Something in the Water

by Peter Scott

  Yes, Gus is fine. He’s been getting a pound a trap this last month and feels quite flush, all boyish bluster. I like to mention Mabel Eaton’s name and watch him blush. Right now he’s mad at me for something else, and I am on my way to the cove to make amends.

  So I close quickly, dear Ruth, and bustle off to the P.O. on my way home. Please give all my love to all of yours—to Jack, especially.

  Love,

  Maggie

  She found a place among the rocks, on the rise behind the fish shacks, where she could watch him without being seen. He’d been at it all day, she thought; he couldn’t have gone to haul and gotten so much done. He had cut a wide, defiant pathway through the spruces, and it must have taken him most of the day—sawing each tree at ground level and dragging it away, clearing the deadwood and stones, filling holes and fissures with gravel. The uphill end of the apparatus that crouched under the tarp was secured to two block and tackles attached to sturdy trunks. The hawser on the lower end, taut and shivering with the strain, ran to a winch on the wharf, where Gus stood wiping his face in his undershirt. Leaning backward, he pulled with all his weight on the crank handle; it clicked ahead one notch, then would move no more. The runner nearer Maggie had slipped off the log roller and lodged behind a boulder. She stepped out into the open as he came up the pathway; when he saw her, he didn’t seem at all surprised. He looked at her as though she were tardy, a look she thought she deserved.

  “You can’t do it alone,” she said. She was holding a pair of work gloves, which he pretended not to notice.

  “I’ve done this much alone; I can finish it alone,” he said.

  “Let me turn the winch while you use your lever to ease it over these boulders,” she said.

  “Why? You told me—”

  “I was wrong,” she said pulling on her gloves. “Or, if not wrong, then wrong-headed. If you don’t blow yourself up dragging this ungodly thing down to the boat, you’ll get blown up trying to use it alone. I’m going with you. There’s no time to discuss my motives—or to argue.”

  She gripped the running hawser and tried to budge it but could not. “You pry that runner up, and I’ll work the log back under it. Then go work the winch.”

  He smiled and nodded, as Amos would have done, then fetched the long spruce pole he’d been using as a lever and waited while she slipped on her gloves.

  Perhaps he did believe that they could do some damage to a U-boat with this contraption, she thought. Perhaps Amos had told Gus something to make him believe, as Amos must have believed, that they could somehow get over a submerged U-boat and drop these charges. But if there was a meeting of some kind with the lobsterboat, the German would be on the surface, wouldn’t he? And he would stay on the surface to go out to the convoy lanes, as Amos had seen him do. Catching the sub underwater might be possible, but she thought it was far more likely that Amos hadn’t thought the whole thing through. This, suspected Maggie, was a brave gesture, little more, and she was resolved to keep it that way. She would go with Gus just this time, and they would watch for the lobsterboat on the water, see who he was and what he was doing. They would enlist the help of Mr. Gardiner, who she hoped would either go with them or send out his launch. That way, if there was a confrontation, the Coast Guard could take charge as it was meant to. And if Maggie was true to Leah, she would find a way to convince Gus to dump the terrible machine overboard tonight.

  He used a wood block as a fulcrum, and though the spruce pole bent some, he lifted the platform enough for her to reposition the log roller beneath it, freeing the runner.

  “Let’s uncover it,” she said. “I’m afraid one of those drums will break loose and blow us to kingdom come.”

  “It takes a fuse to make it blow,” he said scornfully. Was it real disdain she heard in his voice, or was it the playful, contemptuous tone that he and Amos used for one another? She decided that it was the latter.

  “That may be, Mister Weapons Expert,” she replied. “But I’d still like to see. Here, put that pole down and give me a hand with this damned tarp.”

  He looked at her, surprised now, and laughed.

  “You,” was all he said.

  Once they had inched the apparatus over the slight rise in the ledge—twice having to double up on the winch handle—the heavy cradle began its slow descent. Maggie worked the block and tackle, giving Gus a foot or two of slack at a time, while he moved the log rolls into its path and guided it with the spruce pole. As she watched him work, so tired that he moved like a man waist deep in water, she thought that this was more to Gus than a fulfillment of his and Amos’s plan: It was a way to ease the guilt he felt for having cursed Amos after he died and a way to prove to himself that though he ran away from whatever he saw on the mountain, he was not a coward. If this dark little part of Amos’s legacy to them went wrong, it would undo everything else he left behind, and Cecil would have his store in Blue Hill.

  Then again, the plan just might work.

  William “Lump” Muggins thought that if he had to sit across the table from Ethel and listen to her gums slurp and slap at gobs of rice pudding one more night, he would commit suicide. Harry Carry.

  Chin in his palm, he watched her clear the table and waddle away with the armload of dishes that she would leave in the sink. With two hooked fingers, she scooped a dollop of pudding and sodden raisins from the bowl and rolled it around in her mouth before she swallowed it and burped like an old seal. This being Sunday, he didn’t need to ask her what she was going to listen to: the All Girl Orchestra and the program about the crossroads of a million private lives, the one he pretended to hate. Nor did he need to remind her that he would want to listen to Walter Winchell at nine-thirty. She didn’t care that U.S. forces had taken Guadalcanal and were holding it; she asked how she could care about a place she couldn’t even pronounce. Years ago, when she was the pretty girl in the wedding picture, with him in his uniform, she could pronounce Belleau Wood and Meuse-Argonne well enough. She could chew her food, too.

  After a little nap in the kitchen rocker, Lump built himself to his feet, found his white Civil Defense helmet and flashlight, and went out the side door with a wave to her and Jack Benny in the parlor. Neither of them noticed. He lit a cigarette and surveyed the town and harbor below him. In the first light of the moon he could see the sleepy fishing boats of the Stonington fleet, their bows pointing into a westerly wind that seemed to be freshening. The sweet scent of burning leaves still lingered in the air on High Street, where he passed three, then four, houses whose owners hadn’t put up their blackout curtains. The harbor and Main Street were dark, as was the opera house, but on the hillside above, half the homes were lit up like Christmas trees. It was no use knocking on doors to tell people to put their curtains up, not any more. As Lump often said, if they could see the picture he had in his mind of Thurlow Green lying wide-eyed in the frozen mud with a German bullet hole through his forehead, they wouldn’t be so Quakerish. Low Green wasn’t any more to them than a name on a monument—if that—and the hundred or more ships sunk off their coast in the last month might as well have gone down off Hawaii. It griped him so.

  At Russell’s garage, he shined his light on the flying red horse and into the windows, then walked down Main Street trying doors and peering into the windows of dark shops on his way to the town landing. Bruce Carr’s Dodge, its headlights lidded, stuttered homeward up the hill past the rooming house. There, two old Portuguese stonecutters sat smoking on the porch, where there had been twenty men the week before. They waved, and he drew an arc over his head with his light in reply.

  Once in his skiff, Lump shut off the lantern and let his eyes adjust to the moonlight. There was no sight or sound of anyone on the wharves or among the moored boats. He drew a bottle of Demerara from beneath the seat and held it up to the moon, only to find not even two fingers’ worth in the bottom. He shrugged, flatfooted it, and shivered as the rum went down. With a sad sigh, he tossed the bottle overboard and took up his oars
.

  Richard saw the white helmet as Lump rowed past the stern of the Nana, and he cursed under his breath. He quietly stowed the section of cedar sheathing he’d been about to attach and thought to hide below. But he realized that Lump would see his skiff, so he hailed him.

  “Christ, Richard,” Lump said. “You scared the living shit out of me.”

  He shipped his starboard oar and bumped alongside the Lucille to catch hold of the washboard and ask Richard whether he was coming or going. Richard said he was going out for a night patrol; it took little effort for him to sound tired and resigned to his fatigue.

  “Christ, I got to hand it to you,” Lump said. “You know you’re about the only other one around here that’s doing anything. You were out last night, too. You must be some tired.”

  “I was down on the island last night, so I could haul today,” Richard said. He made busy with his stern line to show that he didn’t intend to linger.

  “The night before that, too,” said Lump, bailing the skiff with his free hand.

  “That’s right,” Richard said. “That was patrolling. Tuesday. I’d go out every night if I could. It’s good to know somebody here in Stonington has got his eyes open. Funny that us older guys who wore the uniform in the last war are the only ones paying attention.”

  “It’s not funny, it’s disgusting.” The white helmet shook sadly. “Where is it you go, anyway? The night before last I thought you were headed out north of Barter Island.”

  Richard laughed. “That’s what I want you to think—or somebody else who might be watching. Once I get out of sight, I cut through Merchant’s Row and patrol south of the island out by the Gilkie,” he lied.

  Lump nodded wisely. “Three on a match,” he said. He remembered a night in a communications trench in France. He had struck a match that Richard covered with cupped hands while he lit his cigarette; then Richard did the same for Lump as he lit his. When a third man butted in for a light, Richard had pinched the flame with muddy fingers, saying two on a match was dangerous enough with snipers just yonder. Three, he said, was curtains. It actually hadn’t been Richard in the trench—he had served in the navy—but Lump believed it had been, having told the story so many times with Richard in it—twice to Richard himself. Richard corrected Lump the first time but let it stand when he heard it told again.

  “Three on a match,” Richard said. He sat on the washboard and offered Lump a cigarette. Lump cupped the match, and they smoked in a knowledgeable silence, two old comrades-in-arms enjoying a quiet smoke, afloat on the same memories.

  “The truth is,” Richard said. “I can tell you. The truth is that it’s not so much patrolling I’m doing tonight as picking something up. If you watch, you’ll see me go out past Green Head toward Mark Island and the bay.”

  “As far east as Rockland?” asked Lump.

  Richard said nothing.

  “And would that something you’re picking up be aboard the smack Kingfisher, Mister Prentiss Phinney, master?” asked Lump. He pronounced the names slowly, reverently, smacking his lips.

  “I don’t say yes, and I don’t say no.” Richard smiled.

  Lump heard his lieutenant’s shrill whistle signaling the attack. “Christ,” he said and stood in the skiff. “Christ I’d like to go with you. Like old times.”

  Richard stroked his chin as though considering the possibility.

  “No, I guess I’d better go alone.”

  “Suppose you run into that son of a bitch you treated to a lobster facial last spring—him and his friends? You won’t—”

  “I won’t see him. Or I ought to say he won’t see me.” Richard scratched the scars in his palm, refreshing his anger. “If there’s a god, that guy is blind as a bat, both his eyeballs popped and poked out by sharp climbing claws, shriveled up like prunes in their sockets.”

  Lump thought of the boiled raisins headed for Ethel’s mouth, then of what she’d do if he took off for Rockland in the middle of the night with Richard Snell. He sat back down on the skiff seat.

  “I’d like to go,” he said wistfully. “I’d like to see old Prentiss Phinney again.”

  “I might be staying there for a while. I need to get that radio they’ve been promising me,” Richard said. “It was supposed to be there two weeks ago; maybe tomorrow I can get it.”

  “Could you save out a couple of bottles for me?” Lump asked. “I don’t know how long it’s been, early summer, since I had a taste of that Demerara.”

  “I can do you one better than that,” allowed Richard. “I’ve got one bottle left that I saved from the last run. You take it tonight and just pay me when I bring the other two. That’s if you want it.”

  Lump did. He stretched his neck to watch Richard go below with a flashlight; but Richard kept his back turned, so Lump did not see that he removed a bottle from a full case.

  “I’m much obliged, Captain.” Lump tucked the bottle under his stern seat.

  “It’d be best if you didn’t say anything about this,” said Richard. “I told Russell Webb and Buster and a half-dozen others that I was dry. Better not mention seeing me tonight, either.”

  “Not a word.” Lump crossed his heart with a finger. “Hope to die,” he said.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  JAKE GARDINER HELD ASIDE THE BLANKET THAT SERVED AS A blackout curtain in the parlor of the keeper’s house. He had heard and then seen the Novi boat approaching, her outline sharp on the moonlit water. Jake thought that she was riding low in the water, her bulk increased somehow. With the binoculars he saw what looked like bales of hay on a scaffold rising from her deck. When she veered off to come around into the slip, he saw more clearly.

  “I’m looking at the curled up knees of Jesus,” he said. “I swear I am.”

  On his way to the door, he called to Morales to bring a light and meet him at the slip. Harvey lit a storm lantern and followed them.

  On the landing, Jake stood with his hands in his pockets and followed the yellow circle of Morales’s light as it moved slowly over the framework on the stern, lingering on the chocks, the runners, and the sledgehammer with its handle tied to a brace with a slip knot. Maggie stood on the deck, hands in her own pockets, and watched Jake hopefully.

  “Come aboard,” Gus said to Morales.

  “I’m afraid I’ll sink her if I do.” Morales shined the light on the stern, where the hull rode so low that the sea lapped at the scupper drains.

  “Suit yourself,” said Gus. “Take these then.” He handed Morales a packet of letters which the Coast Guardsman sniffed fondly as he slipped them inside his shirt. Gus gave him a shoe box, too, tied with the same yellow ribbon. “If those are Betty’s gingersnaps, you’ll find they make wicked good clay pigeons.”

  Morales thanked him for the advice and with the light leaned ahead to better see how the fuses were attached and marked. Gus drew a fat cigar from his shirt pocket and puffed on it as he would when it came time to light them. Morales grinned.

  “This could work,” he said over his shoulder to Jake.

  “It does work,” Gus said. “We tried it twice, me and Amos. Oh, it works all right.”

  “How much does the rig weigh? It must be a ton. If you ran into a rough sea you’d sink like a goddamned stone,” said Morales.

  “If it had been rough tonight, we wouldn’t have come out,” Maggie said.

  “I don’t believe this. I cannot believe this.” The hard anger in Jake’s voice startled them all. “Not of you, Maggie Bowen. I thought you were a sensible woman. I’d laugh if I could; I swear I would. Just what in the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “You know ...”

  “No, I want to hear it from you,” he said. “I want you to tell me. Give me that light, Morales.”

  She was taken aback, affronted. On the way out she had insisted, over Gus’s protests, that they stop at the lighthouse to inform the crew of what they were doing and perhaps enlist their help, hoping secretly that Jake would dissuade Gus with a voice of
reason. Now she saw that his reaction would not be reason, but abuse, and she would not brook that.

  “We did not come here, Mister Gardiner, to be insulted. We came as a courtesy, and in hopes that we might coordinate our efforts to—”

  “Well, in this case your good manners saved your life,” he said. “Because I’m going to impound this boat and take it offshore myself and dump that lunatic contraption overboard. I’ll put you under arrest if I need to.”

  “Let’s go,” Gus said.

  Maggie’s hands curled into fists, then relaxed. “You’ll do nothing of the kind,” she said.

  “I won’t let you leave here with that thing aboard,” he said. “Don’t you understand how dangerous it is, how one of those drums could come loose, how one swell could capsize you? Don’t you see that it’s you—your safety—I care about?”

  “I’m flattered,” she said cynically. “I truly am.”

  “You believe that this fishing boat you saw, or think you saw, is going out night after night to some place at sea and meeting a U-boat,” he said scornfully. “And you’re going to surprise them or attack them or somehow get the U-boat to submerge so you can get over top him and drop a half-ton of homemade bombs on him. What makes you think there’s a U-boat out there anyway? No, don’t tell me,” he laughed cruelly. “It’s Amos’s U-boat you’re after, the one he claimed he saw ten miles from here, the one you thought you heard way the hell south of here. You don’t—”

  “I don’t have to listen to you any longer,” she said. “Cast off that line, Gus. Go to hell, Mister Gardiner.”

  “I’ll see you there, Miss Bowen.”

  As they pulled away, Morales held the light on the blue barrels and shouted to Gus to keep in radio contact. Cigar jammed in his mouth, Gus flashed a V for victory.

  “Look at the transom,” Morales said. “It’s not the Quahog any more.”

  “God damn her,” Jake said. “Let me have that lantern, Gooden.”