Storm Warriors Read Free Page A

in the head as the boat capsized. He was knocked out cold, and William and I had to hold him up so he wouldn't drown, and keep hold of the boat so it wouldn't drift away. Floyd took the longest time to come to, and by then the current had pulled us almost down to where all the houses were. We tried to right the boat and get out of there before anyone saw, but Mr. Ward spotted us with the boat still capsized and told our parents. We'd also lost an oar, which washed up two days later, and Floyd looked like he'd been bitten in the head by a shark, so there wasn't much use trying to keep it all a secret. After that, when we wanted to do surfboat rescues, we stayed on dry land and only pretended we had a boat, because not one of the three of us wanted to get another whipping like we each got that night.
    The third dead person I saw was Mamma. One day last spring, she took to her bed with her throat so swelled up and sore she could hardly talk and her eyes bulging out like poached eggs. Daddy called on Doc Fearing, but he said it was the diphtheria and she was too far gone for him to help her. Two days later, she was dead.
    Losing Mamma was the most sorrowful thing that has everhappened to me. For weeks I'd wake up thinking I felt her cool hand against my cheek, and when I'd open my eyes and realize it couldn't be true, my chest about caved in with the sadness of it.
    After we buried Mamma, Daddy didn't want to stay on Roanoke Island anymore. He didn't want to go back to Elizabeth City either, so when Mr. Etheridge said there was a fisherman's cabin on Pea Island near the station that hadn't been used for a long time, Daddy figured that was as good an invitation as we needed to move out here.
    The cabin needed a lot of repair when we first came, but it had a stove, two beds, a table, and a few chairs. There was already a rain barrel under the eaves that was nice and full from early summer rains, and after a little fixing up, the privy was just fine. We built the smokehouse from salvaged wood and started burying fish heads in the sand to prepare a garden plot. Next spring we'll put up our garden fence, to keep the cows and wild ponies out, and our homestead will be complete.
    Still, the cabin always feels like it's missing Mamma. I keep thinking I'll see her picking her way through the thick brush toward our front door, asking why did we up and move to the edge of the earth just because we couldn't find her for a while. And I wonder where she went—what it feels like to live in “God's house,” like the preacher in Elizabeth City used to talk about.
    I know Daddy's missing Mamma, too, even though he doesn't say it. It seems like he put a hard mask on his face—amask that doesn't show whether he's sad or scared anymore but makes him look strong all the time, with his jaw set and his eyes steady like they're staring right through you to tomorrow. Grandpa says some folks grieve that way and Daddy will come around, just give him time. It hasn't even been a year yet since we lost Mamma.
    When we first got here, especially on days when Daddy seemed like he couldn't stand to be around another living soul, I went off by myself to explore the island—all eight miles long and one mile across of it. I walked along the beach down to New Inlet on the southern end of the island and could just barely see the red roof of the New Inlet Life-Saving Station on the other side of the channel. I burrowed into the quiet stands of weatherbeaten pine, cedar, and oak trees and tracked raccoons and foxes in the sand. I went all the way to the north end of the island, where the bright red Oregon Inlet station sits near a cluster of hunting cabins, empty in the summer. If I was there at dusk, I could see the Bodie Island lighthouse flashing on the other side of Oregon Inlet. Then, of course, there's the Pea Island station, about two miles up from the southern end of the island and just north of our cabin. Its siding is painted cornflower blue but its roof