Hatteras Blue (11 page)

"Bodies? Oh.
Bodies.
Yeah, Abe read me about them Injuns—"

"They weren't Indians," said Keyes then. "And you know it, old man."

"Back off," said Galloway sharply. "Captain Aydlett is—was an old friend of mine. I'll do the talking here."

Keyes sat back in his chair. Tiller watched him for a moment, then turned back to Aydlett.

He told the old man the story. As it went on a shade seemed to pass over his eyes. He sat back halfway through it and passed a trembling hand over his mouth. When Tiller was done he sat like that for a time, then muttered, "She told you I was there, eh?"

"I don't think she meant to."

"Maybe it was meant to be. So the buried do come to light at last."

Leaning forward, Keyes said, "After all these years, old man, maybe you'd better tell us the truth."

Aydlett's hand moved out behind him, shaking. Simultaneously with the clang of a ship's bell his other hand came up from under the table. The knotted pale-palmed hand held a short old-fashioned double scat-tergun with two cocked hammers. "Just sit tight," he said softly. 'You too, Galloway. Just lookin' at this you ought to could tell the only safe place in this room is directly behind it."

The door came open behind them and a moment later Galloway felt himself jerked upward, lifted bodily by the shoulders.

"Well," said a once-familiar voice beside his ear. "If it ain't old Tiller."

He had his head halfway around when the shotgun went off.

Or seemed to. White light burst against his head. He found himself on his back on the table, then felt himself being hauled up again. This time he was held from behind. The second punch, delivered like the powerful slow strike of a mako, knocked him empty of breath. He managed to recover, not enough to matter much, but he kicked the man behind him and got one arm up in time to block the next swing of a huge fist. It left an opening through which he saw for a moment a dark, broad face, one dark eye filled with recognition and rage. His own hand came back instinctively, but then he opened it, covering up, and waited for the next blow.

"Shad, don't hit him no more for now. Abe, let him go.
⁵
'

"Pop, this the one killed Mezey. You don't want to be tellin' me to go easy."

'You listen to your daddy or it'll be your skinny ass I'm blowing away! Sit him down. Abednego, you stand behind this other one. What's he look like?"

"Tall white man, dressed expensive. Real nice watch."

"Hm."

Galloway, still blinking back stars, found his eyes nevertheless drawn with awful fascination to the old man's hands. At the way the fingers shook, their involuntary tightening... "Captain Aydlett?" he said.

'Yes, Tiller?"

"I'd be glad if you'd cease pointing that shotgun at my stomach."

Aydlett laughed. He handed the gun to Shadrach and leaned back.

"What's this all about, Pop?"

"About a story," said the old man. "You boys all comfortable? Got a little story to tell you."

"We're listening," said Keyes.

The steady blind eyes were the color of old teak. And then the only sound was the soft voice, and faintly from outside the chirr of cicadas and the endless crash of the surf.

"My people come out to the Banks from Tyrrell County. Roanoke Island was in Union hands in the war, and it was a haven. So us Aydletts been here since 1864.

"My father started goin' to sea when he was fourteen years old. His name was Jason, after the sailor. He worked his way up to third mate. That was as high as a black man got in them days. He was on a four-mast schooner, I don't remember the name, till he got to be married.

"Later on he worked on a menhaden boat, and in the winter he'd guide for the rich folks up in Pea Island. He started workin' me soon as I was big enough to walk. When I was small, on Saturdays I'd go out with him fishing. In the winter the shad, I'd take and bust them and get a bucket of roe out of them and take it home.

"I worked all my life. When I was twelve I was mess-cookin' at the shark factory for sixty-five men, two dollars a week. That was a lot of money then. But the hardest work I done was pushing a clam-rake. You only got fifteen cent a hundred for 'em. And pound netting, that was hard. Those nets behind me here, my mother and us children used to tie them. You don't tie too many yards in a night. That's the way we used to work.

"Wa'n't any other Negro families out here then. We weren't welcome in the stores, had to go round to the back when we wanted soap or kerosene. And when we went up to Manteo we couldn't go in the show there.

"I recall my father had a boat called the
Sally June;
after my mother. And one time I remember we were coming across the inlet, and he revved up the motor. And I wondered why. And about that time the boat moved to the side. She had hit the current in the channel. So he caught me by the waistband and told me to look over the washboard. I looked over there and as far down as you could see the water was clear; but you could see that current cuttin' the sand from the bottom. Now little did he dream that was going to be his doom.

"My father died in November of 1930. He and another man were comin' back from Ocracoke. And the engine quit. And the tide carried them out into a storm. They said they could see them from shore for a long time.

"My family used to practically own the beach down here between Buxton and Frisco. After my father died there was some Yankees here in the thirties taking it up for taxes and my mother she sold it to them. She just let it go. We owned three mile of land out on the coast and a mile out along the sound. Now Abe reads me the Manteo paper and I see it going for a million dollars for twenty acres.

"After my father died I left school and went to be a fisherman. First I had to build me a boat. Got my juniper in the swamp, over on the mainland. Went to a white man who liked me and borrowed fifteen dollars, and bought a used Buick for the engine. Borrowed a propeller. I got me a steering wheel off a wreck. Borrowed a gas tank. That's how I started out in the
Princess.

"Money was scarce. We got half a cent a pound for croaker, three cent for trout. I got that note paid off, though, and ain't never owed a man white or black since. And I built me two more boats, the
Queen
and the
Duchess.
And I was a fisherman for forty-eight years.

"Then my eyes started to go bad. Could have asked for a handout from the government, but I didn't. My father always told me you got to make your own way. After I couldn't see no more I turned the boats over to my boys."

The old man turned his head to the side, as if listening. Galloway glanced back; his sons were staring narrow-eyed at Keyes.

"Now you may wonder why I am tellin' you all this. But it does lead up to a point. It's this. I look back over the years and how I had to struggle. My father and I worked all our lives and our family still ain't got nothing.

"Now you two has come to see me about something that me and some other men did forty-some years back. You seem awful eager to find it out. The way I figure it, I'm past carin', but if there's anything I have or know that might be worth something, then Shad and Abe deserve to get paid for it. Now, you—Mr. Yankee—"

"I'm no Yankee."

"To me you're a Yankee. Now you speak up and tell me what my story's worth to you."

Keyes reached for his jacket pocket, but his hand halted as the shotgun came up. Then it resumed as the barrels motioned him to continue.

"What's he doing?"

"Putting money on the table, Pop."

"Folding money?"

"Two hundred—three hundred—five hundred dollars!"

"Tell him to put it back."

"Pop—"

"This here is real cash, Dad—"

The old man rounded on them and told them to shut up. They did. He sat back and shook his head slowly.

"Why not?" said Keyes tensely. He did not reach toward or look at the money.

"Seems like you want this bad as I thought you might. Let's call it a thousand."

"You're sure that's enough?"

"Don't get smart with me. Yep, I think that will about do it."

"All right," said Keyes. "But I don't have that much ail in cash. I can write you a check on my Merrill Lynch account—"

"Half and half will be all right," said the old man.

When the check was written Aydlett put it and the money away in a drawer in the table. When it was out of sight the tension in the little house lessened. The old man leaned back, looking satisfied with himself. He took out a brass-ferruled pipe and began stuffing it slowly with Captain Black.

"Now," he said.
"y°
^u
wants to hear the story."

In early 1945 the sea off Hatteras was clear of the enemy. No longer were the beaches slimed with oil, scattered with flotsam from torpedoed ships and here and there a body, still in its waterlogged lifejacket. But no one knew whether the U-boats would return.

For one thing, all through 1943 and '44 there were the rumors. There was wartime censorship. But without news, imagination had loose rein. U-boats had been seen refueling, people whispered, in isolated inlets along the coast, had been seen in Chesapeake Bay itself. Lights had been reported along the coast at night, perhaps signals to someone lying off. And on Hatteras itself the tales took on concrete detail. German sailors, it was said, had slipped ashore by boat, were mingling with the locals and even seeing movies. Ticket stubs skimmed from the pockets of dead U-boat men proved it. And why not? Hadn't they landed in New Jersey, Canada, and Florida?

There had never been enough regular military forces to defend or even observe the immense empty bow of the Banks. And so the men of the island had taken it into their own hands. Four or five at a time would go patrolling along the empty beaches by starlight, carrying old pistols or the twelve-gauge L.C. Smith doubles they used to hunt the Canada geese that came down the flyways to Hatteras.

Clifton Aydlett had been one of them on that foggy May night. There'd been a gallon jug of clear East Lake corn, inadequately aged but potent, and doubly welcome as they passed it among the men who paced in old Coast Guard peacoats and civilian duffles along the windy beach. They'd been out for two days, sleeping in the abandoned station house, and around the driftwood fire in the dunes they agreed to go home at dawn. It was just too cold to stay out, and the fog made it hard to see a hundred yards.

They sat huddled in the dune line, smoking Leford Baum's Lucky Strike Greens, prolonging the inevitable demise of the whiskey, and looking out onto a cottony nothingness above which somewhere was the moon.

It was ten minutes to one when Jamie O'Neal suddenly kicked sand over the embers, pulled the cigarettes from the others' mouths and buried the glowing tips. Frozen by the action, they turned their heads slowly.

The sound of diesel engines was blowing in from the sea.

The five men moved apart and hid themselves in the dunes. They waited. The mutter swelled and distanced in the peculiar way of sound in fog. Minutes passed. Then, faintly, they heard splashes.

The raft came ashore to the north of them. The figures wore dark overcoats. They did not speak as they pulled the rubber boat, hissing as it deflated, up onto the beach. Metal clanked as they unloaded it. The men hidden in the dunes glanced at each other.

Young Cliff Aydlett fingered the trigger of his bolt-action .22, evaluating it mentally against a Nazi submachine gun.

The old man's voice paused then. Galloway started; he'd lost all consciousness of listening to a story. He had been back there on those lonely dunes with four half-drunken white men, all of them suddenly confronted by the enemy of their nightmares.

"Anyway," said the old man, "Dunbar and Leford called to 'em to surrender. They shot first. We killed 'em all, and buried 'em there in the dunes."

"Why didn't you report it?"

"Afraid to. When we got back we found the war had ended the night before. If you kill men in a war time you're a hero. But afterward—you see? Leford and Jamie figured the smart thing to do was not talk about it. Wouldn't you think so?"

"Maybe, at the time," said Galloway.

"So now you say they're found. Diggin' for one of them new resorts, you say? Mysterious are His ways. But why are you two ferreting around about it? Askin' Miz Baum, and tracing her words to me? Explain good now."

The old man's question hung. Galloway looked at Keyes. The tall man sat motionless, his eyes on the worn planks of the floor. At last he sighed and looked up.

"We thought there might be something else in the raft, Mr. Aydlett."

"What it is?"

"In the raft. Was there anything in it that wasn't buried with it? A book, instruments—"

"Why?" said Aydlett, and his blind eyes glimmered.

"Because that's what I paid for! Now tell me!"

"Take it easy, Dick—"

"Sit down, man!"

"Take that shotgun out of my ear, boy!"

"I don't know as I like this cracker's tone of voice," said Shadrach to Abednego.