The Keeper's Son

by Homer Hickam

  “I think you will find me sufficiently aggressive,” Krebs said.

  “I hope so, Krebs. I really do. You see, that is exactly why I wanted to talk to you in particular. I wanted to be certain you understood the concept of terror that lies behind this mission. Do you understand the concept of terror, Krebs?”

  “Not exactly, sir.”

  “I will explain it to you.” Vogel leaned forward, close enough that Krebs could smell his sickly sweet breath. “We in the Unterseeboote flotillas do more than sink ships, you see. We also terrorize the enemy, especially their civilians. The mind of a civilian is easily manipulated. If they start thinking of us as a force of maniacs, we become invincible in their minds. What do you think of that?”

  Krebs thought it was pure shit but he responded, “I find it interesting, sir,” which was his way of saying the same thing.

  Vogel sat back and waved his hand dismissively. “Interesting? I should hope you would find it more than interesting. I fear for our country, Krebs, and I perceive only one way to save it, and that is through the application of terror. You and I and the other four commanders of Paukenschlag are the instrument to apply that terror. Doenitz’s order to sink only freighters and tankers? We will forget we ever heard it. Once we’re in American waters, we will sink everything we see afloat, big or small. Everything! The war has changed, Krebs, and we must change with it. Terror is what we will bring to the American shore.”

  Vogel stopped and stared at him and Krebs felt obligated to respond. “I will sink as many ships as possible, sir. I always do.”

  Vogel leaned forward again, running his tongue along his fat lips. “Listen, Krebs, and make no mistake as to my meaning. The Americans are soft but they are also capable of building up a great war machine that the English will use to pound us into the dust. Then, the cavemen Russians will come in and kill all the German men, then eat our children and rape our”—he hesitated, then said with a curious distaste—“women.”

  Krebs realized that Vogel truly believed every word he was saying. That was more frightening than anything else he had heard.

  Vogel went on, “It is imperative therefore that we keep the Americans at bay and scare them so badly they will pour all of their efforts into building battlements from one end of their coast to another.”

  Krebs nodded. “I understand, sir.”

  “Do you? What do you understand?”

  “I am to sink ships.”

  Vogel suddenly slammed his fists onto the table. “No, you idiot! I want blood! Blood!”

  Krebs’s face was speckled with Vogel’s spittle. It stank and he wanted desperately to wipe it off but he remained still and silent, his lips pressed together so hard they turned white.

  Vogel allowed another sigh, then got up and walked behind Krebs. “We must succeed, Otto,” he said, placing his pudgy hands on Krebs’s shoulders.

  Krebs had decided the man was either an idiot or a maniac, and probably both. He shrugged Vogel’s hands off, then stood. “I should like to immediately return to my boat, sir. There is much preparation to be done.”

  Vogel calmly studied Krebs, a wry smile on his lips, then nodded. “Blood, Krebs,” he said. “Blood.”

  “Yes, sir,” Krebs replied, and made good his retreat. He couldn’t wait to take a shower. He felt far dirtier after a few minutes with Vogel than weeks aboard a miserable, stinking U-boat.

  Froelich was waiting for Krebs in the anteroom. “Well, I see you survived.”

  Krebs was noncommittal. “Yes.”

  “I don’t know about you, Otto, but as soon as I get to sea, I’m going to give that little bastard the slip. Trust me. You don’t want to be near Vogel. His ideas will get you killed.”

  Krebs plopped his cap aboard his head, then squared it. “I intend to take your advice, Plutarch. Good hunting.”

  Although Froelich wanted to talk more about Paukenschlag over a beer, Krebs turned him down and made directly for the U-560. There was much to do. The wheels had begun to turn in his head, and whether he liked it or not, he was excited. He had lied to Vogel, and to all of them. He had spotted something on Doenitz’s chart. He wasn’t going to stop at New York. He was bound for the capes of North Carolina where the Gulf Stream and the Labrador Current squeezed ships together in a blue-water noose.

  18

  For most of December, Josh kept the Maudie Jane at sea, coming into Doakes only for fuel and food. There was much to do in the sea-lanes. The war seemed to have tripled the amount of traffic. At any hour, dozens of tankers and freighters were rumbling north and south, and there were many near collisions. Josh kept signaling, using a combination of blinker lamps, signal flags, and Stobs’s home brew to demand that the ships spread out. He also ordered them to start zigzagging. Few ships complied or even responded. Most of them pretended not to notice the patrol boat at all. “Let’s hope we’re wrong about the Germans coming over here, Eureka,” Josh said, surveying the chaotic scene from the stoop bridge. “It’s going to be a bloody mess otherwise.”

  “We ain’t wrong, Skipper,” Phimble said. “It’s like it was up on the ice. Remember what Falcon used to say? ‘My blood is hot, boys, and my bones are cold! There’s a battle coming our way, mark me!’ ”

  “The captain had a well-trained crew and lots of ammunition,” Josh said. “We don’t have either.”

  “Past time to start changing that,” Phimble replied stoutly.

  Josh looked at his innocent boys. Ready and Again were fishing, Jimmy and Bobby were idly watching them do it, Once was napping on the bow with Marvin asleep beside him, Big and Fisheye were probably sharing a joke in the engine room, Millie was undoubtedly in the galley reading a comic book, and Stobs was hunkered down over his home brew, probably listening to juke-joint music from a North Carolina radio station. Josh shook his head. One last moment of innocence, he thought. Then he put the megaphone to his lips. “Man overboard!” he shouted. “This is a drill!”

  Phimble grinned. “That’s more like it, sir!”

  The boys on deck turned their heads in surprise. Marvin scrambled to his feet. “Man overboard, you lubbers!” Josh railed. “Hop to!”

  They hopped to, though slowly. Then Josh made them do it all over again. Then again and again. Once couldn’t figure what was happening. “Did somebody really fall overboard?” he asked his brother while they scanned the sea from their position on the bow.

  Again scratched up under his tub hat. “Beats me. I had me a big old wahoo on the line, too.”

  “What’s gotten into Mister Thurlow?” Bobby asked, after the order finally came to stand down.

  “He must think one of us is going to fall overboard, though I don’t recall any of us ever done it,” Once replied thoughtfully.

  “I came close once,” Bobby said. “That time we were playing catch with the baseball on the stern and you threw me a high one.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Once said. “I’d forgotten that. That must be the reason. I’ll go tell Mister Thurlow I won’t do that no more so he don’t have to worry.”

  Although Once did, indeed, tell Mister Thurlow that he was pitching better these days, and not to worry about him throwing too high or long anymore, it didn’t make any difference. As a matter of fact, he didn’t seem to even understand why Once had told him the good news. Not only were man-overboard drills still being held with alarming frequency, but also fire drills and collision drills and abandon-ship drills and repel-boarders drills and at all times of day and night. General quarters was called nearly every other hour, it seemed, which meant pretending to man a machine gun without ammo and drop depth charges that didn’t exist.

  Josh also gathered the boys in the galley and showed them a book with silhouettes of German ships, including U-boats, and made them call out which was which when he held them up. He even made Big and Fisheye do it, even though they worked in the engine room. The answer was always negative when the boys asked if they could fish. The only fun they were allowed to have was to step up on the
stoop bridge and take a turn at handling the boat. “You have to learn every job aboard,” Josh told them over lunch.

  “Why’s that, Skipper?” Bobby asked, chewing on a ham and biscuit.

  “Well, you might get hurt, Bobby,” Josh replied. “And Big, for instance, might have to come up from the engine room and take your place. Or the other way around.”

  At that pronouncement, the boys looked at each other with wide eyes. Getting hurt wasn’t the reason they’d signed up for the Coast Guard.

  “This war thing’s got the skipper all mommicked,” Ready muttered at the mess table after Josh had climbed topside to relieve Phimble at the wheel.

  “Look what it’s done to poor Marvin, too,” Millie said. The little dog was lying on his back, his tongue lolling out of his mouth. “He’s wored out. He hardly even barks anymore.”

  “Maybe we should tell our maw how we’re being mistreated,” Once said. “She’d put a knot in Mister Thurlow’s tail.”

  “Let’s tell all our maws,” Millie proposed, and the boys all nodded in eager agreement.

  Maws were told and Josh heard from every one of them, and still the drills came one on top of the other. “We got to get back to the way we was,” Once said to Again while pulling lookout duty on the bow on a cold, blustery day. They’d just finished another man-overboard drill and had gotten soaked doing it. When Once had complained, Josh had replied, not the least bit sympathetically, “I told you to put on your slicker, didn’t I? And all you boys better start wearing shoes.”

  Again looked down at his bare feet, turned chapped and raw in the cold and wet. He hated wearing shoes and had never had to do it on board a boat before. In the past, when his feet got cold, he would repair on down to the galley and warm them up. Now, he had to stand watch on watch and was liable to be rousted out at any time for yet another drill. He pondered a tanker sloshing by and said, “I bet those old boys are staying dry and warm. How do you get out of this chickenshit outfit?”

  “I’m ready to quit if they’d let me,” Once replied. “I’m colder than a dead mullet.”

  Bobby joined the brothers. He’d also neglected to put on his foul-weather gear and his teeth were chattering. “Can we quit if we want to?” he wondered.

  “We joined because we wanted to,” Once observed. “I guess we ought to be able to quit for the same reason.”

  Ready came up. He’d worn his slicker but his bare feet were still pretty cold. When he heard their idea about quitting, he had to let the boys down easy. “You can’t quit the Coast Guard anytime you want to,” he said. “It’s against the Constitution. But I have a better idea. How about we write down all our gripes and hand them over to Mister Thurlow?”

  Once was taken with the idea. “A list might get him straightened out, sure enough. Everybody could sign it.”

  “It would sure knock Mister Thurlow for a loop,” Bobby said, imagining a coil of paper several feet in length.

  Word quickly percolated throughout the boat that a list of gripes was being drawn up that would straighten out the skipper and Bosun Phimble, too. It was, of course, to be done in vast secrecy. Josh knew about it nearly before it started. He noticed the furtive looks the boys gave him as they passed by. Then he had to loan Ready a pencil and after that a sheet of notebook paper. He noticed the boys going down into the galley looking unhappy and coming back looking satisfied, as if they’d done something about it. When he descended into the galley for coffee, he noticed Millie quickly tuck away beneath his comic book the sheet of notebook paper he’d loaned Ready. It was covered with pencil scribbles.

  “What’s going on, Skipper?” Phimble asked as Josh came topside with his cup of coffee.

  “Piss-and-moan list,” Josh said. Phimble just laughed.

  In mid-December, a small gray ship suddenly popped up above the horizon. “A cutter, Mister Thurlow,” Phimble announced.

  Josh studied the little warship. Her lines and twin stacks identified her as a 165-footer. That particular type of Coast Guard vessel had been designed to intercept booze smugglers during Prohibition. Since the Rum Wars had ended, the cutters had been modified for antisubmarine warfare. “Make a light signal,” he said to Once. “Tell them, ‘Welcome to the Outer Banks.’ ”

  Once did as he was told and then read the answer that was blinked back. “She’s the Diana, Skipper. Officers are invited over for a cup of java.”

  Josh ordered all the boys to put on the shoes he’d bought for them. They were high-top, black-and-white basketball shoes. Mallory’s General Store just happened to have had a good stock and Josh had bought them at half price.

  “How come the shoes?” Big griped to Millie. Griping was becoming an art form to the Maudie Janes.

  “Skipper says we should make a good example to the cutter boys.”

  “With shoes?”

  Millie rolled his eyes. “Chickenshit,” he said.

  “And how!” Big confirmed.

  As Phimble maneuvered toward the cutter, Once peered at a boy on the cutter’s bow. “Well, I swear upon a turnip, there’s Joe Bird! Hey, Joe Bird!” The other boys picked up the cry.

  “Joe Bird’s from Killakeet,” Josh explained to Phimble. “It’s good that they’ve got a local boy on board if they’re going to plow along this bank.”

  While Josh and Phimble took the raft across to the cutter, the Maudie Janes gathered on deck to look over the Diana boys. “Can we feed the seagulls?” Millie asked, coming up with a bag of stale biscuits.

  “No,” Ready answered. “Mister Thurlow said we weren’t supposed to do nothing except work around the boat, give a good appearance and all.”

  “Well, can we fish?” Again demanded.

  “Same story,” Ready answered in a grim tone.

  Again frowned. “What good appearance does it make if we’re out here in the Stream and we don’t fish? Seems more foolish than anything else. Millie, write this one down on the list, too!”

  Millie disappeared below to take care of it. His list now filled the front of the sheet of notebook paper and he was working on the back.

  “Hey, Killakeeters!” Joe Bird yelled. “What’s new on the island? Did Judy Jones ever get herself married?”

  “She married my brother,” Stobs answered. “Why? You still sweet on her?”

  “Naw. Just wondering.” Joe Bird didn’t fool anybody aboard the Maudie Jane. Killakeet boys liked to marry Killakeet girls, and with one his age married off, Joe Bird’s odds were cut way down.

  “Willow’s still around,” Stobs called across.

  Joe Bird pretended not to hear him.

  In the cutter’s galley, Josh and Phimble took their ease with the Diana’s captain, Jim Allison, and her executive officer, Frank Feller. After a few words of greeting, the four officers immediately started to form perceptions of one another. Such stocktaking was the natural preoccupation of men who led other men. Josh determined that the Diana officers were a couple of real smart cutter officers, no doubt about it. They wore khakis that appeared as if they’d just been laundered and pressed. The creases were so sharp you could cut yourself on them. It made Josh glad he was wearing his leather jacket so his wrinkled shirt wasn’t quite so evident. But though Allison was spiffy, he had an air of calm competence. Josh figured he could trust the man, if it came to it, and with that assessment, he was done figuring him out.

  Phimble studied his opposite, too. Feller was a rough plug of a man, though he had a friendly expression. He was likely strict on the men, Phimble guessed, but fair. He could work with Feller if it came to it, so case closed.

  From the other side of the table, Allison and Feller also made their assessments. Allison immediately decided he would not care to have Ensign Thurlow assigned to his cutter. True, he had the weathered look of someone who’d been born to the sea rather than just learning about it through books and lectures. But Thurlow’s shabby uniform also indicated perhaps a resistance to strict military discipline. Allison thought an independent command on a
small boat was perfect for the man.

  From just the few words that had passed between them, Feller took Phimble as quite intelligent and a couple of ranks below where he should have been (probably because he was a Negro). Phimble was a steady man during storms, he’d wager. Feller thought Thurlow was lucky to have such a man. If he could have thought of a way of enticing him over to the Diana, he would have done it.

  After a Filipino steward served them coffee in fine china with the Coast Guard emblem on the saucers and cups, the next thing the officers did was talk about their boats, another natural preoccupation. Josh and Phimble both admired out loud the Diana, her layout as well as her fine-looking and smart crew. Josh especially admired that she had full depth-charge racks.

  “But we aren’t allowed to drop any,” Allison said. “Even with the war on, we can drill all day but no actual expenditure of rounds. I’m of a mind to just go ahead and drop a few, anyway.”

  Josh asked, “Have you heard anything about U-boats coming our way?”

  The two cutter officers exchanged glances. “That’s why we’ve been reassigned north,” Feller said. “Word’s out a few might be heading this way. We’ll be operating out of Norfolk.”

  “What about the fleet?” Josh asked. “Are they coming out?”

  “The Big Bum?” Allison shook his head. “I don’t think so. Admiral King is going to keep his destroyers and cruisers all safe and snug in Norfolk until he’s ready to go off and fight the Japanese. I’m thinking he’ll let us little boys handle any German subs that might come across the pond. But you should be all right this far south. Scuttlebutt is the Jerries will park themselves outside New York Harbor. If so, we’ll be ready to run up there.”

  “If I was a German sub commander, I’d come down to Hatteras,” Josh said. “They did in the Great War, you know.”

  Allison gave that some thought. “Well, nobody I’ve talked to has mentioned that as a possibility. But I tell you what. You call me if you see a U-boat. I’ll come on down to help as fast as I can. That’s a promise.”