Shorecliff

by Ursula Deyoung

  “For the next hour or so Hennessey kept up a running narration for my benefit. He was almost enjoying himself by now. I bet he’d forgotten all about the holes in his boots. He was happiest when he was making a joke out of something, and now he kept pointing at bushes and trees and saying, ‘That one, for instance. They like to keep low to the ground. Just imagine some ax murderer crouching behind that bush, watching us, waiting until we’re right across from him before leaping out, right now!’ Then he’d grab my shoulder, and I’d shy like a frightened horse. I don’t know if it’s ever happened to you, Richard, but when you get in the mood sometimes, everything can seem scary. You’d think I would have been too exhausted, too hungry, too plain old worn out for Hennessey’s joking to have any effect, but I wasn’t. And the way our lanterns were bobbing around, it seemed as if the shadows really were moving next to us, as if the wood were full of ghosts.

  “Then something else happened. Hennessey was saying, ‘Imagine a pair of eyes suddenly appearing from behind the tree—white, staring eyes looking at you as if they wanted to eat you up whole—eyes ready to kill you.’ I was trying not to look at the tree, so he took hold of my head, turned it around, and pointed straight at the tree. And right as I looked, a pair of eyes did pop out from behind that tree—white staring eyes exactly the way he’d described. I tell you, I’ve never been so goddamn scared in all my life. I was so scared I didn’t even scream, though it felt like my heart was about to explode. But the most terrifying thing of all was the sound Hennessey made. It wasn’t a shriek or a yell—it was more like an intake of breath combined with a moan, very sudden and choked. And that told me Hennessey was so scared that even he, even such a big man as he was, couldn’t scream out loud.

  “Just as we thought we would die of fright, another pair of eyes popped out beside the first, and then another and another. They were all around us. The other men in our platoon noticed them, and then did we hear some screaming, let me tell you! It was a bunch of Germans—they’d been cut off from their company too, I guess, and now they’d discovered us and tried to surround us. We couldn’t see their bodies; it was too dark. Only their wild eyes stared out, reflecting the light of our lanterns.

  “God knows what would have happened if Lieutenant Mange hadn’t shouted, ‘Scatter!’ at the top of his lungs. Boy, we scattered. We ran like hell. I even lost Hennessey in the crush. I dove forward between two pairs of eyes and galloped into the woods. Damn near poked my own eyes out because I kept running into branches. I heard shouts all around me, but after a while they became fainter, and when ten minutes had gone by I’d had enough aimless running. I stopped and looked around. I had one little lantern with me that I’d been hiding under my coat—that was all. Then I felt another type of fear, Richard. This wasn’t the sudden terror you feel when something startles you, the way those eyes startled me. This was the sick, deadening apprehension you feel when you’re all alone in the middle of a big snow-covered forest, cut off from your comrades. There’s nothing like it. I hope you never experience it, kiddo, because it comes awfully close to—well, you could almost call it despair.

  “I knew there was a good chance I would die if I didn’t keep walking, and my only hope now was to find Hennessey and Lieutenant Mange and the others. So I wandered in a new direction. But I didn’t dare call out because I knew the Germans were still nearby. I just walked on trying to make as little noise as possible. That part of the night I don’t like to think about. The cold and snow and darkness seemed ten times more horrible now that I had to face them alone. I started missing Hennessey’s silly jokes, even though I’d been about to throttle him earlier. I must have walked for about half an hour—or maybe it was less, twenty minutes, but it felt like years—when I heard someone crashing toward me from my left. Before I could think better of it, I cried, ‘Is that you, Hennessey?’ Then the man stepped into the circle of light my lantern cast, and I saw it was one of the Germans.

  “He’d lost his helmet, and his blond hair was all spiked up and covered in snow. His face was white too because it was so cold, and there was snow in his eyebrows. He didn’t have a light at all, poor devil. He’d been staggering along in complete darkness. But he was holding his gun out, aimed in front of him, so that when he came up to me the barrel almost touched my chest. Then I felt yet another type of fear. I guess I experienced all the colors in the fear rainbow that night, Richard. This was the gut-wrenching terror you feel when you know your life depends on another man’s nerve. I could hear him panting—his breathing was ragged and hoarse, as if he’d been sprinting for miles—and I could tell he was scared practically out of his wits. That meant at any moment he might panic and pull the trigger. So I didn’t say anything. I just stood there, looking into his big eyes. My stomach felt as if it were slithering out of me. I wanted to throw up my hands and shout, ‘Stop, stop, I can’t take it anymore!’ But I didn’t say a word.

  “The German was getting more and more worked up. He was breathing faster, and his shoulders were heaving up and down. That’s how scared men get in these types of situations, Richard. It’s not the sort of thing you ever want to see. Finally he jerked the gun a little—making me jump, I can tell you—and he said, ‘I’ll shoot!’ He didn’t have a very strong accent.

  “When he said that, I should have been even more scared. He was threatening me, after all. But for some reason it calmed me down. I think it was because I knew then what sort of scared he was—he was filled with the fear that’s so paralyzing you can’t do anything except shake. So I didn’t panic. I raised my arms slowly, away from my gun to show that I wasn’t going to attack him, and I asked, ‘Where are the other American soldiers?’ I figured he would at least understand the word ‘American.’

  “As it turns out, I think he must have known a lot of English because he pointed behind him and said, ‘They’re over there, not very far from here.’ He turned back to face me, stared for a second with his eyes even wider, and then burst into tears. Yes, Richard, he just started sobbing right there, with the tears rolling down through the melted snow on his cheeks. He kept clutching his gun so that it pointed at me in a wobbly sort of way, but I wasn’t scared of him at all anymore. I stepped to one side. That poor bastard—I felt the most god-awful pity for him then. German or not, enemy or not, he was a pathetic sight. I think he was younger than I was, and so frightened to be there facing me that he was about to lose his mind. And then, the shame of telling me what I wanted to know—I could tell that was the last straw. Being in that position and losing his nerve and giving the enemy information, the last scrap of his manliness thrown away… Richard, my boy, one of the worst things about war is the way it makes men feel about themselves. If he lived through it, I’ll bet you a hundred bucks the memory of that moment still makes him shudder with self-loathing. Poor bastard.

  “I wanted to say thank you. I even wanted to tell him everything would be all right. But anything I said would have made it worse. So I moved down alongside the barrel of his gun until I was standing next to him, met his eyes once more, and walked past him into the woods. I thought he might shoot me in the back just to get back his self-respect. But he didn’t. I walked on for a little bit, and then I heard a thump. I looked back. As far as I could make out from the light of my lantern, he’d fallen onto his knees. Kneeling there…I wish I hadn’t seen that.”

  Unexpectedly, Uncle Kurt stopped talking. He looked out the window and said nothing for a few moments.

  “And then what happened?” I asked at last, unable to restrain myself.

  “Well, then I found Hennessey and the others, and we dragged ourselves along until morning, and by that time we’d found the rest of the company.”

  “What happened to the German?”

  “I don’t know, buddy. I never found out. That’s the end of the story.”

  That was all I got out of him that day. He had drifted away, it seemed reluctantly, into a pensive silence.

  Not all of Kurt’s stories were so grim and u
nsettling. Many of them would end with a punch line and a laugh. But all of them were riddled with comments about the awful things war did to people. They didn’t stop me from glorifying him, but they did stop me from glorifying war itself. I admired him all the more for being so wise, for being able to criticize the very thing that had made him a god.

  Once, later in the summer, my mother discovered me in Uncle Kurt’s room. She opened the door right as Kurt was reaching the climax of one of his stories.

  “Richard,” she said, “what have I told you about bothering your Uncle Kurt in the mornings? I’m surprised at you. Run along now.”

  “Don’t worry,” Kurt said, smiling at me in a conspiratorial way that filled me with pleasure and pride. “Richard here doesn’t bother me at all. He comes up for news of the war.”

  My mother looked at him with a crease on her forehead. “But, Kurt,” she said, “isn’t it—well, troubling for you to think back over all those memories? Are you sure it’s good for you?”

  “Now, Caroline.” Kurt laughed, but it was a soft, strained laugh that I didn’t like at all. “I think about the war with or without Richard. At least when he’s here I have a captivated audience rather than a captive one. I’ve relived my stories many times, but they’re new for him. Aren’t they, my boy?”

  “Yes, Uncle Kurt,” I whispered.

  “But aren’t you working?” My mother glanced at the typewriter and the facedown sheets of paper.

  “Yes, I’m working,” Kurt said. He gave her a level stare and added, “In all the many times Richard has come here, he has never once looked at my typewriter the way you just did. He’s content to hear my stories directly from me, without prying.”

  My mother got the hint and left. I treasured Kurt’s comment, though I felt guilty too, knowing how false it was. In fact I had shot many a furtive glance at his desk, wondering what he was writing and if it was anything like the stories he told me. He never noticed. I don’t think Kurt realized how abstracted he became while telling those stories, how often he would look at the window, his eyes locked on something far away.

  My mother never scolded me again about bothering Uncle Kurt, but I tried to keep my visits private anyway. It would have taken away half their excitement if I hadn’t felt that I was on forbidden ground. Of course I often felt the urge to boast to my cousins about Kurt’s stories, but I valiantly resisted mentioning them.

  All too soon, however, it became clear that the cousins knew my secret and simply weren’t interested, which meant that I could refer to my talks with Kurt freely, without fear of being usurped as his audience.

  Once, on my way back to the beach, still sandy from previous exploits, I saw Isabella lying on her bed and tiptoed in to ask why she wasn’t at the shore.

  “The shore’s not a good place for me right now, kid,” she replied, her words muffled by the pillow. She had crushed her face into it so that I could see only one eye and half of her distorted mouth. She didn’t seem to be crying or even particularly unhappy. She spoke in a bored monotone.

  I was baffled. “Are you sick?” I asked.

  “Not in any way that you’d understand.”

  “Are you sad?”

  “I guess you could say so.” This was said after a sizable pause.

  I was frozen by an onslaught of pity and awe. It occurred to me that I might stroke her hair, the way my mother still stroked mine when I was upset, but I discarded the idea. A thirteen-year-old boy could not stroke a seventeen-year-old girl’s hair—it would have been sacrilege of the most terrible kind. Nor could I present her with sympathy. She had rejected my offered ear, and clearly my ignorance made it an offense even to be standing in her room. “Do you want me to go get someone?” I ventured.

  “No, there’s no one I want to talk to.”

  That was when I had my flash of inspiration. “You could talk to Uncle Kurt!” I exclaimed. “He’s so old and smart, he’ll know exactly what to say.”

  Isabella smiled into the pillow. “Uncle Kurt’s not a good person to talk to when you’re upset. He has too many secrets of his own to worry about other people’s.”

  “Uncle Kurt doesn’t have any secrets!” I said, horrified. As soon as I said it I realized I was wrong. “Or at least, his secrets are all good secrets.”

  Isabella laughed again. “There’s no such thing as a good secret, Richard.”

  Her statement was so sweeping that I couldn’t help but stand there, squinting up my eyes, trying to prove her wrong. Of course there are good secrets—surprise birthday parties, for instance. I thought of that one in under ten seconds, but before I could say it, I heard a laugh in the doorway.

  It was Francesca, tossing her long, curly hair away from her bathing suit. The suit was a rich green, with nothing but two thin straps to hold it up and an almost nonexistent skirt—more modest than the ones girls wear nowadays, but still shockingly revealing by our family’s standards.

  “No such thing as a good secret?” she echoed, her eyes sparkling. “I don’t think that’s true! I can think of a lot of good secrets.” She laughed her throaty laugh again and said, “Right, Richard?”

  “I was being serious, Francesca,” Isabella said. She had sat up as soon as Francesca came into the room.

  Francesca smiled at Isabella without malice, looked at me for a second or two, and left. From the hallway we heard, “Are you coming to the beach, Isabella?”

  “You go on without me,” Isabella called.

  There was a moment of silence that I felt to be extremely awkward.

  “Will you be all right?” I asked at last.

  “Oh, yes, I’ll be fine.” She was still sitting up, waggling her feet at me. “Run away to the beach, little boy. Don’t worry about me. What have you all been doing down there anyway?”

  “Tom and Philip had a swimming race,” I answered, ready to give her the full details in spite of her condescending tone. “Charlie was the judge, and he and Tom got into a water fight. Pamela and I went exploring down the shore by the cliff, and the Delias are building a sandcastle. Fisher decided to hunt for crabs—but only unusual ones, he said. Yvette is sunbathing. And that’s everyone because Francesca came back here with me. I wanted to get my telescope.”

  “Can you see down to the shore from here with your telescope?”

  “No, of course not.” I laughed, thinking she was trying to be funny. “The shore is half a mile away and below the cliff. The furthest I can see from my window is to the edge of the woods. Sometimes I can see boats out at sea too, but not very well. I’m not good at focusing it.” I was hitting my stride. Conversation with Isabella always seemed easy. “So are you going to come back with us?” I asked, assuming that, having heard the enticements of the beach, Isabella wouldn’t be able to resist.

  She said, “No, I’m going to stay here. You can tell me all about it when you get back. I’ll be waiting for you.”

  I shrugged and left. My cousins spent a lot of time lying on their beds. Considering how dark and gloomy the third floor of Shorecliff was, even on the brightest days, it was impressive that they were so willing to give up the outdoors. But I guess misery is more satisfying when you wallow in darkness. Being sad in the sunlight is harder to pull off.

  Francesca was loitering on the stairs, waiting for me. She surprised me sometimes by her consideration—I never expected any from her. “So she’s not coming?” she asked. When I shook my head, she said, “Well, that’s her choice. Come on.”

  4

  Shore

  We went to the seashore constantly, nearly every day. Most of the older cousins were intrepid swimmers and ventured into the freezing waves even on windy days that would have seen me huddling in bed were it not for the fact that I refused to be left behind. The water we swam in was cold enough to make our skin go numb after a few minutes, and the aunts and uncles never went in past their knees. But the children were fearless.

  Francesca, in particular, would not be denied her daily swim. Probably this
was largely for the purpose of wearing her green suit, but nevertheless she thrived in the water, hurling herself into oncoming rollers like a selkie. She boasted that Aunt Loretta was a magnificent swimmer and had taught her all the strokes, though in fact the boys were much more skilled at withstanding the waves than she was. She had a strange habit of crouching in the shallows, her black hair resting on the surface, and then exploding upward with her hands above her head as if she were diving into the air. The gesture seemed to embody our pleasure in the water. The boys also reveled in dodging waves and starting water fights. Pamela and I went in on occasion, usually when there were several aunts nearby and the ocean was so calm that the older cousins deemed it boring and sunbathed instead. I preferred to feel the water swishing gently against my legs, beckoning me onward. Conquering the sea as a foe felt like a distasteful and pointless exercise, but embracing it as a friend was a delight each time.

  There was nothing between the house and the beach except the coarse grass that abounded around Shorecliff and a sprawling patch of wild roses and blueberries. We children thought nothing of trotting for ten minutes or so through this thicket and then bursting onto the sand, but for the aunts and uncles it was a chore—whenever they came, they brought lawn chairs and baskets of food and bags of books, as if they meant to be there all day. Then they would stay for an hour or two and depart, while we, who were constantly racing between the house and the beach, could spend all day there without thinking anything of it.

  We went to the shore so often that for the most part our times there melted into one another, and maybe that’s why my memory of it seems so magical, built as it is out of so many different mornings, so many lazy afternoons. But one event stands out from the collage, a fear-filled hour that formed one of the milestones of the summer.