Hatteras Light Read online

  “I have seen sea monsters,” Halstead said, unaware he had even spoken.

  Chief Lord nodded solemnly. “So have we all. That’s the trouble, you see.” He rubbed his hands together slowly, as if smoothing a thought between his dark palms. “I have heard cynical men, civilized men, scoff at the talismans of voodoo princes, and then watched those same men murder witches with holy instruments, daggers blessed at the altar of the Saviour. There is no kenning it. One must steer a careful course between sky and sea.”

  “What are you saying?” Cyrus asked. “Are you inviting us to be superstitious? There’s no voodoo here, nothing like it.”

  “I am only wondering what to do about the submarine, Cyrus. That’s all. It is something all our experience hasn’t prepared us for.”

  Halstead imagined those sleek Viking craft, the rattle of flint arrows on iron shields, the horned heads of those godless warriors as they spilled from the belly of the serpent onto strange and backward continents, hacking and hewing through flimsy squadrons of natives, like nothing they’d ever seen before.

  Then he thought of voodoo. He said: “Chief of what, Chief Lord? That’s what I’d like to know.”

  Chief Lord turned his palms up and smiled. “I am the charmer, the consultor with familiar spirits, the wizard, the necromancer. Chief fencer. Chief horse-coper. Chief tergiversator. Chief liar.”

  The men’s laughter broke in Halstead’s ears and cleared them to silence.

  Malcolm Royal came over and sat smoking awhile before he said anything. He had the suitor’s respect for courtesies. “You took it on the chin today, Mister Halstead, but at least you were in there punching. Tomorrow your luck may change.” Halstead nodded. “Any news on Mister Dant?”

  Halstead had all but forgotten him. “Nothing from the Navy. He’ll come in, by and by. Don’t they all? I can’t imagine the German being much interested in him.”

  “Littlejohn says none of the other fishermen have seen him. That’s a bad sign.”

  “What can I do?” He couldn’t be responsible for everything. Some men were not meant to be found, and some boats belonged to the sea the day their keels were laid.

  “Not a bad question, at that.” Malcolm tasted more smoke and exhaled it in quivering rings. “And I’ve got another one for you: Is it possible, I mean to say, could it be, that there’s more than one?”

  Halstead started. “I—I hadn’t considered that. It never crossed my mind, but …”

  “Well, you might consider it from now on. Have you ever seen just one shark in the water?”

  2

  THE CURRENTS WERE playing tricks with Alvin Dant’s boat. It was a clear night, and he swore once he could see the Light, way off to the southwest. Thirty miles, maybe forty—who could say? You could see it a long way off on a night like this one, the sky a glass vault and the air itself luminescent with remembered light. It twinkled like a landstar because of the extreme distance; still, it emanated hope.

  He woke Brian. “Do you see it, son?”

  Brian watched hard in the direction his father pointed. “See what?” he asked. “There’s nothing out there.”

  “Out there, out there!” he said, but Brian’s eyes never left his own.

  And indeed, when Alvin looked again, the Light was gone.

  3

  THEY DIDN’T GO up this time. The captain managed it all from the periscope bridge, for he was taking no chances. She was an oil tanker, and he didn’t believe a country at war would let her steam up the coast unprotected. Somewhere out in the blackness, he was sure, lurked a destroyer escort.

  His plan was to get in really close and fire one torpedo. He was running out of them, and from now on he wanted one ship for every torpedo. It was unheard of. Nevertheless …

  “No destroyers in sight. I don’t understand it.” He scanned all points of the compass. The oiler was low in the water and making about eight knots. There was no chance of missing her: he had her broadside at a thousand yards. “We’ll take her from seaward. We can’t risk a warning. There’s an escort out there, and if we show ourselves …”

  Max Wien started to protest. They always gave a warning to an unarmed ship, especially a lone one with no chance for rescue from a convoy. But he kept quiet. He had been trained not to backtalk his captain. And maybe Stracken was right, maybe there was a destroyer out there, and then they would be the ones in need of compassion. But Max really didn’t think so.

  “It’s been too easy so far,” the captain said.

  “Yes,” Kraft said, “maybe it’s the Americans who are desperate.”

  The captain turned. “I don’t think desperate is the word.”

  It was quiet in the belly of the shark. Max listened to the sound of men breathing all around him, like the sound of one giant, many-headed beast sweating its moment of action. It was strangely serene.

  “We should give them a chance to get off,” he told Bergen. “Do you know what it’s going to be like?”

  Bergen cleaned his fingernails. He was always doing that. He shook his head. “And where would they go? Tell me that.”

  Max thought of the island again, impossibly far away. So this was going to be plain murder.

  He thought perhaps he should pray. He recalled the young priest in Papenburg who had christened his sister’s child before the war brought the plague to the town and death to the child. The priest had put the child into the water and held him there. Max had not believed in a priest so young, just as now he did not believe that his prayers could penetrate the submerged steel hull and escape to heaven, any more than radio waves could. So he didn’t pray. Instead he clasped his hands very close together and listened to the succession of orders that would accomplish the destruction of the oiler.

  The concussion rocked the bulkheads.

  The captain pivoted the periscope for ten minutes, then ordered them to surface.

  Curiosity, Max thought, that’s all it is: we want to see the damage.

  The night air was refreshing. He had the habit now of following the captain. If the captain fancied him an orderly, Max did not deny the arrangement. He stood between Stracken and Kraft watching the great ball of fire that had been a ship a few minutes ago. It was hard to tell just where the torpedo had struck, the inferno was so general. Max guessed amidships.

  “She burns well,” the captain said, and Max wondered how he felt. The man just stared, his eyes aglow with the reflection of the flaming hull. The explosions kept going on, and the water all around the ship was on fire. The black shapes of boats dodged about in the burning oil, some of them on fire. There were men in the water everywhere, and Max knew the U-boat couldn’t and wouldn’t rescue any of them—where was there room to put them?

  The captain said to Kraft: “How is one to know, Gunther?”

  Bergen was standing at the ready. “Shall I finish her quickly, Captain?”

  The captain turned. It was brighter than daylight on the tower bridge just now. The flames rose hundreds of feet, stirring the air into a great sucking wind. Max felt it on his neck. And now, against the wind, the sound of men screaming, shouting, cursing.

  “What for?” the captain said. “We can’t hurt them anymore.”

  They watched the vessel burn for a few more minutes. Through the glass, the mate was trying to discover her name and registry by the bow markings, not an easy task with all the smoke and distraction. But as she burned brighter he had it.

  “Abilene City.” He pronounced it badly. “American.”

  “There’s nothing more to see. Nun lassen wir uns mal in dem seichten Wasser nieder.” Now let us make our bed in the shallows.

  4

  CHIEF LORD HAD the tower watch. He had hardly climbed up onto the iron catwalk that circled just under the light when he saw it, far out to sea: a pillar of fire. In fourteen years as a surfman, he had never seen anything like it.

  His feet moved under him, carried him to the hatchway and down the long spiral staircase, his feet beating the iron
steps like drums. He emerged from the tower shouting to the others, and ran to go hitch Homer.

  Joe Trent and Ian MacSween, a mile apart on beach patrol, were halted by a burst of light out on the horizon. Each man sent up a signal rocket, and the two rockets flared in the sky at almost the same moment.

  5

  “WHAT A WONDERFUL EVENING,” Mary Royal said. She and Keith were walking over the dunes. The night was breezy, full of the moon. The stars were muted. High, fast clouds scudded across the sky, throwing shadows like waves. She had asked him to take her for a walk.

  “You two were out here a long time today.”

  “What of it.” But he was smiling, and now they were through the cut in the high dunes and facing the ocean. The wind carried the rumble of surf.

  “She’s a sweet girl. Are you going to marry her?”

  “Do you think that would solve the problem?”

  “She’s not herself. She’s having an awful time.”

  “I think I’m just confusing her.”

  “And yourself?”

  “Yes, I guess so.”

  “Nothing like this has ever happened before. Nobody knows how to act.”

  “Sometimes I go to bed at night, and I wonder if the world will still be there in the morning,” Keith said. “And in the morning I wake up sweating, like I’ve just survived something.”

  The breeze was blowing out to sea. Mary gathered her hair into a ponytail to keep it from blowing around her face. She put her arm around Keith. “You know, it has always seemed hard here for men and women to speak. Does it seem strange?”

  He walked forward a little ways, so that her hand slid off his windbreaker. “Strange? I grew up here, remember. I know how it is. Our father wasn’t home more than a couple of days a month for as long as I can remember. I used to go down to the station to visit him. He would let me take my nap in the lifecar, and they made a swing for me out of the breeches buoy. My mother never saw him.”

  “I think Malcolm knew you were going away before anybody.”

  Keith thought that over a minute. He hadn’t told Malcolm he was leaving until the very last minute. He himself hadn’t known for sure until then. The scholarship had been a quiet arrangement from the beginning, and now whenever Keith lay alone at night with nothing else on his mind, the thought of his leaving came to him with a feeling of sorrow and shame.

  He hadn’t spoken at any length with Malcolm since he had been back, but then Malcolm hardly ever spoke much with anyone. Keith recalled vividly, though, all those fights Malcolm and Jack used to have, how terrified they made him, how they never seemed to solve anything.

  “Do you remember how I used to watch you paint?” Keith said. “I think watching you paint like that made me more determined than ever to see what else was out there. I think you did that for me.”

  “I sent you away.”

  “No, no, I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “Then you’ll stay awhile now?”

  “Well, I’m not going anywhere right away. I’m out of the university.”

  “What?”

  “I left without taking my final examinations. I had to come back.” Three and a half years had passed in New England, and then he had felt an urgency to return right away, not to wait even the two weeks it would have taken to finish the term.

  “They’d take you back, I know they would. You’re brilliant. Why, I’d write a letter—”

  “Oh, Mary, look!”

  They saw a ball of fire out to sea and stood enthralled for a moment. “Lord,” she said. Keith squeezed her hand, then started running up the beach toward the Light. “Where are you going?” she shouted after him.

  He turned, still jogging backward. “Malcolm will be going out shorthanded. He’ll need me.”

  Mary Royal watched him flee up the beach away from her, at terrific speed, it seemed to her. She felt the same rush of heartsickness she always felt when Malcolm’s boat went out, but it was worse this time. Keith would be with him, pulling toward the flames on the water.

  6

  WHEN CHIEF LORD CAME bellowing across the short quadrant of grass between the lighthouse door and the life-saving station, the whole crew emptied onto the porch like dice spilled from a cup, Halstead’s men among them. At that moment they marked the two orange flares the beachwalkers had launched. Malcolm ran to the corral behind Chief and helped him harness Homer, who was skittish and hard to manage.

  “The tanker,” Malcolm said, pipe still clenched in his teeth.

  Chief Lord nodded, winded. The crew was hauling out the boat on its carriage. Chief climbed into the bow with the reins while Malcolm finished buckling the harness, and in two minutes from the time Chief had first appeared at the foot of the lighthouse, they were underway, cutting through the dunes on the corduroy road, their eyes fixed on the blaze at the horizon.

  Halstead’s men watched, unsure what to do. He was agonizing over what duty required of him when Malcolm shouted:

  “Don’t be trying this with that cigar boat of yours, or we’ll be hauling you out, too.”

  “Let me handle an oar, then—”

  Just then Keith appeared, arms pumping. All the surfmen had on their high boots, oilskins and bonnets, and life-vests. Keith had just his windbreaker, khaki pants, and canvas shoes.

  “Can I help, Malcolm? Can I take an oar for you?”

  Malcolm waved him along. He caught up when they were almost at waterline. Malcolm clapped him on the back, and shoved a life-vest at him.

  “Starboard aft oar,” was all Malcolm said. Jack resumed his old position at the waist, shaking his head. They rushed the boat into the breakers and vaulted inside, all but Malcolm, who shoved them just a little farther before he scrambled in over the stern and took up the sweep oar.

  Keith pulled hard while his brother counted stroke. The first big breaker they hit lifted the bow almost vertical and slammed them hard into a trough. There were two more like that, and then the oars bit all at once and they shot forward over the combers. Already the Light seemed far away to Keith, and Malcolm’s presence at the helm, haloed by the sweeping light, was all that kept his panic down.

  Keith leaned into his oar with purpose now. They pulled for almost an hour to get within reach of the tanker, and it seemed a miracle she had stayed afloat so long. But the torpedo had not broken her back, only punched a hole in her and toplit her cargo, so that she was settling slowly by the bow.

  “We’re burning!” Cyrus Magillicutty shouted above the rush of the flames. They were into the oil now, and the gunwales of the surfboat were on fire. Chief Lord beat out the flames with his bonnet, and Malcolm steered them out of the oil.

  “We’ve got to get in closer,” Chief Lord said.

  They were parallel to the oiler now, and Keith could make out the silhouettes of men huddled at the aft railing. As he watched, one by one they leapt into the flaming seas and made for the surfboat.

  “Come on!” Keith heard himself shouting. “Get in closer! Can’t you see them?” Malcolm nodded and steered into the oil again. Jack cursed. The men from the tanker were diving under the flames and coming up a little closer each time.

  Finally the first of them reached the surfboat. The burning tanker lit the sky. There was no trouble seeing men in the water.

  Wordlessly, Cyrus and Joe Trent started pulling men aboard, while the rest kept the boat from broaching to in the swells.

  The sailors’ faces were blackened and their clothes were all but burned off them. When Keith helped one of them crawl toward the stern, a pad of flesh came away in his hand. He wiped it on his jacket, and felt a knot behind his tongue.

  “Lie on your backs across the thwarts between oarsmen,” Malcolm commanded in a voice Keith had never heard, at once soothing in its control but threatening too. The sailors were hysterical at being saved, and Malcolm had to be sure they wouldn’t capsize the boat: “Tuck your feet into the next man’s armpits.”

  They took ten men aboard this way.
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br />   “That’s it,” Malcolm said. “Pull for the beach.”

  Just then, Chief spotted a lifeboat struggling around the stern of the tanker, in it a group of men with only two manning oars.

  “Pull for the boat,” Malcolm commanded. They pulled like drayhorses, and the hot blast of the fire watered their eyes and choked them and blistered their naked hands.

  They came alongside and saw that the lifeboat had taken on a lot of water, and most of the men it held were badly injured.

  “Chief, Jack—take her in.” The two surfmen clambered into the lifeboat and Toby Bannister threw them a hawser, which Chief made fast to the bow. The two surfmen took up oars, and Malcolm’s boat proceeded to tow them in, a slow and dangerous business. If either boat swamped, it could sink the other.

  Keith had never worked so hard. By the time they were halfway to the beach, his hands were raw and his chest heaved for breath. His back was sore, and he was lightheaded and suddenly very cold, now they were away from the blaze with the stiff following wind in their faces.

  “Pull, boys!” Malcolm urged, and they did. Keith felt inferior, out of his class, not a hero. His rowing on the Harvard crew had been a lark compared to this, his hands protected in their calfskin gloves, the course laid out for safety, the labor timed to allow rest, their craft light as a wing compared to this broad-beamed ark.

  The wind gusted suddenly on their starboard beam, and it was all Malcolm could do to control the sweep oar with both hands. His eyes narrowed under his oilskin bonnet, and the Light seemed to get no closer. Malcolm fought the wind to a draw.

  They left the lifeboat beyond the breakers and made the run to the beach alone. On Malcolm’s signal, all hands shipped oars. They surfed the crest of the last big wave and were overboard all at once, waist deep in the foam, hauling in the boat the rest of the way by hand.