Kiss River (10 page)

Gina recalled that the Coast Guard stations had originally been home to the life-saving crews. “Yes,” she said.

“The nearest are up in Ocean Sands or down in Sanderling,” the woman said, toweling off her arms.

Gina was confused. “I thought there was one right about here.”

The woman shook her head, then a spark came to her eyes.
“Oh,” she said. “I know the one you mean. I’ve read about it, and it
was
along here, you’re right. But it was lost in a storm in the sixties, I think. That was before I moved here, so I’m not sure exactly when. A lot of erosion along here since then.” She waved her hand to take in the beach. “It’s changed a lot even since I moved here.”

“Ah, that figures,” Gina said, disappointed. Storms, storms, storms. She was coming to realize that weather was the source of devastation around here. “Well, thanks,” she said with a wry smile. “I guess I can stop looking now.”

“Sorry,” the woman said. She bent over to pick up her beach bag. Straightening again, she looked at Gina.

“You have a nice evening,” she said, then waved as she walked toward a path leading into the vegetation near the beach.

“You, too,” Gina said.

She watched the woman disappear into the trees, then turned and headed back toward Kiss River.

She walked along the beach, her feet slapping in and out of the shallow waves, feeling alone. When she reached the lighthouse again, she stood in knee-high water, staring out at the sea. She thought of that woman on the beach, walking out of the water. Gina could swim, but she had never before been in the ocean. The Pacific off the coast of Washington was far too cold to swim in. Her eyes searched the water in front of her. What if the lens was just below the surface? Maybe it would not even need to be raised to suit her purpose.

She’d brought no bathing suit with her, since swimming had certainly not been part of her plan when she drove east from Washington. But she had on shorts and a T-shirt and no one was around to see her make a fool of herself. Slowly, she started walking into the water. It was nearly high tide, probably not the best time for a search, but the sea was rarely this calm. She would do this methodically, she told herself. She’d walk in an arc around the ocean side of the lighthouse, expanding the arc each time she changed direction. The idea suddenly seemed amazingly simple. The lens weighed three tons. Even if it had broken apart when it fell into the sea, the pieces should still be large enough for her to find.

She walked quickly at first, whisking her hands through the water in all directions, hoping to feel something hard and smooth. Then she had to slow down as the water grew deeper. Occasionally, her feet stumbled over chunks of brick and mortar, but nothing resembling glass. Finally, she was deep enough that she was half swimming, half treading water, trying not to think about sharks and riptides. She’d never experienced either of them, but had certainly heard enough about both hazards. A couple of times, she held her breath and dipped her head below the surface of the water, opening her eyes to look around her, but she couldn’t see more than a couple of feet away from her in any direction and the salt burned her eyes.

She’d been in the water a long time when she turned to look behind her and was stunned to see how small the lighthouse had become. A little jolt of fear shot through her. She was far out into the sea, but still, it was not that deep here, perhaps only a couple of feet above her head, and she calmed herself with that thought as she swam toward shore, a heavy aching in her chest. She had covered a lot of territory out here. She had touched every speck of the sea bottom with her feet and found nothing. The lens, with its tie to both her past and her future, had simply disappeared.

Thursday March 19, 1942

T
he most shocking and horrible thing happened to me today. I am not even sure I can write about it because words just can’t tell how awful it was, but I think it might make me feel better if I write it down, so I will try. It’s midnight now and I can’t sleep, anyway. I’m afraid if I go to sleep, I’ll have nightmares.

I like to climb trees. I always have. Mama scolds me about it, saying that I think I’m so grown-up and all, but I am still just a little kid who climbs trees. Well, I don’t know if I’ll ever outgrow that, or even if I want to. I plan to climb trees with my own children someday. Anyhow, I like sitting up in the trees above the beach just south of Kiss River. There is a wonderful tree there, not very tall, with its branches spread out almost like a platform about ten feet above the ground, and I usually sit up there after school, eating an apple or something and sometimes reading. And to tell the truth, I sometimes sneak out of the house and sit up there at night, because that is the stretch of beach that Jimmy Brown patrols and I like watching him. I would die if he ever
knew I was there, but the trees are thick and I am sure he can’t see me at night, even if he turned his flashlight on me.

So today, after school, it was really warm out and not as windy as usual and I couldn’t wait to get up in my tree. So I took the book I’m reading now (
The Grapes of Wrath
) and went up in the tree. On the beach below me were pieces of wood, nearly covering every inch of sand, and I knew they were probably from one of the ships that had been sunk out to sea. I knew that bodies sometimes washed up with that salvage, though I’d never seen any. Just as I was thinking how glad I was about that fact, I saw some blue and white cloth off to the side of the wreckage. I stared at it, and soon I could make out that it was someone’s shirt, and that someone was still in it!

My first thought was to get Daddy, but I thought I’d better check on the person before I ran off, just on the off chance he might still be alive and need help. I was so scared my knees were actually shaking, but I climbed down the tree and walked out to the beach, trying to find places to put my feet amongst the pieces of wreckage from the ship. The man was lying facedown in the sand and a distance from the wreckage. His shirt was blue and white stripes and his pants were brown. And he had on shoes and socks. I will remember every detail about him until the day I die. I knew he was dead. I knew it. Yet there was this little part of me that thought I had to make absolute sure. So I carefully tucked my foot underneath his ribs and rolled him over. And then! Oh my God! His throat had been cut! The blood was brown and it was all over his shirt and in a wide, revolting gash across his throat. His head had nearly been cut off, I think. I screamed, and then I started running. Not toward home and Daddy, but toward the Coast Guard station. I had to stop once because I thought I was going to retch, but I managed not to. I couldn’t get that man’s face out of my mind.

At the Coast Guard station, I immediately found Mr. Hewitt and told him what I’d discovered. We (me, him and Ralph Salmon, who is another one of the Boston boys and nice, but no Jimmy Brown) climbed in the Coast Guard jeep and headed back down the beach. There was wreckage all along the beach. It looked so different from usual that it took me a minute to figure out when we reached the right spot. While we were bouncing over the sand, I kept asking Mr. Hewitt the question that was
driving me crazy. If the Germans torpedoed the ship, which they would have done from a distance away, how did they also manage to cut the man’s throat? Mr. Hewitt didn’t answer me. He was driving, just looking straight ahead of him at the beach, a frown on his face and his lips tight, and I guessed he was trying to figure out the same thing.

I sure as heck didn’t want to see the man again, and Mr. Hewitt told me I should wait in the jeep. I didn’t want to look like a chicken, though, so I said I was going with him. We had to climb over all sorts of boards and things and Ralph got a nail through his shoe, but lucky for him, it didn’t quite reach his foot.

Once we got to the man, I had to force myself to look at him, and Ralph actually
did
retch, going off in the woods (too close to my tree!) to do it. Mr. Hewitt got down on his haunches next to the dead man. “This man was not on the ship,” he said to me.

“How can you tell?” I asked. I leaned over, my hands on my legs, like I was trying to get a good look at the man. I didn’t want Mr. Hewitt to think I was scared.

“The tide would’ve washed in the salvage just a couple hours ago,” Mr. Hewitt said. “Look how wet it is.”

I did look, and saw that the boards were still dripping water. I still wasn’t sure of Mr. Hewitt’s point, though.

“This fella’s clothes are completely dry.” Mr. Hewitt pointed at the man’s bloody shirt. “Even his shoes are dry. There’s no sign he was ever in the water at all. And his body’s not bloated the way it would be if it had spent some time in the water.”

Ralph came out of the woods then, but didn’t seem to want to get too close to us or the dead man. He sat down on the beach a ways away from us, green around the gills.

“This man has nothing to do with a torpedoed ship,” Mr. Hewitt reported. He fished around in the man’s pockets, coming up with a pack of Chiclets, but no wallet or other identification of any variety. “Take a good look at him, Bess,” Mr. Hewitt said to me. “You know everyone around here. Have you ever seen this man before?”

I looked hard at the man’s face, not letting my eyes fall to the grisly gash across his throat. I am certain I’ve never seen him before. He was young, and I know all the young men around here.
Most of them are gone, anyhow, fighting in Europe. I shook my head and told Mr. Hewitt the dead man was a stranger to me. Mr. Hewitt stood up and looked at me then.

“You know what, Bess?” he said. “You’re quite a gal. You’ve got guts. Look at ol’ Ralph there, white as a sheet.” Ralph had gotten up and moved closer to the man, but not close enough to get a good look. When Mr. Hewitt said that, Ralph started blushing. At least he finally had a little color other than green in his face! He laughed, though, and I knew he took Mr. Hewitt’s words as teasing, even if there was some truth behind them.

I asked Mr. Hewitt what he was going to do. He said he’d get in touch with the sheriff who would check the missing person’s reports and maybe they could find out who this fella was.

“He was killed here,” Mr. Hewitt said. “Right here on this beach. Otherwise there wouldn’t be all this blood on the sand.”

Killed right there! Practically right below my tree. Mr. Hewitt was right. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it, but the sand was soaked with the same brown blood that was on the man’s shirt. I did start to feel sick then. I am not sure I’ll ever be able to relax in the branches of my tree again.

“He looks German to me,” Ralph said suddenly. It was practically the first words he’d said since we left the Coast Guard station.

Mr. Hewitt laughed. “And what does a German look like?” he asked.

Ralph pointed out the man’s blond hair and eyebrows. I knew he was thinking the dead man was a German spy. Everyone thinks every stranger around here is spying for the Germans. Otherwise, how would those U-boats be able to know exactly where our merchant ships are nearly every minute of the day? But Mr. Hewitt just laughed.

“You just described yourself, Ralph,” he said. “Blond hair and blond eyebrows.”

“I’m no Kraut!” Ralph said. He looked really upset.

Mr. Hewitt ignored him. Instead, he said to me, “We’ll escort you home now, Bess.”

“You don’t need to do that. I’m not afraid.” Although the thought of walking back through the woods did put a chill up my spine.

We argued about it for a bit, then finally they walked me part-way. Mr. Hewitt told me to make sure I tell Daddy about the man, since it happened so close to the light station. “And you be careful,” he said. “I don’t know how or why this fella met this fate, but one thing’s for sure and that’s that there is a murderer on the loose out here.”

I headed home. It was strange, but I hadn’t thought about that until he said it. That there was a murderer on the loose. I guess I’d been so caught up in thinking about the man somehow coming from a torpedoed ship and so surely a victim of the Germans that I hadn’t stopped to think. But Mr. Hewitt was right. There’s a murderer out here.

For the first time since I can remember, Daddy locked the house up tight before we went to bed. Mama kept hugging me hard, and I knew they’d be keeping an eye on me tonight, and I wouldn’t be able to sneak out to watch Jimmy Brown on his patrol. That’s all right. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to go out on the beach in the dark again.

T
here was something about this house in the middle of the night that Clay found unsettling. When he’d wake up in the dark, the thunderous pounding of the ocean would be right outside his window, as though the sea had moved closer to the house during the night. But if he got up to use the bathroom or go downstairs for something to drink, he would find the interior of the house eerily still. It was as though someone—or something—was lurking in the dark corners.

Lacey had taken a vacation in April, leaving him alone in the house for a week, and although he would admit it to no one, he’d been glad to have Sasha with him. If he’d had the house entirely to himself, the hushed darkness might have driven him even further around the bend than he already was. Too much history in this house, and the ghosts all came out at night.

On Tuesday night, he woke up at one in the morning, needing to use the bathroom. Shutting his eyes, he tried to drift off again, but knew it was no use.

Sasha stirred in the corner of the room as he got out of bed, but the dog only uttered one of his low, doggie moans, and went back to sleep. Clay stumbled into the hallway, expecting the house’s nighttime silence to envelop him, but instead, he heard a sound coming from his sister’s room. He stopped for just a moment, worried that she was sick, but then quickly identified the murmured cries of passion and the rhythmic creaking of her bed. He hurried past her room to the bathroom.

Who was she with? In the bathroom, which was adjacent to her bedroom, he could still hear the lovers. He felt intrusive—not for the first time since moving into the keeper’s house with Lacey—and he ran the water in the sink so he wouldn’t have to hear. Maybe, he told himself, you’re just jealous that she has someone and you don’t. But that wasn’t it, and he almost wished it was. What troubled him about Lacey and her lovers was that she did not seem to discriminate. He didn’t know who was with her right now, but most likely, it was not the same man who had been with her the week before.

The following morning, he found his sister and Gina in the color-washed sunroom. Lacey was at her worktable, glass cutter in hand and a piece of cobalt-blue glass on the table. She was often up early like this, trying to get some work done on her glass before going to her job at the animal hospital. Gina leaned against the narrow wall between two of the windows, eating a peach and watching Lacey slip the cutter cleanly across the glass. Gina’s hair was sleek and straight this morning, although that would certainly change the moment she walked into the damp air outside. She was bathed in red and gold from one of the stained-glass panels hanging in the windows, and Clay had to tear his gaze away from her to look at his sister. He wanted to question her about the man in her room the night before, but he hated to do that with Gina there in case it led to a confrontation.

“Gina tried to find the lens last night while we were at Dad’s,” Lacey said before he could think of a way to broach the subject.

“I think someone might have already gotten to it,” Gina said. “I couldn’t find it.”

“How did you try to find it?” he asked.

“I went into the water.” She sounded proud of herself.

Clay laughed and leaned against the doorjamb, arms folded across his chest. “There’s a lot of water out there,” he said. “I don’t think it would be that easy to find.”

“Well, there were a lot of pieces from the lighthouse,” she said. “I felt them with my feet. But I checked each one out, and none of them seemed like part of the lens.” She must have seen the skepticism in his eyes, because she continued. “I was very methodical about my search,” she said, a bit defensively. “I walked or swam in an arc out from the lighthouse, and I kept increasing the radius.”

Lacey shook her head, looking up from her work with a dimpled grin. “Does she remind you of anyone?” she asked Clay.

Clay nodded, knowing that both he and Lacey were thinking of their father and his old preoccupation with the lighthouse. “You’re obsessed,” he said to Gina.

She shrugged, apparently unable to deny it.

“I told you,” he said, “it was a hell of a storm. And I am absolutely certain no one else has salvaged that lens. We would know.”

Gina finished the last bite of her peach and wrapped the pit in a napkin she pulled from the pocket of her shorts. “Well,” she said, “I’m going to talk with the two older guys from the Save the Lighthouse committee today. They’re my last hope.”

“Who’s that?” Lacey asked.

“Walter and Brian, right?” Clay said. “Are you going to Shorty’s?”

Gina nodded. “Your father said that would be the best place to find them. Although I don’t know exactly where it is.”

Lacey leaned back from her worktable to give Gina the simple directions, then she looked at Clay. “Will Henry be there today?” she asked.

Clay nodded. “You’ll probably meet my wife’s grandfather,” he said to Gina. “I’m picking him up on my way into the office and dropping him off there for the day. He hangs out with Walter and Brian.”

“Oh, that’s nice,” Gina said. She seemed a little confused, and Clay wondered if he should say more. How much had Lacey told her in their woman-to-woman chats? Did she know about Terri’s death? Instead, though, he shifted his gaze to his sister.

“Who was over last night?” he asked, trying to sound casual.

Lacey looked a little surprised, but made another careful cut in the glass before answering him. “Josh,” she said. “And Pirate.”

He felt some relief. Lacey had introduced Josh to him a few weeks earlier and he seemed like a decent guy.

“Who or what is Pirate?” Gina asked.

“His yellow Lab. Gorgeous dog.” Lacey looked up at her brother. “Josh wanted me to ask if you’d consider evaluating Pirate for search and rescue work,” she said.

He was annoyed. “I don’t do that anymore,” he said, and he could hear the warning in his voice. Lacey knew better than to ask him. He didn’t want to get into an argument with Gina there.

“Just an evaluation,” Lacey said, as if she knew he wouldn’t fight back with their houseguest present. “He’d pay you. Pirate has potential. He’s still a gangly little thing, but he’s energetic and a quick learner. I think his temperament—”

“What part of ‘I don’t do that anymore’ don’t you understand, O’Neill?” Clay asked her.

“Oh, come on, Clay,” Lacey pleaded. “You’re going to let a perfectly good potential search and rescue dog turn into just another—”

“Aren’t there other trainers he could go to?” Gina surprised him by coming to his defense.

“None local,” Lacey said. “And none as good as Clay.”

Clay’s laugh was caustic. “I am less than no good anymore,” he said. “Get off my back about it, all right?”

An awkward silence filled the room. He exchanged a quick glance with Gina, but couldn’t read whatever was in her face.

“Is it getting serious with Josh?” he asked Lacey, changing to what he hoped was a safer topic.

“Uh-uh,” Lacey said, her eyes on her work.

“He seems nice, though. Why don’t you find one good guy to go out with and stick with him?”

Lacey rested her glass cutter on the side of the table and raised her head, long red hair slipping over her shoulders. “Because I don’t want one guy, nice or otherwise,” she said. “You date just one guy, pretty soon he wants to marry you, and then where are you?”

“Isn’t that what women want?” he asked. “Marriage? Kids?”

She and Gina both laughed as though they shared some secret.

“Well, the kids part would be okay,” Gina said. “But you can keep the marriage.”

“Why do all men think women are just dying to get married?” Lacey asked. She looked up at Gina. “Do you know the difference between a man and childbirth?” she asked.

Gina lowered herself into the straight-back chair in front of the windows. “What?”

“One can be excruciatingly painful,” Lacey said, “while the other is just having a baby.”

Gina laughed. At one time, Clay might have laughed himself, but male-bashing jokes—
any
jokes, for that matter—didn’t seem very funny to him these days.

“Why is it so hard to find compassionate, sensitive, handsome men?” Gina asked Lacey.

“Why?”

“Because they all have boyfriends.”

Lacey groaned, but was raring to go two seconds later. “Why do men give their penises names?” she asked.

Gina shook her head, the smile already on her lips.

“Soooo,” Lacey dragged out the answer, “they can be on a first-name basis with the one who makes all their decisions.”

Gina giggled, but Clay was annoyed. “Have you two had enough male bashing for one morning?” he asked.

“We’re just making up for centuries of female bashing,” Lacey said, but Gina looked genuinely contrite.

She leaned forward in her chair. “Sorry, Clay,” she said. “Just remember that women bash men out of fear.”

“How so?” he asked.

“It’s our defense,” she said. “You know, using humor to cover up for all the times we’ve been hurt. It’s just a way of coping with our fear.”

“Speak for yourself,” Lacey said, but Clay’s eyes were on Gina’s. For some reason, her words put a lump in his throat. The simplicity in her explanation, perhaps, or just the fact that she was taking responsibility for something that annoyed the hell out of him.

“I don’t think I’ll ever get married and have kids,” Lacey said, returning to the topic that had started the joke-telling.

“Why not?” Gina asked.

“I’ll mess them up,” Lacey said. She looked up at their boarder. “Or I’ll die and desert them.”

Whoa.
The conversation had suddenly taken much too serious a turn for his comfort level.

“I’m off to work,” he said abruptly. “You guys have a good day.” He left the room, anxious to pick up Henry and have some good safe conversation about the weather and crabs and home repair while he drove across the island to Shorty’s.

But Gina caught up to him in the kitchen. “Clay?” she said, walking quickly into the room.

He turned toward her.

“I was too glib about marriage,” she said. She reached out, touched his arm. “I’m very sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I was married for a few years and it wasn’t very good, that’s all, but your marriage was probably great. One of the rare ones. I’m so sorry for your loss.”

“Thanks.” He rested his hand on hers for a moment, feeling the fine bones beneath the warm skin. He wanted to keep his hand there longer, to curl his fingers into her palm. But he let go, smiling at her, then pushed open the screen door and stepped onto the porch.

That had been kind of her, he thought as he walked through the sandy yard toward the parking lot. But she was wrong about his marriage.