It was about that time that our day-old Baltimore Sun carried huge headlines about the eight German saboteurs. They had been landed by submarine on Long Island and Florida and almost immediately caught. I knew, of course I knew, that the Captain was not a spy, but as I read, it felt as though I were swallowing an icicle. Suppose he had been. Suppose Call and I had caught him and become heroes? It seemed such a near miss that suddenly it was important to me to find out more about the old man. If he was not a spy, if he was indeed Hiram Wallace, why had he come back after all these years to an island where he was hardly remembered except with contempt?
7
Call and I had been so busy crabbing since school let out that we’d hardly been to visit the Captain together. Call, I knew, usually went to see him on Sunday afternoons, but my parents liked me to stay closer by on Sundays. I didn’t mind. The long sleepy afternoon was perfect for writing lyrics. By now I had nearly a shoe box full, just waiting for Lyrics Unlimited to write and demand all that I could deliver.
So Call was surprised when, on a Tuesday, I proposed that we wind up the crabbing an hour early and pay a visit to the Captain.
“I thought you didn’t like him,” Call said.
“Of course I like him. Why shouldn’t I like him?”
“Because he tells good jokes.”
“That’s a stupid reason not to like somebody.”
?
?Yeah. That’s what I thought.”
“What d’you mean?”
“Nothing.”
I decided to ignore the implied insult. “You can learn a lot from someone who comes from the outside. Take Mr. Rice. I guess Mr. Rice taught me more than all my other teachers put together.” All two of them.
“About what?”
I blushed. “About everything—music, life. He was a great man.” I talked and thought about Mr. Rice as though he were dead and gone forever. That’s how far away his Texas army post seemed.
Call was quiet, watching my face. I knew he was fixing to say something but didn’t quite know how to say it. “What’s the matter?” I asked him. As soon as I asked, I knew. He didn’t want me to visit the Captain with him. He wanted the Captain all to himself. Besides, he was suspicious of me. I decided to tackle the matter directly.
“Why don’t you want me to visit the Captain?”
“I never said I didn’t want you to visit the Captain.”
“Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s go.”
He shrugged his shoulders unhappily. “Free country,” he muttered. It didn’t make any sense, but I knew what he meant—that if there had been a way to stop me, he would have.
The Captain was tending crab lines on his broken-down dock. I poled the boat in close before he heard us and looked up.
“Well, if it isn’t Wheeze and Cough,” he said, smiling widely and touching the bill of his cap.
“Wheeze and Cough, get it?” Call yelled back to me from the bow. He shook his head, smiling all over his face. “Wheeze and Cough, that’s really good.”
I tried to smile, but my face had too much basic integrity for me even to pretend I had heard something funny.
Call and the Captain gave each other a “don’t mind her” look, and Call threw the Captain the bowline and he tied us up. I don’t mind admitting I wasn’t too keen to step out on that ramshackle dock, but after Call had jumped onto it, and it had only shuddered a bit, I climbed carefully out and walked off to the shore as quickly as I dared.
“I’m going to fix it.” The Captain hadn’t missed my anxiety. “Just so many things to do around here.” He nodded at Call. “I tried to get your friend here to give me a hand, but—”
Call blushed. “You can’t hammer on a Sunday,” he said defensively.
Hiram Wallace would have known that. Nobody on the island worked on the Sabbath. It was as bad as drinking whiskey and close to cursing and adultery. I racked my brain for the next question—the one that would prove to Call beyond doubt that the Captain was no more Hiram Wallace than I was. “Don’t you recall the Seventh Commandment?” I asked slyly.
He lifted his cap and scratched his hair underneath. “Seventh Commandment?”
I had him. That is, I almost had him. I hadn’t reckoned on Call. Call who snorted and almost yelled, “Seventh? Seventh? Seventh don’t have neither to do with hammering on Sunday. Seventh’s the one,” he stopped, suddenly embarrassed and lowered his voice, “on adultery.”