Kiss River (20 page)

“That you can spend even a second thinking about the Fresnel lens when you’ve got all of this going on in your life.”

There wasn’t a moment she didn’t think of that lens. “Look at yourself,” she said. “You work all hours of the day. Lacey said you didn’t used to be that way. That it’s your way of dealing with grief over your wife.”

He sat back in his chair, his face suddenly unreadable, and she knew that she’d trod too hard on a place too tender. His obvious grief over the loss of his wife touched her. Their marriage must have been very strong.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“No, you’re right.” He shook his head. “I guess we’re both escaping.” He sighed, standing up. “If there’s anything I can do to help, Gina, please let me know.”

She looked up at him, at eyes that mirrored the sadness in her own.

“It helped just to be able to tell you,” she said. And she meant it.

Tuesday, April 14, 1942

I
am so mad and embarrassed and just plain aggravated that I can hardly write this.

First, let me explain about what happened last night. I was on the beach with Sandy when we heard these BOOMS. By now, we surely know what that sound means. Another one of our ships had been attacked. But we couldn’t see any light from a fire or anything, so we figured it had happened pretty far away. It wasn’t until this morning that I learned what it was: one of our ships called the
Roper
sunk a U-boat! The
U-85.
Daddy was hip-hooraying over that news. Finally, we’re fighting back. I don’t feel nearly so scared now, because I’m sure this is just the start of the turning tide.

So I was by the lighthouse after school, raking up the twigs and leaves left over from winter, when Dennis Kittering came limping along. The school in High Point where he teaches is on a spring vacation, so he will be camping on the beach all week. He was whistling that “Perfidia” song.

“What’s that song mean?” I asked him.

“What song?” He looked confused.

“That one you’re whistling. ‘Perfidia.’”

“I don’t really know the words,” he told me. “Just the tune.”

“But what does Perfidia mean?” I asked him. “Is it a girl’s name?”

“Ah.” He smiled at me then, this smile he uses sometimes when I know he’s feeling like he’s better than me. “You have a dictionary, Bess. You look it up.”

That annoyed me right there. We were off to our usual bad start. (I did look it up when I got in the house, though. It means “deliberate breach of faith or trust.” I still don’t know what that has to do with the song, though.)

Anyhow, then Dennis said, “It’s such a beautiful day. How about we go up to the top of the lighthouse and look at the view?”

I’d taken him up last year when I first met him and he hadn’t been up since, and while I felt sorry for him about that, I didn’t want to take him up today. The truth is, I don’t feel all that trusting of men these days, and I was not about to climb through that closed-up lighthouse with him. I said if he wanted to go up, he could go alone. He had my permission. But that obviously wasn’t what he wanted. He said what he really wanted was to talk to me, that he was concerned about me. I immediately felt embarrassed, as I do anytime I think someone knows what happened to me in my bedroom with the German. People are always telling me they’re sorry my family had to go through that ordeal, and I can’t look them in the eye, wondering exactly how much they know. I said I didn’t really have time to talk, but he somehow talked me into sitting on the bench near the lighthouse with him, and I got ready to accept his sympathy or whatever it was he was going to offer me. I did
not
expect him to say what he did, though.

“I’m aware that you’re meeting a sandpounder on the beach at night,” he said.

I was horrified!

“What makes you think that?” I asked him.

“I’ve seen you,” he said. “Remember, I camp on the beach.”

Thoughts were flying through my head. There were no lights on the beach now. Dennis could have been anywhere. He could have been a few feet from Sandy and me and we never would have known it. That thought made my skin crawl!

“The patroller and I are just friends,” I said.

Dennis shook his head. “I believe you are far more than that,” he said. “And I’m sure that since you’re out there at all hours of the night, your parents have no idea.”

I stood up then, feeling really angry and also scared that he planned to tell my parents what he knew. I couldn’t bear the thought.

“You are nothing but a meddlesome snoop!” I said.

He grabbed my wrist, not hard, but tight enough to keep me from leaving.

“Don’t run off,” he said. “I’m not going to tell your parents, and I don’t mean to embarrass you. I’m talking about this because I care about you. I’m worried about you. That’s all. You’re getting in over your head with an older man who—”

“He’s younger than you,” I said.

“He’s what? Eighteen? Nineteen?”

“None of your business,” I said.

“Boys that age are out for one thing, Bess,” he said.

I figured he knew that because that’s what
he’d
been out for at eighteen or nineteen.

“He’s not like other boys,” I said.

“Look, you’re pretty and smart and I just worry that you could get hurt,” he said. “I’d like you to seriously consider moving to High Point. You could live with me and my sister. I’ve already talked to her about it. I told her how smart you are, how your potential is getting wasted here and all. Do you think your parents would let you if I talked to them about how good it would be for you?”

I couldn’t believe my ears. “You’re crazy!” I told him.

“No funny business,” he said. “As I said, I would talk to your parents about it. My sister and I have a little house, but it’s nice. It belonged to my parents. You could attend a great Catholic school in our neighborhood. Your parents have to know you’re getting a substandard education here.”

“I’ve probably read more books than you have,” I said.

He smiled at that. “Maybe you have,” he said. “And that’s exactly my point. You should be going to school somewhere where that brain of yours is appreciated. Where you can end up doing
something more with your life than whatever sort of job a woman can get around here. Which isn’t much, is it?”

He was talking about something that has truly been on my mind lately. I love it here. It’s my home. As Daddy says, I have salt water in my veins. But not much is expected of the women here. My dream is that someday, when I’m older and when the war is over, I can move to Vermont with Sandy and go to college there and become a teacher.

“My parents would never let me leave here,” I said.

“Are you sure about that?” Dennis asked me. “I know what happened at your house a few days ago.”

I don’t blush often, but I know my cheeks turned bright pink when he said that.

“Maybe a week ago, your parents wouldn’t have given your safety here another thought. But now, I’m sure they’d love knowing that you were away from here, with all that’s going on.”

“It’s getting better here now,” I said. “That ship, the
Roper,
sunk a U-boat last night.”

“We sunk it twice.” Dennis had that look on his face I’ve learned means he’s angry about something.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“We sunk it, and all the men from the U-boat were in the water, begging to be picked up by the
Roper.
Instead of saving those men, the
Roper
bombed the damn submarine again. It was already sunk. All they did was kill a bunch of men begging for their lives in the ocean.”

I honestly did not know that, but I couldn’t get worked up about it like he was.

“Those Germans would’ve killed our men if they’d had the chance,” I said.

“It wasn’t honorable,” Dennis said. “You don’t kill a drowning man, even if he is the enemy.”

I didn’t want to talk about that anymore. I stood up.

“Well, back to our other subject,” I said. “I’m not leaving Kiss River. And don’t you dare say a word to my parents about the sandpounder, Dennis,” I said. “Swear to me you won’t mention anything about that to them.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” he said. “But as an adult in your life, I
need to do what I can to keep you safe. That’s why I’m talking to you rather than to them. You’re smart.
Act
smart.”

I walked away from him, just bristling all over with anger, but knowing I’d better stay on Dennis’s good side, anyhow. I can’t take the chance that he’ll tell Mama and Daddy what he knows. He made me feel about ten years old. I
will
act smarter though. I’ll be far more careful that Dennis doesn’t see me with Sandy from now on.

“G
ina?”

She thought she was dreaming. The voice came from far away. But then she heard the faint knocking sound and opened her eyes. Through her bedroom window, she saw the lighthouse, the white brick almost blinding in the early-morning sun, and she could hear the soft rhythmic lapping of a calm ocean.

The knocking came again. “Gina?” It was Clay, outside her door.

She looked at the clock radio. Six-thirty in the morning on her day off.

Sitting up, she brushed her hair back from her face. “Yes?” she answered.

“You need to get up, Gina,” Clay said. He sounded as though his mouth was right against her door. “I spoke to my friend, Dave, after you and I talked last night. You know, the pilot. He offered—”

“You can come in,” she said, suddenly wide-awake. She was still in her nighttime T-shirt, sitting up with the sheet to her
waist, her hair a mess, but she didn’t care. She wanted to hear what the pilot had said.

Clay opened the door. He kept one hand on the knob, looking a bit uncomfortable about being in her room. “He offered to fly us over Kiss River,” he said.

“We can go
with
him?” She hadn’t expected that. She’d thought the pilot would make his own search, if he was willing to do it at all. The thought of being in the plane with him was both exciting and unnerving. She was not a great flier.

“Right,” Clay said. “First he said he could take us out tomorrow, but he called just a few minutes ago and said we should go now, that the conditions are perfect. You interested?”

“Absolutely!” she said, waving him out of her room so she could get up. “I’ll be ready in two minutes.”

“Bring a sweater,” Clay said as he closed the door. “And sunglasses.”

She tore off the old T-shirt and pulled on her shorts and a tank top. In the bathroom, she brushed her teeth and ran a comb ineffectively through her tangled hair. Grabbing a sweater, she then raced down the stairs to find Clay, Lacey and Sasha in the kitchen.

Clay laughed when she appeared in the doorway.

“Do I look that bad?” she said, trying to smooth her hair.

“I just never saw anybody move quite so fast,” Clay said.

“Do you two want something to eat before you go?” Lacey had picked blueberries and was trying to wipe the stain from her fingers with a damp paper towel.

“No time,” Clay said. “Dave said it’s perfect right now. The water’s really clear.”

“Let’s go, then.” Gina headed for the door, but Lacey caught her arm.

“Clay told me about the little girl you’re adopting,” she said, her wide blue eyes full of genuine sympathy. “I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you,” Gina said.

“Come on,” Clay was already out the door, and Gina nodded to Lacey.

“We can talk more about it later,” she said.

The morning was warm and bright, the air unusually dry and
filled with the scent of salt water and pine trees. In the parking lot, they climbed into Clay’s Jeep.

“I hope you don’t mind that I told Lacey,” he said as she buckled her seat belt.

“Not at all,” Gina answered. It had struck her as odd that it had been Clay she’d confided in instead of Lacey, but her talk with him the night before had left her feeling cleansed in a way, and less alone. She had no regrets.

Clay turned the Jeep around in the parking lot and headed down the narrow gravel lane toward the chain. Gina had her own key for the chain now, and she got out of the Jeep to unlock it and pull it aside.

“You can leave it unlocked,” Clay called to her through his open window. “Lacey will be going to work soon.”

In her two weeks in the Outer Banks, she had not seen a morning so sparkling clear. Once they reached the main road, she could see the individual needles of the loblolly pines crisply silhouetted against the vivid blue sky, and beams of sunlight pierced the forest.

“Do you like to fly?” Clay asked her as they drove south.

“I hate it,” she said with a laugh. “And I don’t like small planes. They make me feel claustrophobic.”

“Uh,” Clay laughed, “you shouldn’t have that problem on this plane.”

“Why not? Is it big?”

“You’ll see.”

She suddenly remembered there would be a fee for this flight. “I forgot to ask you how much this will cost,” she said.

“Dave owes me a favor,” Clay said.

She should have known Clay wouldn’t let her pay.

“Thank you so much,” she said.

He looked different this morning. The sunlight cut right through the pale blue of his eyes, made them look like jewels beneath his dark lashes and heavy eyebrows. His tanned skin was smooth over his high cheekbones and the sharp line of his jaw. She knew he didn’t really look any different than he did any other day. The difference was in
her,
in how she was looking at him. She could not forget the way he had listened to her the night be
fore, attentively and with compassion. The way he’d rested his hand on her back while she cried. And the way he had called his friend to arrange this flight of fancy for her. She glanced at him again. This morning, Clay was beautiful.

There was no airport, and that was Gina’s first disconcerting surprise.

“It’s just an airstrip,” Clay said as he pulled into the small parking lot in Kill Devil Hills, near the memorial to the Wright brothers.

Her second surprise was the plane.

“Hey, Clay!” A skinny man with wind-tossed red hair walked across the tarmac toward them as they got out of the Jeep. A distance behind him stood a very small, bright-red airplane.

“Hi, Dave,” Clay shook the man’s hand. “This is Gina.”

Dave grinned at her. “So you’re the one who wants to find the old lens, huh?” He was so thin that she thought she could knock him over with the touch of a fingertip, and his blue polo shirt and khaki slacks looked too large for him. His voice was a deep surprise, though, and he spoke with that thick accent she’d come to recognize as the mark of an Outer Banks native.

She nodded at him, but her eyes were on the toylike plane. “There’s no roof on that thing,” she said.

Dave and Clay both laughed. “Some people would give their eyeteeth to fly in a Waco biplane,” Dave said.

“Did it belong to the Wright brothers?” Gina tried to joke.

“I told you you wouldn’t get that closed-in feeling in it,” Clay said.

She rolled her eyes at him. “How old is it?” she asked.

“It’s a replica,” Clay reassured her. “It’s only…what, Dave? Fifteen years old?”

“About that,” Dave said.

“And where’s the runway?” Gina asked.

“That’s the airstrip,” Dave said, motioning toward the narrow strip of macadam. She hadn’t really understood what Clay had meant by “airstrip,” and she cringed at the sight of it.

“Don’t worry,” Dave said. “It’s plenty long enough for us.”

“You don’t have to go with us,” Clay said. He sounded con
cerned about her reaction to the plane and the airstrip. “I can look for the lens for you.”

“No,” she said, getting a grip on her fears. “I’m going, too.” She marched ahead of them toward the plane.

Dave reached into the front seat and lifted out two leather helmets and some other paraphernalia. “Well, I have to tell you,” he said, handing one of the helmets to Gina, the other to Clay. “In all the times I’ve flown above Kiss River, I’ve never seen the lens. I
have
seen a bunch of stuff down there. Parts of the lighthouse, bricks and such, but never the lens. The water’s right clear today, though, so we’ll give it a shot.”

“We should take a buoy with us in case we do find it,” Clay said as he buckled the helmet beneath his chin.

“Already have one,” Dave said. He turned to Gina. “You need some help with that?”

Her fingers shook as she tried to buckle the chin strap of the helmet. “I’ve got it,” she said. “Listen, you won’t do any loop-de-loops or anything, will you?” The little red plane looked like the type that might be used for aerobatics.

“Not if you don’t want me to,” Dave said.

“I don’t. Please.”

“I will do a hard bank, though, over the Kiss River area,” he said, “so’s you can get a good look at the water.”

“You mean you’ll tilt the plane?” she asked.

“That’s right. So don’t be scared when I do it. It’s going to be fine, and we won’t flip over or anything.”

Clay was holding two sets of goggles in his hands. He handed one of them to Gina, and she pulled them down over the helmet and her sunglasses.

“And finally—” Dave handed her a large headset “—we can communicate through this intercom.” He helped her fit the headset over her ears and arranged the microphone near her mouth. Until that moment, it hadn’t occurred to her that they would not easily be able to communicate with one another in the air. In a little open plane like this one, it was sure to be noisy.

Clay opened the door to the front compartment. “I’ll get in first,” he said. “That way you’ll have a better view of the coastline as we’re flying north.”

“Doesn’t Dave fly up front?” She made no move toward the compartment.

Clay shook his head. “Nope. We do.” He climbed into the passenger seat, then held out his hand to help her up. She settled into the admittedly comfortable leather seat and fastened her seat belt. A loud rush of static suddenly filled her headset. After a moment, there was a short pause in the static and she could hear Dave’s voice.

“You two all buckled in up there?” he asked.

Clay raised his thumb in the air, and she did the same.

Dave taxied the plane to one end of the airstrip. The propeller began to spin right in front of Gina’s face and the engine roared in her ears. Around their heads was a web of bars and wires that were probably very important but seemed terribly flimsy, and they began to vibrate from the buzz of the engine. Gina locked her damp hands together in her lap and drew in a long, shaky breath as the plane inched forward. No turning back now.

Dave gave the plane more power, and Gina felt her body forced back against her seat as they sped down the airstrip. It was nearly impossible to take in a breath, her lungs were so compressed, and she shut her eyes and swallowed hard. She knew the moment they were in the air, because her stomach dropped down to her feet.

“Open your eyes, Gina.” Clay’s voice came to her through the headset.

She forced her eyes open, and saw blue sky both above and below her as Dave turned the plane in the direction of the northern Outer Banks. The roar of the wind was deafening despite the headset, and the web of wires shook so violently she was certain they would snap from their bearings at any moment. Whether she survived this flight or not, it was going to be her last in a small plane.

Clay touched the back of her hand, rigid in her lap. “You all right?” he shouted into his microphone.

She nodded. Oh, what a wonderful liar she’d become.

He pointed toward the shoreline, and she looked down. The early-morning sun turned the sand into a broad strand of gold; the waves were white-tipped as they reached for shore.
It’s beautiful,
she told herself.
Look at how beautiful it is.

And it was. No one spoke, and the more she concentrated on the beauty below them, the more she felt herself relax. She began to recognize the areas they were flying over. There were the small cottages of Kitty Hawk and the beaches dotted with shell seekers and fishermen. She spotted the flat-roofed houses in Southern Shores. Then Duck came into view, followed by the long expanse of green that marked the wildlife reserve. Finally, she saw the white tower and the Kiss River promontory in the distance. The jagged line of bricks where the top of the lighthouse had been lopped off struck her anew from this height. The tower looked so fragile, like a small, broken toy, while the ocean was so expansive and powerful, that for the first time, she truly understood how the bricks and mortar—and the fragile glass lens—could have succumbed to the force of the sea.

“I’m dropping down a bit lower now,” Dave said through the static as they neared the lighthouse.

Good. She wanted to go lower. She shifted her focus from the lighthouse to the sea. The water was calm and remarkably clear. The day she had walked through it in search of the lens, she had barely been able to see her hands beneath the surface. Today, though, the water was a bluish green, so translucent she could make out the ridges in the sand near the shore.

“Look at all that stuff!” Clay said, pointing, and she saw what he was talking about. There was a straight broad line of debris on the ocean bottom, as though the wind and sea had grabbed the top of the lighthouse and pulled it straight out into the ocean, dropping bits of it along the way. They were quickly past the line of debris, though, and Gina strained her neck to see behind her.

“I’m turning around,” Dave said. “I’ll come at it from the other side.”

The plane tipped dramatically to the left, but Gina barely noticed. She wished that Dave could drop even closer to the water.

“Look there!” Clay suddenly called into his microphone.