“We haven’t had a storm here in a long time,” one young man had said. He didn’t seem old enough for the statement, to Andrea, but she kept her silence and ate her ice cream, letting the smooth chocolate slide down her throat, cooled by rich vanilla.
“We’ve been hit a few times,” another man said, “but we always ride it out. Best thing to do is just batten down the windows and take your yard furniture inside.”
“What about that storm back in ’33?” Andrea’s father asked. “I heard that out on the island they were up on their roofs.”
“That’s the island,” the first young man replied, grinning. “It’s always worse out there. Besides, this one may not hit here at all.”
It had gone back and forth like that all day long, but in the end, Andrea’s father loaded up their truck with plywood, planks, nails, groceries, candles, and a lot of other things—so many she’d lost track and begun to wish for home, and her beach.
Now the light on their porch was visible in the distance and drawing closer, and Andrea was exhausted. She leaned on her father’s shoulder and smelled the comforting odors of flannel and tobacco. He glanced down at her, then back to the road, and she knew he was smiling. It was a good moment, and the pleasant sensation only lessened slightly when they finally pulled up beside the house and saw that two other vehicles were there ahead of them.
The neighbors had gathered, and she knew that the only thing that remained was to find out if they were here to discuss the war, or to worry over the coming storm. It wouldn’t matter to Andrea. She would take her book and her crayons and slip off into a corner. Sometimes they called out to her and asked her questions, but when the grownups talked she got lost quickly, and she didn’t know anything about the war. The storm worried her more, but the supplies in the truck had calmed her. Her father was taking it seriously, and he would take care of her.
The wind whipped sand around their legs and the sky grew dark and black as they climbed the stairs and slipped into the warmth of the big kitchen.
On the beach, the waves crashed against the rocks. It was high tide, and the waterline was higher than usual, but no one noticed.
Chapter Two
The kitchen was brightly lit, and the aroma of coffee wafted out the door the moment her father opened it. Andrea slipped inside and ducked past her mother, who smiled down at her as she passed. There were three neighbors gathered around the table, Muriel O’Pezio, who was the nearest neighbor, sat on one side of the table, and across from her were Keith Foster and Jeff Thompson.
Muriel was older than Andrea’s parents. She was tall and slender with wispy gray hair that she kept feathered back from her face and very bright, blue eyes. Her dog, Jake, was curled in a big ball of lazy muscle at her feet. Jake was a bulldog, but not the kind you saw in the cartoons. He was white with a patch over one eye like the dog on the Little Rascals. He lifted his head off the floor when Andrea and her father entered, and he cocked his head, causing one ear to rise comically and his tongue to loll as he watched her skirt the edge of the table on her way to the next room.
Muriel’s home was the only one you could see from the porch out front, or from the beach, and it was built along the same lines as Andrea’s home. The structure was raised from the ground on heavy creosote-soaked supports in case of flooding, giving it the impression of a building built on stilts. Andrea waved at the woman often when she saw her on the beach, and liked to play with Jake down by the surf, though Andrea’s mother did not trust the dog.
Keith Foster and Jeff Thompson had driven out from nearer to town. They were friends of her father’s, and Andrea knew them pretty well. Mr. Foster had been in the Coast Guard, and Jeff Thompson was an army man. They stopped by once or twice a week to listen to the radio reports of the war, and discuss things with her daddy over beer, or coffee, or—if the evening dragged on long enough—both.
They all three liked to tell stories, late into the night, and sometimes Andrea would sit just apart from them and pretend to play with something, or to read her book while she listened. It was hard to imagine her daddy, or either of the other two men, with guns, fighting wars and sailing across the ocean on huge gray ships, but it was fun to think about it, filling in the details from her own active imagination.
Mr. Thompson reached down and ruffled her hair as she passed, and Andrea blushed, pulling away slightly. Mr. Thompson chuckled, and Andrea put on a short burst of speed, darted through the door into the next room and stopped there to catch her breath. Mr. Thompson was always messing up her hair, or calling her kiddo. He smiled a lot, and usually had a piece of chocolate or a dime ready if the hair ruffle didn’t bring a smile. Andrea liked him, but she didn’t want to be caught up in the adult conversation.
When that happened, her part was invariably to stand in the middle of the room, shuffling uncomfortably from one foot to the other while they all exclaimed over how tall she was, and how long her hair was getting, or asked her if she’d met any boys this summer. It was always the same, and they would forget any answers she gave almost as soon as the words were out of her mouth. She knew this because the next time she saw them they asked the same questions again. They never told her what they were talking about, or asked her opinion.
Her crayons were right where she’d left them, and she grabbed them and searched the floor until she found her notepad. With these in hand, she crawled up onto the couch, where she could look out the window toward the beach below, and settled in. There was something about sitting on the couch that made it possible to hear the radio clearly, even though it was in the next room. Her parent’s voices were muted, but she heard the broadcaster loud and clear.
It was hard to tell, but the announcer seemed to be a young man. He spoke quickly, giving things emphasis with raised tones and slowing his speech at the important points. He talked about someone named Rommel, and the name sounded vaguely familiar, but Andrea tuned it out. She stared out across the ocean and frowned.
She had sat in that same position more times than she could remember. Something was different. She flipped the pages of her notebook to the last picture she’d drawn. In the colorful image she saw the beach, the rocky outcropping halfway to the water line, and beyond that the white-capped waves. The picture had been drawn in the evening, and the sky was colored with the hues of sunset, a very pretty palette of lavender and orange with white fluffy strips of cloud overlaying it all. In her picture she’d made one of the clouds look a little like Jake, the dog.
Andrea glanced back at the beach. The water swirled around the base of the rocks, much closer than she’d ever seen it before. There was no moonlight. All she had to illuminate the beach were the two large electric lights her father had installed on the porch. In that dim, focused break in the shadows, the water was ominous, creeping up and over the rock and rolling around behind it in surges. The frothy white of the waves was thicker than usual, as if agitated.
Curling her legs up under her, she leaned over the back of the couch to watch more closely. She didn’t want to let it out of her sight, though she couldn’t have told anyone why. The water should not be up around the rocks; she knew that. She was about to turn away, to go to the kitchen door and find a way to get her mother’s attention so she could show her what was happening, but at that moment the sky lit with a brilliant light. It looked like a giant firefly blinking on out over the water, and Andrea watched, mesmerized.
Then the crash came, like thunder only louder. The windows in front of Andrea’s face shook with the impact of the sound and rattled in their frames like a line of skeletons. Andrea turned, leaped from the couch and ran toward the kitchen, but the adults already blocked the door, and then were through it. They rushed to the couch and stared out over the water. A flame burned where she’d seen the light, a candle floating in the inky darkness. It seemed very small and far away, but the strobed image of the huge flash still hovered before Andrea’s eyes.
At first, no one said a word. They lined up on the couch. Andre
a’s mother scooped the girl into her arms and stood just behind the men, staring out the window toward the beach. Muriel came up beside them, but no one looked to her, or acknowledged her late arrival. Then, as suddenly as the silence preceding the huge crash of sound had begun, it ended. They all talked at once and pointed toward the window. The springs of the couch squeaked and complained.
“What the hell was it?” Mr. Thompson asked incredulously. “What is it?”
“Torpedo,” Thomas Jamieson said through gritted teeth. “A damn German torpedo. They must have gotten one of the ships trying to make it in ahead of the storm.”
There was another moment of silence, then Lilian spoke, very softly.
“So close,” she said. Her voice was little more than a whisper, but they all heard her. “Oh my god, they are so close.”
The men whirled and headed for the door, grabbing for hats and jackets as they went. Andrea’s mother spun slowly and watched them rush out into the darkness, but she said nothing. She, Muriel, and Andrea watched until the last of the men had exited and the door was closed tightly behind them, and then they spun back to the window and the flickering, dancing fire that burned—impossibly—on top of the water.
In the background, Andrea heard the radio. It was the same young man, but now he was talking about the storm. She heard the words “North Carolina,” and “evacuation,” but they meant little or nothing to her. She was worried about the light out on the water. She wondered where her father had gone, and for how long. She remembered the early years of her life, all spent alone with her mother for company—and her toys. She felt how tense her mother was now, how tightly she was being held—almost painfully.
Andrea pushed the announcer’s voice aside and stared out at the beach. She saw that her daddy and his friends had made their way onto the sand and were headed toward the water, where they might see better, or hear something else, if the attack hadn’t ended. Andrea burrowed her face into her mother’s neck and shivered.
She remembered the way the water licked and teased at the base of the rocks on the beach, and now, watching her daddy hurry onto the sand, she saw that the waves had drawn nearer still. The rocks had become a small island, their tip dripping with foam, and their base awash in a swirl of dark water. She watched that water creep up the stone, and she clutched her mother tightly.
None of the adults took any particular notice of the water. They gazed steadily out over the water at the fire, burning in the distance. Andrea understood that the fire had been an explosion, and that whatever they were, and however strange the names sounded ringing in her ear, the Nazis and the U-boats were responsible. She knew that this frightened her mother, and that, in some ways, it excited her father. He knew that the men were out on the beach, glaring at the fire as if they could put it out by blowing on it, or stamping whatever caused it under their feet. She knew, also, that they almost wished there would be Nazis on that beach, whoever the Nazis were, so that they could rush them and attack with their bare hands.
What seemed a very long time later, her mother dropped her gently back onto the couch, and the women returned to the kitchen. The scent of fresh coffee filled the air, and the bustle of pans and wash of sink water told Andrea her mother had retreated into things she was comfortable with and left the men to the fire on the beach—and Andrea herself to the rising, licking waves.
Muriel had turned the radio down low, not quite willing to give up the steady stream of voices and announcements, but not wanting—just for a short time—to be buried in the dire predictions and wild pronouncements of that young man so far away, flinging his words through the air.
Wind whipped against the windows, and the first spatter of rain rattled across the glass. The streaked view this gave of the beach distorted everything, and moments later, when the rain grew steadier, even the light from the fire disappeared from sight. Andrea still watched, though there was nothing to see, as if her silent vigil could fend off the encroaching waves and the strange threat of U-boats and Germans. She wanted to go to bed, close her eyes, and wake up to another morning on the beach.
The door crashed open and the men stamped inside, wet and scowling, dripping water onto the linoleum kitchen floor in large puddles. They gathered at the table, where Lilian had poured fresh, hot coffee. There was a bottle on the table, as well, Scotch, Andrea knew. She thought it was odd that the drink her daddy liked best had the same name as the tape she used to wrap Christmas presents—that was why she remembered what it was called. Now she wondered why every time something was wrong, that bottle became the centerpiece of the table.
Her mother never touched it to drink, but she would pour. There were special glasses, a little bit bigger than the ones Andrea used for orange juice, but glass, and very heavy. When someone dropped ice into them, they gave off a ringing clink! That was the sound that made the final separation between Andrea and the adults. She had come to learn that once the Scotch bottle was on the table, voices grew louder. The ruffling of her hair would be harder, sometimes even painful, and things that the grownups said to her became even more incomprehensible than usual.
She picked up her almost forgotten crayons and notebook and headed to her room to draw, and to sleep. The windows shook, buffeted by a powerful gust of wind, and she was grateful that her room was near the center of the house. She had no windows.
Behind her, she heard Mr. Thompson’s voice rise over the others, just for a moment.
“Well,” he said, “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m headed back to the place to pack. I’m going to get the family on the road before morning and head inland. I’ve got relatives in the mountains, and I guess maybe it’s about time I gave them a visit.”
Andrea paused in the hallway outside her door and listened.
“We’re going to ride it out,” her father’s voice boomed in response. “I’ll start battening things down tonight. I picked up everything we should need when I was in town.”
“I guess I should have had someone out from the city to help at my place,” Muriel said. Her voice was higher in pitch, and sounded somewhat frightened. “I haven’t done a thing to prepare, but I don’t have anywhere else to go. Nowhere that would take Jake . . .”
There were some mumbled responses. Andrea thought it was likely that her mother had invited the older woman to stay and sleep on the couch, but a few moments later she heard Muriel’s shaky goodbye, and the door closed. The others left one by one, Andrea knew by the sound of their car doors and engines, roaring off into the night. The rain fell in steady sheets, and she hoped that Muriel and Jake had made it home okay. The memory of that creeping, swirling water came back with chilling clarity.
When her mother finally came through the door to announce that it was bedtime, Andrea was coloring furiously. She’d placed the earlier picture of the beach on her bed beside her notebook, and now she was working on another. This picture was a warped version of the first. The sky, instead of the muted lavenders and purples of the other sunrise, was a wash of deep red, dripping down from dark clouds. The beach was half as wide as it had been in the earlier picture, and water surrounded the stones, wrapped around their base like great white-tipped fingers in a death grip.
Her mother glanced at the pictures, and when Andrea looked up, it was just in time to see a quick wash of something dark flashing behind the familiar brown eyes and swirling, shiny hair.
“Why is Mr. Thompson leaving?” Andrea asked, choosing her words carefully. She didn’t want a quick pat on the cheek, she wanted a real answer, but if her mother got upset, there would be no chance again until the following morning.
After a moment, her mother sat down on the bed and turned to her. Andrea was shocked at how tired her mother looked, how fragile.
“A lot has happened tonight,” she said at last. “Mr. Thompson thinks that the storm that’s coming in will be very bad. He’s taking his family away to a place that will be safer.”
“Why aren’t we going?” Andrea aske
d.
“Your daddy thinks we’ll be fine here, honey. There hasn’t been a big storm here since 1933, and this is a good, strong house. We’ll be fine.”
Andrea dropped her eyes to the picture she was working on, idly sliding the red crayon back and forth across the sky. Before she could form another question, her mother rose again, leaned close, and kissed her on her cheek.
“Get some sleep, baby,” she said. “It’ll all seem better tomorrow. I promise.”
Outside, the wind howled promises of its own, and Andrea heard the pounding of her father’s hammer as he placed the sheets of wood he’d bought over the windows of their home.
Andrea drifted off to sleep, still clutching the red crayon. As the world fell away to darkness, she dreamed of churning, rushing water, eating away at the sand beneath their home and washing like gripping talons around the foundation poles. The sky was a deep red, like the color of your eyelids if you closed them and stared into a bright light, veined with clouds and dancing with lightning.
In the distance, her father’s steady hammering became the firing of huge guns, and the wind faded to the whistle of shells through the air. Andrea slept fitfully as the wind rose in force and volume, and her father retreated inside to wait it out.
In her dream, she watched a boat shaped like the letter “U” swirling down and down into the black depths of the ocean, caught in the clutching, gripping fingers of the waves and drawn far, far away. As dawn approached, her features finally eased their tense, twitching battle with the unseen, and the dreams fell away to black.
Chapter Three
When Andrea woke, it was very dark. She knew that her door was open a crack, and there should have been some light leaking in from the hallway. Her mother always left a small lamp on in the bathroom so they could find their way in the dark.
Mote in Andrea's Eye Page 2