Island of Spies, page 2
“The Germans came in the last war,” Otto continued. “U-boats sat right out there.” A shiver whispered across my shoulders. “They’ll be back. In fact, I say they are back, and waiting to rush us. Rain, they’ll get you first. Or you, Neb, and your folks. Your daddy was a big man when he was keeper of this lighthouse, but now he’s sick and you’re, well . . . you. Your folks need protection. Yours too, Rain Lawson. Or whoever you are.”
Rain’s claimed the name Lawson since first grade.
Mama had walked Rain, Neb, and me to school that day. “Miss Pope,” Mama had said, herding us into the schoolhouse, “I’ve come to enroll these children in school.”
“We’re a three-fer,” I’d added. “Where do we sit?”
Miss Pope had stared into Rain’s face. It’s a pretty face—square-jawed, and a Caribbean shade of brown. Not a fisherman’s crusty surface tan, but a warm, always-tan. Rain’s zigzag hair’s a tumble of dark-and-light blond curls streaked in brown.
Rain smiled at Miss Pope, her dark eyes dancing. She’d wanted to go to school since she was three. Miss Pope cleared her throat. “Ada, the law says . . .”
“Rain needs to be in school,” Mama said. “There’s nobody to say she can’t be.”
Except Miss Pope, I thought.
Fact: The law is, white children go to the white school. One drop of Black blood, and you go to a Black school off the island or you don’t go to a school at all. Rain’s mother is white and freckled, and has curly blond hair. Her father’s a lost page in their personal history. His blood’s an unknown.
“Rain reads like she could drink the ink off of the page,” Mama continued. “Rain, please spell something for Miss Pope.”
Rain nodded, setting her curls rocking. “S-o-m-e-t-h-i-n-g.”
Neb shifted to stand like his daddy, Mr. Mac. “Rain and Stick found each other in the sea,” he said. “What the sea gives is yours to keep. Stick and Rain together are a given.”
Miss Pope tapped her pen against her role book and gave Mama the look women share when they’ve hatched a rebels’ plan. She picked up her pen. “Welcome, Rain. Your full name?”
I went still inside. Rain didn’t have a last name, only the ring with the letter M. Rain looked at Mama. “May I? Mama Jonah said I could ask.” My mother nodded and put her hand on Rain’s shoulder. “My name is Rain Jonah Mystery Lawson,” she announced. Her parents plus the second family she’d found at the edge of the sea—mine.
“Good enough,” Miss Pope had said, and that’s how Rain and me became sister-enough.
Fact: There’s two ways to break a rule. Bust it wide open, like I do, or ask an insider to help bend it. People underestimate Miss Jonah’s smarts: She had asked for Mama’s help.
Now Rain rose. “Otto, you know who I am and you know my name.”
“Rain, Rain, go away,” Otto sang. He swiped at her hair, and she slapped his hand away.
Otto picked up the unmarked bottle of distilled water I keep for my experiments, and tossed it hand to hand like a baseball. “Put that down,” I said.
Otto glared. “Say please.”
“It’s nitroglycerin,” Rain said, her voice even. “You could blow us all up.”
Nitroglycerin. A reference to Dime Novel #12: Boom Times. Rain might look waifish and naïve in her homemade, pink-flowered dress and hand-me-down Mary Janes, but she’s a thunder-clap thinker.
Otto gingerly lowered the bottle to the desk. “Listen, Seaweeds. Our men will go to war, and you’ll need me to keep your families safe. I’ll let you in now—at a reduced rate.”
So that’s it. He wants us to pay protection money.
“A paying case—us paying you. No thank you. Bzzzzt, meeting over,” Rain said.
“Two bucks a month buys your safety. You can afford that. I hear you fixed up that shack for Postmistress Agnes Wainwright,” Otto said. “She pays good, right?”
Fact: Miss Agnes pays great. She also swore us to secrecy, maybe because cleaning up a guest shack without tourists is flat-out stupid. “What shack?” I asked.
He sneered, trotted down the stairs, and slammed the door behind him.
“Two dollars a month?” Neb said. “Who has that kind of throwaway money?”
Faye does, I thought. In her secret box under her bed, with her diary. So far she’d saved forty dollars in get-away money—a fortune. She plans to leave for Hollywood the day she finishes high school. In fact, lately she wanted us to call her that—Hollywood Faye Lawson.
Faye would never tell Otto about her cash, but she tells Neb’s sisters everything. Gossip flies around the island at the speed of a gale-force wind.
I jumped up. “Let’s go. Otto will shake Faye down too. We need to warn her.”
“She’s with the sisters,” Neb said. He never says my sisters. Only the sisters. “At least Otto won’t be hitting my folks for money,” he added, like that would be a good thing.
Fact: Neb’s family is dead broke, from Neb’s daddy being sick for so long. Faye says the sisters have elevated Making Do to an art.
I grabbed my spyglass and swept Neb’s whitewashed brick house fifty yards up the beach. No Otto. I turned to Rain’s house.
Rain and her mother, Miss Jonah, live in a giant wine cask that rolled off a ship in a storm. It’s just bigger than a pickup truck—small for a house, huge for a barrel. It lies on its side with a door cut into one flat end and a window cut in the other. It’s tall enough to walk around in and nice if you don’t crave corners, but Miss Jonah prefers to sleep outside beneath the stars.
“No Otto at your place,” I said as Rain stepped up beside me.
As I searched for Otto’s red jacket, two men darted from the dunes—one man blond and slender, one bulky and dark-headed. The Island Bus, which chugs up the island once a day, stopped and they hopped on board. “Strangers,” I said, frowning.
Rain took the spyglass. “Worse than strangers. Kinnakeet’s invited two outsiders to play on their baseball team. One’s smart and one’s big. They’re brought-in talent. Ringers.”
Ringers. The word sounded shiny and dangerous as a switchblade.
Baseball means everything on the island, where each village has a team. Kinnakeet is mad to win. So are we. I spied Otto cresting a dune. “Otto’s at Buxton Woods.”
The woods are dark and swampy—a herpetologist’s paradise. They’re flush with deer and raccoons, birds and frogs. And a-slither with snakes—some deadly poison, others pink-bellied and bite-happy. “I knew it. Tommy Wilkins does have a hideout in the woods,” I murmured.
I gave the broad Pamlico Sound, on the other side of our narrow island, a sweep. A sloop with red sails sliced through the bright blue water. “It’s Papa!” I shouted, snapping my spyglass closed. “Papa’s home!”
CHAPTER 2
Danger Knocks
We sprinted downstairs and out into the blinding afternoon sun. “Wait,” Neb called. “The Matchstick Alert!”
The Matchstick Alert is a state-of-the-art security technique borrowed from Dime Novel #16: Danger Knocks. As the firm’s tallest member, I hold a matchstick high on the door jamb and Neb tugs the door closed. If the matchstick’s there when we return, headquarters is secure. If it’s not there, we’ve got trouble.
“Alert set,” he said, pulling the door closed. “You two warn Faye about Otto, and I’ll get Babylon. We’ll ride to the dock.”
Neb and Rain love riding his pony, Babylon. I hate it.
I squinted across the ocean. Far offshore, something glinted, and a shiver skated my spine. “I saw that flash from headquarters. Somebody’s watching us. I feel it.”
“You feel it? That’s not very scientific,” Rain said, reading the sea. “Porpoises,” she said as three graceful, gray-blue creatures rolled in the water, their broad backs glinting.
“U-fish,” Neb teased.
“Porpoises are mammals. Race you!” I said, and we took off.
We blasted past Neb’s picket fence and across the compound of whitewashed buildings. Neb veered toward his pony, Babylon, who grazed beyond the clothesline. Rain and me pounded up the steps, startling the cat. We zipped across the porch and skidded into the parlor. Faye and the sisters walked around the room like teenage zombies, books balanced on their heads. “Eerie,” Rain whispered.
Faye let her book slide off, and caught it in one hand. “We’re walking like movie stars, kiddos. You should try it.” She frowned. “You look like something a gull hacked up.”
I glanced in the mirror. Rain and me both washed our hair before school. Hers hung in accordion waves just past her shoulders. Mine hovered around my head like an orange cumulus cloud. My hair’s a perfect hygrometer. I know how humid it is by how big my hair gets. Sometimes I tell people I have a head for science, but so far nobody gets it.
Fact: Faye’s movie-star pretty. Hair the color of cedar bark, violet eyes. She looks sweet, but then, so do crabapples. “Why are you wearing Papa’s shirt?” she demanded.
“It’s my lab jacket. Listen—”
“You think that looks like a lab jacket?” She grinned. “You slay me, kiddo.”
“Faye, Otto plans to blackmail you,” Rain interrupted.
Rain cuts through chitchat like a shark through a school of fish.
“Blackmail?” Neb’s sisters let their books fall. Ruth, who’s tall and bony, put her hands on her hips and glared at me. Naomi, who’s short and island smart, spoke up. “Otto’s blackmailing Faye? Why?”
“Guess,” I said. People will guess things they’d never flat-out tell you.
Faye went red. “Did that little rat follow Reed and me to the edge of Buxton Woods last night? I thought I heard somebody.”
I tried to look horrified—which I was. We try to be quieter than that. “It’s more like extortion than blackmail. Otto’s fishing for protection money,” I said. “Don’t take his bait.”
Faye snorted. “That twit’s hitting me for cash? Thanks for the heads-up, doll babies.”
Doll babies? Sometimes I wonder if Faye and I are related.
Neb clip-clopped past the window on Babylon’s back, and Rain and I sped to the door. “Hey, Hollywood,” I said. “One more thing. Papa’s home,” I said, and slammed the door.
Faye isn’t the only one who knows how to make an exit.
* * *
• • •
Rain hopped onto Babylon’s bare back, light as a grasshopper. I hurled myself across the pony’s shaggy rump and grabbed the back of Rain’s sweater to keep from sliding off. Neb and Rain ride like water flows. I ride like a kid born to hunch over a microscope with a pencil clenched between her teeth. I hung on as Babylon followed the footpath across the dunes, to the village where old wooden houses line the shady, white-sand street.
“There’s Papa’s sloop!” I shouted, sliding to a graceless heap in the grass by Grand’s store. The store sits at the heart of the village with its back to the water, a little warehouse and two fuel tanks to one side. I ran to Grand’s rickety dock, which stitches its way into the sound, as Neb tied his pony and left her to graze.
Papa had dropped anchor a hundred yards from shore. I lifted my spyglass. He stood square-shouldered and trim on the deck of the Miss Ada, giving orders to his crew—a red-faced white man named Onslow Banks, and a dark-skinned Black man from Pea Island, Richard Oscar. Together they let the sloop’s red sails fall gracefully to the deck.
The Pamlico Sound, the nation’s largest, is mostly too shallow for big boats. Grand had already sent two smaller barges—called lighters—to lighter Papa’s goods from the sloop. Trouble rolled ashore in the very first load. “Fifteen barrels of flour?” Grand yelped. “And ten rolls of black cloth? Are we expecting a plague?”
Grand whipped off his spindly gold glasses and raked his fingers through his white hair, standing it up like meringue. I could see him counting beneath his breath. He says it calms him. “Take it to the warehouse, gentlemen,” he said. “I’ll sort it out later.”
The odd parade of goods continued: candy but little sugar, garden seeds, box after box of fishhooks, coffee, and peanut butter. Mountains of canned goods, fresh apples, gallons of gasoline, bags of animal feed in pretty flowered sacks just right for making feed-sack dresses and blouses. “We’ll never sell this much gas,” Grand said. “Your father has lost his mind.”
At last, Papa rowed ashore in his skiff. As he stepped to the dock and pushed back his sun-streaked brown hair, I charged down the dock and leaped into his arms. My toes barely grazed the dock’s rough boards as he swung me around. He plopped me down and kissed the top of my head as Rain sprinted up. “Rain,” he said, scooping her into a hug. “How are you? How’s your mother, how are the cats?”
Before she could answer, Neb clomped into place and gave Papa the Boy Scout salute. “Neb,” Papa said. He snapped to attention and fired off a three-finger salute. “At ease, Scout.” Neb was the most at-ease boy I knew until his daddy got sick. Now he’s tight as a new clothesline. Without the Boy Scout Handbook, I think his life would fly apart.
Papa smiled—something he does so much, his tanned face shows pale laugh lines around his brown eyes. “I know I’ve only been gone a few weeks, but I swear you’re all taller. Any word from the FBI yet?”
“Any day now, sir,” Neb said. “It’s only been—”
“Six months and two days,” Rain said. She recited:
Dear FBI,
The Dime Novel Kids of Hatteras Island welcome a prime assignment.
Alphabetically yours,
Neb, Rain, and Stick
Rain has a memory like flypaper. Everything sticks.
“It will come,” he said, studying the jumble of boxes in his skiff. “Any new cases?”
“We’re closing in on the notorious Tommy-Gun Wilkins,” I said. “Citizen’s arrest, like in Dime Novel #54: Polly Pounces.”
Papa’s eyes went serious. “A citizen’s arrest? Let’s talk that over first,” he said, waving to Faye, who strolled toward the dock. Faye’s too proud to run.
“Plus we got an around the clock watch on the postmistress,” I added.
“Miss Agnes?” Papa said. “Any crime, or just general bad taste in men?”
Fact: Postmistress Agnes Wainwright circles Grand like a buzzard circles carrion. “Grand’s too good for her, but it’s more than that,” I said, lowering my voice. “Miss Agnes is suspicious. She won’t let us into her house despite our charm. She prowls while the village sleeps, and hangs up laundry when it’s not even wash day.”
“Shocking,” he said. “Glad you’re on it. Let’s see, I know there’s something for you Dimes somewhere.” He leaped nimbly aboard his skiff, opened a new blue-green satchel, and snagged a small, bright-colored box. “Paints for my favorite artist,” he said, handing them to Rain. “Neb, I saw this in Norfolk—a balsa slide, for your Boy Scout neckerchief. The blank face should be easy to carve. Bear, bobcat . . . whatever you like.”
Even Neb’s hair seemed to wilt. “Thank you for this . . . chunk of wood, sir.”
Papa grinned. “Your dad’s the best decoy carver on the island. Ask him to show you,” he said. “How’s your mother?”
Neb’s lip quivered. I spoke up before he had to. “She’s gloomier than usual, with Mr. Mac sicker than usual,” I said, and Neb nodded his thanks to me. Neb’s so angry about his father being sick, he’s even stopped speaking to God.
“I’m sorry, Neb,” Papa said, placing a hand on Neb’s shoulder. Neb’s face righted itself like a ship on a pitching sea. Papa glanced at Otto and his goons, who’d slumped on the shore like a pack of hyenas. “How’s Otto?”
“Greedy and mean.”
“Same as always, then. Too bad.”
“James Lawson!” Grand shouted from the other end of the dock. He slammed his clipboard against his leg and stalked toward us. He’s wiry, Grand, and bowlegged as a pair of parentheses. “Explain yourself!”
“I’m in trouble,” Papa said. “You’ll have to wait until supper for your gift, Genius. Do me a favor? Tell your mother I’ll be home soon as I can. Lord knows I need a bath and a shave,” he said, rubbing the reddish stubble on his face. “And Stick . . . or is it Sarah now?”
“It’s Stick,” I said, very firm.
Papa’s dark eyes went warm. He says I’ll get tired of being called Stick one day. I say never. Stick’s a wild-card name, a name for a girl who makes her own rules. “Stick, please tell your mother I can’t wait to see her.”
As we ran to Babylon, Papa’s voice boomed out: “Titus, I know this isn’t what you expected, but I can explain.”
“Wonder what that’s about,” I muttered.
“The war,” Rain said.
“The war’s not coming here,” Neb said, fear sharpening his tone.
“It is,” she said. “Mama Jonah says she feels it coming like a rising storm.”
* * *
• • •
“Mama,” I shouted, letting the back door slam at my heels.
I sprinted through the kitchen to our living room. Faye says its white-and-blue-checked linoleum tiles and overstuffed furniture are fuddy-duddy. I say she’s a snob.
Mama peeked in from our library. “Stick, what’s wrong?” Mama’s a perfection of ordinary except for her eyes, which are rare and violet like Faye’s, and her smarts, which are sharp as my own. If Papa’s our sail and fate’s our wind, Mama’s the ballast holding us steady.
“Papa’s home,” I said, and her smile made her square face beautiful. “He wants a bath and a shave, and he can’t wait to see you.”
