Diane Chamberlain - Kiss River

It’s funny that I’m writing in this diary now. Toria (my cousin) gave it to me for my fourteenth birthday and I couldn’t have cared less then. I had too many other things to do, like fishing and crabbing and riding my bicycle and playing with the dogs. Now, fishing bores me all of a sudden. That’s all anyone ever does around here. Fishing, crabbing, clamming, oystering. The time I used to spend fishing, I now seem to spend thinking, and I know that’s not a very useful way to pass the time, but I can’t seem to help it. Anyhow, I put this diary in my dresser drawer after I got it, beneath my underthings, and pretty much forgot about it. About a week ago, I was reaching into that drawer and my hand brushed something hard. It was the key, stuck in the keyhole of the diary, and I pulled the book out of the drawer and stared at it and words started coming to me. I want to write down what I’m thinking, and put them thoughts somewhere safe, where no one can see them except me. There is no other place I can say what I think. Mrs. Cady (my teacher) doesn’t want to hear it. And Mama and Daddy are right critical of every word out of my mouth, like those words might burn them and they have to protect themselves from them. So suddenly I am grateful to Toria for giving me this book. I still keep it in my underwear drawer, only now, after I lock the diary, I hide the key between the mattress and box spring of my bed.

So, the light is still burning in the lantern room tonight, and when it swirls around I can see the white tower of the lighthouse outside my window, even though I can’t see the light itself unless I move closer to the window and bend my head over, but I like how from my bed, the white tower is smack in the center of my window. My whole room fills up with the light. When Toria stays over, she can’t sleep at all. I don’t think I could sleep without it, I’m so accustomed to it.

But here’s what happened this morning that’s got me full of jitters. While I was in the lantern room doing my cleaning, something out to sea caught my eye. I knew what it was right away—smoke, a big black bubble of it, expanding from a spot straight out from Kiss River, not quite to the horizon. And I knew where it was coming from, too.

Daddy keeps binoculars up there and I looked through them, but I couldn’t see the ship itself, just the smoke. There were orange flames coming out of the water, and I guessed it must’ve been an oil tanker. This was the closest one. The first one I’ve seen with my own eyes, although I know it’s not the first to go down. Not by a long shot. The sign at the post office says, Loose Lips Might Sink Ships. That means we should be quiet about anything we know about the merchant ships traveling along the coastline, because you never know who might be spying right next to you. That seems silly to me, because I know nearly everyone around here. A stranger would stand out, especially a German stranger. Krauts, some people call them. I heard Daddy call them that once, when he didn’t think I was listening. It shocked me to hear him say that, because he and Mama are always after me not to see myself as any better than anyone else. When Mama heard one of the boys at Trager’s call Mr. Sato “slant-eyes,” she threatened to wash his mouth out with soap.

None of us ever saw a Japanese person before Mr. Sato came here a year or so ago. His son was married to a girl from here and they lived with Mr. Sato in Chicago. When the son died a year ago, the girl, whose name I don’t remember, wanted to move back here, and she brought Mr. Sato with her, since he’s crippled in a wheelchair and couldn’t live alone. They live in a house on the sound, across the island from me. I have to go right past his house on my way to school, and I used to see him out fishing. He would sit in his wheelchair on the deck that hangs right out over the water from their house, with the fishing pole in his hand. I used to wave to him because I felt sorry for him, and he’d always wave back. Everyone calls him slant-eyes behind his back and the kids make fun of him. No one is very friendly to him, and after Pearl Harbor, I’d be surprised if anyone talks to him at all. I never see him outside these days. He might be scared to go out and I don’t really blame him. He looks like a harmless old man, though, tiny, gray-haired and sort of shriveled up in his wheelchair. I wouldn’t know he still lives in that house if I didn’t hear other people whispering about him, saying how they don’t like having a Jap for a neighbor.

Anyhow, I got off my topic again. Mrs. Cady is always after me about that. She says, “You write real well, but you jump around too much.” Glad she’s not reading this!

Back to the burning ship. So those Germans are killing us right outside our back door now. Their sneaky U-boats come up from under the water and attack, just like a shark. When I watched that black smudge growing out to sea, I wondered if someone’s loose lips might have gotten word to the U-boats out there somehow.

I have not seen a U-boat myself, although I keep looking for one. When I’m cleaning up in the lantern room, or after school when I come home, I go up there and stare at the water with the binoculars, looking for one of the German subs. I’m not sure what to look for, exactly. Would a periscope be too small for me to see? That sounds like it would be fun to have. A periscope. To see what was happening someplace you weren’t. You could see people, but they couldn’t see you. Without a doubt, that’s what happened out there this morning. Some American ship filled with hardworking men got spied with a U-boat’s periscope, and then bam! The Germans torpedoed them. This is the first I’ve seen this close up, and I don’t want to see another. It was as if, when I saw that smoke, all the fun went out of me. I was suddenly as sour and dead inside as some of the grown-ups I know, and I didn’t like the feeling.

There is one good thing and one thing only that I like about this war: it’s brung the Coast Guard boys to the Outer Banks. They’ve taken over the lifesaving stations, and each one of them is more handsome than the next. They are from all parts of the country, and hearing all their different accents makes me want to get out of North Carolina and see the world. I’ve been to Elizabeth City and Manteo and even once to Norfolk, but that’s it. Mama keeps an eye on me when they’re around. I can feel her watching every move I make, and so I pretend not to even notice those boys. But I do. And some of them notice me right back.

Tonight, Mr. Bud Hewitt (he’s the chief warrant officer for the Coast Guard up here) came to dinner like he does sometimes. He and Mama and Daddy have become friends. He told us they fished a bunch of the sailors from the torpedoed ship out of the sea, but fifty-some were lost, and already a few bodies had washed up on shore. “It’s getting worse, isn’t it?” Daddy asked Mr. Hewitt, and Mr. Hewitt looked serious and sad, and said, “Yes, we just aren’t prepared for this. We’re so used to being spared fighting right here in the United States that no one expected this bombardment. And nobody thinks much about North Carolina. All eyes are on the West Coast. But they better start thinking, or it’ll be too late.”

Mr. Hewitt said we need a blackout, but one hasn’t been ordered, and I can tell he’s mad about that. He explained how the U-boats can see our ships clear as day out there, silhouetted against the lights from shore. Mr. Hewitt actually got tears in his eyes as he talked about it. I could see how frustrated he is about the whole thing.

I told Mr. Hewitt how I was looking for periscopes out on the water, and my parents laughed at me, making me feel foolish. Mr. Hewitt saved me though. He said he was glad I was doing that, he wished more people would take their duty seriously, but it was more likely I’d see the conning tower—that’s the raised-up part of the deck—rise up out of the water. The periscope would be too hard to see, he said. And if I ever did see something, I should go to him immediately. I promised him I would. The station is only a half mile from my house, but I wish I could just call him on a telephone. Down where Toria lives, they have them crank phones. There aren’t any phones yet in Kiss River, even though people are getting them on the other side of the island. I’ve heard that Mr. Sato’s daughter-in-law was one of the first to get one. It won’t be long till we have them here, too, Daddy keeps telling me.