The Keeper's Son

by Homer Hickam

  Pretch shrugged and disappeared below.

  The tanker kept angling toward land, causing Krebs to pay more attention. “She’s going to hit the shoals if she keeps coming,” he said to no one in particular. He thought perhaps coming in close to shore was a new strategy to avoid U-boats. If so, it wasn’t going to work. He puffed into the voice tube. “Hans, slow ahead. Easy on that port drive.”

  Hans answered, testy as always, that he knew very well to go easy on the port drive. The U-560 went through its usual shuddering as the propellers took hold. Everyone on board held their collective breath but soon the drives evened out and the U-boat moved steadily ahead.

  Max bent over the torpedo aimer. “Variation is zero. Open the torpedo door, Chief.”

  “Which one, Max?”

  “As long as it’s in the bow, I could not possibly care less.”

  The Chief chuckled. “How about number one?”

  “That will do.”

  Harro nudged Joachim. “Here we go.”

  Pretch reappeared. “I think you should see this, Kaleu.”

  Krebs took the radiogram Pretch was holding and used the faint light coming from the tower hatch to read it. “Froelich,” he said after a moment, then straightened up. “And by an American destroyer.”

  “Not Froelich!” Max said, looking up from the torpedo aimer.

  “Every hand believed lost.”

  The lookouts were listening. “One of our boats got it,” Joachim whispered to Harro.

  Krebs handed the message back to Pretch and went to stand beside Max. “Are you ready?”

  “I should make one more check, sir.”

  “Get on with it.”

  Max made his check, then announced in a subdued voice, “Chief. Let the eel go.”

  The familiar release of bubbles announced the launch of the torpedo from the tube. Krebs watched it speed away, then lost interest. He leaned against the tower fairing and thought instead about Plutarch Froelich and hoped he had died quickly.

  “Here it comes!” Once yelled from the port bridge through the open door of the tanker wheelhouse.

  Phimble threw the wheel hard over and the Stokes rolled into a ponderous turn. The tanker captain and his men scowled. “You’ll tear the rudder off her!” the captain snapped.

  “Better than getting it blown off,” Phimble replied merrily, and kept cranking the wheel. He gave the engineer a significant look. “Full ahead, mister, all engines cranked as far as they go.”

  The engineer glanced at his captain, then shrugged and pulled over the annunciator. The answering bell was evidence it was heard. The tanker began to whip up the water behind her into a froth, then bore into the turn like a huge locomotive accelerating along a curved track.

  “What the devil?” Krebs was looking with disbelief at the tanker as it turned toward the torpedo.

  “She’s dodging it,” Max said.

  Krebs couldn’t believe what he was seeing. It was most unorthodox. A little alarm went off in his mind. “I would have turned away and headed for deeper water,” he said, the alarm getting shriller.

  The torpedo sped past the tanker and still she kept turning until she was bows-on with the U-560. That was when the real reason for her turn was revealed. There was a small shape behind the tanker, hidden until the last possible moment, and it suddenly burst forward. A searchlight flashed across the sea, catching the U-boat in its bright yellow beam. “The patrol boat!” Max gasped.

  Krebs was startled enough by the ambush that, for just a moment, he could not think of the proper order to give. “Bravo,” he said under his breath. “Very well done, Lieutenant Thurlow.” Then he roared at the machine gun crew, who were all gaping at the onrushing American boat. “Fire, you idiots! Chief, tell Hans full turns! And forget about babying anything!”

  “It’s jammed, sir!” the machine gunner yelled. The oncoming patrol boat was clearly better prepared. The machine gun atop her wheelhouse opened up, a barrage of lead peppering the tower. The machine gunner and his crew were struck in the first burst, blown away in a spray of blood and bone.

  Harro heard Joachim scream, then saw him fall off the tower. Harro started after him but was stopped by Max. “Help me with the machine gun,” he ordered.

  Max settled in behind the gun and swiveled its twin snouts while Harro fiddled with the ammunition belt. He got it back in place and snapped the cover shut just as Max pulled the triggers. Harro thought his eardrums were going to burst when the gun started rattling. It was so loud!

  Then the machine gun jammed again and no amount of banging on it would dislodge its cover. “Get below!” Max ordered Harro.

  There was a flash of light and a peal of thunder from the patrol boat’s bow. It had a cannon! A round whistled over the tower and detonated, throwing up a geyser of gray water. “Chief, take us down!” Krebs yelled. “I don’t care if we hit sand, dive deep as you can!”

  Harro looked down and saw Joachim clawing at the ladder, trying to pull himself up. “Help me, Harro!” he groaned.

  Harro couldn’t leave his friend. He climbed down the ladder but slipped in Joachim’s blood and fell to the deck. Suddenly, the sea flushed across the deck, carrying both boys overboard. Harro caught Joachim by his jacket. Then a gush of air from the U-560’s buoyancy tanks pushed them out of the path of the American patrol boat, which charged past, firing its machine gun and its cannon.

  “Swim, Joachim!” Harro begged. But Joachim couldn’t swim. His head lolled backward, and there was a pink froth flowing from his mouth. He was dead and Harro had no choice but to let him go.

  How much time had passed, Harro couldn’t say. It could have been hours or minutes. There was a chop to the sea. Every time he looked up, Harro got a faceful of salt water. The U-560 was gone but he heard the grumble of the patrol boat’s engines, although they seemed far away. Harro knew Captain Krebs would take the U-560 as rapidly as possible into deeper water. Some time later, he felt the thumps of explosives in the water, a slight pressure, almost a tickle. The patrol boat was dropping depth charges but far away.

  Harro started to swim toward the lighthouse since it was the only thing he could see. He had no idea if it was a mile away or ten. He just kept swimming. A cold current clutched him with an icy hand, and he thought about giving up. But then he saw the light and was inspired to fight his way toward it. When he heard a noise like rolling thunder, he stopped and listened, afraid that they were depth charges. Finally he realized it was the sound of waves crashing on a beach. He tried to swim but he couldn’t feel his arms anymore. Maybe he wasn’t swimming at all. Maybe he was only dreaming that he was swimming.

  Then there was a terrible roar and it felt as if the ocean was sucking him down. His head struck something, and he was pushed up, then drawn down again, tumbling. Then the tumbling stopped and he didn’t feel the icy hand of the sea anymore. He felt as if he were in a woman’s warm arms, being cradled and gently rocked. But that changed suddenly when he was slammed against something gritty and hard. His hands dug into it. It was sand.

  He crawled across the sand while the ocean beat on his back. He felt so heavy after being buoyed for so long by the water. It was very dark. He couldn’t see anything except, far away, the flashing lighthouse. He felt the water recede from around his legs. He crawled a little farther until he was completely out of the water, then collapsed. He was tired and cold. He had never been so tired and cold in his life. He put his aching head down on his arms and watched the lighthouse until he couldn’t watch it anymore. Then his eyes closed.

  When he awoke, there was sand in his mouth. He spat it out and raised his head. His eyes were bleary with salt water but he could see that the lighthouse was still there, only it wasn’t flashing anymore. The rising sun had turned it into a distant alabaster spire, like a white needle. Harro wiped at his eyes with his fingers to clear them.

  Then he was aware that he wasn’t alone. He looked up and saw a girl kneeling in front of him. She had wild red hair and t
he most amazing eyes Harro had ever seen. They were the color of the French lavender that Father Josef grew in his greenhouse. He realized she was the girl he’d seen on the wild horse. He wanted to say something to her but he didn’t know what to say. He was lost inside those eyes. Then she said something very strange. She said, “Hello, Jacob. I’ve missed you.”

  42

  The U-560 had been ravaged. Its deck gun was gone, ripped off by a well-placed depth charge. One of its saddle tanks had been ruptured and a stream of diesel fuel followed behind like a rainbow-hued ribbon. The Chief was frantically working to pump the fuel out of the holed tank into the others. The conning tower had taken a hit, the sky periscope was bent and probably unusable. The torpedo aiming device was gone. The railings around the tower were missing, and a large steel plate that formed the forward part of the fairing was hanging by a scrap. Two of the bow torpedo tubes had sprung leaks and were spewing seawater faster than the bilge pumps could keep up.

  There was another, even greater problem. Both of the electric motors had been knocked off their mounts and their cabling torn loose. Hans had reported to the Chief that not much could be done. The Chief thought otherwise and told Hans to come up with a plan to fix them. At least the diesels were still working, although, with the loss of the saddle tank, they had a lot less fuel to burn.

  Krebs found Max in the bow torpedo room, supervising the emergency packing of the leaking tubes. “It’s a hell of a mess, Max,” he said.

  Max was covered with sweat and grime. “As soon as we can, Kaleu,” he said gently, “we need to bury the gun crew. The boys don’t like it, having them lying topside.”

  Krebs knew Max was right. During the first few hours after getting away from the patrol boat, all he could do was bring up the machine gunners and lay them, covered with blankets, on the splintered deck. They were too ripped apart to keep below. But as soon as possible, they needed to be put over the side with all the attendant ceremony. Sailors, even young U-boaters, were superstitious and needed sacred words read over their dead fellows and the bodies consigned properly to the deep. Max, thank God, had brought along a Bible.

  Despite the deaths and the battering the U-560 had taken, and the bodies lying topside, morale was still holding. Perhaps it was because the crew was too busy keeping the U-560 afloat. At first, Krebs had put the loss of Harro and Joachim out of his mind. Now, when he had a moment to catch a breath, he gave them some thought. Joachim had been observed struck by one of the fifty-caliber bullets from the patrol boat, but Harro had reportedly not been wounded, just washed off into the sea. Maybe he was still alive but, if so, he wouldn’t last long. The water in the Gulf Stream was warm and tropical, but closer in, where Harro had been lost, the water was cold. Krebs considered the unthinkable.

  “I do not know how to advise you, sir,” Max said when Krebs voiced aloud his thought. “It is completely unprecedented.”

  “Tell me what harm it would do,” Krebs pressed. “If it will endanger the crew, I will not do it.”

  “Pretch must be quick. Very, very quick, that’s all I am saying.”

  “But am I wrong?”

  “Would you do the same for another of your men? That’s a question only you can answer.”

  “I don’t know if I would or not,” Krebs replied.

  Max gave Krebs a long look, then snapped, “If you’re going to do it, then do it quickly.” Then he left to go back to work on the leaking torpedo tubes.

  Krebs felt oddly forlorn. Max had not given him the absolution he had hoped for. Nonetheless, the advice he’d given was sound. Krebs had to do this thing right away or not at all. He found Pretch fiddling with his radio. “Can you still communicate?”

  Pretch nodded. “The antenna took a beating during the attack but I’m receiving.”

  “Can you transmit?”

  “I think so.”

  “Then I want you do something for me. Should trouble come from it, I will claim that I forced you to do it. Do you understand?”

  The look on Pretch’s face told Krebs that he didn’t understand.

  “The patrol boat that nearly sank us,” Krebs said, “can you contact it?”

  Pretch raised his eyebrows. “Yes, as long as the Americans are monitoring the usual frequencies. Morse or voice?”

  “Morse, I think.”

  “I have heard their radioman use Morse.” Pretch took on a worried aspect. “Sir, we would have to be quick. They have direction finders. If we transmit too long, they’ll be able to find us. What is it you want to say?”

  “I want to ask them to look for Harro and Joachim.” Pretch looked relieved. “I was afraid you were going to surrender.”

  “I would hope you would know me better than that, Pretch. Here, I will write the message down for you. Remember, should there be trouble, I will swear that I made you do it.”

  Pretch opened up the box that contained the old telegraph key. He looked over the message Krebs had written and then began tapping:

  WHITE SHARK TO PATROL BOAT. TWO BOYS IN WATER.

  Pretch looked up. “I will send it again in fifteen minutes, sir.”

  “Good. Thank you.”

  Krebs started to climb the ladder to the tower control room but was stopped when he heard Pretch’s telegraph key start to click. Pretch took down the message:

  COAST GUARD TO KREBS. WILL LOOK.

  Krebs read the answer with some astonishment. “They know my name.” He scribbled a reply. “Let’s return the favor.”

  KREBS TO THURLOW. THANK YOU. THEY ARE GOOD BOYS. ONE WOUNDED.

  A reply came clicking back within seconds.

  T TO K: UNDERSTOOD.

  “Dammit!” Josh growled after Stobs had relayed the reply from the U-boat. “How does Krebs know my name?”

  What made the whole thing frustrating was that until the moment Stobs received the first message from the U-boat, the crew of the Maudie Jane had been convinced they had sunk the damned thing. The evidence was everywhere in the form of a thick pool of diesel fuel and splintered deck planks. All night, after the attack, Josh had kept the patrol boat beside a buoy thrown into the slick. Since sunrise, they had gone back and forth over the site with a grapple, hoping to snag a very dead submarine. Then Stobs stuck his head out of the wheelhouse and announced he’d received a message from the Germans.

  “I think we beat Krebs up pretty good, Skipper,” Phimble offered. “He’s probably lost half his fuel load, based on this slick. He’ll have to head across the Atlantic.”

  “I don’t want him to go anywhere,” Josh griped. “I want to sink him so Killakeeters can fish on his bones for the next one hundred years.”

  “What about the two krauts you promised to look for?”

  “I said we’d look for them and we will.”

  Josh was furious with himself. His answer to Krebs had been a reflex, a courtesy from one seaman to another. Now, after thinking about it, he knew he shouldn’t have answered at all but kept hunting. He shook his head. What was done was done. He guessed his word was worth something, even if it was to a U-boat captain.

  “I think I know how he got your name, sir,” Stobs said. “Chief Glendale’s dropped it a few times calling out here.”

  “Damn Glendale,” Josh griped. “He don’t know the first thing about radio discipline.”

  “That German radioman’s real good with his Morse code,” Stobs said. “Not a bit of hesitation. I’d like to race him, see who could tap the key the fastest.”

  “Don’t get too familiar with the son of a bitch, Stobs,” Josh replied crossly.

  “Yes, sir,” Stobs said, ducking back inside the wheelhouse, always a good idea when Mister Thurlow was building up to a foul temper.

  The girl went away for a while, then came back carrying a cloth satchel over her shoulder. She gave Harro water from a metal canteen and then she built a fire with a match taken from the satchel. She used dry weeds to start it and then fed the fire with driftwood. While he dried his coveralls by turning
around in front of the fire, she dug clams from the beach and cooked them in their shells on a piece of old tin propped up over the flames with empty conch shells. She briefly disappeared again, returning with a slimy-looking green plant that she proceeded to chop up on a rock with a hunting knife. She also used the knife to cut the clams open at their hinges and sprinkled the chopped plant over the creamy meat inside. Harro ate them from the shell with a sharpened stick she gave him. The taste was tangy and sweet, both at the same time. He thought it was the best food he’d ever eaten in his life. Warmed by the sun and a full belly, he sat with her on a sand hill. The girl, he thought, smelled like sunlight.

  Harro realized he was happy, though he had no right to be. Joachim, his mate, was dead, and his home, the U-560, might be sunk and all his mates with it. But then he thought—no, Captain Krebs would get the boat through somehow. He squinted out to sea but saw nothing but a pod of dolphins working their way down the coast, and a trio of pelicans flying across the beach, and a shimmering layer of fish in the shallows attracting the interest of a few gulls, kewing to one another anxiously before plunging like darts into the ocean for a meal. He felt confused, as if his world had turned sideways.

  “I’ll take you home now,” the girl said.

  “I must find my boat,” Harro replied.

  “Your boat?” She canted her head and those glorious lavender eyes lit on his face. They were somehow warmer on his skin than even the sun. “You should go home,” she said. “Your father will want to see you.”

  Harro knew she had him confused with someone else but he didn’t want to hurt her feelings. “My name is Harro,” he said. “What is your name?”

  Now she canted her head in the other direction. “I am Willow, of course. Don’t you know me, Jacob?”

  “My name’s not Jacob. It’s Harro.”

  She frowned, but then something seemed to dawn on her. “It’s because you’ve been gone for so long. You’ve forgotten your name.” She nodded toward the distant needle of the lighthouse. “That’s where you live.”