Kiss River

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.

Chapter Ten

Thursday, March 19, 1942

THE 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 partway. 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.

Chapter Eleven

THERE 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.

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