by Sarah Sundin
The might? Arch ducked some flapping laundry. The few warships in eastern ports were officially assigned to convoy escort across the North Atlantic to England, and the number and quality of ships assigned to coastal patrol would make Hitler laugh. Nowhere near enough to institute coastal convoys.
Despite the threat, despite the dire need at sea, Arch longed to sit next to an amber-haired pharmacist in a green dress.
She should always wear green. It brought out the color in her hazel eyes and made her hair glow. Granted, he’d like her in mousy gray. So lively and genuine, a woman who didn’t need him or even want him. Yet sometimes he saw a flash of fear and insecurity. Perhaps someday she wouldn’t mind a man to stand by her side, a man to lean on.
A group of sailors stood by the davits of the whaleboat, inspecting the tackle, the system of lines and pulleys that lowered the boat to the sea.
“I tell you, boys. It’s only a matter of time.” Seaman Winters ran his hand along a line. “It’ll be worse than the seas off Iceland.”
“I heard over eighty men went down with the Cyclops. And what are we doing? We’re swimming laps.”
“Yeah, and did you see the shore lit up like Christmas last night? Why don’t they order a blackout, huh?”
“The Nazis will turn this shore into a shooting gallery, and we ain’t got nothing to shoot back with.”
Arch winced. While he agreed with every word, grumbling was bad for morale. He stepped forward.
“Say, fellas.” Warren Palonsky scowled and raised his hands as if brandishing a tommy gun. “You wanna see a shooting gallery? I’ll show you a shooting gallery.” His voice managed to mix Buckner with Bogart, and he sprayed imaginary bullets out to sea.
The men laughed and whooped, and Arch smiled. Palonsky always lightened the mood.
“What’s going on here?” Lieutenant Odom strode over in his overcoat with his own scowl in place. “Pipe down and do your duties.”
The men snapped to attention. “Aye aye, sir.”
Odom glanced Arch’s way. “Mr. Vandenberg. You were about to tell them the same thing, were you not?”
Arch gave him a noncommittal smile. “May I have a word with you, Mr. Odom?”
“Very well.” He followed Arch to a quieter section of the deck. “Yes?”
“Just so you know, that was the tail end of that exchange. The men were grumbling, and Palonsky wanted to lift their spirits.”
Odom shifted his jaw to one side. “They were goofing off.”
“Only for a minute, sir. The men are on edge. They’ve served on convoy duty. They’ve seen ships go down, bodies in the water. Some of them rescued the survivors of the Reuben James and the Atwood. Some of them were on those ships. They’re nervous, and Palonsky took their minds off the danger.”
“Maybe. But he also took their minds off their work.”
“I’ll talk to him, sir.”
“Good.” Odom departed.
Arch huffed. How did the man get through the Naval Academy without a sense of humor?
“Palonsky?” He waved over the seaman.
“Yes, sir?” The sailor stood rigidly at attention.
“At ease. You have some comedic skills.”
He shrugged. “Trying to boost morale, sir. The men are wound tight, and Buck—” His gray-blue eyes went wide.
“Please speak freely.” Arch angled his shoulders toward Palonsky. “This is confidential.”
Palonsky’s mouth worked, and his gaze darted around. “It’s just . . . Captain Buckner and Mr. Odom are hard men, sir. The boys can’t work like this. They’ll snap, now that we’re at war.”
“I know. However, the comedy needs restraint. The purpose is to aid the men in their duties, not to interfere, correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So why don’t we confine the outright comic routines to quarters and the mess? When you’re at light duties, perhaps a few jokes.”
A spark of mischief lit. “Want me to run the scripts past you first, sir?”
Oh boy. Arch would certainly be the subject of the next comic routine. He smiled and clapped the man on the shoulder. “Not necessary. I trust you. Carry on.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Palonsky returned to the tackle.
The alarm clanged. General quarters!
Arch’s heart careened into his throat, his knees bent, hands splayed wide, braced for impact.
“All hands to battle stations.”
Dear Lord, a U-boat. Arch knew what to do, where to go, but he froze, braced, immobile, while men scurried to their stations.
“Lord, help me.” He broke free, stumbled forward. “I’m not below decks. Not trapped.”
Before him, in the doorway to the bridge superstructure, Mr. Odom talked to the executive officer, Lt. Ted Hayes. Odom beckoned to Arch.
He worked his way to them, pulling himself together. “What’s going on? Sound contact?”
“Message from Newport. A Navy patrol plane reported a sunken tanker sixty miles southeast of Montauk Light.”
“U-boat.” Arch swallowed hard. “We’re chasing it.”
“No, we’re searching for survivors. A lifeboat and a raft were spotted.”
“Then we’re chasing—”
“No.” Odom’s face scrunched up as if he’d eaten something sour. “Those are not our orders. Our orders are to rescue survivors.”
“It’s stupid.” Hayes crossed thick arms. “This is a destroyer. Designed to destroy U-boats. But we’ll be good little boys and do as we’re told.”
“Better hope that U-boat crosses our path. Then we can sink it,” Odom said.
“Yes.” Arch put false cheer into his voice. “Better hope.”
By the time Arch reached the quarterdeck, Chief Boatswain’s Mate Ralph Lynch had gathered the men in the damage control repair party—a machinist’s mate, a gun captain, a talker, and repairmen for machinery, electrical, and structural integrity.
Arch briefed them on the situation. Although the Ettinger was performing a rescue, with a U-boat in the vicinity she had to be ready for combat.
The crew set Condition One, closing and dogging hatches and doors and preparing tools, first-aid supplies, and firefighting equipment.
A few minutes of rushed activity. Then watching and waiting. Arch scoured the horizon through binoculars. A periscope, a wake, a lifeboat, a signal flare, a column of smoke, oil on the surface—anything to guide them. Deep in the hull below, the sonar crew would be monitoring for a submerged submarine.
Arch’s vision through the binoculars blurred. Stupid shaking hands. He flexed and clenched his hands, over and over, as if he only wanted to warm them.
An hour passed. The stewards brought up sandwiches and coffee from the mess. While the communication, navigation, and propulsion divisions would be humming with activity, the deck gang and the gunners watched. Waited. No opportunity to act. No opportunity to relax.
“Ahoy!” a lookout cried from the signal bridge, pointing to port.
Arch spun and pressed the binoculars to his eyes. A lifeboat. Thank you, God. Not a sub.
“Away fire and rescue party,” sounded over the loudspeaker, and the destroyer slowed, the familiar pitch of engines telegraphing the precise speed to Arch.
The rescue party gathered by the whaleboat, including Mr. Odom and the ship’s medic, Pharmacist’s Mate Parnell Lloyd. The whaleboat had already been loaded with blankets, first-aid supplies, and rum.
Arch returned to his station. U-boats sometimes lingered near their victims to prey on rescue ships. They couldn’t lower their guard.
In the lifeboat, hands waved above blond heads.
“Lower the cargo nets,” Arch ordered the sailors by the rails. “Prepare to aid the survivors.”
They heaved the nets over the side, then tossed lines to the lifeboat to help them heave to.
Arch grasped the lifeline. Twenty-four survivors, it looked like, if they’d sit still long enough for him to count. But they waved and cheered and ca
lled out in a Scandinavian language. “Anyone speak English?” he shouted.
“Ja! I do.” A stout middle-aged man pulled on the line. “Takk. Tusen takk. Thank you.”
Arch ordered three sailors to climb down the net and assist the survivors. “What happened? Where are you from?”
“The Panamanian tanker Norness. But we are norsk.”
Arch addressed the talker behind him. “Call the bridge. Find out if anyone on board speaks Norwegian.” He turned back to the survivors working their way up the net. “What happened?”
A long string of Norwegian hit his ears, and it wasn’t happy. “U-boat. Three torpedoes.”
Arch glanced out over the waves, straining to see the enemy. “How many men?”
“Forty. Here we are twenty-four.”
“Mr. Vandenberg, sir?” the talker called. “Captain got word from New Bedford. A fishing boat picked up nine survivors. Still one raft unaccounted for.”
“Thank you.” Seven more to find. He grasped a hand and heaved a man onto the deck.
“Takk. Takk.” A young man in nothing but an undershirt and shorts shivered hard.
Two crewmen wrapped the survivor in a blanket and poured rum down his throat.
Arch shuddered. Not even two months earlier he’d been the waterlogged flotsam wrapped in blankets and soaked in rum.
He dragged another man on board, the English speaker, splattered head to toe in black oil. Someone tossed Arch a blanket, and he flung it around the man’s trembling shoulders. “You’re cold.”
“We are from Norge. We are not cold.” The man’s blue lips broke into a quaking grin.
Arch chuckled. “When were you sunk? How long were you in the lifeboat?”
The Norwegian downed the rum a sailor offered him and wiped his mouth. “First torpedo at 0130.”
Arch yanked up his coat sleeve to see his wristwatch. It was 1330. Twelve hours. Thank goodness the men of the Atwood had been rescued immediately. Destroyers only had two whaleboats, and the life rafts consisted of a rubber ring with netting in the center, useless in frigid waters.
“You are cold?” The Norwegian sailor hunkered in the blanket.
“Me? No.”
“You . . . you . . .” He held out one hand and wiggled it.
Arch shook. Yes, his hands shook. He forced a smile. “Maybe a little cold. Let’s get you somewhere warmer.”
A sailor escorted the man below, and Arch hauled another survivor to safety. Arch had survived too. He was safe. But when would he be free?
8
Boston
Monday, January 19, 1942
A man with thinning gray hair and a droopy mustache handed Lillian a prescription. “Mr. Dixon’s never had a clerk at the counter before.”
A common misconception, despite her white coat. “I’m actually a pharmacist.”
“But you’re a . . .” His nose wrinkled. “Girl.”
“Yes, and a pharmacist too.” She hefted up her sweetest smile, one her twin sister Lucy might wear, and examined the prescription for digitalis. “Everything looks in order.”
Gray eyebrows drew together. “It’s for my heart. I’d rather have a real pharmacist fill it.”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Barnes,” Mr. Dixon called from the back, where he was compounding an ointment. “She does a fair enough job. Would I hire an incompetent?”
Mr. Barnes’s face relaxed. “Of course not.”
“I’ll have this ready in ten minutes, sir.” Lillian typed out the prescription label. That was the closest Mr. Dixon had come to a compliment in the last two weeks, and Lillian smiled. She’d win him over.
After she finished the label, Lillian shook a few dozen digitalis tablets onto the counting tray, counted them by fives into the collecting chute, poured the extra back into the bulk bottle, then poured thirty tablets into an amber glass vial. She gummed the back of the label and applied it to the bottle, nice and neat.
“Mr. Fenwick, your medication is ready.” Mr. Dixon stood at the counter with an ointment jar. “Ah, good morning, Mrs. Harrison. I’ll take your prescription in a minute.”
“Thank you, Mr. Dixon.”
At the sound of her neighbor’s voice, Lillian peeked around the wall. “Hi, Mrs. Harrison.”
“There you are, sweet girl. I tell you, Cyrus, you’re blessed to have this young lady. Smart as a whip.”
Mr. Dixon grunted and peered around. “Mr. Fenwick?”
“Cyrus, when you’re done, would you please help me find an antacid?” Mrs. Harrison tapped her glasses. “I can’t seem to read the labels.”
“May I help her?” Lillian gave the vial of digitalis to her boss. “Mr. Barnes would prefer if you dispensed this to him, and it’s ready.”
Mr. Dixon narrowed his eyes at Lillian’s prosthesis and heaved a sigh. “I suppose you’ll need to go out front sometime.”
“Thank you, sir.” She was making progress today, and she darted out the door before he could change his mind. If only calf-length dresses were fashionable as they were when she was in high school. The knee-length hemlines in vogue didn’t hide the top of her prosthesis or the hinged steel bars connecting it to the leather strap around her thigh.
Mrs. Harrison handed Mr. Dixon her prescription, asked for Albert to deliver it, and led Lillian to the antacid section. “It’s too dark in here for my old eyes.”
Lillian pulled a bottle of calcium carbonate off the shelf and lowered her voice. “It’s also too dark in here for my young eyes. Makes the whole store look dingy and old-fashioned too.”
“You should tell Mr. Dixon.”
“I don’t dare. He doesn’t like having a lady pharmacist, especially . . .” She shook her head. Best not to talk of that.
Mrs. Harrison squinted at the shelves. “Maybe if your suggestions brought in customers, he’d see your worth. I’ve known Cyrus for years. Bedrock of the community, that man, but he does like money.”
Lillian’s mouth twitched. “Yes, he does.”
“I only shop here because it’s on the way home from the City Square station, and I trust Cyrus. But when I just want to do some shopping, I go to Morton’s on Winthrop Square. So bright and modern.”
Lillian rotated the bottle in her hand. Perhaps that would be the best tack to take.
After Mrs. Harrison selected her antacid, she headed to the front cash register with her purchase, and Lillian returned to the prescription area.
Mr. Dixon was mixing an elixir. “Did you help her?”
“Yes.” Lillian took the bulk bottles back to the shelves. “She has a hard time reading the labels because it isn’t bright enough in here. We wondered if we could improve the lighting. It would increase sales.”
“I doubt that. It would only increase my electric bill.”
Lillian set the bottles on the shelf and put on her cheeriest voice. “I think it would be worth it. A bright store is so inviting, especially on a rainy day like today. And I’m sure Mrs. Harrison isn’t alone in her difficulties, but most people are too proud to ask for help. They’ll just go to another store.”
“I’ve never had complaints. My father established this store in 1878. It’s a Charlestown institution, and our customers are loyal. Extra lightbulbs? Do you want me to take that out of your salary, young lady?”
Not a bad idea. Perhaps they could make a deal where she swallowed the cost, and if sales increased, she could earn back her salary. “I wouldn’t mind.”
“Foolish naïveté of youth.” He poured liquid from a graduated cylinder into a glass bottle. “A customer’s coming. Man the counter, please.”
“Yes, sir.” She sighed, then smiled for the patient, a light-haired man in his thirties. “Good morning. How may I help you?”
“I need this filled. Have it delivered, please.”
Lillian frowned at the prescription for Harvey Jones for three hundred tablets of phenobarbital. Goodness, they received lots of prescriptions for large quantities of phenobarbital, all from Dr. Maynard Kane.
What she’d seen as an unusually high inventory of the sedative seemed to be the store’s normal usage.
“Is something wrong?” Mr. Jones asked.
On Dr. Kane’s printed form, his handwritten order was complete and used proper abbreviations and terminology. Lillian gave a flimsy smile. “I was worried we might not have that much in stock, but we did get a delivery today.”
“All right.”
“Albert will deliver it in his afternoon rounds.” Lillian pulled down a stock bottle.
Why did Dr. Kane write so many prescriptions for this medication? Her education told her to call and ask. Lillian stepped to the telephone and dialed the physician’s number.
“Let me guess,” Mr. Dixon said. “The doc forgot the sig.”
She stuck her finger in the dial for seven and swung it around. “No, the directions are there. But the quantity is extremely high.”
“Hmm. Let me see.”
Lillian nestled the receiver in the cradle and brought the prescription to Mr. Dixon. “Three hundred tablets. I’ve seen several prescriptions for high quantities of phenobarbital from Dr. Kane.”
Mr. Dixon gave her a look as if she were daft. “Some patients require higher doses.”
“But why all from Dr. Kane?”
“His office is across the street. And what are you going to do? Question his judgment? He’d be furious.”
Lillian shifted her weight off her bad leg. “Not if I word it tactfully.”
“Tactfully? Doctors hate it when we disturb them and question their orders. Choose your battles. Call if the prescription is incomplete. Call if a patient could be harmed.”
“But the medication is habit-forming.”
Mr. Dixon waved his arm toward the door. “The doctor knows the man’s condition better than you. He knows the proper treatment. Besides, did that man look like a drug addict?”
“No, but . . .” What did a drug addict look like, anyway?
“First rule . . .” He lowered his thick gray brows and thrust the prescription back in her hand. “Never turn away a paying customer.”
Lillian’s muscles stiffened, but her spine felt limp. “No, sir. I won’t.”
The prescription was legal. Filling it wasn’t wrong. And she couldn’t afford to lose her job. It was hard enough to get this job as a crippled woman. It would be impossible to find a job if she were fired.