Something in the Water

by Peter Scott

  “He’s going to go fishing.”

  Cecil did not believe it. “That’s what he said, son, and maybe that’s what he wants to believe. But Amos doesn’t have the money to buy a boat like that.” Cecil sounded almost frightened. “He can’t be.”

  But he had. Amos was bringing the Novi boat around the northern end of the island in the rain at that very moment, whistling and having a little drink at the wheel. She was twice as much boat as he had ever operated—much less owned—and she handled beautifully. The rain clouds were scaling off to the east over the darkening sea as he approached the Sheep Ledges. There, Amos pulled the throttle back and swung her around the first buoy in a string of blue-and-white ones. They were the Grove boy’s traps, he thought. He hooked the buoy, then paused to take another fond look at his boat.

  She was freshly painted forest green, with a white house, white washboards, and a clean white boot stripe to show off her lines. Though long and low aft, the sheerline rose abruptly at the house, ending in a high bow whose straight stem was almost plumb to the water. She would take just about any kind of heavy sea, and she had enough deck space for three men to work with room to spare—or for other things.

  He took up each of the buoys in the string carefully, so as not to muss the clean washboard, and tied off a coil on each before he threw it back. Maybe the Grover boy had not heard what happened to the other Deer Isle men’s gear. If he did not know enough about where the Coombs waters were, then this was a way to learn. Amos thought maybe he should have waited until Gus was with him to tie these off, but there would be another time. When he had finished the string, he took the Quahog home, coming around into the cove as if he had been running this boat all his life.

  Maggie was waiting for him on the wharf, her hands deep in the pockets of her slacks, her nose pointed to sea. As he came into sight, she realized that she was as nervous as a young girl, just as she had been the first time that they had embraced. This time, though, she was not afraid. Maggie liked the looks of the boat—this was the first time she had seen the Quahog—but she knew that for Amos she would have to reserve her praise until she had had a closer look and had taken a ride. Such a big boat, she noticed, was made bigger by the little cove.

  Maggie had known that Amos had been ashamed of himself for being afraid to go out on the water after he had seen the submarine. She had not guessed, though she should have, how much pressure had been put on him by the invisible ones he paid so much attention to. Amos had told Gus that one morning he found Walter standing on the cliff in front of the cabin watching Sam Witherspoon putting his traps in Coombs waters, right where Walter had drowned. When Amos came breathless up the path, his uncle did not turn around but stood there with his hands clasped behind him, his shoulders slumped in sad defeat.

  When Leah first told Maggie of Amos’s plan to buy a bigger boat, she said it was for fishing offshore, but Maggie guessed the truth. She felt anxious and relieved at the same time. After thinking it through for a couple of days, she went to the cove one evening with her own plans in mind, and his replies imagined. She insisted that he let her buy into the boat; she would be half owner, and that way he would not have to borrow from anyone and would not be beholden, even to her.

  He hemmed and hawed, but he did not argue. Amos wanted the option to buy her out in case anything went wrong, and Maggie agreed.

  Watching him now, as he secured the new boat on the Tuna’s mooring, she wondered if they weren’t both crazy. They probably were.

  He came in to stand with her on the wharf. Maggie’s bountiful chestnut hair was pinned up, covered with millions of tiny pearls of condensed fog; a damp ringlet hung over her ear. When she nodded her approval of the boat, trying—like him— not to grin too broadly, Amos put his arm around her waist.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “It’s been almost twenty years since you’ve done that,” she said quietly.

  “No,” he said thoughtfully. “I bought the Tuna in ’29. What’s that come to? Thirteen years.”

  “What?” She turned to him, her head tilted slightly.

  “I haven’t bought a boat in thirteen years. Remember? It was—”

  “I meant since you put your arm around me,” almost adding: And the first time you’ve ever done it without looking in every direction to make sure nobody could see.

  “Oh.” He blushed and let his arm drop to his side.

  “I didn’t mean I didn’t like it,” she said. His ears were deep red.

  “I wasn’t thinking.”

  “We’re co-owners,” she said. She would have liked to slip her arm through his but did not. “Does that make us cocaptains? No.”

  “It don’t matter to me,” he said. “Let’s take her for a ride. Let’s go show her to Jake, and get that radio. Wait till you see how the water curls up when her bow cuts through it.”

  On the way to the lighthouse, they decided to keep the name Quahog even though she said it had a suggestion of Massachusetts to it. He said they could call her the Hen Clam, as it meant almost the same thing, but she held out for Quahog, and Amos was glad, since he would not have to buy new brass letters for the Novi’s transom.

  He coaxed Maggie to take the wheel, but she said maybe later. She stood close to him under the house, their shoulders touching at times, just the two of them alone, just as she had imagined it; she shut her eyes and envisioned the huge black submarines swimming beneath them.

  Harvey Gooden was looking at a Lifebuoy soap ad, examining a picture of a girl in a bathtub, when Morales came into the room to say that there was a good-looking babe coming ashore. Of course, Harvey did not believe him. How could he believe anything from a guy who called himself Mexican when he was really Portuguese? There were no Mexicans in New England and no coloreds either to speak of—only ’Gees and some Italians in the quarries. Someday he would find a way to trap Morales in his lie, calling himself part Indian, which Harvey claimed he was. He waited until Morales left before he went to the window to see for himself. There she was. He decided that she must be an island woman, but this was the first time he had ever seen one wearing slacks and displaying such a good figure. Harvey did not recognize the boat but thought the man looked like Amos, only taller.

  On the short boathouse slip, Amos watched fondly as Jake sniffed around the new boat, testing the planking with his pocketknife, revving the engine. Amos could tell that he was satisfied and nudged Maggie, who smiled in reply.

  “You could mount a good-sized machine gun on her if you strengthened her planking,” Jake said. “You probably have a better chance of getting one than we do. It wouldn’t do much good against a U-boat, but we don’t know that it’s just U-boats we’re looking for. Naval intelligence thinks the Germans are going to put more saboteurs and spies ashore. A fifty caliber would be just the thing. Wouldn’t it be the bees knees to catch a rubber raft full of Nazis in the open with a gun like that?”

  “Good God,” said Maggie. “A machine gun? I thought we were hoping for a radio.” She did not know Jake Gardiner very well, having only met him twice in passing; she thought he must be joking until she looked at Amos and saw that he was not.

  Morales, swinging down the path in his Stetson, an osprey feather stuck in its rattlesnake band, caught Maggie’s eye and gave her a wink before he got close enough to see that she could very well be in her late thirties. Her face was fair and freckled, but she was no teenager; there was a confidence there, an authority or something. He liked the way she stood posture perfect; he liked the fullness of her breasts above her folded arms, liked the way she talked to the men, looking them in the eye.

  “Come aboard, Morales and take a look,” said Jake. “See how the radio will go in here.”

  Morales introduced himself to Maggie as Seaman First Class Ernest Morales, and said she could call him Morales.

  “I like your hat, Morales,” she said, holding his handshake. Morales was in love with an older woman.

  Jake said that he had to
brief Amos and that there was paperwork to be read and signed; the lighthouse keeper invited him and Maggie to come inside for a cup of coffee. On the stony path to the house, Maggie asked Jake if she could look around while they conducted their business.

  “I’ve wanted to come out here since I was a little girl,” she said. “My father once spent two days and nights here during a terrible gale. He said that the waves broke the windows of the house, and dragged a boulder as big as a lobsterboat from one end of the rock to the other. They had to take refuge in the lighthouse. I suppose he was exaggerating.”

  “I doubt it,” said Jake.

  “It’s so quiet now, so beautiful, everything freshly painted. You’ve planted pansies—I love the yellow ones—and impatiens, too; how lovely.”

  “Amos brought the seeds,” said Jake. “And it’s beautiful now because the morning fog’s gone out to sea; you brought the sunshine.”

  Maggie laughed and Amos rolled his eyes.

  “May I go up in the lighthouse?”

  “Sure, I’ll show you around.”

  “Oh no, you have business to tend to. I’d like to wander around on my own, if I may.”

  While Maggie explored, Morales and Harvey installed the radio. Jake and Amos hovered over a table strewn with operating manuals and stacks of government forms.

  “Sign this one here,” Jake said. “They’re issuing eight hundred and fifty of these radios to fishermen, and it’s about time. You’re one of the first. It’s part of a program called the Coastal Picket, to be manned by civilians and Coast Guard reservists. If you join the temporary reserves, you might get a gun to mount on her.”

  “How could I? I’m almost fifty years old.”

  “They’d take you. You know the water. You could easily pass for thirty-five—or younger if you had to. You’re going to have to learn how to operate the radio anyway; Morales can teach you, or you can go to the reservist’s school in Rockland for a week, get certified in navigation and gunnery, take the oath. It would make it easier to get the things you’ll need.”

  “A week?” asked Amos. “No.” Where would he sleep in Rockland? Who would watch the houses and the chickens, tend his traps? The idea of spending the night off the island made him queasy.

  “Maggie’s going to be doing this patrolling with me, just so you know. I can’t imagine the Coast Guard liking that much,” he said.

  “You want to take her with you? A woman? What is it between you two anyway?”

  “It isn’t anything between us two,” snapped Amos. “I’m taking her because she wants to go, and the boat’s half hers, so she can.” He surprised himself; it had only occurred to him just then that she would want to go.

  “No need to get your nose out of joint,” grinned Jake. “But if they find out somehow that you’ve got a woman aboard, I’m going to swear I didn’t know anything about it. You don’t want to go to the school?”

  “No, no school for me.”

  “I don’t blame you. You’ll get your fuel and the radio, and we’ll see about a gun. You don’t have to go to the school. I, Chief Petty Officer Gardiner . . .”He puffed out his chest and hooked his thumbs in his suspenders. “Am authorized to sign you up for a stint of five months in the temporary reserves.”

  “Okay. How do you do that?”

  “I just did it. You’re official.”

  “Good,” said Amos. He glanced at the door. “If I can’t get a gun right away, how about some depth charges?”

  Jake laughed. “For this boat?” The man was too timid to spend a week in Rockland but was ready to go to sea in a tub carrying depth charges to use against the Kriegsmarine.

  “She could be double planked.” Amos had expected him to laugh.

  “You’re serious. But no. They tried that last month on a sixty-foot trawler out of Boston. She was steel hulled, and the catapult still blew down through the deck.”

  “You could rig up a kind of runway for them and roll them off the stern,” said Amos. “All they are is fifty-gallon drums with black powder in them, right? And a fuse or something?”

  “Well I guess so,” answered Jake. “But if you did manage to get over top of a sub and let them loose, you’d be blown to bits yourself; you couldn’t get away in time.”

  Jake stood up when Maggie came through the door and offered her a cup of coffee. He took them into the radio room to show them the plan on the wall chart.

  “The red pins are sinkings. Look at them all. The black ones are U-boat sightings,” he explained.

  “That one there is mine,” Amos told Maggie.

  “Our sonar is useless this close to shore because the water is too dense, so the U-boats can lie on the sandy bottom without a worry. It’s going to take small boats like yours to spot them until we can get airplanes. The nearest air station is Salem, Massachusetts; if we can document enough activity near here, they might transfer one of their PH 2’s to Owls Head near Rockland. Then we could begin to fight the Nazis. Right now all we can do is find and recover survivors.

  “Our orders say that we’re to use our lighthouse launch to patrol north and east of here. They want you to search to the south and west, out in the Grumpy and Gilkie fishing grounds. Another man on Vinalhaven and two more out on Matinicus have applied for radios, which they ought to get soon, but until then it’s just you and us.”

  “Am I right to assume that the U-boats spend the daylight hours in shallow water and go out to the shipping lanes at night?” Maggie asked.

  Jake nodded.

  “Then we should patrol at dawn and dusk as well,” she concluded.

  Amos was not surprised to hear her say “we.”

  “You’ll need to call us when you go out and maintain radio contact while you’re on the water,” said Jake. “And let us know when you go in. It wouldn’t hurt, Amos, if you kept contact with us while you’re fishing. But be careful to turn the radio off when there are other fishermen around.”

  Amos said he would need to practice using the thing after Morales showed him how.

  “Which is exactly what he’s ready to do right now.” Morales stood in the doorway, hatless, brushing little curlicued wood shavings from his shirt, showing Maggie his perfect teeth.

  “One more thing.” Jake stopped them at the table in the front room, found a booklet entitled The Coastal Information System, and opened to a page with a turned-down corner. “I want you both to read this part right here.”

  “You do it,” Amos said to Maggie.

  She read it to herself first, then aloud: “These patrols are not intended as a military protection of our coastline, as this is the function of the army and navy. The patrols are more in the nature of lookouts, or pickets, to report activities along the coastlines, and are not to repel armed forces.’ ”

  “You hear that, Amos?” asked Jake.

  “You don’t see a hearing aid, do you?”

  “What about you?” Maggie asked Jake when they were outside. “Aren’t you afraid they’ll attack the lighthouse?”

  Jake laughed bitterly. “The Germans use the light for navigation, just like our ships do. Even when our navy wises up and tells us to shut off the light and fog horn—if they ever do—the U-boats can use our radio beacon to compute their position. They need us.”

  “And by the looks of your pantry, you need some fresh food,” Maggie said. “I hate to think of you two eating out of cans—you three, I mean.”

  “The tender comes back in ten days,” Morales said. “Every American serviceman between here and Europe is eating out of cans. And those poor guys in the convoys are sailing in tin cans—big, slow-moving targets just waiting to be blown up.”

  “We’ll be back before the tender comes,” said Maggie, buttoning her jacket against a freshening breeze. “Won’t we, Amos?”

  He did not answer. His mind was on the radio, how it must look in the boat, and on what the old ones would say when he practiced on it in the cove. He was wondering what they were going to say about him and Maggie,
together all of a sudden after all these years. Walter would be tickled. Ava might even soften some toward them.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  BASIL WALKER WAS TOO FAR TO TURN AROUND IN THE DRIVER'S SEAT to see where he was going. The mirrors on his 1932 Ford truck had long ago rusted off, as had the hinges on the door, so he had to rely on Fuddy McFarland, who had leapt down from the truck bed to guide Basil backward into the town’s scrap-collection area. Iris Weed, with horn-rimmed glasses and a permanent pucker, clutched her clipboard as Basil backed toward the roped-off spot. She knew the brakes on that truck were no good, so she held her breath until Fuddy slipped a chock behind the rear wheel to hold the vehicle on the slight slope.

  “Is it all iron?” she asked. She was not going to get any closer to either of the men, or their truck.

  Fuddy rubbed the stubble on his chin, leaving rusty smudges like those on the crotch of his trousers.

  He said it was.

  “Then it goes in that pile. I’ll send Betty over to write down what you’ve brought when it’s been weighed.” She pointed to the scrap-iron heap with her pencil and returned to the pile marked “Aluminum.”

  Basil did not want to get out of the truck because it would be too much trouble getting back in, and Fuddy was not interested in untangling the load of junk piece by piece. So, he tied one end of a hawser to a boulder and the other to the Model A frame at the bottom of the load and stepped aside.

  “Lookit here,” said Basil, pointing to the float at the end of the dock. Jake Gardiner and a miniature ensign, both in summer whites, stepped from a Coast Guard launch being secured by Morales, and walked up the dock to the scrap piles.

  “I like your sign: ‘Scrap the Jap.’ That’s clever.” The little ensign, his bare forearms bright pink from the ride in the open boat, managed a deep manly voice.

  Fuddy stared at them.

  “We’re looking for your first selectman,” said Jake. “Can you tell us who he is, and where we can find him?”

  “Don’t know.” Fuddy slapped at his pockets for his cigarettes.