Kiss River

Chapter Three

GINA KNEW THIS ROOM. SHE HAD NEVER BEEN in it before, but she knew it all the same. She stood in the doorway in the darkness, breathing hard, although the small, soft-sided suitcase she’d carried up the stairs, along with her backpack and camera, was not heavy. Without turning on the light, she walked to the window and, with a little work, managed to open it. A soft breeze blew through the screen. The sky had changed since she’d first walked into the house earlier that evening, and now it was filled with stars, more stars than she’d seen before in her life. She could make out the tower, a gray ghost against the night sky, fifty or so yards away from her.

In all her fantasies of what this day might bring, she had not expected to find herself in this room, this house. She had not expected to eat dinner at that old kitchen table, running her fingers over the smooth porcelain, knowing things about it her host and hostess could not know.

The last thing she’d expected was to be taken in, however temporarily, by two strangers. How quickly they had felt like friends! Lacey, primarily. She reminded Gina of one of her students, a red-haired girl with an expansive nature, the sort of person who could talk to anyone as if she’d known them all her life. But Gina was not here to make friends. She was not generally an introvert, but she would have to keep to herself on this trip. Lying to strangers to get what she needed was one thing; lying to friends, another. And already she had lied to Clay and Lacey.

Fresnel. She squeezed her eyes shut, still embarrassed by her faux pas. A lighthouse historian, my foot. But Lacey and Clay seemed to buy it, or at least to accept it. Tomorrow she would find herself a room, then see if she could talk with their father about raising the lens. And if he said to forget it? She wasn’t certain what she would do then. One bridge to cross at a time.

The lens was so close. Through the window, she could hear the sound of the sea, the breaking of the waves. White foam swirled around the base of the lighthouse under the night sky. The lens was out there, just below the surface of the water. There had to be a way.

She switched on the lamp on the night table. From her suitcase, she pulled the T-shirt she would sleep in and her toiletries bag, which held only her toothbrush, toothpaste, floss and sunscreen. She wore a bit of makeup when she taught, but lately, her looks had been the last thing on her mind.

The small pink diary with its broken lock and tattered corners rested on the clothing in her suitcase, and she took it out and set it on the bed Lacey had already made up for her. She knew the diary’s contents by heart.

Pulling off her shorts, she extracted the picture of the little girl from her pocket and propped it up against the lamp. She finished undressing and climbed beneath the covers, then picked up the picture to study it in the lamplight. She had wanted things in her life. She’d wanted her mother to get well. She had at one time wanted a husband and a good marriage, but that was not to be. But never had she wanted anything so much as to hold this child in her arms again.

She set the picture back on the night table, then turned out the light. Lying in the old, full-size sleigh bed in the dark, she could still see the stars. Years ago, the light from the lens would have shot through this small bedroom once every four and a half seconds, illuminating the walls and the ceiling and the covers on the bed.

Yes, she knew without a doubt whose room she was in.

Chapter Four

Saturday, March 7, 1942

THE LIGHTS WENT OUT AGAIN TONIGHT. I’M sitting on my bed, writing by the glow of the hurricane lantern, just like I used to do when I was younger, before the electric came to Kiss River. Daddy’s put the lighthouse on the emergency generator—he won’t let that light go out no matter what. But here in the house, we have no backup. Mama says “You’ve gotten spoiled and soft, Elizabeth.” Maybe she’s right. She argues with me no matter what I say these days. Or maybe I argue with her. I don’t know. We’re not getting along well, is all I can say about that. All I know is, even though it’s not unusual for the lights to go out, tonight I feel scared by the sudden darkness. And I have to add that nothing much usually scares me. Not the storms that wash clear across this island or even the wild boar that kill chickens and sometimes a dog or cat and once that I heard of, but don’t know for a fact, an old woman hanging out her wash on the line behind her house. I’m not even sure now why I feel scared. Maybe because the adults are. They don’t say it, of course, but I can feel fear everywhere I go. Everybody’s talking about the war. People sit around at Trager’s Store and talk about it, not laughing much or telling jokes like they used to. In my own living room, my parents sit right next to the radio, listening. Always listening. There’s still music. I am sick of hearing that song, “Let’s Remember Pearl Harbor,” and especially “Perfidia.” What does Perfidia mean, anyhow? Is that supposed to be someone’s name? If it’s not Glenn Miller music, it’s Gabriel Heater and his “Up to the Minute World News!” and none of that news is good. Lines I never noticed before are on Mama’s forehead. Although I am angry with her and all her rules for me, I want to take my hand and smooth it over her forehead to erase those lines. When I feel like that, I know I still love her and Daddy. Sometimes I have to remind myself of that!

We’re not in any real danger up here in the northern beaches, Daddy said to me just yesterday, even though some ships have been sunk not far from here. Most of the ships that have been torpedoed by the Germans were down around Hatteras. After today, though, I bet Daddy’s thinking he might have to eat his words.

This morning, I was up in the lantern room, cleaning the lens. We are not needed here the way we used to be before the electric came, when we had to keep the lighthouse lantern lit all night long, winding the clockworks and toting oil up them two hundred and seventy steps. The keepers of other lights have been let go, but somehow Daddy’s been allowed to stay on as a “civilian keeper,” as long as he does all the maintenance work around here. So I help by cleaning the lens. At least, the lower part of the lens. I can’t reach much higher than that, and Daddy won’t let me use the ladder near all that glass, and secretly I’m glad he won’t, because it’s much harder work than I guessed. All these years, I’ve been watching him clean the smooth glass prisms with his soft chammy and jeweler’s rouge, wishing I could do it myself. A year ago, when I turned fourteen, he finally let me, and now I wonder why I begged him to do it. You have to be so careful not to scratch the glass. I wasn’t supposed to ever touch it. “Eighteen panels of crown glass prisms, manufactured and polished in Paree, France,” Daddy says to anyone who will listen and even some people who won’t. Fingerprints can dull the light, he always says, but I used to touch the prisms when he wasn’t looking, because I loved the slick, cold feel of them. The lens is more than twice his height and I never realized how truly huge around it was until I had to clean it myself. I think it would take up half this room (my bedroom).

It’s funny that I’m writing in this diary now. Toria (my cousin) gave it to me for my fourteenth birthday and I couldn’t have cared less then. I had too many other things to do, like fishing and crabbing and riding my bicycle and playing with the dogs. Now, fishing bores me all of a sudden. That’s all anyone ever does around here. Fishing, crabbing, clamming, oystering. The time I used to spend fishing, I now seem to spend thinking, and I know that’s not a very useful way to pass the time, but I can’t seem to help it. Anyhow, I put this diary in my dresser drawer after I got it, beneath my underthings, and pretty much forgot about it. About a week ago, I was reaching into that drawer and my hand brushed something hard. It was the key, stuck in the keyhole of the diary, and I pulled the book out of the drawer and stared at it and words started coming to me. I want to write down what I’m thinking, and put them thoughts somewhere safe, where no one can see them except me. There is no other place I can say what I think. Mrs. Cady (my teacher) doesn’t want to hear it. And Mama and Daddy are right critical of every word out of my mouth, like those words might burn them and they have to protect themselves from them. So suddenly I am grateful to Toria for giving me this book. I still keep it in my underwear drawer, only now, after I lock the diary, I hide the key between the mattress and box spring of my bed.

So, the light is still burning in the lantern room tonight, and when it swirls around I can see the white tower of the lighthouse outside my window, even though I can’t see the light itself unless I move closer to the window and bend my head over, but I like how from my bed, the white tower is smack in the center of my window. My whole room fills up with the light. When Toria stays over, she can’t sleep at all. I don’t think I could sleep without it, I’m so accustomed to it.

But here’s what happened this morning that’s got me full of jitters. While I was in the lantern room doing my cleaning, something out to sea caught my eye. I knew what it was right away—smoke, a big black bubble of it, expanding from a spot straight out from Kiss River, not quite to the horizon. And I knew where it was coming from, too.

Daddy keeps binoculars up there and I looked through them, but I couldn’t see the ship itself, just the smoke. There were orange flames coming out of the water, and I guessed it must’ve been an oil tanker. This was the closest one. The first one I’ve seen with my own eyes, although I know it’s not the first to go down. Not by a long shot. The sign at the post office says, Loose Lips Might Sink Ships. That means we should be quiet about anything we know about the merchant ships traveling along the coastline, because you never know who might be spying right next to you. That seems silly to me, because I know nearly everyone around here. A stranger would stand out, especially a German stranger. Krauts, some people call them. I heard Daddy call them that once, when he didn’t think I was listening. It shocked me to hear him say that, because he and Mama are always after me not to see myself as any better than anyone else. When Mama heard one of the boys at Trager’s call Mr. Sato “slant-eyes,” she threatened to wash his mouth out with soap.

None of us ever saw a Japanese person before Mr. Sato came here a year or so ago. His son was married to a girl from here and they lived with Mr. Sato in Chicago. When the son died a year ago, the girl, whose name I don’t remember, wanted to move back here, and she brought Mr. Sato with her, since he’s crippled in a wheelchair and couldn’t live alone. They live in a house on the sound, across the island from me. I have to go right past his house on my way to school, and I used to see him out fishing. He would sit in his wheelchair on the deck that hangs right out over the water from their house, with the fishing pole in his hand. I used to wave to him because I felt sorry for him, and he’d always wave back. Everyone calls him slant-eyes behind his back and the kids make fun of him. No one is very friendly to him, and after Pearl Harbor, I’d be surprised if anyone talks to him at all. I never see him outside these days. He might be scared to go out and I don’t really blame him. He looks like a harmless old man, though, tiny, gray-haired and sort of shriveled up in his wheelchair. I wouldn’t know he still lives in that house if I didn’t hear other people whispering about him, saying how they don’t like having a Jap for a neighbor.

Anyhow, I got off my topic again. Mrs. Cady is always after me about that. She says, “You write real well, but you jump around too much.” Glad she’s not reading this!

Back to the burning ship. So those Germans are killing us right outside our back door now. Their sneaky U-boats come up from under the water and attack, just like a shark. When I watched that black smudge growing out to sea, I wondered if someone’s loose lips might have gotten word to the U-boats out there somehow.

I have not seen a U-boat myself, although I keep looking for one. When I’m cleaning up in the lantern room, or after school when I come home, I go up there and stare at the water with the binoculars, looking for one of the German subs. I’m not sure what to look for, exactly. Would a periscope be too small for me to see? That sounds like it would be fun to have. A periscope. To see what was happening someplace you weren’t. You could see people, but they couldn’t see you. Without a doubt, that’s what happened out there this morning. Some American ship filled with hardworking men got spied with a U-boat’s periscope, and then bam! The Germans torpedoed them. This is the first I’ve seen this close up, and I don’t want to see another. It was as if, when I saw that smoke, all the fun went out of me. I was suddenly as sour and dead inside as some of the grown-ups I know, and I didn’t like the feeling.

There is one good thing and one thing only that I like about this war: it’s brung the Coast Guard boys to the Outer Banks. They’ve taken over the lifesaving stations, and each one of them is more handsome than the next. They are from all parts of the country, and hearing all their different accents makes me want to get out of North Carolina and see the world. I’ve been to Elizabeth City and Manteo and even once to Norfolk, but that’s it. Mama keeps an eye on me when they’re around. I can feel her watching every move I make, and so I pretend not to even notice those boys. But I do. And some of them notice me right back.

Tonight, Mr. Bud Hewitt (he’s the chief warrant officer for the Coast Guard up here) came to dinner like he does sometimes. He and Mama and Daddy have become friends. He told us they fished a bunch of the sailors from the torpedoed ship out of the sea, but fifty-some were lost, and already a few bodies had washed up on shore. “It’s getting worse, isn’t it?” Daddy asked Mr. Hewitt, and Mr. Hewitt looked serious and sad, and said, “Yes, we just aren’t prepared for this. We’re so used to being spared fighting right here in the United States that no one expected this bombardment. And nobody thinks much about North Carolina. All eyes are on the West Coast. But they better start thinking, or it’ll be too late.”

Mr. Hewitt said we need a blackout, but one hasn’t been ordered, and I can tell he’s mad about that. He explained how the U-boats can see our ships clear as day out there, silhouetted against the lights from shore. Mr. Hewitt actually got tears in his eyes as he talked about it. I could see how frustrated he is about the whole thing.

I told Mr. Hewitt how I was looking for periscopes out on the water, and my parents laughed at me, making me feel foolish. Mr. Hewitt saved me though. He said he was glad I was doing that, he wished more people would take their duty seriously, but it was more likely I’d see the conning tower—that’s the raised-up part of the deck—rise up out of the water. The periscope would be too hard to see, he said. And if I ever did see something, I should go to him immediately. I promised him I would. The station is only a half mile from my house, but I wish I could just call him on a telephone. Down where Toria lives, they have them crank phones. There aren’t any phones yet in Kiss River, even though people are getting them on the other side of the island. I’ve heard that Mr. Sato’s daughter-in-law was one of the first to get one. It won’t be long till we have them here, too, Daddy keeps telling me.

I asked Mr. Hewitt if it had been an oil tanker and he smiled at me and said I was right, how did I know? I explained about the orange flames I saw, that I knew it must be oil burning on the water. He said I was smart. I like him. He always treats me like I’m an adult, even in front of Daddy and Mama. He said something about the boys at the Coast Guard station thinking I’m a good-looking girl, and I thought Daddy was going to clobber him. But both Mama and Daddy like Mr. Hewitt. “He’s on God’s side,” Daddy says, which is something he says about all the Allies. Even Mrs. Cady says that, and when I asked her if the Japanese and the Germans and the Italians tell their children that God is on their side, she accused me of being unpatriotic. That is not true. I love my country and I know we’re right. But I bet the Germans think they’re right, too. I don’t think God picks sides. And when I see what God lets happen to them merchant ships, I’m sure of it.

I’ve learned a lot about the war from Dennis Kittering. He’s a teacher in High Point who comes here almost every single weekend, winter and summer, to camp on the beach near Kiss River. Since January when the U-boats started sinking ships, he’s had to have a special pass to be able to camp out there, but they gave him one without any trouble. I like him, even though he can aggravate me to no end with his know-it-all attitude. He is very young for a teacher, only out of college one year, with dark hair combed straight back and glasses with wire frames, like Mrs. Cady’s, and he walks with a limp because he was born with one leg a little shorter than the other. He treats me like Mr. Hewitt does, like my thoughts are worth something. I’ve learned more from him about what’s going on in the world than I have from anybody. It’s Dennis who explained to me why this war is happening, and about the internment camps that are starting up for the Japanese people. He said they are innocent people who are suffering and struggling just to survive. The way he explained it put tears in my eyes. I asked him how come Mr. Sato isn’t going to one of them internment camps, too, and he said because it’s only on the West Coast, so I guess Mr. Sato is lucky to be living here even if people pick on him.

Dennis is the one who told me I should read The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. I am the library’s best customer. I read more than anyone I know. I am the top reader in my school, although I guess since there are only twenty-three students in my whole school, and most of them are younger than me, that’s not saying much. But I read even better than the older ones. I’d finished all the Nancy Drews, and then Mrs. Cady told my parents I should be allowed to read whatever I want. They said it was all right with them. So I am now reading The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and a book of stories by Eudora Welty, and I discuss them with Dennis on the weekends. I was reading at the kitchen table yesterday, taking notes with my pencil right on the tabletop, because I didn’t have any paper right there and the table is porcelain and the notes will wash right off, but Mama yelled at me anyhow.

Mama says I’m not allowed to call Dennis by his first name. I’m supposed to call him Mr. Kittering, like I do with other adults. But Dennis laughs at me when I call him that. So around him, I call him Dennis. When I talk to Mama, though, I call him Mr. Kittering.

The lantern’s getting low on oil, so I am going to turn it off now and go to bed. I’m afraid of having nightmares tonight after seeing that ship burn, but at least if I wake up afraid, I’ll be able to see the light fill up my room and know I’m safe.

Chapter Five

GINA WAS TOUCHING HIM. CLAY FELT THE HEAT of her body next to him in his bed, and he held his breath as she slipped her hand beneath the sheet, over his chest, lower. Lower. Touching him, teasing him. This is a dream, he told himself. He wasn’t responsible if it was only a dream. She smiled at him with those lovely white teeth before tossing the sheet aside and lowering her head, her mouth, to where he wanted it to be. He waited to feel her lips and her tongue on him, but instead, he was jolted awake by the touch of something cold and damp against his arm. Opening his eyes, he turned to find the bed empty next to him and Sasha nudging his arm with his nose. Clay groaned and rolled onto his back.

He hated the weekend because he had no real need to go into his office, no way to lose himself in his work. During the week, he’d go in early and stay late, and that seemed to keep his mind occupied well enough to save him from too many disturbing thoughts. But the weekends were different. There was plenty of work to keep him busy around the keeper’s house, of course, but it was solitary work, for the most part, and gave him too much time to think. Some weekends, he went diving with his long-time buddy, Kenny Gallo, but Kenny had to work today. Clay decided he would replace the rotting boards in the cover of the old cistern on the south side of the house. That would take him most of the day and he would wear his Walkman and listen to jazz. Terri had hated jazz, so he would hear nothing that would remind him of her. A decent plan. He did this every day before he got out of bed: planned the day so that every minute was filled and safe from thoughts of Terri and any guilt that might accompany them. Maybe later, when he was done with the cistern and Kenny got out of work, they could meet at Shorty’s Grill and just hang out for a while. He relished spending time with Kenny these days. Kenny didn’t expect—or even want—him to talk about anything heavier than the results of the latest ball game.

Sasha nudged his arm again, and he patted the bed, inviting him up. Sasha was another source of guilt. Poor dog. He had to miss the old days, when he and Terri’s dog, Raven, were constantly on the go, being challenged and rewarded and the center of the universe. Back then, Clay and Terri had lived in Manteo, on a large, treed lot with a huge pile of rubble in the backyard. Clay had dragged other people’s castoffs into the woods behind their house: old appliances, huge chunks of concrete, narrow boards suspended between sawhorses, even an abandoned, totaled Mustang. That was where he’d trained dogs for search and rescue work. Not only Sasha and Raven, but dogs from other search and rescue teams who traveled to see him. Because he was the best. Or at least, he had been, once. Sometimes he missed Raven nearly as much as he did Terri. A shepherd-Lab mix, Raven had been the finest, keenest rescue dog Clay had ever worked with, and she’d been a bit wasted on Terri. Terri had been an interior designer, and she had never truly enjoyed the work with the dogs. Clay didn’t like to think about that fact. He’d ignored Terri’s lack of interest in search and rescue, because he didn’t want to see it.

He still owned the house in Manteo, although he hadn’t really lived there since late November, shortly after Terri died. He’d tried staying there for a while, but he couldn’t tolerate the loneliness, and he’d quickly retreated to the spare room in the cottage Lacey used to rent in Kill Devil Hills. Then Lacey arranged for both of them to live here in the keeper’s house. Leave it to Lacey. She could find a solution to anyone’s problems—except, perhaps, her own. For once, he was grateful for his sister’s ability to play the role of savior.

So, the old Manteo house stood empty. He could probably rent it, if he could find someone who didn’t mind a pile of trash in their backyard, but he didn’t have the motivation to fix up the house on the inside to get it ready for a tenant. He’d always been known for his energy, his need to constantly be on the go, but the truth was, he didn’t feel like doing much of anything these days. He knew he was not well. Not in his head or his heart. But that was another thing he didn’t want to think about.

So strange, living with Lacey. It reminded him of when he was a kid, living with his mother. Feed the hungry, clothe the poor. Did you inherit that sort of thing? It was almost spooky. And she always had something to feed him. He could look in the pantry and see nothing. She could take that nothing and turn it into something delicious. She was taking care of him, and he was letting her. His little sister.

He heard voices in the hall outside his room. Lacey’s and the deeper voice, the voice of the woman who had been about to give him a blow job before Sasha had ruined it. He wouldn’t be able to look her in the eye this morning. It was a dream, Terri, he thought to himself. Out of my control.