“Nobody knows how many tons of bombs they dropped on North Captiva. Cayo Costa, too. Volunteers weren’t always locals, neither—so it was dangerous. They shifted around the state, depending on what was needed. They could get lost, or stranded.”
I listened to him tell Jeth about the Cuban fishermen washing up on the beach but no vultures being around because the storm was so bad, before he told me, “There mighta been a woman drowned, too. Seems like there was…”
I’d asked about that, and also if he remembered a German named Frederick.
“What you’ve got to keep in mind, Doc, is a lot of people died in the fall of 1944. A couple hundred folks killed by a storm was minor compared to the number dying in Europe and the Pacific. I guess we got used to it. Death. It’s something we dealt with every day. Back then, it was personal and sad, but it wasn’t news. You see what I mean? Families took care of their own. We buried our own. There wasn’t all the forms and crap there is now. Someone died? You said words and put ’em in the ground.”
We were coming around Lighthouse Point. The trawler began to lunge and fall in cement silver waves that rolled toward us at wheelhouse level. I was standing at the galley’s stainless sink, making sandwiches and storing them in plastic bags for later—a good thing I’d started early, because it was too rough now to do much besides hold on, and try to talk above the noise of creaking hull, and the pots-and-pans clatter of a small boat struggling in big sea.
The chart table was on the starboard side. Tomlinson and Arlis were both seated there now. I watched Arlis lean toward the cabin window, pull the curtain aside, and look toward the island. We were only a few hundred yards off the beach. “Right there’s where we buried those Cuban fishermen. They had no family, so we did it for ’em.”
He was pointing at Sanibel Lighthouse, and two white clapboard houses on pilings that were visible above the surf line. The houses were old, and looked vaguely Polynesian with their pitched roofs and cupolas. The lighthouse resembled an oil derrick, except for the glass lantern room at the top.
“The Coast Guard had three or four men stationed in those very houses when the storm hit. They said the lighthouse swayed back and forth like a tree in the wind. The military built a separate tower nearby, and the wind blowed that thing away. They built it especially so they could climb up high and watch for German submarines.”
Arlis added, “Funny, huh? The night someone reports a U-boat out there, the tower gets blown away.”
I was about to nudge the old man back onto the subject of Frederick Roth when Jeth interrupted, saying, “Doc, the visibility down here sucks. Do you mind taking the wheel until I get up on the flybridge? Probably would be best if there were two of us—a buddy system kinda deal.”
We were quartering waves on the port side, and every sixth or seventh roller broke over the bow, causing the Island Gypsy to shudder as her propellers cavitated. The foredeck was awash; wheelhouse Plexiglas streamed with water. Jeth had the windshield wipers on, and they provided frail, pyramid-framed glimpses of the horizon ahead.
Jeth waited until I was at the helm before zipping his foul weather jacket, then tightrope-walked to the cabin door and stuck his head out. Disgusted, he said, “Hell, I think it’s raining, too.” At the same instant, Arlis surprised me, saying something unexpected: “And right there’s where we captured the prisoner who escaped.” He was still looking through his thick glasses out the starboard window.
Standing with the wheel in my hands, I said, “What?”
Arlis repeated himself and pointed toward shore.
We were running parallel the beach, scrawny-looking casuarina trees and coconut palms visible from the peak of each freighting wave. Through the trawler’s windshield, I could see houses, hotels, and condos, too, most of them patched with blue tarps.
I said, “You captured a German prisoner? Or was he an escaped prisoner of war?” I was confused.
The cabin door banged shut as Jeth went out into the weather.
Arlis’s tone became impatient—wasn’t I following along? Or was I dense? “Of course it was an escaped POW. We got the whole Atlantic Ocean between Florida and Germany, how was a Nazi gonna get here if he wasn’t already a prisoner?
“That’s why the Army captain sent me back to Sanibel even with the weather bad as it was. Three Kraut prisoners escaped the camp at Belle Glade. We got a tip at least one of them was hiding out somewhere on the islands and nobody knowed the area better than me. Plus, I had my own boat, and the ferry wasn’t running.”
Above me, I heard Jeth bang twice on the cabin roof. He wanted me up there. An extra set of eyes in foul weather.
“You caught the German?”
“What did I just tell you?” That irritable tone again. “Me and a couple of them big island boys, the Naves and Woodrings. I don’t know what happened to the other two Krauts. Ours, though, he went back to prison and hung himself. Good thing, too, ’cause he was as bad as they come.
“It was during that time Oscar Jefferson’s daddy got burned up at a moonshine still. Somebody poured corn liquor on him and lit a match. We figured it was the Nazi. Peter, that was his name. We caught him right there.”
I said, “The escaped POW was Peter?”
Arlis looked at me like I was an idiot. “No. Oscar Jefferson’s daddy was Peter. The Nazi, he’s the one we caught right there by that old house.” He banged his index finger on the cabin window, pointing to the spot, but then got a brief cheerful look on his face, a light going on inside his head. “You asked me about those people. Mr. Brusthoff, and the Dorn girls. That’s their place right there.
“Hell, I thought that house was torn down long ago. But that’s where we found him. What I remember is, there was a rumor one of those Dorn girls was being especially nice to that German. Maybe Oscar Jefferson’s daddy, too. People loved to talk in those days.”
Above me, Jeth kicked the cabin roof twice more.
My squall jacket is green, made of waxed cotton. I put it on after making eye contact with Tomlinson, who’d been listening to Arlis as carefully as I. No need to talk—he would pay attention and take the wheel if I called. Next to Tomlinson’s arm, I noticed, was a file he was assembling. The folder was labeled: ADMIRALTY LAW.
To Arlis I said, “You’re not your normal sweet self today. Have a sandwich—I think your blood sugar’s low,” then went out the cabin door, into a wind that was dense with rain and diesel fumes. I climbed the flybridge ladder and took the companion swivel seat on Jeth’s left.
From the vantage point of the flybridge, it was easier to see Sanibel Island and the area where Arlis said they’d captured the German POW. We were near enough to the beach that I could see a few solitary strollers and a familiar boardwalk—this is where I often jogged. The boardwalk and the beach disappeared briefly as each wave peaked and slammed ashore.
There were hotels and condos down the beach, but here the only structure was visible through leafless trees: a Cape Cod–style house and gazebo, all sided with gray shingles. Southwind.
Through the rain, I could also see a tiny lone figure on the balcony bundled in a blanket. Chestra Engle held up her hand—a wave?
No…more like an invitation to dance.
26
Jeth is not quick to use profanity—it’s risky with his stutter—but he used profanity now. “Sonuvabitch. We got company. And guess who?”
I was so busy going over our scuba gear, double-checking gauges, regulators, flashlights, strobe lights, and safety lines, that I hadn’t noticed the forty-three-foot Viking sportfisherman dolphining over the horizon toward us.