Storm Warriors (3 page)

The only other thing I found, besides the telegraph poles that run the length of the island, was the ruins of the old Etheridge house. Mr. Bowser said Mr. Jesse Etheridge, one of the white Etheridges, used to live in it, but that nobody has tried to fix it up since a northeaster blew most of the roof off some years ago.

When the surfmen came back to the station on August first after their summer break, I took to watching their drills from a sand hill nearby. They did them in the morning: drilling with the surfboat on Tuesday, practicing with the signal flags on Wednesday, breeches-buoy drill on Thursday, and resuscitation of the apparently drowned on Friday. Saturday was general cleaning, Sunday a day of rest except for keeping watch, and some days they had a fire drill. Mondays were used for different things, like having the mules practice pulling the surfboat, overhauling the beach apparatus equipment, or whitewashing the stables. Then, in the afternoons, the man on watch for the day stayed on the lookout deck atop the station, and the rest of the crew went hunting or fishing.

One Friday, I was watching from my usual spot when they started motioning me to come on down from my sand hill. I about froze up, scared that they were mad at me for watching so
often. But then Mr. Etheridge called out, “William says he's tired of being victim”—he pointed at Mr. Irving, the lowest-ranking surfman—“and the men need practice with a child victim, anyway. Come on down here.”

Mr. Etheridge is the kind of man who, if he tells you to do something, you do it. I walked slowly toward the surfmen.

“All you've got to do is start out apparently drowned and end up alive,” said Mr. Wise, grinning. “We'll do the rest.”

“And your ribs'll feel fine after a few days,” said Mr. Irving.

I raised my eyebrows. My ribs? But I didn't have time to start worrying, because all of a sudden the men went into action, and instead of working on the surfboat or the breeches buoy, they started working on
me
.

They pushed me down in the sand on my back. “He's not breathing,” someone cried. “Begin resuscitation! Wipe dry the mouth and nostrils!”

I was about to yell that I was breathing just fine, but somebody stuck a dry rag in my mouth and then wiped my nose with it, and I was too surprised to yell anything. They about tore the buttons off my shirt to open it up and slapped me on the chest three times
hard
.

“Ow!” I cried.

“There's no response, proceed to step two!” someone shouted.

Since when is “Ow” not a response? I wondered. They pried my mouth open and stuck a piece of cork between my teeth.

“What's this for?” I tried to ask, but it came out sounding like “Huh-ih-haw?” and nobody answered me.

They rolled me onto my stomach over top of a bundled-up blanket, and somebody shoved against my back so hard the blanket about squashed my stomach up flat against my backbone.

“He's got a lot of seawater running out his mouth. Keep pushing!” they shouted.

I could have told them that was drool, but I didn't want to try talking again with the cork between my teeth.

After pushing on my back a few more times, somebody said the seawater was done running out, and they rolled me onto my back again. Three of them knelt around me—Mr. Pugh, Mr. Wise, and Mr. Bowser. “We've got to move to step three,” said Mr. Wise, looking worried, “or we'll lose him for sure.”

I winced. Step three was probably even worse than steps one and two.

Mr. Pugh took out the cork, then used a handkerchief to grab my tongue and hold it out the corner of my mouth. Mr. Bowser held my arms up over my head, and Mr. Wise commenced to push me below the ribs like he was trying to squeeze the entire contents of my chest out through the top of my head.

“One, two, three,” they all counted while Mr. Wise pushed. Then, “One, two, three,” they said as he waited between pushes.

They counted and pushed and counted and pushed until Mr. Bowser said, “I think he's starting to breathe!”

I could have breathed a whole lot better if they'd have taken that handkerchief off my tongue and stopped mashing my chest, but I guess being the victim means you have to try and breathe
despite
being resuscitated.

Mr. Wise stopped pushing. “He's breathing on his own!” he announced.

Mr. Bowser let go my arms, Mr. Pugh let go my tongue, and everybody cheered.

“You see? We saved you,” said Mr. Irving.

I sat up and touched my sore ribs. “That being resuscitated seems mostly as bad as drowning,” I said.

They all laughed.

After that day, the surfmen treated me like I was one of their own nephews—teasing me about being so skinny, calling me over to help tote water to the stables, sending me to tell Daddy and Grandpa they should come to the station house to play cards after supper. And it only took three days for my ribs to stop hurting.

September seemed to bring in even more mosquitoes, stinging yellow flies, and sand fleas. But in October I stopped itching quite so much, and the figs on the bush in front of the station got ripe and were about the best thing I'd ever tasted.

Some days I helped Daddy in the fishing skiff, and some days Grandpa and I took handlines and fished in the ocean, standing at the edge with waves washing over our legs. Some days I helped
the surfmen, especially when the supply boat came in with their meat, canned goods, and other supplies and it all had to be unloaded. And some days I took one of Daddy's old copies of the
Fisherman and Farmer
newspaper and sat with my back propped up against the outside of the smokehouse to read. On those days I usually missed Roanoke Island and school and tried to guess what William and Floyd were doing. I wondered if Mamma would be disappointed that I wasn't in school anymore. She used to say it was “a god-awful shame” how many children, both black and white, left school and started working at age ten and hardly even learned to read. Mamma taught me how to read even before I started school, and Miss Ella Midgett, my teacher on Roanoke Island, said I was the best reader in the whole class. At least I went to school until I turned eleven.

One afternoon in early November, I went to the station to see if there was anything interesting going on. The sky was blue as Mamma's china, and a strong northeast wind blew spray off the tops of the waves and made them glitter in the sunshine. The waves went every which way because of the wind and rumbled loud as a railroad train as they crashed onshore.

At first I thought it was a pelican bobbing in the rough surf. Then I let out a yelp, because I saw that it was a man's head.

I ran, shouting, to the station. “Mr. Etheridge! Mr. Bowser! Come quickly, someone is drowning!” I yelled.

Mr. Bowser came out of the stables, a curry brush in his hand.
“You're talking nonsense, boy,” he said. “Don't you think the man on watch would see a drowning from up on the lookout deck well before you could see it standing down here on those short little stubby legs of yours?”

“But I
saw
it!” I insisted. “There's someone in the surf!” I didn't care how ridiculous he thought I was being. I grabbed his arm and dragged him toward the ocean.

Mr. Bowser squinted in the bright sunlight out at the waves and started to laugh. “I tell you one thing, boy, and don't you forget it. You ever see
that
nappy head floating in the ocean, you
know
he's not drowned. That's Theodore Meekins, and he can outswim any man—or fish, I reckon. He's probably out there racing the dolphins right now.”

He turned to go back to the stables, and I stared with my mouth open as Mr. Meekins dove under a towering wave. The wave broke and sent spray flying into the sky. On the other side of the trough, there was Mr. Meekins, raising his arms to dive under again.

As I watched, I felt the power of it—the sea trying to drown Mr. Meekins and him fighting it. We hadn't been able to fight the Klan—they'd won and scared us into leaving our home. And we hadn't been able to fight the disease Mamma got. It won and took Mamma away from us. But people called the surfmen “heroes of the surf” and “storm warriors,” because they fought the sea, wind, and storms, and brought sailors back safely. Over and
over again, they won the battle. I wanted to fight battles like that—and win.

When Mr. Meekins came up onshore, with beads of water gleaming on his broad chest and his cutoff breeches dripping onto the sand, I asked if he would teach me to swim in the waves like that. He looked me up and down, like maybe I was still too skinny and puny to win in a battle against the ocean. “Why don't you eat plenty of red drum for Thanksgiving and lots of fig pudding at Christmas,” he said. “And when the water starts to warm up again in spring, we'll see what we can do.”

I grinned real big.

At both Thanksgiving and Christmas, which we spent with Mamma's cousins on Roanoke Island, everyone commented on what a good appetite I had.

Then, on December 27, when the
Emma C. Cotton
ran aground and I helped with the rescue of the seven-man crew, I felt like I'd fought in a battle and won.

A couple of days after the
Emma C. Cotton
wrecked, we'd run out of cornmeal and coal, so it was time for us to go to the town of Manteo on Roanoke Island for supplies.

I lowered the bucket into our rain barrel and hit ice. I would have asked Daddy and Grandpa to help me move it inside, but they were busy arguing, and I figured the sun would melt it by the time we got back from Roanoke Island anyway. The two carp we'd put in it to keep it clean and eat the wigglers in summer didn't seem to mind. They just swam around under the ice like it was any other day.

“Come on now. Just one extra dollar is all I'm asking for,” I heard Grandpa insisting.

“That's what I'm telling you. None of them are
extra,
” Daddy shot back.

“You giving up on your poor mother so fast? How's she going to find us here if we don't let her know?”

“Fast? So
fast
?” Daddy's voice rose in frustration. “It's been thirty-five years!” Then, more gently, he said, “Don't you think it's time to let it rest, Papa?”

There was silence from inside. Then, “No. I'm not ready to give up. And all I want is one dollar.”

Daddy didn't say anything, but I knew he was handing Grandpa a dollar bill and giving him a look like he wished he hadn't.

I burst into the cabin. “I can't wash because the water's frozen, so I'm ready to go.”

The sun had just peeked up into a cloudless sky. The brisk southwest wind would make it easy for us to sail to Roanoke Island and back in one day, as long as it stayed fresh. We'd spent the two days before hunting, and had hung about thirty ruddy ducks and Canada geese on the outside of the cabin to cool overnight. These Daddy would trade at Griffin, Sample & Company General Store for the things we needed: coal and wood, cornmeal and sweet potatoes, shot and powder for the shotgun, and new line for repairing the fishing nets.

Daddy inspected my face and hands. “Frozen water, huh?”

I nodded.

He took the rag off the nail in the kitchen and stuffed it in his pocket. I hadn't escaped washing so easily. “Let's go, then,” he said.

We carried the birds to the sound side of the island, where the skiff was moored, and loaded them into the boat. Daddy dipped a corner of the rag into the frigid sound water and handed it to me. It made my face, neck, and hands feel like ice—salty ice. Daddy and Grandpa splashed water on their own faces, and I shivered watching them.

We hoisted our sails, and the wind filled them. The boat skimmed across the Pamlico Sound, slapping the chop and making me feel like I was flying. When Daddy called, “Coming about,” we tacked to the north, and the low green bumps of the trees on Roanoke Island came into view.

As we sailed closer, I remembered how Roanoke Island used to seem so small. Compared to Elizabeth City, Manteo had seemed lonely, with its few weather-beaten houses and stunted trees. But now, after the isolation of Pea Island, Manteo felt like a bustling town.

We sailed into Shallowbag Bay and docked in Manteo, then walked down the sandy street toward Griffin, Sample & Company. We skirted Mr. Ward's oxcart and waved to him as best we could while carrying all those dead birds. We saw a few other folks we'd gotten to know in the time we'd lived there and said hello. Mrs. Leary, the teacher from the white school, stopped and asked us how we were faring. We politely said, “Fine.”

Once the birds were delivered, Grandpa and I left Daddy to
haggle over price with Mr. Griffin, and we went to the post office. Grandpa slapped three pennies down on the counter.

“Mr. Brothers, I need a sheet of writing paper, an envelope, and postage,” he told the postman.

“Morning, Ulysses,” Mr. Brothers said, smiling. “And I suppose Nathan will want to borrow my pen and ink as well?”

We both nodded.

Two white women came in, and Grandpa and I waited while Mr. Brothers took care of them first. When finally the office was empty, Mr. Brothers brought me the paper, envelope, pen, and ink. Grandpa dictated as I wrote:

“Please put this advertisement in your newspaper: ‘My dearest Dahlia. We have moved to Pea Island on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. To find us, inquire at the Pea Island Life-Saving Station. We anxiously await your return. Your loving husband, son, and grandson, Ulysses, George, and Nathan Williams.’ ”

I addressed the envelope to the
Missionary Record
in Raleigh, North Carolina, and stuck the letter and Grandpa's dollar inside. We said good day to Mr. Brothers and went outside into the cold sunshine.

“Did I ever tell you about my Saturday nights with your Grandma Dahlia?” Grandpa asked.

“No, I don't believe you have,” I said. We both knew that was a lie—I'd heard the story lots of times—but I did want to hear it again.

Grandpa's eyes lit up, the way they always did when he told that story. We leaned against a hitching post, and Grandpa tipped his head back, remembering. “Lord, she was a beauty, your grandma. Long, graceful legs like a doe, and lips soft like roses. She smelled like roses, too, on account of her mistress—Mistress Callie they called her—said her husband had given her more rose water than she could use up before she died, so she gave a bottle of it to my Dahlia. Saturday nights she'd come walking from Mistress Callie's farm—wasn't but about two miles away— and I could smell those roses even before I could see her. I'd quick pump some water and wash up, trying to smell a little better myself, you know, after working in the fields all day.” He laughed and shook his head. “I'd shout to my kinfolk to get on out of our cabin, saying ‘Me and my Dahlia, we gonna have us a time!’” He lifted his face to the sun and let it shine on his closed eyes. The lines on his cheeks and forehead smoothed out as he drifted in his memory back to the past. “And Lord, we did have us a time, too,” he said softly. Then, suddenly, he seemed to startle into the present. He rubbed the gray stubble of his beard. “What's all this your daddy's trying to tell me, about how folks up and started new families when they got sold away, and forgot about their old families? Your grandma would never do that! I've never even looked at another woman since she's been gone— well, hardly. And I know she's coming back. I
know
it. I can feel it in my bones.”