The Boat Runner

by Devin Murphy

  People in town distrusted Uncle Martin and called him a collaborator. They spat out his name because they saw him in the uniform, and that was all they needed to judge, even though he had been a Dutch Marine. They couldn’t have known how ashamed of Holland’s surrender Martin was and how it burned him up so much that he wasn’t done fighting. But the people in town had no idea what he was doing in secret. Being called a conformer meant nothing to him. He was above all of that. This was a gift his ruthlessness provided.

  From the boat’s bow I could see where the Germans had hung a poster by the pier about what would happen to locals who protected Jews or downed Royal Air Force in hiding. I’d seen smoking bombers dip out of the sky and watched for the gossamer fabric domes of parachutes dipping to the ground. All the children in town would race out to the fields to try to find the wreckage, but never found anything more than the burnt bodies in the charred fuselages of the downed planes on the outskirts of Delfzijl. The Germans would have seen the same planes landing and scooped up whomever they found floating down.

  “A bad lot for them,” Uncle Martin said about downed RAF men. “The Germans know that any German pilot floating to English soil is going to get a farmer’s pitchfork up their ass, so they aren’t too inclined to be nice to those RAF men.”

  “That explains the chocolate bars.”

  “I guess so,” Martin said.

  A few weeks before, low-flying planes dropped V-shaped chocolate bars over the town so that the Dutch people would take more kindly to any RAF men that crash. The chocolate bars clanked on rooftops and slid over the street, and people went crawling on the stones to snatch as many as they could. The wrappers said, Compliments of the RAF.

  Most of the candy was scooped up and eaten by German soldiers, who were everywhere by then.

  When we were rested, Uncle Martin had me untie the lines for us to take the boat to fuel up. On the way to the German-run fueling station, the bow of the boat pushed a pack of seagulls off their floating perch on the water, and the birds started hovering above the ship and squawking down at the decks the same way they would when we were out to sea fishing and tossing scraps overboard. While watching the birds, Uncle Martin handed me a large box of threepenny nails and a claw-handled hammer.

  “Go to the steering hold and take out the box of potato masher grenades above the starboard bilges. Pry open all the boxes we loaded below and bury a grenade in as many as you can, then close the boxes back up.”

  “Oh god, Uncle Martin, I don’t want to do any of that,” I said.

  “This is important.”

  “Please don’t make me go out with you.” My thumb ran over the sharp steel edge of the hammer’s claw, and the fat pad of my thumb pressed between the gap. The seagulls were still calling all around the ship.

  “I’ll take care of you, I promise. But tonight I need your help. Now go do as I ask,” he said.

  “No.”

  “Go.”

  “I’ll tell,” I said.

  Martin’s open palm cracked the side of my head. My ear rang. It took everything not to let my eyes well over.

  “Jacob. Do as I say.”

  I looked him straight in the eye and balled my fists, but he raised his voice and leaned into me and yelled, “Now,” and I turned to do what he said.

  In the holds I packed grenades into potato sacks, boxes of peppers, apples, toilet paper, and flour. I eased open the crates, scooped away what was inside and planted grenades like how my mother dropped tulip bulbs into the dirt, then tapped the nails back into place. The whole time I was ranting to myself.

  Later, when the ship was fueled, the supply boxes had been stuffed with grenades, and the bald officer in the trench coat had returned, we cruised east out of the harbor, then north to the mouth where the Ems opens and spreads out like an alluvial fan into the North Sea. The bald officer rode up with Martin in the wind-shielded wheelhouse. I didn’t want to be anywhere near the man, or even hear him talk. The officer checked his watch and then a map he pulled from his satchel every few minutes to compare to Martin’s chart. At the dark mouth of the channel before the North Sea, where the water got choppier, Martin set the boat on a track to do large circles and turned out all his running lights. Fast-moving clouds swept over the star-wild sky. The officer stood ready by a large spotlight next to the steering column.

  As we circled in the darkness, breaks in the cloud cover let the stars wink through. Whatever section of the moon was out was hidden. Drifts of diesel scent floated over the decks. The engine sputtered through the water as my legs got heavier and heavier, as if they’d become magnetized to the deck.

  At 2:00 A.M. Martin faced the bow of the ship to the east, and the officer flipped the dual spotlight on and off in quick succession, flashing some code out into the dark. He did this for several minutes. My eyes followed the beam of light as it stretched outward, searching, then fading in the distance past the spot where the two beams of light converged. When the officer switched off the spotlight, the total darkness of some subterranean river settled over me, and there was my brother again in free float. Here came the rising wave of hurt. When the light switched back on, it made the mist look like a thick head wall of smoke moving in.

  In the beam of light, the lustrous shadow of a U-boat’s bow crested the surface. The sound of a large surge of water followed by a tremendous crash sent swells rippling over the calm surface.

  “There,” the officer said, “Unterseeboot,” and pointed off the starboard side of the Lighthouse Lady.

  Martin set the boat to circle alongside the U-boat. He came down the ladder from the steering column and waved me to follow him into the holds. Then he moved a Mauser submachine gun to the side panel of the ladder way. Next to that he put a large, black, steel box with an apple-sized glob of adhesive putty that looked like bread dough in each corner. He covered it with the jacket he’d been wearing, then put on a thicker black coat that he tucked a potato masher into the inner lining of.

  “When we pull alongside, only tie one spring line in a slipknot from the center of the submarine to our cleat. We’ll unload everything from there. They’re going to stack it all at the bottom of the hatch column. When we have a few boxes left, this officer is going to go into their boat, and I want you to go to the helm and get ready to get us away from that sub as fast as possible.” He rested a hand on my shoulder.

  “I’m sorry I smacked you,” he said, then climbed out of the hold.

  Martin brought his boat parallel to the U-boat, a sleek, riveted whale. A close link chain assembly threaded through the hawsepipe and secured the anchor to the foredeck. There were four men in black oilskin jackets and wool hats on the top of the U-boat, and I tossed one of them the mooring line to tie the center of our boat up with from the middle of their ship. Once the lines were secure on their end I tied a slipknot to the cleat on our midship. The man on the U-boat handed over a meter-wide and five-meter-long wooden plank, which we secured to make a walkway between the two ships. The plank had been adhered to the outside bow and was slick and wet.

  “You men can start unloading the supplies, while I go speak to the captain,” the bald officer aboard said. He tossed his duffel bag over his shoulder and walked across the wood board. He handed his bag down into the hatch and then climbed down himself.

  The men on the surface of the boat began loading the supplies. Someone reached out of the hatch and pulled the boxes inside, where they were stacked and then probably carried from hand to hand to the holds all throughout the ship. The resealed boxes went across. Some had bent nails pounded into the wood. One of the sailors on the U-boat went back into the hatch, leaving three above the surface. With only ten boxes left, Martin went below the hold and came up with a skinny lead anchor for a skiff. He handed it to one of the sailors.

  “Put this right next to the hatch for now, would you?” The sailor laid the anchor next to the hatch and turned back to get the next box.

  “I’ll get the rest of these, Jacob, w
hy don’t you get up to the helm and keep us steady?”

  Martin heaved a box over to the sailors standing on the plank. When I was on the helm, he went below the deck. He came back out with the black box cradled to his body with his left hand. He held his right underneath it for support.

  “Let me carry this one across, it’s heavy,” he said, walking to the wood beam.

  He took small, slow steps over the plank. His figure wavered against the dark night with each step, and for a moment I hoped that the plank would stretch far, far ahead of him, so whatever he planned to do would not happen near me.

  The sailor on the beam helped Martin steady himself as he walked to the top of the U-boat. Martin crossed the plank, bent down, and pushed the black metal box onto the deck of the U-boat so the dough-shaped gobs smoothed down and adhered themselves to the deck. When he stood up, he pulled a Luger out of his jacket pocket, fired two shots into the chest of the man closest to him, and one shot each into the chest of the other two men, who both fell. The orange flash of the muzzle lingered across my field of vision as one man doubled backward and slid off the side of the boat like a wet rag. In what seemed like one fluid motion, in which I did not take a single breath, Martin stuck the muzzle of the gun down the hatch and started pulling the trigger, dropped the gun down the hole, pulled the potato masher grenade out of his jacket lining, twisted the top of it, threw it down the hole, and slammed the hatch shut. He twisted the hatch wheel closed and pushed the skiff anchor through the wheel so it would be jammed shut if someone tried to open it from the inside.

  “Martin,” I yelled, but it was too late.

  One of the soldiers on the deck of the ship reached out with a blade that glinted for a moment before the man slashed it at the back of my uncle’s ankle. Martin’s leg gave way, and he kneeled next to the man who was about to gouge him again. I turned to get something to throw at the man or grab the machine gun, but when I looked back, Uncle Martin had lodged the hilt of his scrimshaw knife into the soldier’s throat. Uncle Martin stood up and jumped off the side of the U-boat onto the stern of the Lighthouse Lady as the explosion of the potato masher pounded its way from out of the ship’s innards and punched at the hatch door.

  Uncle Martin stood up on the deck of the Lady. His left leg, cut through the boot, bent at the knee. He hobbled as he jumped to the spring line, which he pulled to release.

  “Go, go, go!” he yelled up to me as the mooring line between the two boats fell loose.

  A series of small explosions echoed at my back as the boat steered free. I looked back onto the stern deck to see if Uncle Martin was okay. He came out of the hold with the Mauser submachine gun, raised it to his shoulder, and fired at the black metal box he’d stuck to the U-boat. The fire red tails of the tracer bullets ripped into the side of the U-boat. His aim traced a burning line up to hit the mark. The box exploded, blasting the side of the U-boat open across the top and below the waterline. The percussion of more potato mashers echoed as the explosions burped out of the smoking hole that rolled and flooded. The hole pulled the honing tower down on its side before it started to sink.

  A large surge of air bubbled up behind us where the U-boat sank.

  “Steer a wide circle around it,” Uncle Martin yelled up to me.

  We circled around the sinking sub to make sure nothing or no one floated to the surface. Small potato masher explosions popped under the water and each let a little blast of bubbles breach the surface. Martin swept his spotlight with his left hand and in his right he held the Mauser. The gun’s muzzle followed the sweeping light on our several loops around the area. For a while the U-boat’s belly faced upward toward us beneath the surface. It had rolled upside down and shook as the last blasts pushed the rest of the air out. When we couldn’t see it anymore and found nothing floating up to the surface in the wake of the white wash of air bubbles, I turned the boat back southwest, in the direction of Delfzijl. A small sliver torn from the far corner of the moon had come out. The sky lay dark and low as an osprey shadow circling beneath the clouds.

  Uncle Martin climbed up and had me run the boat due west and then south to keep us at least five kilometers offshore the whole time. He set a course for the woods south of Delfzijl that we would reach by sunup. While I steered, he undid a metal panel under the wheel and pulled out a green radio. Years earlier before summer camp, I had seen him take this radio apart and put it back together. He hit a switch and static filled the wheelhouse.

  “Turn this dial and listen for any calls of distress from that U-boat,” he said.

  All I heard was squelch. Static. A low hum breathing loose from silence.

  Uncle Martin then took off his boot and we saw the deep groove of a wound at the top of his Achilles tendon. Once he stanched the blood flow with rags we could see the white ham fat-colored tendon and where the blade cut deep enough to slice part of it. He took off his belt, tied it around his thigh, and held a needle under several lit matches.

  “Are you going to sew that back together?” I pointed to his tendon.

  “I don’t know how. Just the skin and hope it heals.” It took him twenty sutures to close the wound. He lay on the wheelhouse deck, sweating and swearing to himself. He held up his hands to look at the blood on them.

  “Jesus, Jacob. I cut that kid’s throat open.”

  “Uncle Martin,” I didn’t know how to talk to him about what I felt. “This can’t go on.”

  “What would you have me do? Disappear?” I looked down at him to see if he intended the sting of referencing my father. “Should I give myself over?”

  When he got up, he hobbled down the ladder and went through the several boxes of supplies that had not been loaded onto the U-boat. He took out the rest of the grenades. One of the crates had a whole bushel of sour green apples inside. He filled the hem of his shirt with them and climbed up the wheel where we ate them for the rest of the night.

  At first light, the mist coming off the water still looked like a thin layer of smoke. The smoke confused the horizon line between the water and air and creating an odd feeling of levitating. I felt that my life was being lived in that suspended mist, lost in the water smoke. My stomach started to turn from all the apples, but I kept eating, hoping that it would give me a visceral reason for feeling so beaten and cold, experiencing a dissipating hunger.

  “I love the wind,” Uncle Martin said, tilting his face up. The skin around his eyes was riven with hairline wrinkles. There was an inward curve along the ridge of his nose I only noticed in profile and a pinch of slack skin between his eyebrows.

  The cool white flesh of the apples filled our mouths. Juice ran down our chins. We spit seeds into our palms, and lifted our flattened hands up and out the window to let the wind take them away.

  When Uncle Martin dropped me off on shore near the woods, he handed me a small pillowcase full of apples and other food for my mother. Then his boat pulled away and headed north until it was out of sight. Walking up the beach to the trail in the woods that led to my house, the watermark wandered the sand ahead of me. I shut my eyes and walked, then stopped and vomited apple chunks, which mixed into the tide’s foam and washed back over my feet. Still, something was left in my stomach. I stuck my finger down my throat and jammed it in over and over, trying to purge out whatever remained.

  13

  It was becoming common for the air raid siren north of town to go off all hours of the night. The loud, high wail rose in pitch as it washed over Delfzijl, sending people out of bed, through their homes, down stairs into their basements and cellars. People who lived in one-story brownstones ran across their streets to hide beneath their neighbors’ homes.

  After Uncle Martin and I docked the boat from a supply transfer, the sirens started. We had been bombed twice in the last several months, with each attempt knocking out the harbor, which then had to be rebuilt by the German soldiers.

  “I’m afraid the RAF will think we’re a major port now with all this traffic,” Uncle Martin said.
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  We had already docked the Lighthouse Lady, and didn’t have enough time to cast her off again. We ran from the port to the center of town and into the school’s front doors. We went down into the basement, which had become a community air raid shelter despite the Germans setting up headquarters on the first floor. We were the last to descend the stairs. About ten families huddled in the dark. Some were wrapped in bedsheets. Their forms shifted back and forth or paced in the large open room. Despite the dark, many of the shapes were familiar. Mort Stroud was the father of one of my classmates. Mr. Johansson worked at the butcher shop. Then I saw Mrs. Von Schuler, my homeroom teacher. The word Yeladim rang out in my head and recalled the shame I felt from throwing rocks at rats years before. She sat in the corner with a small boy sleeping in her lap.

  For a long time no one in the basement spoke. We took our place sitting along the walls. Eventually Mrs. Von Schuler reached out a hand and patted my knee.

  “You’re getting so tall. It’s hard to believe.” Her voice was the same as it always was, a sweet vocalization of affection.

  I put my hands on top of hers. I’m not sure why. Because I felt she was scared. Because I wanted to apologize to her.

  “Did you know your father used to bring me loaves of bread?”

  I tried to make out her features in the dark.

  “No.”

  “Yes. He’d just show up with them from time to time.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “It was a nice thing for him to do.”

  As my eyes adjusted I could see how worried she was. How scared everyone was. If my father were there, he’d tell some story to help the children forget about being away from home. He could quiet their fears. He had been gone for so long, without giving us a word or sign. My mother kept doing her rounds visiting every household in town. She stopped asking if anyone had seen him. She’d knock on the door and simply look into their faces. Her trips became silent, penitent. Every part of me hoped my father was safe, but at certain moments I was furious with him. For leaving us, having crawled off on his belly like a coward. Though in that basement, more than anything, I wanted to hear one of his stories. As we sat in the dark there were no voices to soothe our fear.