Hatteras Light |
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Charles Scribner's Sons,
1986 |
a novel, by Philip GerardCHAPTER 1PETE PATCHETT was the first to see the U-boat. The two-day blow had ended, and Patchett walked under overcast skies on the damp sand, barefoot, as usual, looking for gifts. After a storm, the ocean always left some prize for weather endured, and Patchett wasn’t one to overlook the hand of Providence when it offered. A good part of the economy of the whole island, for that matter, derived from salvage. In his time Patchett had claimed everything from booze to choir robes, boathooks to sailcloth, even a crate of chickens, all by right of salvage. He hoped for some largesse now as he moved down the broad beach with a light step. He was small enough to be taken for a child from far away, as he stooped to turn sand dollars in his hand before pocketing them in his filthy clamdiggers, or poked at inverted horseshoe crabs with sticks to right them. He had no fear of the open. Truth to tell, he enjoyed his stature out here, where just now he was, except for the lighthouse, the tallest thing around. When he lifted his eyes, there it was, riding easy offshore on the wide, slow swells, a gray hump. He thought at first it was a whale, for all the dolphins playing around it. He squinted toward it, a hand raised to his brow Indian—style. He noticed oil in the surf, painted timbers from some boat or ship, nothing so very extraordinary. There was a war on, after all. They’d all read about it in The Coastland Times and heard about it more immediately over the wireless in the middle of the night, listening to the distress calls of vessels far out in the Atlantic. He stared at the whaleen vessel innocently, lacking the sense to be afraid of it. Suddenly a puff of smoke appeared just forward of the hump with a noise like a thunderclap, and the beach in front of him erupted in a great blast of sand and air, knocking him down. Someone was shooting at him with a goddamn cannon. Pete Patchett scrambled to his feet and ran. 2 OLD HAM FETTERMAN was carving. He was a modeler, a naval architect of miniatures, shipwright of a large and distinguished toy fleet. One of his ships, a Baltimore Clipper, stood under glass at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. They had offered him a thousand dollars for it, but in the end he had donated it, for he was old enough to understand that money like that could only be trouble. He didn’t fear for his soul, exactly, only for his incentive. He was installed in Littlejohn’s store carving an odd, flat hull when Patchy brought the news. He carried on for several minutes, ending his recital with a simulation of the shell exploding at his feet, complete with spittle. "Patchy, hold your water," Littlejohn said. He affected a meerschaum and was descended from pirates, so they said. His namesake, so they said, had survived Blackbeard’s beheading party at Teach’s Hole on Ocracoke Island, the next landfall south of Hatteras. But that was no news—everybody on the island could claim notorious parentage, if it came to that. The Royals, you know came down from Francis Drake, the Englishman. "I tell you we’re in for it, boys. I seen it. Tried to murder me, all right." A submarine vessel, he claimed, "one of them unterseeboots you read about in the papers. Littlejohn puffed his pipe and Fetterman carved, nodding. "I don’t doubt it, Patchy, but your noise ain’t welcome here." Littlejohn passed a bottle of bootleg beer to Patchett. He was a man who knew how to behave in a crisis. "Here," he said, "this’ll help, or nothing will." Pete Patchett drank down that beer and three more and listened to the rowdy gulls and the wind, and half an hour later he ventured back over the dunes to look for the U-boat. Of course, it was gone. 3 CHIEF LORD held the door of the life-saving station for Virginia Royal, who carried supper for her husband, Jack Royal, number-two man at the station. She had enough chicken and grits in her basket for the whole nine-man crew: Hal MacRae, Cyrus Magillicutty, Joe Trent, Will Fetterman, and the Chief. Toby Bannister and Ian MacSween were on beach patrol, and Malcolm Royal, the Keeper, was on tower watch. "I hear there’s trouble,"Virginia said. "Never mind," Jack said. "You think them poor Germans want trouble with us?" He took some supper and shared the basket around, carefully ignoring Virginia. No one had ever witnessed them in public embrace, let alone in here. "Nevertheless, keep a sharp eye." Cy Magillicutty, a man nearly as broad as Jack’s brother Malcolm, said, "She’s quiet tonight, Virginia. We won’t be going out." It was true, what he meant. It was only May, and the hurricanes wouldn’t be starting for another dozen weeks or more. There would be occasional squalls, but that was just weather, nature tuning her strings for a symphony of winter blows. This was the lazy time, a time to eat in leisure, sleep the nights through, and get the boat ready—recaulk the lapstrake, scrape and paint the bottom, grease the oarlocks with clean grease. They were getting the boats ready at the eleven stations all up and down the coast from Kitty Hawk to Cedar Island. Every morning and evening the crews rushed their boats to the water and beat out over the breakers for a lark and to show they could do it. Anyway, between the tower watch, the beach patrols, and the wireless monitor, they’d hear about trouble fast enough. "You worry too much." Jack smiled handsomely. "You can’t believe a rummy like Patch. He ought to have been home with his woman at that hour, not out scavenging on the beach. He’s got the soul of a castaway, that one. A landsman, like his old man. Virginia didn’t stay and eat with the men, though she would have welcomed the company. Not that they would have stopped her, but it was a dangerous thing to get started. As it was, Virginia was the only woman besides Mary Royal, Malcolm’s wife, routinely allowed to enter the common room of the stationhouse, and then only briefly to deliver food and messages. It was a men’s preserve. She left and promised to send her boy Kevin with coffee for the late shift. She paused briefly in the doorway, wanting to tell Jack she missed him, but when she turned they were all looking at her and she said nothing. "She’s a fine female," Chief Lord said after she had gone. "I wouldn’t be sitting here with the likes of you if I had that one at home." He laughed profoundly, his eyes slanting darkly "You don’t know," Jack said and wiped his mouth. "You don’t know."
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Reprint, John F. Blair 1997 |