying glass with the circular fluorescent light. The gold behind the red glass on the cross made it difficult to be certain of its true color. Her hands aching, she used tiny pliers to carefully bend back the tines that held it.

  The sun flowed like a warm river through the windowpanes. She held the two pieces, one from the cross and one from the box, so that the light would pass through them. Her eyes, still sharp for color, went from one to the other. She allowed a long sigh, then put them down. Carefully, and in some pain from squeezing the pliers just so, she placed the glass back on the cross. Then she sat there for a long time, trying to decide what to do.

  After a few minutes, she decided. She rose and went into the kitchen to the telephone on the wall. She lifted the receiver and, her fingers still aching, punched in Harro’s number. He wouldn’t be home, she didn’t think, but she believed one of his children might be there for a visit and she was right.

  In fact, it was little Josh. Little, ha! Josh was big as his namesake, and a father twice over. “Josh,” she said. “I have something to tell you. Are you listening?”

  “Yes, Aunt Theodosia.” Harro’s children liked to call her that.

  “Tell your father something for me, will you?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Tell him I found Miriam’s cross.”

  “Miriam’s cross?”

  “Shut up and listen. Tell him I found Miriam’s cross and something else, too. Tell him, Josh—are you listening?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m listening.”

  “Tell him . . .” She stopped and thought for a bit on how to put it into words.

  “Aunt Theodosia, are you there?”

  “Yes, I’m here, you dit-dot! Give an old woman time to think, won’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Tell him I found Miriam’s cross and . . .” She shook her head. It was not right. She needed to tell Harro to his face. He had always wondered about the truth and now she could tell it to him. She summoned her courage. “Tell your father to come and see me.”

  Without waiting for an answer, Dosie hung up the phone and went to the stove. She would fix some yaupon tea. That always seemed to calm her, not the tea, just the fixing of it. After it was ready, and properly loaded with honey, she carried the steaming mug and went outside and sat in one of the rockers and thought about the time she and Josh had sat there together and then had nearly torn the door off its hinges in their haste to get upstairs to the bedroom.

  The recollection made her smile.

  She sipped her yaupon tea and rocked a bit longer and then she put the mug down and leaned forward and put her elbows on the banister and cupped her chin in her hands. She looked across the sea and listened to the wind and the rolling thunder of the waves and the hissing of the sand, the symphony of Killakeet, and remembered nothing of death, but everything of love.

  HISTORICAL NOTE AND

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  When an author applies his imagination to history, a reader might well wonder where truth ends and fiction begins. Although Josh Thurlow, Bosun Phimble, Dosie Crossan, Rex Stewart, and the Maudie Janes are fictitious, they accurately represent the men and women who faced the U-boat onslaught along our shores in 1942. Often inexperienced, nearly unarmed, and working in pitifully small and slow boats, they fought on an ocean covered with dying ships, lakes of burning oil, and drifting bodies. Because of the necessity of compressing events, The Keeper’s Son doesn’t entirely describe the breathtaking extent of the carnage. Over four hundred Allied ships, both merchantmen and warships, were sunk by the rampagin
g U-boats along the American east coast from January to August, 1942, a strategic blow possibly greater than the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Ultimately, the defeat of the U-boats on this side of the Atlantic required a complex convoy system and the heavy application of air power. Admiral Ernest King, who led the United States Navy in 1942, was keen to get his forces into the Pacific to slug it out with the Japanese navy. In the hope the U-boats would simply go away, he refused to release his ships and planes to plodding coastal convoy duty. Ultimately, he had no choice but to organize the convoys and see to their escort. But by then, blood and oil soaked our beaches. It was a painful learning experience for the United States and nearly wrecked our early war plans.

  My interest in this battle came first in the early 1970s when a U-boat wreck was discovered off Morehead City, North Carolina. At the time, I was a scuba instructor and also a freelance writer who specialized in writing about wreck-diving. After diving on the U-boat, I became intrigued as to how and why it was there. After devouring the historical records, I started to track down Americans and Germans who had fought in the battle. My resulting book, Torpedo Junction (Naval Institute Press, 1989; Dell, 1992), is still the definitive account of this sprawling battle, which was far more complex than I could possibly demonstrate from the perspective of Josh Thurlow and the people of Killakeet Island.