Diane Chamberlain - Kiss River

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.

I just realized that I’m starting to feel uncomfortable around Dennis. It’s not just the way he criticizes us Bankers, but it’s also that I know he looks at me different this year. He tells me I’ve gotten real pretty and actually said if I was a bit older, he would ask me to marry him! “You have potential,” he said. “I’d like to marry you and take you to High Point, where you could get a real education.” I admit I am flattered by all he says, but also I feel creepy, like I don’t want to be close enough to him for him to touch me. I think that’s why I wanted to keep my bicycle between us on the Pole Road. There was no one else around and it made me a little nervous. He’s not bad-looking. He wears glasses he looks nice in, and I like his dark hair. But he is ancient, eight years older than me, and I am definitely not interested in him as a boyfriend. Besides, I don’t like how “Bess Kittering” sounds. (I love how “Bess Brown” sounds, though!)

Mama scolded me when I got home. I stayed too long at the Coast Guard station, she said. I am supposed to just drop the pies off and leave, not stay and expect those boys to entertain me. I told her I was late because I met Mr. Kittering on the way home and we got to talking, and that made her even angrier. She thinks Dennis is strange to come out here every weekend. She’s never even met him, only seen him from a distance, and I told her how nice he is, how I like to talk about books with him, but she just kept yelling at me. I think Mama must have been born an old lady.

THE SUN WAS STILL HIGH IN THE SKY WHEN CLAY pulled into the short gravel driveway of the small cottage, which, like many other soundside cottages, was set on stilts above the water. Getting out of his car, he could see that the front gutter was a bit askew and a section of the deck railing was missing. He would have to spend a day over here soon working on those repairs and the other inevitable problems with this house that were not immediately visible. The old cottage took a great deal of his time—much like the old man living inside it. But these days, he loved nothing better than to fill up his time to the mind-numbing brim.