Kiss River. Diane Chamberlain

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      She set the picture back on the night table, then turned out the light. Lying in the old, full-size sleigh bed in the dark, she could still see the stars. Years ago, the light from the lens would have shot through this small bedroom once every four and a half seconds, illuminating the walls and the ceiling and the covers on the bed.

      Yes, she knew without a doubt whose room she was in.

      Chapter Four

       Saturday, March 7, 1942

      THE LIGHTS WENT OUT AGAIN TONIGHT. I’M sitting on my bed, writing by the glow of the hurricane lantern, just like I used to do when I was younger, before the electric came to Kiss River. Daddy’s put the lighthouse on the emergency generator—he won’t let that light go out no matter what. But here in the house, we have no backup. Mama says “You’ve gotten spoiled and soft, Elizabeth.” Maybe she’s right. She argues with me no matter what I say these days. Or maybe I argue with her. I don’t know. We’re not getting along well, is all I can say about that. All I know is, even though it’s not unusual for the lights to go out, tonight I feel scared by the sudden darkness. And I have to add that nothing much usually scares me. Not the storms that wash clear across this island or even the wild boar that kill chickens and sometimes a dog or cat and once that I heard of, but don’t know for a fact, an old woman hanging out her wash on the line behind her house. I’m not even sure now why I feel scared. Maybe because the adults are. They don’t say it, of course, but I can feel fear everywhere I go. Everybody’s talking about the war. People sit around at Trager’s Store and talk about it, not laughing much or telling jokes like they used to. In my own living room, my parents sit right next to the radio, listening. Always listening. There’s still music. I am sick of hearing that song, “Let’s Remember Pearl Harbor,” and especially “Perfidia.” What does Perfidia mean, anyhow? Is that supposed to be someone’s name? If it’s not Glenn Miller music, it’s Gabriel Heater and his “Up to the Minute World News!” and none of that news is good. Lines I never noticed before are on Mama’s forehead. Although I am angry with her and all her rules for me, I want to take my hand and smooth it over her forehead to erase those lines. When I feel like that, I know I still love her and Daddy. Sometimes I have to remind myself of that!

      We’re not in any real danger up here in the northern beaches, Daddy said to me just yesterday, even though some ships have been sunk not far from here. Most of the ships that have been torpedoed by the Germans were down around Hatteras. After today, though, I bet Daddy’s thinking he might have to eat his words.

      This morning, I was up in the lantern room, cleaning the lens. We are not needed here the way we used to be before the electric came, when we had to keep the lighthouse lantern lit all night long, winding the clockworks and toting oil up them two hundred and seventy steps. The keepers of other lights have been let go, but somehow Daddy’s been allowed to stay on as a “civilian keeper,” as long as he does all the maintenance work around here. So I help by cleaning the lens. At least, the lower part of the lens. I can’t reach much higher than that, and Daddy won’t let me use the ladder near all that glass, and secretly I’m glad he won’t, because it’s much harder work than I guessed. All these years, I’ve been watching him clean the smooth glass prisms with his soft chammy and jeweler’s rouge, wishing I could do it myself. A year ago, when I turned fourteen, he finally let me, and now I wonder why I begged him to do it. You have to be so careful not to scratch the glass. I wasn’t supposed to ever touch it. “Eighteen panels of crown glass prisms, manufactured and polished in Paree, France,” Daddy says to anyone who will listen and even some people who won’t. Fingerprints can dull the light, he always says, but I used to touch the prisms when he wasn’t looking, because I loved the slick, cold feel of them. The lens is more than twice his height and I never realized how truly huge around it was until I had to clean it myself. I think it would take up half this room (my bedroom).

      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 СКАЧАТЬ