The Keeper's Son

by Homer Hickam

  Even though their island is fictitious, my descriptions of the characters of Killakeet are representative of the people who lived along the Outer Banks in the early 1940s. The barrier islands off North Carolina have a history of glorious beauty interspersed with death and destruction. Attacks by pirates, war, and enormous storms and hurricanes have all proved deadly over the years. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a subculture of people grew up on those sandy spits for the express purpose of salvaging wrecked vessels. When the descendents of these piratical “wreckers” were gathered by the federal government into the Lifesaving Service, they changed from colorful miscreants into heroic figures who were willing to go out in terrible seas to save lives. Surfmen, as they were called, lived in stations along the coast and waited for the call to man their pitifully fragile surfboats. One of the most famous surf stations was the Pea Island Station, which boasted an all-black unit. For the magnificent story of this brave, inspirational group of surfmen, I would recommend Sink or Swim (Coastal Carolina Press, 1999) by Carole Boston Weatherford, and Storm Warriors (Alfred A. Knopf, 2001) by Elisa Carbone. For more information on the Outer Banks in general, I recommend Graveyard of the Atlantic (The University of North Carolina Press, 1952) by David Stick. For accounts of what it was like to grow up in an Outer Banks lighthouse family, Lighthouse Families (Crane Hill Publishers, 1997) and Hatteras Keepers (Outer Banks Lighthouse Society, 2001) by Cheryl Shelton-Roberts and Bruce Roberts are marvelous books. For a look at the natural surroundings and ecology of the Outer Banks, Hatteras Journal (John F. Blair, Publishers, 1998) by Jan DeBlieu is a touching work, as is Ocracoke Odyssey (Down Home Press, 1999) by Pat Garber. For a discussion of the delightful dialect of Outer Bankers, I recommend Hoi Toide in the Outer Banks (The University of North Carolina Press, 1997) by Walt Wolfram and Natalie Schilling-Estes.

  The Coast Guard Beach Patrol did indeed exist, although perhaps it was a bit more organized than how I have presented it. Many times, however, locals joined and provided their own horses and uniforms to supplement the regulars, so Dosie’s experiences were not entirely unusual. Many 4-F cowboys were also recruited for the Beach Patrol, so Rex’s story has a historical basis as well. For more information, Prints in the Sand (Pictorial Histories Publishing Company, 1989) by Eleanor C. Bishop is an excellent resource.

  As for Captain Krebs, Lieutenant Max, and the men of the U-560, the deeds of the U-boat brethren are told in many excellent novels and books. I modeled Captain Krebs a bit after Captain Peter Cremer, who accomplished some deadly work in his U-333 off the Outer Banks during 1942. His book, U-boat Commander (Naval Institute Press, 1984), is a great source for anyone wishing to understand the mindset of German U-boat captains during World War II.

  I was also assisted by a number of past and present residents of the Outer Banks, who graciously provided me with old letters, diaries, logs, photographs, or simply their memories, all necessary to enrich the lives and times of my characters. I am especially indebted to John Gaskill, the Bodie Island keeper’s son, and the late Rany Jennette, son of the keeper of the Hatteras light. Their assistance included personal tours of their childhood homes and the lighthouses their fathers kept so well. I will never forget climbing up the winding, echoing stairs of the old lighthouses with them, and thence into the lantern rooms that once provided safety for all those who sailed the Graveyard of the Atlantic. Thrilling and inspirational is the only way to describe standing with those men and discussing their experiences while looking out across a vast sea swept by a constant river of salt-laden air. John and Rany also provided me with details of their World War II service aboard American warships off the Outer Banks. Rany, who served aboard a coast guard 83-footer off Hatteras, was especially able to provide fascinating descriptions of what it was like to crew on those “sea-going jeeps with square wheels.”

  Bruce Roberts and Cheryl Shelton-Roberts, the founders of the Outer Banks Lighthouse Society, have dedicated their lives to protecting and restoring lighthouses as well as telling the stories of their keepers. With unfailing patience, they answered all the myriad questions I posed to them while working on this novel. Along the way, they became special friends. For information on their work and their many wonderful books, please see http://www.outer-banks.com/lighthouse-society.

  Wendell “Wink” Weber, Jack Read, Robert Balsdon, Bill Wells, Don Gardner, and other members of the 83-Footer Sailor’s Association provided me with much information and colorful war stories about life aboard the little patrol boats, one of which, the fictional Maudie Jane, plays a pivotal role in this novel. For more information on the association, please see http://uscg83footers.org. The following coast guard retirees and their Web sites were also extremely helpful: Kenneth T. Laesser, http://www.laesser.org/index.htm; Fred Siegel, http://www.fredsplace.org; and Jack A. Eckert, http://www.jacksjoint.com. My thanks must also include Mrs. June Brittingham, the widow of the late Arthur Brittingham, for sharing her husband’s memoirs of his coast guard experiences along the Outer Banks in 1942. They were invaluable in recreating the atmosphere of the era.

  Thomas A. Tag has long been acknowledged as the leading authority on the lamps, lenses, and illumination of lighthouses and provided me many technical details for this novel. For more information on Thomas and his books on lighthouse operations, please peruse the Great Lakes Lighthouse Research Web site at http://home.att.net/∼tatag/.

  Special thanks are due to Mrs. Judith and General Bill Fiorentino (U.S. Army, Ret.) of Steel Prize Stables in Madison, Alabama, for attempting to teach me a little about horsemanship so that I might re-create some of the equestrian scenes in this novel. Also my thanks are extended (along with a carrot) to the real Genie’s Magic for teaching me humility and who is really in charge of the barn.

  The late Harold “Swede” Larson, a former coast guardsman who went on to have a distinguished career in the United States Marine Corps, was a great friend and mentor for years. His memories of life aboard the USCG Cutter Dione, the real counterpart to the fictional USCGC Diana in this novel, were extremely important not only for this book but also my military history Torpedo Junction, which is set in the same time and place. Because of Swede’s dedicated assistance, as well as information provided by hundreds of coast guardsmen, navy sailors, merchant mariners, and German U-boat men, Torpedo Junction is, I am proud to say, still considered the most complete account of that bloody battle along the American coast during World War II. Thanks are also due to the late Rear Admiral James Alger, USCG, who commanded the Dione and is the inspiration for Lieutenant Jim Allison in this book. Jim Alger and I are both graduates of the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets. Ut Prosim, Jim, and Semper Fi, Swede. See you on that heavenly shore.

  Of course, any errors in this novel are entirely my own. I have attempted to get all the details just right but I suppose dedicated rivet-counters might find something wrong. I’ll keep trying, guys.

  On a personal note, I want to thank Sean Desmond, my most wonderful editor of this novel, and Tom Dunne, my publisher. Both men were willing to allow a writer chiefly known as a memoirist to stretch his art form to become a novelist. For that and more, I shall be forever grateful. As always, thanks go out to my great agents, Frank Weimann and Mickey Freiberg, who keep things humming behind the scenes.

  A message of thanks is also extended to Linda, my wonderful wife, who is my first reader/editor and works so hard to keep our Web site (http://www.homerhickam.com) current, answers all the fan mail, and generally softens my life around the edges so that I can have time to pursue my work. For this novel, special thanks must go as well to Maxx, one of our four cats, who kept me company throughout by sleeping on my desk and often resting her hind quarters on the shift key of my computer keyboard. This resulted in some creative though inadvertent capitalizations that I hope the copy editor and I have caught!

  Finally, my sincere appreciation goes out to the armed forces of the United States and especially the men and women of the United States Coast Guard. Sem
per Paratus is the coast guard motto and you have proved yourself always ready, indeed. Over the decades, you have kept us safe along our shores, at sea, and around the world. For that, I will be forever grateful.

  The Keeper’s Son is the first in a series. Although the battle of Torpedo Junction might be won, and Killakeet Island returned to its peaceful ways, dark days lie ahead for American naval and coast guard forces in the early years of World War II, not only in the Atlantic but in the Pacific theater as well. Josh Thurlow, Bosun Phimble, Dosie Crossan, and maybe a few Maudie Janes have adventures yet to come.

  Read on for an excerpt from

  Homer Hickam’s next book

  The Ambassador’s

  Son

  Coming soon in hardcover from St. Martin’s Press

  Commander Josh Thurlow and his Coast Guard boys lived in a cave on the green island of Melagi, high on the slope of an ancient, dead volcano. The cave overlooked a punch-bowl valley, collapsed on one side and disgorging a lake of grass into an abandoned copra plantation by the sea. The plantation, most of its royal palms cut down to stumps, served as the camp for the 5th Marine Raiders, a battalion of warriors famous for their bloody exploits on nearby Guadalcanal. Beside the camp sat a placid little scum-covered swamp which happily provided hordes of mosquitoes and the odd crocodile to keep the Raiders miserable and on their toes in turn. The Raiders regularly cursed the Corps for placing them on the island which they called ‘‘MeSoggy’’ since they slept in the mud, ate in the mud, did their laundry in the mud, shook from fever in the mud, hid in their dugouts from Japanese bombers in the mud, and stood in formation to the tops of their boots in the mud.

  In comparison, Thurlow’s Cave, as it was locally called, was a very good place to live. It was almost cool during the blazing heat of the day, and nearly dry during the nasty little storms that intermittently battered the island. The only indigenous life, besides the usual insects and arachnids, was a small squadron of polite bats and a few quiet lizards. There was little in fact about Thurlow’s Cave that wasn’t good except where Melagi was, which was the hot, steamy, and malarial Solomon Islands, and the year, which was the World War–ridden 1943, and the war itself, which was everywhere one looked.

  Neither the cave, the Raiders, the bats, the war, nor even his Coast Guard boys were on Josh Thurlow’s mind on a morning in August, actually August the tenth. This happened to be the birthday of his girlfriend, his supposed girlfriend, one Miss Dosie Crossan, and Josh was wondering how she might be celebrating her birthday, and with whom. A letter had recently reached him from Dosie and its contents had kept his mind churning ever since, even dragged him from his sleep. From his cot beneath a draped mosquito net, he stared into the darkness of the cave and sensed imminent sunrise and therefore could wait no longer. He rose to deal decisively with the letter. He was, after all, a man of action which meant there were times (and Josh knew this very well from hard experience) when he didn’t know how to leave well enough alone.

  Josh dressed in his utilities and pulled on his boots, after turning them over and shaking them in case of pedipalpi and scorpions, then wound his way through the cots holding his sleeping boys. He was a big man, broad-shouldered, with muscled arms and stout legs supporting a heavy chest, yet he was surprisingly light on his feet and slipped soundlessly from the cave to settle on a large stone the boys had dubbed Look-it Rock. Overhead, dense clouds parted to present a swath of stars so glittering and bright they were like diamonds spilt from a smuggler’s bag. But Josh took no note of the stars or much else, including the rustlings of the nocturnal owls and rats and snakes hunting one another in the black bush. The world had constricted in his mind to the one thing he felt he needed to do, even if he wasn’t certain what it was. The letter from Dosie was in his shirt pocket. His thought was to read it again, just in case he had missed some subtlety. Then, if he still agreed with himself that the letter reflected a certain loss of her affection, he would decide what should be done about it.

  There was nothing gentle about sunrise in the Solomons. It always had a cataclysmic feel to it. Abruptly, with the spirit of an upthrust spear in a warrior’s hand, the sun tore its way out of the sea, slashed the horizon-riding clouds of cotton into blood-red shreds, and flung its hot white light viciously across a purplish, rolling sea. Before Josh’s eyes, Melagi transformed itself from the gray shadow of night into its morning color of the brightest, purest jade. Steam rose like hot smoke from the surrounding bush, birds started to chitter and squawk, and the feathery leaves of a nearby sandalwood tree shook as if in the hands of a malevolent spirit.

  With light enough to read, and the damp, blood-temperature breeze ruffling his sandy hair, Josh withdrew Dosie’s letter. He made it through the greeting (Dear Josh,) but was immediately distracted when he heard the clunk of the coffee pot being set on the little wood stove in the kitchen. The stove was half an oil drum with scrap iron legs, and the kitchen was a bamboo lean-to the boys had built just outside the entrance to the cave. Josh’s stomach growled in anticipation of breakfast, and Dosie’s letter drooped in his hand. Millie, the cook and medic of the team, wordlessly handed Josh a mug of hot, aromatic coffee, which sent the letter back into Josh’s shirt pocket. ‘‘Thank you, Millie,’’ Josh said, and added, ‘‘It’ll rain today. And it’ll be hot.’’ Being a native of Killakeet Island of the Outer Banks of North Carolina, a place of fishermen, Josh rarely greeted anyone without a comment on the weather.

  Millie, also a Killakeeter, was a skinny youth, thin-faced, with intelligent gray eyes that were still hooded with recent sleep. He nodded in silent agreement on the weather report, then went back to his bamboo kitchen while Josh noticed with some pleasure that the coffee contained a splash of Mount Gay Barbados rum. It was as if Millie (who was also a cousin) knew that his commanding officer needed something a little extra on this particular morning. All his boys were pretty good at figuring out Josh’s mood, although the truth was his moods were pretty simple, either good or bad or swinging toward one or the other.

  Millie next arrived with a spoon and a pan piled high with six scrambled eggs, big chunks of Spam, a quarter-pound of melted American cheese, all covered with catsup. Josh worked away at his favorite breakfast while watching with interest the landing craft, barges, and assorted small, gray-painted naval vessels churning and chugging across the water from Guadalcanal to Melagi. The stretch of blue water between the islands had recently been named Iron Bottom Bay, its sad new title attributable to the tons of American and Japanese warships resting in broken death on its deep beige sand. Many sharks lived there, attracted by the pathetic bodies that yet regularly seeped from their rusting underwater graves.

  When he had finished the pan of Millie’s egg concoction, Josh put it aside and was ready to get back to Dosie’s letter. But then he was distracted yet again when, one by one, his Coast Guard boys came out of the cave to go down to the slit trench to do their morning business. As they passed him by, scratching their rashes, a price of living in the Solomons, they gave him their greetings:G’mornin’, Skipper, more rain today, I’m thinking, or Cap’n, easy breeze, ain’t it? Josh hello’ed his boys in turn, agreeing with their estimation of the weather and calling them by their names: Here was Ready O’Neal, the bosun, with his wide, cheerful, and innocent face; the identical twins and gunnery mates Once and Again Jackson, all elbows (which they used for friendly battle on the path to the trench) and long legs of gangly youth; Stobs Mallory, the chunky radioman, his big glasses perched on his stubby nose giving him the appearance of a large white owl; and Fisheye Guthrie, the greasy-haired, fox-faced mechanic.

  The boys were all Killakeeters, come to the South Pacific with Josh, the oldest Ready at twenty-one, the youngest the twins at nineteen. Escorting the boys as they accomplished their morning work was Marvin, a small black-and-white terrier dog, also brought from the Outer Banks. Marvin was smart. That’s about all you needed to know about him except not to mess with him when he had a fresh bone.


  The last boy, if he could be called such, out of the cave was Pogo. Pogo was neither a Killakeeter nor even an American but a Solomon Islands bushman who’d appeared out of the jungle on Guadalcanal to attach himself to Josh when he and the Coast Guard boys had been over there helping out the Raiders during their struggle with the Japanese. Pogo was naked, save a feather in his puff of frizzy hair, an ornate necklace of cowry shells and glass beads around his neck, big wooden plugs in his earlobes, and a flapping breechcloth the locals called a lap-lap. On this particular day, he had chosen a bright blue lap-lap with, for no apparent reason, a 5th Marine Raiders patch pinned at its center. ‘‘My word, belong morning, Mastah Josh,’’ Pogo offered, a grin on his round and cherubic face. Josh could never teach Pogo, no matter how hard he tried, to call him Skipper or Captain. Pogo, like most bushmen, was prone to being a little stubborn. At least the boys had convinced him to stop chewing betel nut. As a result, his teeth had turned brilliantly white.

  Megapode Dave, who the boys had adopted since their arrival on Melagi, was a bird which looked as if it might be the offspring of a turkey and a vulture, though not as attractive as either. Dave, according to Pogo, was magic and could answer prayers if he was in the mood. Magic or not, he mostly slept. Now Dave waddled out of the cave on his big splined feet and laboriously climbed Look-it Rock, difficult since he was not designed to be a rock-climbing bird, and cuddled next to Josh for a post-sleep nap.

  The boys returned from their business and set to their breakfasts while Josh idly stroked Dave’s back and enjoyed the view. Millie brought him more coffee well-splashed with Mount Gay, and the morning seemed unusually pleasant until he remembered Dosie’s damned letter, and so he hauled the thing out again. The first paragraph of the letter was the good one where Dosie told Josh the news of Killakeet, that his father, the lighthouse keeper, was doing well, as was his brother who was now the assistant keeper. She also reported that she had placed some flowers on his mother’s grave, though for what purpose, other than respect, she didn’t say. He got no further because Dave, his tiny black eyes suddenly popped open and looking as serious as death, erupted with a loud squawk and stuck his neck out straight as a finger. Josh followed the megapode’s trembling beak and saw a dot in the northern sky over a channel known famously as the Slot, a constriction of the sea between the northern Solomons that the Japanese navy used like a highway for their swift destroyers and barraging cruisers and sneaking armored barges.