The Keeper's Son Page 8

  “Steel and war go together,” Josh said. “What brings you to Killakeet, if I might ask?”

  She looked him in the eye, as if to gauge why he had asked the question. “You want me to tell you the pretty story or the awful truth?” she asked, finally.

  “Well,” he said, thinking for a moment, “the pretty story.”

  “All right. Here it is. I fooled around in college until Daddy cut me off, worked my way through selling encyclopedias to people who didn’t want them, got a good job, fell in love with a musician—a jazz trumpeter, of all things and, yes, I should have known better—got pregnant, had a miscarriage, lost the job, lost the horn player, started drinking, fell on and off the wagon, and just a month ago got so disgusted with myself I decided to come down here and see if I could figure out how to change my life from a living hell into something a little bit better. Daddy agreed to stake me.”

  Josh whistled. “I’m glad I didn’t ask for the awful truth.”

  She laughed. Then she moved her boots around in the sand and watched them, as if fascinated by the marks she was making. “So what about you, Josh? What have you been up to all these years?”

  “The pretty story or the awful truth?”

  “The awful truth. Pretty stories are too sad.”

  Josh told her a few things, a little of his life in the Coast Guard, and some of the things about the Bering Sea Patrol. When he stopped, she seemed to be waiting for him to go on, but he said, “That’s about it.”

  “And Jacob,” she said. “Anything about him?”

  He was grateful that she had brought it up. He never knew how to tell folks about his brother. “No,” he said. “Nothing. Though I find myself still looking for him whenever I’m out to sea.”

  “I hope you find him someday.” She frowned and shook her head. “That sounded so ridiculous. Of course, everybody hopes that.” She studied the horses and the sand and the sea, then allowed a sigh of contentment, at least as near as she was capable. “It’s so good to be back on Killakeet. All my days here were such good ones. When I came across on the ferry, I felt as if I had come home.” She nodded over her shoulder to the brown mare. “That’s my Genie. She’s a comfort. She loves me no matter how stupid I act. Daddy bought her for me. She’s from Kentucky.”

  “She’s a fine-looking horse,” Josh allowed. “Did all that really happen to you? The pretty story?”

  “Well, I left out a few things.”

  “I’m sorry you’ve had a hard time of it.”

  “Josh,” Dosie said, “I’ve already figured one thing out. I’ve had a hard time of it because of the decisions I’ve made. I plan on thinking things through while I’m here.”

  “You should talk to my daddy. He’s pretty wise.”

  “I intend to talk to anybody who’ll listen,” she retorted. “But mostly I intend to talk to myself.”

  “Queenie O’Neal sent you a fruit basket, by the way. I left it with Herman.”

  “That’s very sweet. I shall make it a point to personally thank her.”

  “Queenie’s been known to give advice, too,” Josh warned. “Most times, you don’t even have to ask for it.” Josh thought for a moment. “That’s pretty much true of everybody on the island.”

  Genie made a low noise in her throat and Dosie looked to see what had disturbed her. “Oh, isn’t he magnificent?” she said of a stallion that had stepped from the trees into the broom grass around the pond.

  Josh saw it was an old friend. “That’s Star,” he said. “I’ll introduce you.”

  “Won’t he run away?”

  “Not from me. When I was a boy, he even let me ride him.”

  They walked down the dune, Josh holding up his hands so Star could see they were empty. The mares and the colt walked away, then stopped and looked back, curious but unafraid. The stallion lifted his head and then nickered a greeting and trotted over. Josh ran his hand down the stallion’s scarred neck, noting a few new scrapes. “Been fighting the young boys, have you?” He rubbed down the horse’s nose. “Old man, you’d better start taking it easy.” Star bared his teeth at him and Josh laughed.

  “Do you think he’d let me touch him?” Dosie asked.

  “I don’t know,” Josh confessed. “Star’s not always easy to figure. But give it a shot.”

  Dosie slowly placed her hand on the stallion’s neck. He quivered but accepted it. “I never thought I’d get so close,” she said.

  “The wild ponies got a sense about people, good or bad,” Josh said. “Old Cloud was the stallion of the herd before Star. He used to go into Whalebone City just to chase Doc off his pizer. That was something funny to see. There was just something about Doc he didn’t like.”

  Star, apparently having his fill of humans, walked off to the mares and the colt, which hid behind its mother. “They are amazing animals,” Dosie said. “Who could imagine that horses could live on an island where they have to dig for water?”

  Josh and Dosie walked back up the sand hill. At the top, she said, “I’ve been all over this end of the island and I’ve yet to find a horse skeleton. Where do they go to die?”

  “What I’ve heard is that they go out there,” Josh said, nodding toward Pamlico Sound. “When they get lame or sick or just old, the other horses look after them for a while, but then one day they go out into the sound and start swimming for the far shore.”

  “They commit suicide?”

  “Now that’s a strong word,” Josh said. “The horses just know when it’s their time, I guess.”

  “I wonder where they think they’re going?”

  “Horse heaven,” Josh said, looking across the sound. “You know, I’ve walked that land over there just straight across from here. It’s good horse country just back of the beach. There’s lots of grass and even freshwater ponds. To a Killakeet horse, I guess that would be heaven. They just light out for it when they’re old and hope for the best.”

  “I like hoping for the best,” she said. “I’m going to adopt that as my personal motto from here on in.”

  “I guess I will, too,” he said.

  “Oh, no, we can’t both have the same motto. You’ll have to pick one for yourself.”

  Josh gave it some thought. “How about ‘moderation in all things’?”

  “Terrible. Excess is the purpose of life. I have a degree in philosophy, you know.”

  “That must come in handy. What do they pay philosophers these days?”

  “ ‘I ask not for wages, I only seek room in the garden of song,’ ” she said, ending with “Tra-la.” Then she said, “Arthur Wentworth Hamilton Eaton, since I’m certain you’re agog to know.”

  “Was he a philosopher?”

  “No, far worse. An author and a poet.”

  Josh tried to catch up. “I like Hemingway, although I think he doesn’t know a thing about fishing.”

  “I met him one time.”

  “Arthur Wentworth whatever?”

  “No, Hemingway. He was drunk but I was drunker, which meant we both found one another fascinating. Do you want to know how I met him?”

  “I heard you worked for a publisher.”

  “No secrets on this island, is there?”

  “A few, I expect. But then, if I knew what they were, they wouldn’t be secret, would they?”

  “You’re near a philosopher yourself, Josh Thurlow,” she said.

  “I’m but an engineer,” he replied modestly, “who loves boats.”

  “Maybe you’re more complicated than I thought. How did you get that scar on your chin?”

  “From a polar bear.”

  “It bit you?”

  “Not exactly. I was running from it so fast, I slipped on the ice.”

  She laughed. She had a good laugh, like bells somehow. Josh had not felt so happy since when he couldn’t remember. He wanted to keep feeling that way. “I have an idea,” he said. “After Sunday services tomorrow, let’s you and me go on a picnic. I’ll borrow Daddy’s horse, old Thunder. Ho
w about it?”

  Dosie’s mouth flew open to accept, then, thinking better of it, she clapped it shut. “I can’t,” she said uneasily. “It’s too soon.”

  “Too soon after what?”

  “You mustn’t push me, Josh,” she warned.

  “I wasn’t pushing you,” Josh said. “I was just . . .”

  “Just what?”

  “Nothing. I just wanted to go on a picnic.”

  “And then what?”

  Josh was getting a little flustered. “Well, I don’t know. We could—”

  “End up in your bed? Is that what you have in mind?”

  “Why, no!” Josh exclaimed, although it was, pretty much.

  Dosie took a breath. “I’m not going to let any man define me again, not even you, Josh Thurlow. Oh, don’t look so coy. Why, a woman would have to be crazy not to want your arms around her. But it isn’t going to happen, nosiree. I’m my own woman. I don’t need a man. I’m going to find my way in this world just fine without you.”

  “I didn’t say otherwise,” Josh said. “I guess I’m my own man, too.”

  “Well, there it is, then. We’re both our own people. How charming. I’ve got to go.” Dosie got up and brushed the sand off her jodhpurs.

  Josh stood with her. “Look, I’m sorry. I just thought you’d like to take a ride, see the lighthouse. Nothing more. Honest to Pete.”

  Dosie tucked the binoculars into a saddlebag. “When I was a girl, I always wanted to go to the top of your lighthouse but you’d never take me.” She kept her face hidden, so he couldn’t see the unexpected and aggravating tear that trickled down her cheek, but her voice gave her away. “Well, wild horses couldn’t make me go with you now.”

  Josh resisted the temptation to make a witty comment about the wild horses on Killakeet, mainly because he couldn’t think of one. “I’m sorry” was all he could think to say, though he wasn’t absolutely certain what he was sorry about.

  She showed him her face, her eyes gone puffy, the tear joined by another, both coursing down her cheeks. “Why didn’t you take me back then? What was wrong with me? Tell me. I need to know.”

  Josh scratched up under his cap. “Not a thing, far as I can remember.”

  “If your memory improves, look me up.” She climbed on Genie. A touch of her heels and the mare was off like a shot.

  Josh watched until Dosie had disappeared behind the sand hills, then walked back to the jeep and sat heavily beside the sleeping pelican. With his hands on the steering wheel, Josh stared at nothing for a long minute, then said, with a great deal of enthusiasm, “Now, that’s what I call a woman!” Purdy woke up and spread his wings.

  7

  Doakes Coast Guard Station took up a stretch of the beach next to Whalebone City. It was named in honor of Surfman Phineas Doakes, who had drowned during the rescue attempt of the passengers and crew of the Frances Clayton. The installation, however, was older than its name, having first opened in 1885 in response to a howling storm that had flung three ships, one after the other, onto Bar Shoals. One hundred and twenty-nine passengers and crew had been drowned and had washed up on Killakeet for days afterward. Reacting to the disaster, Congress decided to supplement the lighthouse by putting surfmen on the island.

  A dozen surfmen, all native Killakeeters, were hired by the Lifesaving Service and provided a house on the beach from which to operate. The house was built of pine planks two stories high. A boathouse was at one end of it and a mess deck and a galley in the other. A lookout tower stuck up through its center. For the next thirty-nine years, the Killakeet surfmen lived in the house and kept an eye on the ships coasting by. Their career would include many rescues in their tiny surfboats on storm-shattered seas.

  When engine-powered steel ships replaced most of the wooden sailing vessels along the coast, the days of the surfmen up and down the Outer Banks were numbered. The Lifesaving Service was absorbed by the Coast Guard in 1915, and Doakes was closed nine years later, its surfmen retired. For two years, Doakes was abandoned, but then the Rum War against the Prohibition-era liquor smugglers heated up, and a small detachment of coastguardsmen moved in and kept it open until 1936, when it was closed again. In 1941, with more Coast Guard cutters assigned up and down the Banks to patrol the busy-shipping lanes, the station was reopened once more. Josh was assigned as the commander of the station, which now consisted of the old Surfmen’s House, two small warehouses, a gasoline-tank farm, and a brandspanking-new eighty-three-foot patrol boat.

  The eighty-three-footer had no official name, only a number, 83229. Her crew, however, called her the Maudie Jane and had even stenciled that name on her bow. Maudie Jane Cocker had been the Killakeet schoolma’am until she had drowned. She’d been standing on the beach, enjoying a cup of yaupon tea, when a huge wave had rolled in and plucked her right out to sea. Her body had come ashore on Miracle Point. A wild horse, the old mare named Jezzie, was found standing over the body as if guarding it. Josh thought Maudie Jane’s name was just fine for his boat. The boys all said she was a good teacher, and kind besides. Maybe her spirit would look after them all.

  Fridays were called a Six-Bell Hammock day for the crew of the Maudie Jane, thus allowing them to report to the boat at seven in the morning when most of their fathers and brothers were already at sea. The day was used for washing and sweeping the decks of the eighty-three-footer, polishing her brass, wiping down her ladders, scrubbing her heads, and generally seeing to her upkeep, including what work might be required on her two gasser engines. Occasionally, some light painting might be done, and for that purpose a pallet of cans of navy gray was kept in the warehouse along with all the attendant brushes and sandpaper and red lead required.

  Josh usually did not show until late afternoon on Six-Bell Hammock days and then only for a final inspection. It was Bosun Phimble’s time to be in charge. To get the work done faster, the mothers and wives of the Maudie Janes often turned up, going aboard armed with buckets and brooms and squeegees and mops and sponges. By inspection time, there was no boat more scrubbed and sparkling in the service. Josh always had a hard time finding anything wrong, a matter of face for an inspector. At least Marvin could be counted on to leave some hair in his bunk down by the sonar closet, and Josh would dutifully inscribe such on his sheet and solemnly present it to Bosun Phimble, who would salute and promise to “get it cleaned up before the sun’s down, sir!”

  Winks would be exchanged, and all would go home for the weekend with the Maudie Janes prepared to rise the following Monday morning and be at the boat at the required 6 A.M., ready to get out and patrol and rescue if it came to it.

  Given the ocean they patrolled, it usually did, and sooner rather than later.

  It was on a Tuesday morning in early December when Bobby McClung, a deck crewman, came racing barefoot across the sand, stopped and caught his breath, then reported to Josh. “Skipper, Daddy just got in from night fishing. There’s a Beaufort fishing boat out along the ten-fathom line. Adrift, looks like. He didn’t have enough gas to get over to it.”

  Everybody along the dock was listening. The mother of the Jackson twins called out, “Go save ’em, boys!”

  “OK, Maw!” the twins bawled back.

  Bobby waved to his sweet little mama, who was actually tough as tacks like most Killakeet women, then threw off the lines as Josh ordered the boat off to the rescue. The Maudie Jane was a well-designed patrol boat. She had controls in her wheelhouse and duplicate controls topside on a narrow flying bridge. The “stoop bridge,” as the crew called it, was Josh’s favorite spot. From there, he had a clear view of not only what lay ahead but could take in everything that was happening on deck, too. In just a few seconds, the boat was into the breakers, pushing aside the low waves, spray sent back to spatter the windshield. Leaving Phimble at the wheel, Josh went inside the wheelhouse to have a talk with Stobs.

  Stobs, who was Hook and Winifred Mallory’s son and Willow’s brother, said, “I’m not picking up anything that sounds like a
distress call. Hatteras says there’s some traffic up north of us, a freighter named Walter Terry, asking directions, but that’s it. You want I should use my home brew?”

  “Home brew” was what Stobs called his handmade radio set. It was the only way he could talk to the merchant ships. Military radios were set at a frequency too high to communicate with commercial radio sets.

  “Go ahead and try,” Josh answered. “But likely they don’t have a radio.”

  While Stobs made his calls, Josh went down to the galley to get some coffee. Millie Thompson, the cook, was sitting on one of the bench seats of the mess table. Millie was one of those skinny boys with an Adam’s apple the size of a small gourd. He was also Josh’s cousin, on his mother’s side. He was reading a comic book but quickly put it down and got Josh his coffee. “You want a sandwich, sir?”

  “Not right now,” Josh answered. “You might check with the other boys.”

  “Right away, sir,” Millie answered and went back to his comic book.

  Josh decided to inspect the engine room. It had been a while since he’d looked it over while going full bore. To get to it, he had to first go back up on deck and then aft to the engine room hatch. The roar of twin engines greeted him as he descended into the engine room. Everything was humming right along. Tom Midgette (known as Big) and Troy Guthrie (known as Fisheye) were stripped to their waists, their chests glistening with sweat as they worked with their oilcans and gauges and calipers. At the sight of Josh, they grinned. Big was puckish and short with black, oily hair and a thin mustache. Fisheye was tall, muscular, blond, with a left eye that stayed cocked, thus his nickname. They were good motormen and could take apart their engines and put them together again in three feet of bilge water if it came to it. Most Killakeet boys were good mechanics since they’d grown up fiddling with marine engines.

  Josh gave the engine room boys a nod of approval and headed topside. As soon as he was on deck, he savored the feel of the sea. Josh loved being out on the ocean. As was his habit, he scanned from one end of the horizon to the other. There was a distant freighter out there, just a gray smudge, heading north on the Stream. About a mile away, a Killakeet workboat bounced along between the waves, coming in from a night of fishing. It looked like Pump Padgett’s boat. Pump was Jimmy Padgett’s daddy, Jimmy being designated the sonar operator on board, though he didn’t know the first thing about the machine. Like all the rest of the boys, he’d come aboard without benefit of training, a standard practice for Outer Banks boys. Only Stobs had gone anywhere near a Coast Guard school.