Storm Warriors (12 page)

I finished my water and was about to ask for another cup when Mr. Forbes marched over to the window and peered out. “Son of a—” He glanced at me. “That rascal of a salesman is back. Two days into the active season, and he's arriving at suppertime again.” He stomped back to his chopping block and stabbed his cleaving knife in so that it stood straight up. “It's enough that he comes by here on payday with tobacco and eyeglasses and anything else he can get the men to spend their money on before they can take it home to their families. But now he wants me to feed him every other day as well!” His face was red and his eyes flashed. “Quick, Nathan, fill a pot with water!”

I didn't ask why, just pulled a big stewpot down from its hook, put it in the sink, and pumped water into it as fast as I could. Mr. Forbes stuffed the vegetables we'd already chopped into a sack and shoved it in the cupboard.

Together we lifted the stewpot onto the stove, and with a sly grin, Mr. Forbes threw in one unpeeled sweet potato and the dead loon. Then he covered the pot and sat down, ready to greet our guest.

There was a knock at the door. A short, stubby white man stuck his head in. “I was passing through your neighborhood. Wanted to see if you need anything,” he said cheerily. He took off his hat and wiped perspiration from his bald head. “I have an excellent new tonic, guaranteed to cure worms, prevent flatulence, and grow hair.”

“Can't say that I need any of that,” said Mr. Forbes. “But it's just about suppertime. You will eat with us, won't you?”

The man smiled broadly. “I was just about to say how this heat sure makes a body hungry.”

Mr. Forbes got up to stir the “stew,” and the salesman followed him greedily. “Went hunting this afternoon,” said Mr. Forbes as he swished the unplucked loon around in the water.

The salesman stared first into the pot, then at Mr. Forbes, then at me. I kept a poker face.

“I—uh.” The salesman cleared his throat. “I think I have a— uh—an engagement this evening. Yes, that's right, I have an engagement at the hotel at Nags Head.”

Mr. Forbes nodded. “We won't keep you, then. You'd best sail back across the inlet before the tide goes out.”

The salesman hurried out the door. When he was safely gone, Mr. Forbes and I collapsed with laughter.

As I walked home down the beach, with the evening sunlight turning gold on the waves, I smiled to myself. Tonight I could visit the men at the Pea Island station, and this time I would be the one with a story to tell. And I hoped that Grandpa would feel well enough to come listen.

Grandpa felt better for a few days, and we all figured the quinine powder had healed him up just fine. He even came out with me to pick the first melon from our garden. He balanced it on a piece of salvage board, raised up a cleaving knife and brought it down hard. The melon fell open, dripping juice onto the board.

“Look at that,” Grandpa said. “Sweet as honey.”

He chopped it into crescent moon slices, and we slurped the ripe fruit.

“Grandpa, I think this garden makes you almost a farmer,” I said.

He grinned and wiped melon juice off his chin with the back of his hand. “It does make me happy, at any rate,” he said.

He walked me along the row of tomatoes and showed me how to pinch off the sucker vines so the plant would have more
strength to put into making big tomatoes. He picked a fat red one and handed it to me to eat.

“Aren't we going to save anything for supper?” I asked.

“Not if you keep eating everything,” he said.

We both laughed.

Two days later, the fever grabbed him again and threw him down in bed.

Daddy had fish to take to Manteo, so it was my job to stay with Grandpa. I sat with him, bringing him drinks of water, changing the cool rag on his forehead so his head wouldn't ache so much, and telling him stories. I told him about the salesman and the loon at least six times, and each time I made it more exciting. I said the salesman jumped so high in the air when he saw that loon that he nearly bumped his head on the ceiling, then he yelped like a puppy and ran out of there without even grabbing his hat. I was trying anything to help Grandpa feel better, and I think it worked, because he said, “Nathan, you're a fine storyteller.”

At noon I tried to get Grandpa to eat something. He had one bite of pan bread but refused to eat any more and said he just wanted to sleep.

I tried to sit up with him while he slept, but the afternoon heat made me drowsy. The square of sunshine that filtered in through the window crept slowly from the floor to the wall as the sun moved, and a light breeze brushed my face. Finally, I crossed
my arms on the side of the bed, put my head down, and fell asleep.

I don't think it was Grandpa's voice that woke me. I think it was the prickly feeling on the back of my neck, like someone's cool hand had brushed me there. Then I heard Grandpa talking.

“There you are, my love. I knew you'd come find us,” he was saying, his voice soft with affection.

My eyes sprung open, and I searched the room. Grandpa had pushed the rag off his head and was propped up a little. He was looking toward the foot of the bed, his face glowing with joy. We were alone in the room.

“I'm right here, Grandpa.” I touched his arm. “I didn't go anywhere.”

“I know you are, boy,” he said, still not looking at me but staring peacefully at a place at the foot of the bed.

I blinked, thinking I should be seeing something there, too. But there was nothing but the iron bed frame with its peeling white paint, and beyond that, Daddy's shotgun leaned up against the wall and Grandpa's hat hung on a nail. I glanced back at Grandpa. A chill of fear rattled my backbone. “Grandpa,” I whispered, “what are you seeing?”

“Nathan …” He patted my cheek, then gave me a little shove. “Don't sit there like nobody taught you any manners. Go give your Grandma Dahlia a hug. She's come a long way to find us.”

I swallowed hard and stared at Grandpa. “There's no one there,” I said, shaking my head slightly.

“I knew you'd find us,” Grandpa said. His voice sounded strangely weak. “Didn't you always say she would, Nathan? Well, you were right.” He lay back down, the strength seeming to flow out of him like water out of a burlap sack. “I knew you'd find us,” he said again, softly. “Nathan, go tell your daddy his mamma has finally come home.” Then the joy on his face relaxed into blankness, and his eyes froze in a stare at the ceiling.

I jumped up. “Grandpa!” I cried. I shook him hard. His mouth dropped open, and a stream of drool oozed out the side. “Grandpa!” I screamed it and pounded on his chest. His face wouldn't change. His eyes wouldn't blink.

My hands trembled. “Grandpa, come back!” I cried. I touched his neck and felt the stillness there. No breath. No heartbeat. I let the tears run down my cheeks and drip onto his shirt.

“You promised,” I whispered, “that I'd be grown before you let us bury you.”

The light in the room faded with the sunset. Daddy would be at our boat mooring soon. I stood and braced myself to take him the news.

That was when it happened. As I brushed past the foot of Grandpa's bed on my way out the door, I breathed in the sweet, rich scent of roses.

Daddy punched the mooring pole when I told him.

“I knew it,” he cried. “I should have made him go that very first morning—tied him up and dragged him there if I had to.” He kicked the hull of the skiff. “Oh God—I waited too long.” He shut his eyes tight and pressed his fingers into his brow. “And I brought him out here to live, where there's no colored doctor. If we'd been in Elizabeth City, Doc Moore would have come to the house.” His voice cracked with the pain of it, and his shoulders slumped. The strong, hard mask was gone.

“Daddy?” I said it timidly and reached out my arms.

He folded me into a hug. We both cried, dripping tears onto each other's shoulders. Mosquitoes buzzed around our heads.

After a time, Daddy straightened his back and dried his face on his sleeve. “Help me with these nets,” he said. “And we've got
work to do at home.” We pulled the nets out of the skiff and carried them to the cabin.

It was a terrible lonely feeling, washing Grandpa's body and dressing him in his best clothes. It felt like somebody had tied an anchor weight to my chest and it was hanging there, heavy and sad. Daddy and I didn't talk much, just did what had to be done.

We gave Grandpa a Pea Island burial, the way the surfmen did when sailors died far from home. The surfmen stood with Daddy and me in a circle around Grandpa's coffin while Mr. Etheridge said a few words about Grandpa and about the afterlife. Then we buried him in the sand under a quiet stand of pines.

I left the pine grove with everyone else. Mr. Irving and Mr. Wescott had gotten together and cooked up a peach cobbler, and they invited us to the station to eat it. The surfmen all tried to distract us from being sad, with food and talk, the way folks always do at funerals. I could see in Daddy's eyes that it wasn't working very well. It wasn't working for me, either, so I slipped off to the pine grove and sat down near the mound of sand that was Grandpa's very own piece of the earth. I closed my eyes and listened to the rolling of the waves in the distance and the calling of seabirds.

“I wish you'd gotten what you wanted, Grandpa,” I said. “A real farm, and Grandma Dahlia to work it with you.”

A fox darted past and startled me. I scrambled to my feet, suddenly uneasy to be in the woods by myself with a corpse, even
if it was only Grandpa. “I'll say what I came to say real quick, Grandpa,” I said out loud. “That
somebody
in this family ought to get what they want, and William and Floyd and Daddy are all going to have a big surprise, because I
am
going to be a surfman.” Then I took off running and didn't stop until I'd reached the station house.

The rest of August gave us hot, sunny days and warm, starry nights. My bed felt empty, like I was always waiting for someone to nudge me and grumble that I was taking up too much room or yank the covers just as I was getting comfortable. No one did. I wanted to tell Daddy that we had too many holes in our family now, and maybe we should move back to where we had some kin. But I didn't.

The surfmen tried to help me feel better. Mr. Etheridge showed me his logbook, and how he filled it in every day with information about the weather, surf, and wind, who was on watch during the day, and who walked the patrols at night. He showed me the duty roster, with the surfmen's names and what number position they held:

A northeaster brought in September, and the heat finally broke. On September 29, we heard over the telegraph lines from Washington, D.C., that a hurricane was headed toward the mid-Atlantic and New England coast. The hurricane missed us, but we got a storm strong enough to knock out the telephone and telegraph wires to the station. The telephone lineman came, and Daddy and the surfmen and I helped him find the breaks, testing the wires almost the whole length of the island.

On October 4, we got a wire that said a northeaster was headed our way. Mr. Meekins said this was just the beginning of the stormy season. Daddy and I bridled off our fishing skiff the way we always did before a big storm so she wouldn't be destroyed by the rising water and wind. We waded into the sound and made sure our four mooring poles were pounded in good and deep. They were in four directions out from the boat, with the boat right in the center of them. We tethered the skiff to the poles with four long ropes. That would hold her firmly, let her rise up if the water rose, and keep her from pulling too hard on any one rope.

On October 8, a storm out at sea gave us such a high, rough tide that we had to move all the station's firewood to higher ground to keep it from being washed away.

On October 9, a northeast gale started in the afternoon and blew all night. It rattled the wall boards of our cabin and made the fish-oil lamp in the kitchen swing like a ghost hand was pushing it.

On October 10, the northeaster got stronger and continued to blow all day. It made my ears ring and tired me out with its howling and shaking. Daddy and I trudged through the rain and wind to the station to get away from our own lonely cabin for a while. Mr. Etheridge said if the storm got any worse, we should come stay with them before we got blown away.

In the morning on October 11, Daddy told me to bundle up some dry clothes; we were going to stay at the Pea Island station. We put on our heavy rain slickers and rolled up our breeches. Rain blew sideways. The tide had washed clear up to our garden fence. Sea foam scuttled across our yard and caught in the brush like tufts of gray cotton. I closed my eyes against the blowing sand and felt its grit under my eyelids.

Inside the station house, we slammed shut the doors against the wind. Mr. Meekins said he'd never even seen the man from Oregon Inlet he was supposed to meet on patrol last night. “Must be the overwashing tide,” he said. “They've got less of a spit of land up there—they might well be underwater by now.”

The storm threw sand and rain against the shutters like handfuls of pebbles. With each gust the station shivered and swayed, and the surf, already crashing over the boat ramp, rumbled in my ears like thunder.

Mr. Etheridge canceled the evening and night patrols. There was no beach left to patrol, only rolling ocean from sea side to sound side. The lookout deck patrol would have to be enough, he said.

We opened cans of peaches for supper. No one wanted to venture through the waves to the cookhouse. As we sat eating, a loud pounding sounded on the double doors at the end of the station. I looked up. Who would be out in this raging storm?

There was a frozen moment as the surfmen looked at each other and waited. The pounding came again, water splashed in between the doors, and in an instant everyone was on their feet. “Take life preservers!” Mr. Etheridge shouted.

“Hoist the chairs!” someone else cried, and “Get those doors
open
!”