Kiss River Read online

  He sat down on the arm of the upholstered chair near the door and studied their guest. It seemed odd that a lighthouse historian would not have known that the Kiss River light was no longer standing. “I’m surprised you didn’t know it had been damaged,” he said.

  “Well—” Gina smiled “—my focus has been on the West Coast. And I’m just an amateur at this. I’m really a schoolteacher, and I only get to pursue my lighthouse passion in the summer. I admit I didn’t do my research very well, did I?” She was clearly nervous. Her hands clutched the backpack in her lap as she leaned forward on the sofa, and her smile had a shiver to it. He felt some sympathy for her. “I was using an older lighthouse guide because it’s a favorite of mine,” she continued, “and I popped out here, expecting the light to be just as it was described in the book.”

  “That must have been upsetting,” Olivia said.

  “There are several other lighthouses here for you to explore,” Alec suggested.

  She shook her head quickly. “I’m into preservation,” she said. “And I was very upset to realize that not only had the lighthouse been destroyed, but that no one has ever tried to retrieve the Fresnel lens from the ocean.”

  “That’s an issue that was put to rest a long time ago,” Alec said, wishing he could put it to rest in this room as well.

  “I know.” She rubbed her palms over her backpack. “I wanted to see if I might be able to do something about that.”

  “About raising the lens?” Olivia asked.

  Gina nodded. “Yes. I’d like to see it on display somewhere.”

  Alec did not understand why someone from the Pacific Northwest would give a hoot about the Kiss River light, and her intrusion into something that really did not concern her annoyed him. As a lighthouse historian, though, amateur or not, she had to know that the lens was very rare. Only two of them still existed in North Carolina, and they were valued at over a million dollars apiece. He was suddenly suspicious of her motives.

  He folded his arms across his chest. “The first thing for you to realize is that it’s unlikely the lens is still in one piece.”

  “I know that,” she said.

  “And second, the lens would be government property, no matter who salvaged it. You wouldn’t get any money out of raising it.”

  She looked stricken, and he knew he had offended her.

  “I’m not after money,” she said. “I just want to see it displayed appropriately for the public to enjoy. I was hoping you might be able to help me make that happen.”

  “I’m not the right person to help you with this, Gina,” he said, shaking his head. Again, he was aware of his wife’s eyes on him. She was a quiet, but hardly disinterested, observer.

  “Lacey and Clay said you used to be the head of the Save the Lighthouse committee,” she said.

  “That’s true, but that was a long time ago and I’ve since changed my allegiance. Now I just want to let things stay the way they are.” The eldest of their three cats, a Persian named Sylvie, stole into the room and hopped up on Olivia’s lap. Gina reached over to scratch the cat’s head.

  “Are there other people who were on the committee with you who might still want to see the lens salvaged?” she asked, her eyes on Sylvie.

  Alec sighed. He wanted her to go. Wanted to get back to bed with his wife. But there were other people who might be willing to help her, and in the interest of fair play, he thought she should have those names. He could see the determination in her eyes and knew she would dig them up anyway, with or without his help. “There’s Nola Dillard,” he said.

  “Oh. The real estate agent, right?” Gina pulled a pad and pen from her backpack and wrote down the name.

  “Yes.”

  “Where can I find her?”

  “She has her own company now,” Olivia said. “It’s on Croatan Highway in Kitty Hawk around milepost four.”

  “What’s the name of the highway again?” Gina asked.

  Olivia spelled the word for her. Croatan was the common name for Highway 12, the main road through the Outer Banks. Gina was showing her outsider status in more ways than one.

  “And who else?” She looked across the room at him.

  “Walter Liscott and Brian Cass are the other two,” he said. “They’re getting up there in years, though, and spend their days playing chess at Shorty’s Grill and not doing much else.”

  “That’s on the beach road in Kitty Hawk,” Olivia volunteered.

  “They’re not going to be up for much of a fight these days,” Alec said, although he knew both men would probably love to raise that lens as their final tribute to the Kiss River light.

  “Well, I can talk to them about it,” Gina said, writing on her notepad.

  “The only other person on the committee was another woman, Sondra Clarke,” Alec said, “but she got married and moved away a few years ago.” There had been one other person on the committee—Olivia’s first husband, Paul—but his work for the committee had not been born of a sincere effort to save the lighthouse. Besides, he lived in Maryland.

  Gina nodded. “Well, I’m grateful to you for giving me the names,” she said.

  “You know—” Alec shifted his weight on the arm of the chair “—I hate to see you waste your time with this. It’d be better spent on some other project.”

  “This particular project is important to me,” Gina said. Something in her voice reminded him of himself back when he’d fought to save the lighthouse, and he wondered if she, too, was being driven by more than the mere salvage of bricks and glass.

  “How do you know Clay and Lacey?” Olivia asked her. She had her legs tucked under her on the sofa now, as if expecting Gina’s visit to last a long time.

  “I was looking at the lighthouse, and Clay came out of the keeper’s house and we started talking. He and Lacey offered to let me rent one of the rooms in the house for a little while. It was so kind of them.”

  Lacey had been the one to invite her to stay, almost certainly. His daughter would take in any stray she could find, while Clay would barely notice his or her existence. It had bothered Alec when Clay and Lacey moved into the keeper’s house in January. He hadn’t been back there in nearly a decade, and he’d had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach the first time he’d driven to Kiss River to visit them. That storm should have taken the entire Kiss River promontory, in his opinion.

  “How long are you staying?” Olivia asked their visitor.

  “I’m not sure yet,” Gina said. “At least a week. Maybe longer.”

  “Do you know that Monday is Lacey’s birthday?” Olivia asked, and Alec knew the question was as much to remind him as it was to inform Gina. He didn’t need the reminder, though. He had forgotten Lacey’s birthday once, long ago. He would never make that mistake again.

  “I didn’t know that,” Gina said. “Thanks for the heads-up.” She stood, and so did he and Olivia. “And thanks for the help,” she said to Alec. “It was nice of you, especially since I know you’d rather I didn’t pursue this.”

  Alec shrugged as he opened the front door for her. “You know there are other first-order lenses already on display, don’t you?” he asked.

  “But they’re not the Kiss River lens,” she said with a smile. She stopped short as she walked through the doorway, and he followed her gaze to the small, oval-shaped stained-glass window to the left of the doorjamb.

  “Oh, this must be Lacey’s,” she said, touching the glass image of a woman walking a greyhound.

  “No, actually,” Alec said, “it was made by my first wife.” The oval window had been one of ten in the house he’d shared with Annie. When he and Olivia sold their separate homes to buy this one, it was Olivia who’d insisted he not leave all of Annie’s work behind. “You’ll regret it someday,” she’d said. He’d let her pick which oval window they should bring with them, not really caring at the time. But over the years, he’d been grateful to her for knowing he needed that little reminder of the good times with Annie.r />
  “Oh,” Gina said. “I can see where Lacey got her talent.” She nodded to him. “Thanks again,” she said, then looked past him toward Olivia. “Nice meeting you both.”

  “Nice meeting you, Gina,” Olivia said from behind him.

  After closing the door, Alec walked over to where his wife was sitting on the sofa and leaned down to kiss her, but he knew the mood had long ago been broken. Bocelli was no longer singing, and most likely Olivia had blown out the candles when she left the bedroom. She returned his kiss, but then pulled away to look at him.

  “The money is there to salvage the lens,” she said. “You know it is.”

  He shook his head. “Olivia…”

  “You could help her,” Olivia said. “No one knows the history of that lighthouse as well as you do.”

  “No,” he said, letting go of her, standing up straight. “And please, don’t talk to me about it again.” He bent over again to kiss her lightly on the forehead, then turned to walk toward the kitchen, and if he hadn’t disliked the stranger the moment he’d opened his front door to her, he certainly did now. She had ruined his entire afternoon.

  CHAPTER 7

  Saturday, March 14, 1942

  Mama and I baked all morning, as we do often on the weekend. Today was very cold for the middle of March and I was glad to have the oven heat up the house. I am so tired of going out to use the privy in the cold! This seems like the longest winter ever. First warm day we have, I’m taking off my shoes and not putting them on again until next fall.

  Even though I spent all morning with Mama, we hardly talked at all. It is so hard for me to spend time with her. There is a wall between us. I want to hug her and tell her how much I love her and instead, ugly things come out of my mouth. Or nothing at all. We used to sing sometimes when we baked or cleaned together in the house. I can’t imagine that now. It’s not the war or anything like that. It’s ME. I feel like I have a mean guard up and can’t let it down for a minute around her. Can’t be soft. I don’t know why. Except that I am almost fifteen years old. I overheard Mama complaining about me to a friend at Trager’s Store when she didn’t think I was listening, and the friend said, “Oh, it’s just that she’s a teenager, Mary. She’ll grow out of it.” I hated being lumped together with all the teens in the world, but maybe she’s right. Though I can’t imagine growing out of this. Sometimes I miss having Mama’s arms around me, but when she touches me, I stiffen up, so who can blame her for not trying anymore? I can’t help it, though. Everything she ever says to me is “Don’t do this” and “Don’t do that.” There’s nothing much else to talk about.

  Anyhow, we baked four pies and ten dozen cookies. It being so cold out, I didn’t want to leave that warm kitchen, but then I thought about the choice I had. Stay in the house with Mama, or take the pies to the Coast Guard boys. I didn’t have to think about that too long! I loaded the pies and cookies into the big wooden wagon we keep in the storage shed near the privy, hooked it up to my bicycle and took off down the Pole Road. None of the roads are paved around here. Even the Pole Road, the one used by the electric people to bring in equipment, is just a mess of sand and ruts and crazy curves and turns, but it’s the smoothest road there is for bicycle riding and carrying pies. If I was going to the Coast Guard building by foot, I would have just walked along the beach, although earlier this week we were told not to go out there because the bodies were washing up from that ship what sunk last week. Most cars use the beach, too. They just follow each other’s tire tracks and go real slow, but one has to be dug out every once in a while. Ever since the U-boats started attacking us, the sandpounders (that’s what they call the Coast Guard boys) patrol the beach, watching for ships in distress and keeping a lookout for spies and for submarines letting Nazis off on the beach. The drivers of the cars have to give the patrollers a password to be able to go on. The patroller gives the driver a new password for him to use at the next stop, in another three miles, and people make their way up the beach like that. I wanted to have a password, too, when I go walking along the beach, but everybody knows me and they just say, “You go on ahead, now, Bess.”

  I had to pedal real carefully because of the ditches and tree roots in the road, and I didn’t want to spill anything out of the wagon. It was so cold, I put my scarf right across my face to keep the wind out. Once I got there, though, I knew the trip had been worth it.

  About half the boys were at the Coast Guard station, the other half out patrolling the beaches or maybe training their dogs or working at some other thing. When I walked in the door and took off my coat, I could see every head turn in my direction and smiles come to their faces, and I know it wasn’t just that I was pulling a wagonful of sweets. This is a new experience for me, having boys stare. My body feels different around them. My breasts are not all that big, but those boys stare at them all the same, even though I sure don’t dress to show them off. (I still had a sweater over my shirt, for Pete’s sake!) I could feel how my hips moved beneath my dungarees and how long my legs were. I’m nearly five foot eight now, the tallest girl in my school, although I guess with only thirteen girls from seven years old to seventeen, that’s not saying much. I’m taller than most of the boys at school, too. That’s why these older boys (men, really) from the Coast Guard look so good to me. Most of them are taller than me, some by quite a bit. My hair is brown, and up until last year I always wore it in braids, but lately I’ve been leaving it loose. It’s long and wavy and I can tell the boys like it that way.

  So, some of the boys come up to me and started talking. Some of them talk so funny it takes me a minute or two to start understanding them, like last year when Mrs. Cady had us read a Shakespeare play out loud. My favorite accent is the one the Boston boys have. Teddy Pearson, who is from near there, said that Hitler should be “tod and fethahd.” I didn’t understand what he’d said until I was home in my bed that night, and I laughed out loud when I figured it out. Anyhow, they were all talking to me at once, asking me how I was, what kind of pie I’d brought, did I want to go out with them that night. You’d think they hadn’t seen a girl in months! If Mama could see how them boys act when I walk in the door of the Coast Guard station without her or Daddy, she would never let me go there alone again.

  Jimmy Brown, another of the Boston boys, is my favorite of all of them at the station and not just because he’s the sandpounder who patrols the beach near Kiss River. Today, like always, he pretty much ignored me. That’s probably why I like him—he’s a challenge! Doesn’t drool over me and my pies when I walk in. He sat in the corner whittling something out of a piece of driftwood, looking up with those dreamy blue eyes every once in a while, smiling just a bit, though more at how crazy the boys were acting than at me, I think. So I chatted with all the boys, and with Mr. Bud Hewitt who came out to see what the racket was about, and all the while I had one eye on Jimmy Brown (he looks like Frank Sinatra!) whittling in the corner.

  I would like the work they do. I wish they took women into the Coast Guard. I know the beach better than any of them, and would love to be out there at night, watching for danger. Mr. Hewitt told me that if I was a boy, I’d be the first person he’d recruit for the beach patrol. After all, some of those boys had never even seen the ocean before, much less know the beaches and the woods around them! I mentioned this to my parents one time and Mama just laughed at me, but I heard that she used to actually work with the lifesaving crew. She says that’s only a rumor, but even my father told me it was the truth and said that she doesn’t want me to know about it because it might give me ideas.

  On the way home from the Coast Guard station, I bumped into Dennis Kittering. I was surprised to see him. He’s usually on the beach, not on the Pole Road, but he said he was just exploring a bit. I told him where I’d been and he said, “Why didn’t you bring me any pies?” I said, “I bring pies to the men who are fighting for our country. What exactly are you doing for the country?” Right away, I could have kicked myself. I forgot about his bum leg
. He couldn’t go into the service because he has that one leg shorter than the other. I apologized and he smiled at me and said not to worry about it. He said he was teaching for his country, that’s what he was doing. Educating the next generation. Teaching them why the war was happening, helping them see why we should never let things get so bad again. I felt doubly awful when he said that. We stood there for a few minutes, with my bicycle and wagon between us, talking about The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and that was fun. The truth is, there aren’t many people around here who understand much about the books I’m reading. Dennis thinks I’m real smart and that I should be a teacher when I grow up. That’s actually my plan. He says I need to get a better education than I’m getting here, though, if I want to be a teacher. I don’t know what it is about Dennis. He is nice and smart and mostly kind, but he irritates me to no end when he acts like he knows everything and I sometimes end up in a tiff with him. He corrects my grammar all the time, and when he criticizes my education, saying I can’t be getting a good one here with just twenty-three students of all grades and ages jumbled up together in one classroom out in the middle of nowhere, I get mad. I don’t like that he comes here all the time, saying how much he loves it and all, and then puts us Bankers down.

  I made a stupid mistake and told him how I’d like to be a sandpounder and he laughed at that and said, “The sandpounders are men who have little else to offer the world. They are just a bunch of trigger-happy hooligans with guns, ready to shoot at anything that moves.” That really made me mad, although I’ve heard other people say the same thing about the patrollers. They just don’t know those boys and how serious they take their duty. Anyhow, see what I mean about sometimes getting into a tiff with Dennis?

  He asked me if I want to go to church with him tomorrow. He goes all the way up to Corolla for church, where they have a Catholic service. I told him no, thanks. I always go with my parents to the Methodist church down in Duck. I don’t understand much about Catholics. Last summer, Dennis was wearing a short-sleeved shirt that was open a little at the neck and I could see he was wearing a necklace made of brown cord. I asked him about it, and he pulled it out and showed it to me. It had these two rectangles of wool attached to the cord, one that goes on his back and one on his chest, and they have pictures of Jesus and Mary on them. I don’t remember what the necklace is called, but he said he wears it all the time, that it makes him feel closer to God. Anyhow, when I said yesterday that I was going to the Methodist church, I was afraid he was going to start mocking my religion like he does my education, so I told him that I had to go home, I was late (which was true). I’ll take him a pie next weekend, to make up for being so rude to him.