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14

Briar

1942

A s I drew closer, I recognized the form on the beach as a man. He was clothed in a thin T-shirt and a pair of underwear and lay face down, one ear to the sand. He was extremely pale, his skin a milky blue-white, probably suffering hypothermia and shock from exposure.

I checked my surroundings and saw no one on the beach, then knelt and felt the man’s neck. I found a pulse, thready but there, and glanced at the call box along the shore. Not yet. Why get the authorities involved if I didn’t have to? Would they even believe me enough to come? I could attend to his medical care.

He’d nearly drowned. How long had he been in the water? Living on an island, I’d seen my share of water-related accidents and knew that a victim had only four to six minutes to survive a brain deprived of oxygen, after which recovery was generally considered impossible. I pressed on his back, with no luck, then pushed more vigorously, causing him to dislodge a quart or more of seawater. But I knew I had to pile on blankets to get him warm to fight the hypothermia.

Was he a fisherman? Perhaps. I considered the wilder possibility that he came from the U-boat. I looked out to sea, darkness closing in. Was it still off our shore? I pictured seventy men lying in their shallow bunks out there in the darkness, radios silenced, saving their battery power. Were they watching?

The tide was coming in and threatened to swamp him, so I ran around the bend and up the beach to the boathouse, grabbed a waxed tarp and blanket, and ran back. I dragged him onto the tarp, covered him with the blanket, and pulled him toward our old boathouse, a gray-shingled box set on concrete pylons.

It was dark by the time we made it up there, and I hauled him over the threshold, my clothes drenched in sweat. I switched on a table lamp, which lit the knotty-pine walls of the high-ceilinged room. It had been Grandfather’s place to play cards with his friends back in the day; he’d furnished it with a small round table and chairs, a sagging velvet sofa, and equipped it with a small water closet.

I sat next to the man on the green-painted floor, caught my breath, and examined him for the first time with the benefit of lamplight. Would he wake and thrash about violently? Attack me? For the moment he looked peaceful, sleeping there. I didn’t recognize him from the Menemsha docks or from church. If he was local, I would have seen him at Alley’s General Store at some point.

Since he had a beard, it was hard to tell his age, but I judged him to be no more than twenty-five. He was slender and of average height, and the skin on his arms and legs appeared smooth and nearly hairless, with no sign of exposure to the sun. He fit the profile for a Kriegsmarine cadet. On the more compact side. Being at sea for a few months would explain the beard. But why had he just washed up like that?

How could this be happening on our little island? I’d never felt more alive, unraveling the puzzle of who he was.

He wore no life preserver. Did his fellow soldiers throw him out? Did he ditch his ship? Desertion was serious—the Nazis killed deserters. And he was probably not a spy. Spies were better organized and prepared, sent ashore with U.S. dollars and always in German uniform in case they were caught, since spies in civilian dress were more likely to be executed. According to the Hague Conventions, a combatant attempting to gather information while in uniform had to be treated as a prisoner of war.

But perhaps it was a spy mission gone wrong. Eight German men had just been tried in Washington, D.C., for coming ashore from U-boats during what they’d called Operation Pastorius. Was this somehow connected to them?

Suddenly the man’s whole body began to shake. I took a second blanket from the sofa and smoothed it over him, then headed for the door. Gram would know what to do.