When he reached the spar deck, he saw that although the rest of the ship was completely dark, the stern was still brightly lit. That gave him hope-until he realized what was actually happening. The center of the Teasdale had begun to lift, like a playing card being folded in the middle. As he watched, the inch-thick steel decking started to rip from starboard to port, and the sound of its rending drowned out even the howl of the wind. Sparks shot into the night like fireworks and great clouds of gray steam erupted. LePere gaped in horror as the Teasdale broke in half.
“Billy!” he cried and rushed up the ladder to the darkened pilothouse.
Orin Grange was at the radio, speaking frantically, trying vainly to send a message on a dead set. LePere grabbed his shoulder.
“Where’s Billy?”
Grange shrugged off his hand. LePere grabbed him and spun him around. “Where’s Billy, damn it?”
“He went aft with Bowdecker,” Grange hollered, then turned back to the radio.
LePere headed toward the lighted stern. He passed a group of men gathered at the pontoon raft between hatches two and three. The captain was among them.
“Where are you going, LePere?” Captain Hawley cried out to him.
“My brother. He’s somewhere aft.”
“You can’t get there now.” Hawley grasped his arm. “Get into the raft, man.”
LePere pulled free and ran on.
As he approached the place where the deck had split, he stopped abruptly in terror. The severed stern of the Teasdale was rising up, driven forward by the propeller that was still turning. For a moment, LePere was sure the whole aft end would ride up onto the deck where he stood and crush him. He could see the open sections of the severed cargo hold lit by lights, full of fire and swirling clouds of steam. It was like looking through the doorway to hell. He had a moment of perfect calm, sure he was about to die, and he saw, or thought he saw, silhouetted in one of the lighted windows aft, the shape of Billy standing all alone.
Then the stern veered to starboard. As LePere watched, it passed him slowly and headed off into the night and the storm like an animal crawling off to die.
“Billy!” he cried out in vain. “Billy! God, Billy!”
He teetered at the brink of a section of ship that was tipping, preparing to slide into the deep. Hands pulled him back, and he found himself with half a dozen other men struggling to climb aboard the life raft. He moved in a daze, his feet slipping on the sharp angle of the tilting deck. Like all rafts on the older carriers, the pontoon raft on the Teasdale was too heavy to be manually launched. It was designed to float free of the deck as the ship sank beneath it. However, as the bow rose, pointing ever skyward, the raft suddenly broke loose, tumbled down the deck, and hit the water. A moment later, so did John LePere.
The icy water took his breath away, squeezed him mercilessly so that his whole body cramped at once. A wave lifted him and slammed him against the tilted hull. He managed to push off the metal and he sliced into the next wave, swimming hard away from the sinking bow section. When he lifted his head, he found that he was only a few yards from the raft. Skip Jurgenson, another of the Teasdale’s wheelsmen, leaned over the side and extended his hand. LePere fought against the waves. His fingers touched the raft. Jurgenson grasped the collar of his peacoat and helped him aboard. LePere fell against the prone form of another shipmate, Pete Swanson, a coal passer, who lay nearly motionless in the center of the raft. Swanson’s duties were in the engine room and his quarters were aft where Billy had gone. LePere grabbed him and screamed over the wind and the crash of water.
“Where’s my brother? Did you see my brother?”
Swanson was shaking violently, his face ghostly white. Although his lips formed words, no sound seemed to come forth. LePere bent close to his lips.
“I blew it,” Swanson said hoarsely. “I blew it.”
“What about Billy?” LePere shouted into his ear.
Swanson stared blankly, as if he didn’t see LePere at all, and repeated only those three words-“I blew it”-over and over again.
Jurgenson, who’d been hollering into the dark for other shipmates, quit and dropped in a dejected heap next to LePere. “I didn’t see nobody else,” he said. “Not one blessed soul.”
The storm pushed the raft far from the bow of the Teasdale. LePere and Jurgenson watched the last of the ore boat sink in a huge bloom of dark water. Then John LePere lay down and wept, crying “Billy” over and over again as he held to that tiny raft in the middle of the big lake his ancestors called Kitchigami.
1
CORCORAN O’CONNOR WAS PULLED instantly from his sleep by the sound of a sniffle near his head. He opened his eyes and the face of his six-year-old son filled his vision.
“I’m thcared,” Stevie said.
Cork propped himself on one arm. “Of what, buddy?”
“I heard thomething.”
“Where? In your room?”
Stevie nodded.
“Let’s go see.”
Jo rolled over. “What is it?”
“Stevie heard something,” Cork told his wife. “I’ll take care of it. Go back to sleep.”
“What time is it?”
Cork glanced at the radio alarm on the stand beside the bed. “Five o’clock.”
“I can take him,” she offered.
“Go back to sleep.”
“Mmmm.” She smiled faintly and rolled back to her dreaming.
Cork took his son by the hand, and together they walked down the hallway to where the night-light in Stevie’s room cast a soft glow over everything.
“Where was the noise?”
Stevie pointed toward the window.
“Let’s see.”
Cork knelt and peered through the screen. Aurora, Minnesota, was defined by the barest hint of morning light. The air was quite still, not even the slightest rustle among the leaves of the elm in Cork’s backyard. Far down the street, the Burnetts’ dog Bogart barked a few times, then fell silent. The only thing Cork found disturbing was the smell of wood smoke heavy on the breeze. The smoke came from forest fires burning all over the north country. Summer had come early that year. With it had come a dry heat and drought that wilted the undergrowth and turned fields of wild grass into something to be feared. Lake levels dropped to the lowest recorded in nearly a century. Rivers shrank to ragged threads. Creeks ceased to run. In shallow pools of trapped water, fish darted about wildly as what sustained them rapidly disappeared. The fires had begun in mid-June. Now it was nearly the end of July, and still the forests were burning. One blaze would be controlled and two others somewhere else would ignite. Day and night, the sky was full of smoke and the smell of burned wood.
“Do you still hear it?” Cork asked.
Stevie, who’d knelt beside him, shook his head.
“Probably an early bird,” Cork said.
“After a worm.” Stevie smiled.
“Yeah. And he must’ve got that worm. Think you can go back to sleep?”
“Yeth.”
“Good man. Come on.”
Cork got him settled in bed, then sat in a chair near the window. Stevie watched his father a while. His eyes were dark brown, the eyes of his Anishinaabe ancestors. Slowly, they drifted closed.
Cork’s son had always been a light sleeper, awakened easily by noises in the night, disturbances in the routine of the household. He was the only one of the O’Connor children who’d needed the comfort of a night-light.
