Teetoncey Read Free

the swaying canvas sleeve. Nor had they launched the boat.
    Boo Dog began barking at the mules and Ben yelled for him to quiet down. He grabbed his scruff and whacked him good, then looked out to sea, trying to pierce the darkness over the crashing rows of breakers, hoping to spot a mast. There was nothing out there. Or, if there was, it was secreted in the night and towering waves.
    Looking down at the surf line, turned to froth and thick with boiling sand, pale crimson in the final glows of the Coston flare, he saw the awful sight of splintered timbers, broken spars with rigging still trailing; all kinds of debris. He had never seen it this bad. It stretched into the shadows on either side of the small group of men. They were now beginning to spread along the beach.
    Ben knew what it meant. The ship had died out there before anyone could help her. Launch the double-ended boat or get a line on board her. There was nothing to do but search for bodies and hope that someone might have survived.
    The lone man standing by the cart had despair on his face as he lit another Coston, making himself a sentinel. Ben quickly recognized him as Filene Midgett, commander of the Heron station. He was of some kin to Ben, as was almost everyone on the Banks.
    The flare caught and began to bum, casting a hellish glow on shining, reddened skin. Filene glanced at Ben with anything but a welcome look. Vapor came out of his nostrils and mouth, winding away on the wind. Square-faced, heavy-jawed, he was not pretty to look at, even in sunlight.
    "Anythin' I can do to help, Cap'n?" Ben asked, fairly anxious. He could hold the flare, for instance.
    Filene shook his head and gazed back at sea.
    Ben guessed that he was hoping a swimmer might spot his signal and flop toward it. Watching his heavy features, Ben tried to think of what next to say. He knew Filene and the other surfmen weren't too sure about what he planned to do in years hence. They only knew, even though he was John O'Neal's son, that Rachel had raised him as a girl until he was five, actually putting him in dresses and letting his hair grow long. They didn't know how much damage that had done.
    Well, it had done a lot. Ben boiled every time he thought about her doing that. It was a monumental disgrace to do it to a surfman's son.
    Once, when he was about nine and hanging around Heron Head station, watching them practice rescues, Filene had asked, "Why 'n tarnation you let that woman keep you in a dress so long?"
    It wasn't a fair question, Ben thought. He hadn't had much to say about it when he was five. Filene couldn't reckon with that.
    That same afternoon they were practicing with the breeches buoy, firing a line from the Lyle mortar gun over the wreck-pole yardarm; then hauling a man to earth in less than four minutes from the time they started rigging. The breeches buoy looked like a pair of oversized canvas pants and hung from the line on a pulley. The survivor would slip down into it and then hang on for dear life as he swayed over the boiling surf.
    To show he wasn't a coward, Ben had said, "Cap'n, let me ride it down."
    Filene had laughed. "Go ahead, boy."
    Jabez Tillett had said, "Cap'n, mebbe it..." All he got was a withering look for butting in.
    Ben started up the fifty-foot pole, heart in his mouth, climbing the spikes that were set for men. He got halfway up and didn't think he could make it. He looked back toward the sand. It seemed a thousand feet.
    He swallowed and said, "Help me, John." Then went on to the top.
    They brought him down in a wild ride that left his knees shaking. The back of his legs felt like jelly all the way home.
    All Filene had said was, "You mighty slow goin' up that pole, Ben."
    But whatever they thought of Ben, he knew the surfmen were kings on the Banks. Pure royalty. The jobs, though dangerous beyond belief, were prized. As much for pride as for money. The seven men at each station fished mullet or shad or made another living during the summer,