Storm Warriors by Elisa Carbone Page A

of stronger, with a loud cough and pains in his chest, so he was sent home to Roanoke Island to have a good rest. We thought he'd come back in a while to finish out the season, but he never did. Mr. Tillett came as his substitute, the way he'd done for Mr. Pugh when he was on leave last winter to get married.
    The last few weeks before the crew left for the summer, I helped them overhaul the life-saving equipment, whitewash the stable and storehouse, oil the wood inside the station, paint the lifeboat and the window sashes, and pack up all their belongings in preparation for going home. They were happy to be going to live with their families for two whole months. I was sorry to see them go.
    Mr. Etheridge seemed sorry to see them go as well. I think thestation must be awfully big and hollow-sounding for one man to live in alone. He said he tried one summer to have his wife, Frances, and the children come live with him. But Frances said it was too lonely out here on Pea Island.
    With nobody else around but us and Mr. Etheridge only allowed to go see his family once a week or so, we figured on being good neighbors. Mr. Etheridge had his fishing skiff moored sound side, and sometimes Daddy and I went fishing with him. He also had a fenced-in garden and even a hog he was fattening up. When we found horseshoe crabs caught in our gill net, we brought them over for Mr. Etheridge's hog to eat.
    With the warm weather, speckled trout and mullet were running, and our purse seine was always full. We had to check the gill net morning and evening, because if we left the fish for too long, they'd spoil in the warm sound water. We preserved them in strong brine until we could sail to Roanoke Island to sell our haul.
    I helped Grandpa finish our garden fence. On one of our trips to Manteo, we bought seeds and later planted melons, collards, turnips, carrots, sweet potatoes, and tomatoes. They were sprouting up nicely in the sandy plot we'd prepared by burying fish heads there all year.
    By July, the summer heat settled in like an itchy wool blanket. We stopped cooking indoors and dug a fire pit outside to use. Our fish and pan bread tasted good and smoky. In the evening,as it was getting dark, we'd open the window and door to the cabin, take a bit of brush and light it on fire, then blow out the flame and get it smoking real good. We'd bring that inside in a pot so it would fill the cabin with smoke and run out the mosquitoes and yellow flies. Between cooking outdoors and smoking out the cabin, my clothes always smelled of fire.
    Grandpa was spending his time in the garden, weeding, tying up plants, picking beetles off the leaves. Some days I helped him, and in between working, he told me stories.
    “Did I ever tell you how your Grandma Dahlia and I got separated?” he asked one day, his head leaning back against the garden fence where we'd sat down to rest.
    I blinked. He never had told me that story. I'd always wondered but thought it would be mean-hearted to ask.
    “No, Grandpa, I don't believe you have,” I said.
    He closed his eyes, and I felt him going back in time, remembering. “Once your daddy was born, my Dahlia used to come see me on Saturday nights with him slung to her back, sleeping. Mistress Callie let her stay overnight, then, and she and your daddy spent Sundays with me.”
    I tried to imagine Daddy as a little baby, and I laughed. Grandpa opened his eyes a slit, then closed them again and continued.
    “Things were going along the way we thought they always would. I'd work all week, sunup to sundown, with thoughts ofSaturday night keeping me going. Then the war came. Mistress Callie's husband went off to fight the Yankees, and Dahlia said there wasn't hardly anything for her and your daddy to eat at their place anymore. I took to saving what I could from my rations to send home with them.
    “About a year after the war started, two Saturdays went by and my Dahlia didn't come. I asked Master Johnson could I have a pass so