Something in the Water

by Peter Scott

  “We have to go,” Jake said. The armed Coast Guardsman clasped his hands behind his back. “I’ve been ordered to, and these guys were sent to get us. We have to give them a statement is all. They want us there yesterday.”

  “Can’t that be done here in Stonington?” She knew by their faces that it could not be, and she imagined the warm back seat of the sedan. “Then I have to make a phone call and get a message down to the island. You can wait fifteen minutes, can’t you?”

  “Well, Ma’am—”

  “Thank you,” she said, and rose to fold her blanket.

  Rockland was on its lunch break when Maggie awoke in the back seat of the sedan and looked out at Main Street. At the Korner Kafe more than a dozen people, most of them young, waited in line on the sidewalk for a space at the counter. Three girls in saddle shoes and wide skirts came out, and while two of them stopped to chat with some uniformed women in the line, the third stood at the curb and redid her lipstick in her compact mirror while a little fat man watched her over his newspaper. At the stoplight, a pimply delivery boy on a bicycle adorned with flags steered between the sedan and the ambulance ahead. While he waited for a truck to pass, he gawked at the unlikely passengers who were riding in such style. Gus rolled down his window to let in the noise and exhaust fumes.

  “Hell of a lot of people,” he said, as the light changed. “There’s the Harbor Inn. I wonder if Richard knows he’s passing it.”

  “You should see it on Saturday night,” the driver said into the rearview mirror, “I don’t know where they all come from. Sorry to wake you up, ma’am, but we’re almost there anyway.” He put on his hat and straightened his shirt front as they turned right and headed downhill to the Coast Guard station.

  At the gate, two armed guards stepped onto the running boards of the ambulance, then it turned on to a gravel drive that ran between rows of Quonset huts. The guard saluted the sedan and told the driver to go directly to headquarters, waving the sheriff’s car to follow.

  “I look a fright,” Maggie said to Gus. “And so do you. Especially your eyes; you look as if you’ve been up all night drinking.”

  “You look just fine,” he said.

  At headquarters—a low, drab cinder-block building—Maggie’s door was opened by a short woman who couldn’t have been more than twenty. She wore a blue overcoat and cap with a shiny brass crest. “I’m Evelyn Pullin,” she said. “I’m a SPAR. I’m to see that you have a chance to powder your nose and get something to eat. Your meeting is at 1300 hours, which gives us some time.”

  A little dazed, Maggie introduced herself and thanked Evelyn. Nearby, two men in dungarees were brushing white paint onto the row of rocks that marked the border of the headquarters yard. Maggie thought that she had tumbled into another world, then felt sure of it when she saw the lascivious look that Evelyn Pullin gave Morales as she caught his eye.

  “What about my nephew?” Maggie asked uncertainly. Gus stood with Morales on the other side of the sedan.

  “Oh, he’ll go with the men,” said Evelyn. “You’ll take care of him, seaman, won’t you?” She smiled gaily at Morales and patted her blonde curls to accentuate her sunny disposition. Morales offered his perfect white teeth in reply. Gus groaned.

  When the sheriff’s car pulled away, she saw Jake talking to a man in khakis. He waved to her, pointed to his watch, and held up one finger. Evelyn offered Maggie her arm, which she declined.

  “Thirteen hundred must be one in the afternoon,” Maggie said as they walked toward the row of Quonset huts. “But I’m embarrassed to admit that I don’t know what a SPAR is.”

  “Oh don’t be,” Evelyn chirped. “It’s ever so new—the name, the whole thing. SPAR is the Coast Guard ladies’ auxiliary. It’s short for Semper Paratus, always prepared, which is our motto. We’re new here, five of us. It’s all so exciting, isn’t it? I mean look at me—in charge of base affairs. Ha, ha, just a girl from Kittery with a year of college.”

  They passed a Quonset hut from which came the sound of rhumba music and someone beating time on a metal surface.

  “That’s the canteen,” Evelyn said. “Don’t you just love Cugat?”

  “Oh, brave new world,” Maggie said.

  Evelyn cocked her head like a curious bird.

  “Stick of gum?” she asked.

  In addition to his duties as deputy base commander at Rockland, Lieutenant Oscar (Oz) Grover was the Coast Guard intelligence officer for Naval Region Seven. He hated both jobs: the first because it was all details and no command, the second because, though it promised to be more interesting and of some importance, it had so far been nothing more than reporting the alleged sightings of U-boats and saboteurs—and in one case a German destroyer—by zealous Coastal Pickets and inarticulate fishermen. But today the alleged sighting was by Chief Gardiner, whom he knew to be trustworthy, and there was a prisoner involved, which meant that he would soon get to test the interrogation methods he had learned at the intelligence school in New London. With his elbows on the desk, and his chin resting on a steeple of fingers, he listened as dreary little Ensign Onderdonk explained the process of giving and taking statements.

  While Onderdonk delighted himself with military and legal terminology, Gus sat upright, rubbing his palms between his thighs, glancing from the clerk who sat prepared at a little side table to the imposing lieutenant behind the flag-framed desk. Maggie listened with some interest, thinking that poor Onderdonk could never make a good teacher and wondering if she would tell the whole story to this lieutenant, who appeared to be an intelligent young man. Jake, in a set of fresh, borrowed khakis, struggled to keep his eyes open; Morales, in similar uniform, requested permission to stand, which he was granted.

  “Very good, ensign,” the lieutenant said, sitting back. “I haven’t met your—our—detainee, only seen him in the infirmary, so before I question him, it’s paramount that I get every detail from you.” He looked at the papers before him. “Richard Snell, if that’s his real name.”

  “It is,” said Jake.

  ‘Paramount,’ thought Maggie; he must be a college boy.

  The lieutenant looked at Jake, then at Maggie, whose smile sent his hand up to straighten his hair. He asked Jake to begin and told the others to feel free to comment, then nodded to the clerk.

  With his hands spread over his knees, Jake told the lieutenant and pale Onderdonk, who loitered behind him, about Amos’s sighting of a U-boat in the spring, and his own consequent confirmation (and reporting) of it after the lobster fisherman had identified the outline as a Type VIIC. Amos Coombs, he added, had since died.

  “Did this Mister Coombs, or anyone else, report other sightings afterward?” the lieutenant asked.

  “Captain Coombs, sir,” said Gus.

  Jake looked at Maggie, who nodded.

  “Not sightings per se, lieutenant,” she said, holding his eyes with hers. “But evidence—and, it must be said, suspicion—of something of this nature.”

  The lieutenant leaned forward to appear interested; Onder-donk, the arm behind his back clasping the far elbow, turned to gaze out the window. Maggie explained, slowly and with care for the clerk’s sake, how she and Gus had assumed Amos’s patrolling responsibilities after his death, both on the water and along the shoreline. She told the lieutenant about discovering that Amos had been watching not only the water from the cliffs at night, but also the cabin itself. While she described what she had found inside—the salty footprints, the blackened lamp chimney—Jake noticed the light chestnut curl that had fallen over her ear and imagined her unpinning her hair in the lamplight to let it fall on her bare shoulders.

  Then they saw the strange boat, she continued, on both nights, going out at the same time on the same azimuth, and returning the same way.

  “So you decided to go out and have a look, the two of you, and maybe intercept this boat,” the lieutenant said. “What made you think he’d make the same run a third time?”

  “Intuition,” she said, and s
miled. “But it wasn’t just the two of us, not at first. We went to the lighthouse to tell them what we were doing, and ...” She looked at Jake. “To enlist their help.”

  “And what was it, Chief,” the lieutenant asked Jake, “that made you go along with them? Intuition?”

  A wet, supercilious smile spread across Onderdonk’s face, a look that Morales would have blotted out if he hadn’t distracted himself by trying to reach his own elbow behind his back, which he couldn’t do.

  “We had two depth charges aboard, sir.” Gus folded his arms on his chest. “It’s not for the chief to say. He was afraid we’d—”

  “I’m sorry?” The lieutenant looked as if he had suddenly smelled something burning. Onderdonk puffed out his soft chest.

  “Not depth charges, not military issue,” said Maggie apologetically. “They were fifty-gallon drums packed with black powder and detonated by a stick of dynamite on a fuse. Mounted on a ramp sort of contraption.” She held her forearm at a slant. “We had tested it; we knew it could work. Mister Gardiner tried his best to dissuade us; he ordered us to push the whole thing overboard; he even threatened to arrest us if we didn’t. So we did, of course. Eventually. We complied.”

  “Detonated?” The lieutenant was on his feet. “Are you writing this down?” he asked the clerk. “Yes, I guess you should, so we can see it in black and white and then maybe . . . this isn’t some kind of goddamned joke is it, Chief?”

  “No, sir,” Jake said placidly. “Let us explain what happened.”

  He described the signals they’d seen, the silhouettes of the lobsterboat and U-boat, his radioed orders to Maggie and Gus, his request for an aircraft on station.

  “The U-boat crew must have picked up our radio signals and seen us approaching on their sonar screen,” he said. “And they must have decided to macht shnell out of there; the sub dove and took off in what looked like an easterly direction. We went after the lobsterboat.”

  “And you, Miss Bowen?” The lieutenant came around the desk and sat on its edge in front of Maggie, his shoulders slightly hunched. Jake thought about moving closer to her but saw that he didn’t need to.

  “We took a heading that we hoped would intercept him,” she said. “And when we saw his periscope wake, we dropped the charges. The explosions were quite remarkable.”

  Lieutenant Grover stared, then shook his head. “No, a four-hundred-pound charge would blow a fishing boat clear out of the water. I don’t believe this.”

  “It nearly did,” Maggie said. And she wondered how many times in the last few days she had heard someone say he didn’t believe what had happened, how many times she had said it to herself, how many times she would hear it again.

  She watched Onderdonk pacing a private circle in the corner while Jake described his chase, the boat’s desperate mistake among the ledges, and their taking Richard into custody.

  “He denied it was him that met the U-boat,” Jake said. “He says he’s innocent; he was on a rum run, is all. It’s going to be up to you to find out what he was doing; and we’d sure as hell like to know.”

  “Depth charges,” repeated the lieutenant. He looked at Gus, then at Maggie, who smiled and nodded at him in return; Gus’s smile was thin and satisfied.

  “Depth charges,” he said again, still wagging his head. Then he laughed. “Damn, I wish I could have seen it. Where the hell did you get black powder and dynamite and fuses?”

  “Amos got them from a friend who worked at the Stoning-ton quarry when it was still going,” Gus said. “He didn’t have to pay because his friend pilfered it. Amos loaned him money once years ago, when he couldn’t afford to.”

  “Did you get everything, Hawkes?” the lieutenant asked the clerk, who replied that he had. “Then how about some coffee for us?”

  Morales took the clerk’s seat to use his ashtray.

  “They’re going to love this at Regional Headquarters,” the lieutenant said. He walked around his desk. “But can you swear in court that it was this Snell you saw meeting the German sub? You said his boat was disguised.”

  “It was him we followed out of there and had in sight the whole way,” said Jake. “Christ, I’ll swear to that.”

  “On the way into Stonington, I told Richard that Gus and I had recognized the Lucille with the U-boat, and he didn’t deny it—not then,” Maggie added.

  “Did you recognize him?” the lieutenant asked.

  “No, that was a lie,” she said. “Told to find the truth.”

  Maggie took a breath, crossed her legs, and let her hands rest in her lap, palms up. “There’s one more thing, lieutenant,” she said.

  “Good,” he said. “Every bit helps. We should wait until Hawkes gets back so he can get it down.”

  “I don’t think so.” She was careful not to look at the others. “I’m going to risk censure, and even ridicule, but I’ve decided to tell you nevertheless. I only ask that you listen.”

  “Of course.” He sat down and rebuilt his steeple.

  “When I heard the first explosion, I shut my eyes, and on the second one I saw them—the men in the U-boat—saw and heard what was happening, as clear as can be.” She held up her hand. “I heard the explosion and felt it—from inside the submarine, from beneath. I saw a lightbulb explode. I saw fire squirt from a wall covered with dials. A boy with a red beard was clinging to an overhead lamp, another to a pole striped like a barber’s. They were screaming; the one with the greasy black hair and quivering lip was shouting, ‘Wabos! Wabos!’ or something similar. One man stood in gushing water striking something with a hammer. There was smoke, and creaking noises, red and yellow wheels or valves. And ...” She spread out her hands. “And three wrinkled, wet fingers pressed against a gray metal strut.”

  She waited. The lieutenant said nothing, only stared. Morales looked at Gus for an explanation; Gus shrugged his shoulders.

  “What did you say he was shouting?” the lieutenant finally asked.

  “I thought it sounded like ‘Wabos Wabos.’ I don’t know German; I’m not even sure that’s what it was,” she conceded.

  “Wabos is the German submariners’ slang for Wasser-bomben, depth charges,” he said incredulously. “How the hell did you know that? Did you know that, chief?”

  Jake shook his head.

  “I didn’t know.” Maggie regretted that she’d ever spoken.

  “They’re going to have a hard enough time believing that you attacked a U-boat. But that’s possible. This is not. This is impossible.” The lieutenant sounded tired.

  “No it’s not,” said Maggie. “It happened. Just because we can’t explain it doesn’t mean that it didn’t. This whole adventure has made that quite obvious, hasn’t it Gus?”

  Gus looked at her as though for the first time and agreed.

  While Betty and Mabel held the checkered tablecloths in place, Iris Weed folded and fixed the corners with clothespins to hold them down in the breeze. On the grassy half-acre peninsula between the store and the town landing, Iris’s church social committee had covered four eating tables and was busy arranging the pies, cakes, and casseroles on the long serving table under Leah’s supervision. Though the clambake wasn’t supposed to begin until three, some thirty people were already busy around the flagpole on the point, and more were arriving by car and foot, the young men carrying hods filled with clams, others toting crates of skittering lobsters. In the rocks below the tide line, Dwight and Reverend Hotchkiss stirred the big fire with poles, while the Mattingly boys brought driftwood and tossed it in to raise a shower of sparks. Seated in a semicircle on the rocks with their mother, all four Crowell children were busy sorting corn; Vince flicked a handful of silk into the wind so it would blow into his sister’s hair, earning him a whack on the head with a roasting ear. The osprey from the nest on the spindle beyond the parsonage soared in a wide circle overhead, chirping loudly. When Iris shielded her eyes to see the bird, she said a little thank-you for such fine clambake weather so late in the season. She wav
ed to the McDonnell and Waite families, who were arriving aboard the Nana from Stonington. The committee would not only meet its goal of fifty dollars for War Bonds, Iris thought, but the event would also be a dandy send-off for Vergil, who was joining the Marines in the morning, and for Gus, who was going back to school.

  In her bright new canary yellow sweater, Betty was setting places with Mabel when Ernest Mattingly tugged on her skirt and pointed to the road. With a fistful of spoons and Mabel following, Betty hurried through the crowd and cars, and stood at the roadside by an overturned dory. She handed Mabel the spoons and adjusted her hair under her bandanna. On the road from the landing, beneath a canopy of red maples and golden birch, she saw Jake, in khakis and an overseas cap. A step behind him, walking with his knees, was Harvey Gooden, his red flannel shirt buttoned to the throat and his hair so well oiled that it glistened in the shade.

  “He’s not with them,” said Mabel. “Perhaps he’s tying up the launch. But, no, they had to leave somebody at the lighthouse. Oh, Betty.”

  Betty took back the spoons and clenched them to keep from shaking. She clasped Jake’s hand, managing a smile, and introduced him and Harvey to Mabel.

  “Isn’t Ernesto coming?” she asked, afraid to hear. “He said he would. He said—”

  “He tried to,” Jake said. “But it was Harvey here’s turn to get off the rock. Morales offered him twenty bucks, but Harvey wasn’t hearing of it.”

  Betty stretched her neck toward Harvey, her blue eyes wide with fury. Harvey smiled weakly and tried to touch his ears with his shoulders.

  “He wanted to say good-bye to Gus,” she hissed. “We were ...”

  Harvey shrugged again, and she felt the tears coming.

  “Oh,” she croaked in utter disgust. She stamped her foot in Harvey’s direction, did an about-face, and disappeared among the cars, with Mabel following.

  “When she hears that Morales and I put in for sea duty, your ass is grass,” said Jake.

  Harvey sniffed.

  Dwight and the Reverend Hotchkiss, both peeled down to shirts and suspenders, stirred the big fire, spreading the larger pieces of driftwood over the bed of coals. Cecil and Gus, wearing Leah’s knit sweater vests, sat on lobster crates with Albert, waiting for the fire to burn down. The Mattingly boys struggled over the rocks with a drift log, Ernest walking backward with his end.