Hatteras Light Page 17

“I’m sorry it worked out this way, Dot.”

  “Yes, I guess you are.”

  She let him hold her awhile, and they fell off to sleep with no further words between them. That, too, took him off guard. He was pleased that he’d recovered from a bad beginning: Here was a chance to prove his intentions honorable. He would guard her, awake or slumbering, all night long.

  In the dead time just before sun-up, the quiet awoke him. He rose from the couch, lowering her head to the pillow with what gentleness he could manage. Quickly he smoothed out his trousers, Housed his shirt, and left across the beach without even a note.

  Let her just wonder, he thought.

  As he crested the dunes he spied two running figures off to his left, between himself and the Light. One of them looked like Keith Royal, but what was his business this early? He quickened his stride toward Sealion’s dock, then halted all at once.

  It must be an illusion, was his first thought. It sat on the glassy sea like a duck. He sprinted toward Sealion—her deck already a stage of action. Good boys, he thought. Cross waved him on wildly.

  Halstead leapt aboard as the engines turned over and before he had a chance to feel the fear knot his stomach Jack Royal shoved a cork life-vest into his chest. “Put this on, Horatio,” he said. “We’re going to get wet today.”

  2

  SEAMUS ROYAL PASSED the night at the kitchen table, his shaggy head cradled on his fists. In his dreams he wore the gold medal and handled the steering oar, making for a dismasted schooner. His hands burned from blisters and salt. There was a woman he had to save, that much he knew. His crewmen all wore black hoods instead of yellow sou’westers, and their faces were hidden under the cowls. They leaned into their oars and drew them back again in rhythm. Seamus spied the woman, waving, high on the deck. They’d never get to her in time. He just knew it.

  3

  WHAT WOULD YOU THINK OF US—a submarine that cannot submerge, a warship without a captain, a raiding boat with only one gun, a crew without hope or discipline, a spy without a radio? A shark with no fin, condemned to ride the surface slowly, to defend with sheer courage rather than attack with stealth, cunning, skill? Would you pity us, would you laugh, would you gloat, would you kill?

  Max Wien was in a philosophical mood. He had been up all night and was so punchy he felt drunk. It was a good feeling. He had not got drunk in so many months he’d almost forgotten what it felt like, and he promised himself that if he ever made shore, any shore, he would swill good stout beer until his belly swelled and he collapsed like a sail being doused.

  The work parties were almost finished. Kraft held the section of undamaged rail in both hands, his back turned to the rising sun. Max stood by him, and together they spotted the wake of the American speedboat.

  “1st der Kapitän klar im Kopf?” Kraft asked, raising the glasses to his eyes. The work parties were gathering their tools and hurrying off the deck.

  “Is he lucid? I would not use that word, exactly.” The captain was as delirious as an opium eater. “I think you must assume command, sir.”

  Max’s tone roused Kraft. He ordered Bergen and his man to their places by the gun. “Get off two rounds before they close and then we’re going under,” Kraft said, “with or without you.” Bergen grinned.

  The American bore down on them straight on, not even zigzagging in what had already become the classic antisubmarine maneuver. Max wondered: What’s wrong with him?

  Bergen embraced his gun and fired. After the first sharp report there was a three-second silence, then a splash by the American’s bows. She kept coming, firing on her own now.

  The second shot caught the American in the stern, spinning her to a violent stop, and a black cloud of metal, wood, and fuel erupted and then settled on the water.

  Kraft ordered all hands below and U-55 dove leisurely. We’re still in the game, Max thought. He went to Captain Stracken’s cot and held his hand. Only then did he realize his own hand was bloody. A bullet had grazed his right arm. Now the” pain came, and Max sat down beside his captain and kept his eyes open so he would not spin. He listened for the sound of leaking water drowning them all.

  4

  “WE’VE GOT THE BASTARD NOW!” Halstead shouted. Sealion scored a long wake on the gray water. Halstead leaned into the wind. He gave Cross the helm and clutched the cockpit armor for balance. The wind of their own velocity whipped his face.

  Jack said, “You’re out of your stupid mind.”

  Halstead ignored him.

  “You can’t do it this way, straight on! Goddamnit, listen—”

  But Sealion’s forward machine gun was already hammering at the enemy. Jack shook Halstead’s shoulder. He hollered at Cross to zigzag, but Cross was caught up in it, too.

  The U-boat was lying low in the water, obviously damaged, her silhouette marred by missing parts. But the German was firing, his first shot narrowly missing Sealion’s bows. Jack wrested the helm from Cross, elbowing him out of the way. Cross stumbled and fell behind the armor, and that saved him from injury. Later he would remember that Jack Royal had been his savior, and credit intention on Royal’s part.

  So when the second shell burst on the crowded afterdeck just back of the cockpit, Halstead, Jack, Cross, and the forward gunner were spared. The men aft of them were obliterated in a single flash. The steering went but not the power, and all of them watched the sky spin round and round above them, a placid blue square turned vortical with the sound of unstopped engines running all out.

  That didn’t last long.

  Halstead was the first on his feet. The coaming of the cockpit burned his hand to the quick, and he could hardly keep his legs. Jack Royal was bloody, but the blood was mostly not his own. His life-vest had been stripped off and his ears rang. The forward gunner had broken his leg on the deck, and Halstead had caught shrapnel in his cheek. Only Cross was unscathed.

  The engines finally quit and their racket gave way to a howling silence. The boat turned more slowly, finally ceased turning altogether, and listed heavily to port, throwing Halstead off his feet.

  The cork raft stowed on the outside cockpit wall was gone. Sealion was sinking fast. Halstead watched the submarine disappear: Confused, he was sure the enemy was sinking, too. One of his own torpedoes was missing, and he imagined he had fired it and he congratulated himself.

  Jack Royal, man of action, got to his feet, grabbed Halstead and Cross and, nesded between them like a float, flung them bodily into the cold water. He called to the forward gunner who was sprawled on the inclined deck. “She’s burning! Get off—get off while you can!”

  The man slid rather than jumped into the water and sluggishly made his way toward them, howling about his broken leg. Sealion burned briefly but sank before she could explode. There was no sign of the rest of the crew.

  Jack worked his feet to tread water. He held to his companions and shivered. The gunner got close and flailed his way over to them, and the four held onto one another.

  On the beach a boat was being launched. Malcolm’s boat, Jack knew, and pedalled his legs.

  5

  IT WAS A GRIM RESCUE. Malcolm’s men pulled through easy water with even strokes; soon they were close enough to take on survivors. When Malcolm saw his brother in the lifeboat, he wanted to say something soothing. Jack’s face was bloody, and his lips and fingernails were blue. Malcolm wondered if they would be burying him this time. He wanted to say something kind out loud, but Jack was still in shock.

  Beyond them, on land, the Light had not been extinguished with the dawn. Malcolm watched it grow larger with every stroke of the oars, its spiraled black stripe narrowing at the top, above that the black iron crown of catwalk, and from the glass turret the weak pulse of the lamp in daylight.

  6

  TO REMEMBER PAPENBURG at all Max had to reconstruct it. Was there a wooded hill mounting to a house? Had his father been a doctor taken ill in the course of caring for his patients? Had his mother succumbed, her shape under the bedclothe
s smaller each morning, her faint breath expiring in a fever, like steam boiling off a pot?

  Had his little brother Thomas been smothered too by the mysterious fever that swept the countryside like brushfire in those last months before the war, annihilating families wholesale, defying cure, and sparing only a few, at random, like Max?

  Sound was extinct in his world. The collective stink of the men huddled close around him sealed his senses like mucus.

  7

  AFTER THE SURVIVORS of the Sealion had been landed and their wounds treated, and Malcolm had completed his chores in the carousel room, it was time to get ready.

  “This is not the time to be giving away jewelry,” Malcolm muttered to Chief Lord as he pulled on a pair of dry uniform trousers, stiff as Sunday clothes. He combed his thick beard and brushed the sleeves of his double-breasted tunic, secured with ten gold buttons in a double row, then went downstairs to the common room of the station. The ceremony was to be held on the porch.

  Halstead sat in a rattan chair in the shade of the porch, his cheek scarred with stitches, his face drained of color, staring out to sea.

  The Life-Saving men stood at attention at the foot of the porch. Jack, rested and his face washed, stood shoulder to shoulder with his fellows. Seamus Royal stood beside the last man in the row, Cy Magillicutty, who had crewed with him and was old enough to remember a similar ceremony when Seamus had received his own medal.

  Halstead’s forward gunner relaxed in a wooden wheelchair, waiting for a ride to Portsmouth after the presentation. This would be the first and probably last chance he would ever get to ride in a car with staff officers. He grinned carelessly and tapped a finger against the long cast on his leg.

  Keith watched it all from behind the assembled spectators. Mary, Virginia, and Dorothy huddled in a group, excluding him. Fifty-yards away, up in the tower, Toby Bannister had the watch. He looked out to sea and wondered about his brother. He didn’t care much about medals. Everybody had medals anymore.

  On the porch, a full commander from the admiral’s staff gave a short speech about sacrifice and duty and hung the ribbon over Malcolm’s shaggy bowed head, the medal dangling from the end like a spoon lure.

  Malcolm shook his hand, they saluted one another, and that was that.

  8

  HALSTEAD, groggy from morphine, shook Malcolm’s hand in turn and traded compliments with the staff officers before they collected their party and headed north again, taking with them the remainder of his crew: Cross and the gunner. There was a chance, they said, that they could free a cutter now under repair at Philadelphia and send it down to finish the Hun.

  Halstead requested and got permission to recuperate on Hatteras Island while waiting to be reassigned. When told he might not get another command, Halstead said nothing. He had no reason to think he deserved one.

  9

  AS THE MEN resumed their duties and the spectators went home, Halstead approached Jack Royal. “I’ve put you up for the Coast Guard Medal, Mister Royal.”

  “What would that fix?” His father’s medal gathered dust on a shelf. And so, too, would Malcolm’s.

  10

  MALCOLM HURRIED OFF the porch to catch Mary before she left. They strolled in front of the lighthouse and stood close in its shadow so that not even Toby Bannister, pacing the iron catwalk high above, could see them alone.

  “I’m not a hero. That’s not what this is about. That’s not what this is about,” he repeated. He looked first to one side, then to the other. Mary took his face in her hands, pulled it down, and kissed him. She didn’t mind the stiffness of his uniform then as he drew her to him and enclosed her with his arms.

  11

  FOR THE FIRST TIME since receiving his commission, Timothy Halstead, Lieutenant Junior Grade, wanted the company of a bottle.

  He had taken his part in the greatest war in history; he had met the enemy in open battle and had lost his first command. His boat was sunk, his crew dead, mutilated, or scattered, his mission failed, his career ruined, his name disgraced. In all likelihood, he would face a court-martial. Men were dead because of his bravado and bad judgment, and nothing he could ever do could change that. Nothing. He could not stand it that Cross did not hold it against him, just as he could not stand it that Jack Royal did. Even now he didn’t know what he’d have done differently. He had gambled on speed at the expense of maneuver, and he had lost. Simple.

  He had reports to file, letters to write, accounts to square. Tomorrow, he thought.

  Halstead could not go to Dorothy tonight, even if she’d have him. The one person who could actually help him, his lost honor made unavailable to him. What could he offer her now? Ignominy? Shame? He had tried and failed.

  From Littlejohn he cajoled a bottle of bootleg rum and trekked out across the dunes, careful to find a place off the route of the beach patrol. He settled down in a hollow and drank.

  In front of him, somewhere off in the darkness, the sea snapped like flames.

  12

  DOROTHY, Mary, and Keith had supper at Jack and Virginia’s house. After a silent, uncomfortable meal, the two men went outside on the porch. Jack filled his pipe and Keith lit a cigar.

  “What’s going on?” Keith said.

  Jack fooled with his match a little, having trouble with it in the wind. It was a lovely, balmy night with a freshening breeze.

  “Malcolm is wrong this time, Keith.”

  “So you say.”

  They smoked awhile.

  “I want you with us. Dad does, too.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t get it, do you. You’re either with us or against us. There’s no middle in this thing.”

  “I just haven’t made up my mind.”

  “Now that’s the story of your life, ain’t it. Well, make up your mind. You can’t just keep dabbling at things, do you understand?”

  “Malcolm is dead set against it, you know that.”

  “We’re not talking about Malcolm, college boy. We’re talking about you. It’s time you started making your own way.” Jack tightened his fist, then relaxed it.

  “You wanted to hit me, didn’t you? Like the other day. But you were scared to death of Malcolm.”

  “Is that what you think? Then you’re even dumber than I thought.” Jack unclamped his pipe and regarded Keith through the silver threads of smoke, his eyes suddenly reminding Keith of his mother’s eyes, years ago. What was it? From inside the house came the murmur of women’s voices, rife with tension.

  “Maybe. Then why don’t you hit me now?”

  Jack smiled and put a hand on his shoulder. “Maybe you get it after all.” He laid his pipe carefully on the porch railing, and then he drove a fist into Keith’s eye. He brushed his palms together, retrieved his pipe, and went into the house.

  Keith lay on his back in the cool sand, watching the muddy sky go round and round.

  13

  AT PRECISELY TWELVE MIDNIGHT Malcolm seated himself before the logbook and began the familiar ordeal of inventing a dozen or so words to describe tonight’s quiet and the ceremony of decoration. He would be embarrassed to include that, but it was necessary. Staff officers’ visits to the station had to be duly noted, according to regulations. Still.

  He opened the big book, facing the slab of paper, blank as an uninscribed tombstone. He wrung his hands, shifted in his chair, scraped a shoe back and forth on the floorboards.

  Outside, the quiet was like water. He listened to it seep in, felt it fill in around his shoes and knees and waist and chest and ears. He listened to the slow beat of his own heart. He fingered the medal, now in a plain wooden casket no bigger than a snuffbox. Seamus had one. He hefted it like a coin, like currency.

  Malcolm was reluctant to begin. He had the right words, he was sure, but they whirled around in his brain, disorganized, elusive, random as electrons, and he could not conjur them to order.

  When he had composed himself, he wrote: Just after first light brought in four
survivors of U.S.S. Sealion, sunk by Gmn, U-boat. At 1430 Cmdr. Yost & Staff Officers on station, awarded Gold Medal to Keeper on behalf of Crew.

  1

  CHIEF LORD HAD the tower watch. He had taken it knowing full well something would happen tonight. He did not always know in advance, but ominous feelings had been building inside him ever since the first sheaf of lumber had grounded like a landing barge from the vanished Hauppage.

  The omens had accreted like sediment on the mainland side of the island. The odd weather pattern, the fishermen lost in the stream, Keith Royal’s return, the loss of Mary’s baby midterm, Halstead’s defeat, Fetterman’s ugly model, the lightship sunk, Patchett’s disappearance, the U-boat prowling offshore like some minion of Neptune, waiting to pull them down severally into the netherworld, Mrs. Littlejohn’s hoverings and mutterings. Chief Lord had seen magic before, local magic worked for revenge or fertility or profit, but this was bigger. This had the power of the weather in it, the depth of oceans, the breadth of continents, the wrath of gods.

  The sun and the moon shall be darkened, he thought, and the stars withdraw their shining. Things were accelerating, as they always did in wartime. He smoked his pipe to build his own magic and scoured the sea with eyes that seemed locked into the workings of the Light itself.

  He paced the catwalk as the silence prickled his spine.

  For a long minute he couldn’t even hear the ocean. He dug a finger into his ear and sound resumed sluggishly, like a Victrola starting up. He had been dreaming things the past few nights, and the dreams had accumulated a power and will of their own. Four nights running he had dreamed of the island. Each time the island was smaller, eroding at the edges; each time the horizons were closer. Last night Chief Lord had dreamed of running from the station toward the sea where Malcolm and the old horse had dragged the boat without him, something that had never happened in all the years he had been on station. He found himself knee-deep in salt water, spilling into his boots, anchoring him, pulling him down. He had called out to Malcolm, but Malcolm was gone, he and his oarsmen ferrying people away from the island. Chief stood there, feeling the cold water rise about his waist, his armpits, his shoulders, his oilskins clammy and heavy.