“I will.”
“You promise?”
“Yeah. I promise.”
And with that, the Tibbits started off on their long drive home to Iowa, Sam waving even after he couldn’t see Aubrey anymore. By the time they reached the state line, he was thinking of everything that lay ahead of him instead of everything that lay behind. The grass in Madelyn Vance’s yard, groan. Swimming in the Cottonwood pool. His baseball team.
Maybe his team would do okay in regionals this year; this suddenly seemed more important than anything. Sam loved hanging out with his teammates in the dugout, ramming his bat against the corrugated roof whenever anyone got a hit. He loved stepping inside the batter’s box, lifting his elbow, chewing his bottom lip while he glared at the pitcher.
Sam hadn’t thought much about girls before now. There were a few of them his friends liked to tease by stealing their books or slamming shut their locker doors. But roving the school halls in one huge pack and discussing Coach Pearson’s outlook on the preseason Minnesota Vikings or the St. Louis Rams seemed more important than anything to do with females. Camping in Big Bluestem Park and watching plastic forks melt and curl in the fire seemed more intriguing than anything to do with the girls they teased. So Sam kept stories of Aubrey to himself. For some reason, his thoughts of her felt safer there. Aubrey became a part of him that he carried within him, but did not share.
Sometimes at sundown, or so Aubrey told Sam and Brenda one August, in a flash, in an instant, you might see phosphorescence in the water. For one moment, if you were watching, the sea glowed green. That same summer Aubrey proclaimed herself a George Harrison girl, with shiny posters taped to her walls, a collection of George buttons lining her bulletin board, and Beatles albums stacked a foot high beside her record player.
“You should like Paul,” Brenda told her. “He’s much cuter.”
“I don’t see what girls think is so great about the Beatles,” Sam said, feeling illogically jealous, unable to adjust to the sight of the monstrous George face staring pensively at them from Aubrey’s ceiling.
“Will you show the green glow to us?” Brenda asked.
“You want to see it? Okay, but if I try, you have to promise to look hard. If you blink, you might miss it.”
When the three went out, they took the puppy along. Walt McCart had found Mox curled in the ropes on the No Nonsense one morning. He said they would never know whether someone tried to drown the dog or whether someone just dropped him off at the wharf. The puppy flopped along with the three of them, a sand-matted tussle of fur, his hind legs occasionally overrunning his front ones. People who would not smile at anything would smile at Mox.
“Look at my lips, you two,” Brenda said, skipping along beside them.
Sam did his best to ignore her.
“Sam, you have to look.”
He rolled his eyes. He didn’t need to see this. He’d been with her when she’d blown her allowance this morning on the edible wax lips at the Seaside Salt Water Taffy Shoppe on the boardwalk.
“Want some?” Brenda held the bag toward Aubrey.
“Sure.”
“You want some lips, Sam?”
“No.”
“I think you do.”
“I don’t like chewing wax.”
“I think you want Aubrey’s lips.”
He stopped in his tracks, mortified. “Shut up, Brenda. Just shut up.”
But it wasn’t the first time the thought had come to his mind, either.
Aubrey came to the rescue, changing the subject. “You have to hear about the latest thing Kenneth did.” Although if Sam hadn’t been so desperate to be rescued just then, he might have rolled his eyes at Kenneth stories, too. The last time they’d been deep-sea fishing, McCart had almost missed a thirty-pound Chinook because he’d been busy singing the praises of his son.
Sam steeled himself to hear another story about the “All-State Running Back 1963” certificate Kenneth had been awarded last fall, or about the 4-H rosette he’d won for woodworking at the Tillamook County Fair, or about the way Kenneth brought in a record number of fish when he’d captained the Westerly and a group of nine Japanese tourists. The more Sam spent time with Aubrey, the more he realized Kenneth McCart was the favorite son of Piddock, Oregon. But, instead she said, “He saved someone’s life this spring. Since I last wrote to you.”
Sam opened his mouth to say something, and shut it immediately.
“Really?” Brenda stopped in her tracks, too. “Who did he save?”
“A man staying out by the creek.”
Sam picked up a shell, ran his thumb over the ridges, pitched it away. Mox bounded after it.
“There was a homeless man who stopped by the wharf when Kenneth was washing down the Stately Mary. He asked my brother if he could spare an extra fish. Kenneth asked where he was staying and the man said he had a camp tent set up beside Elbow Creek, just beneath the bridge.”
Mox chased after the waves then darted back as they chased him, trying to get to the shell Sam had thrown. Sam looked around for a stick to throw the dog, something that would float. Brenda stood gaping up at Aubrey, listening to the story she was telling.
“They talked about the Alaska earthquake on the news that night. But no one understood what it would do to the sea. And that night, as Kenneth lay in bed listening, he realized he couldn’t hear waves anymore. It was what Kenneth didn’t hear that confused him.”
“I don’t believe he saved anybody’s life.” Sam dusted the sand off a piece of driftwood. He lobbed it into the air. The stick boomeranged end over end as Mox scrambled after it. “Kenneth does a lot of things, but I don’t believe he did that.”
“When you’re used to living beside the ocean, when you’re used to hearing the constant roar, it is the silence that attracts your attention.”
Mox overran the stick and doubled back, looking for it.
“Kenneth said he knew the water had gone out and that it would come rushing in again. He knew the water would flow upstream and flood Elbow Creek. No one except him knew that a homeless man was sleeping up there.”
“Wow,” Brenda said.
“So he woke Dad and they drove up there. Did you know that? He only had to say the word and my father went with him. My dad never listens to me like that.”
Mox had returned without the driftwood. “Someone needs to teach this dog to fetch.”
“They got there in time. My brother was pulling him to safety and all around them, the noise started, the sound of the sea wall crumbling, a bridge folding, people shouting from their beds, a log being driven through the side of a car.”
Kenneth, the golden child to everyone. “How do you think that would feel?” Sam asked. “Knowing that someone was alive because of you?”
“My father tacked the article up on the wall at the marina beside all the others,” Aubrey told them.
LOCAL HERO SAVES A LIFE, the headline in the Lighthouse-Reporter read when Sam saw it the next day. The paper ran the story with a picture of Kenneth and a drenched stranger, the canvas tent bubbling up out of the water like a squid. The article related how the teen had scrambled down the underpinnings of the bridge, reached for the man’s hand on the rocks where he’d been stranded, while his father held his legs to steady him, and Kenneth dragged the stranger to safety. The water had come from Prince William Sound, the newspaper reported, after the Alaskan earthquake the day before. The remains of the tent hung snagged beneath the span of Elbow Bridge for two more weeks before anyone could bring it down.
“Aubrey?” Brenda asked, and Sam saw his sister’s tentative fingers touch Aubrey’s. “I don’t want to miss the light in the water. Are you watching?”
“I’m always watching.”
Sam wasn’t sure just why he grasped Aubrey’s hand and pulled her along as if he wanted to pull her away from something. Perhaps it was because every time he heard another story about Kenneth, he saw how she lived in her brother’s shadow, and sensed she was hur
t.
The tide was dead low. The waves broke lightly, far out. Mox followed them to the standing rock that, any other time of day, would be off shore. Around it, gulls were wheeling over the open ground, preying on exposed sea creatures.
Sam let go of Aubrey’s hand and lifted Brenda onto the rock. His sister struggled for a foothold. When she finally stood, she lifted her face toward the sky and stretched her arms wide and shrieked, “I’m flying out here. I can fly forever!”
Mox was next to be hoisted up and then Sam gave Aubrey a boost, too, before he scrambled onto the rock beside her. Aubrey pulled her blowing hair into a pony tail. She held it there with her hand because she had no clasp.
“Let’s stay here all night,” Brenda said, with her face into the wind.
The three of them roosted there, their silhouettes as spindly as cranes against the sky, as the mist drew closer to shore and the distance between their perch and the point of land that marked the downtown marina seemed to grow farther away. The sound of the sea became something beyond them, so loud that they couldn’t hear it anymore. The ocean never betrayed her mysterious green light, but one by one, the stars sprang alive overhead.
They stayed so long that Sam thought Brenda might have gone to sleep, leaning against him. He whispered to Aubrey, “I wish I never had to leave.”
“This rock?”
“No. Your town.”
“I know.”
“I’ll always come back, you know that? I’ll never stay away.”
“And I’ll always be here.”
“That’s good.”
“Yes,” she said. “Good.”
When Mox fell, he hit water. They’d been so deep in their reverie, they hadn’t realized the tide was coming in. They heard the sound of scrabbling claws, the little yelp, the skittering pebbles, as the puppy struggled. Sam leapt off and found himself knee deep in the dark ocean as the next wave sent up a spray. Aubrey was already in front of him, clapping her hands, bending low, searching.
What a relief when they caught a glimpse of Mox paddling toward shore! Seawater slapped at their legs and, moments later, tugged at their ankles. The ocean rose, fell, broke, rose, fell, broke, as if it didn’t know whether to push them toward shore or to tug them out deep. As they washed up on the dune, Sam said, “This is why I believe in God, Aubrey. Because things turn out okay.”
She scooped up Mox, a bundle of wet fur, into her arms. She stepped ahead and turned, walking backward. It wasn’t easy going; she stumbled over shells and stones that the sea had cast at her feet. “I don’t.”
“You don’t what?”
“Believe in God.”
“Why not?”
“I believe in the sea,” she said. “It’s always there. It isn’t like God. You always know what it’s going to do.”
She tripped over something, maybe a hole in the sand or the remnants of someone’s sandcastle, and stumbled again. She landed oomph, flat on her rear. Unable to halt his forward progress, Sam landed almost on top of her as Mox yelped and struggled to get out from between them. Sam saved the day by bracing himself with his arms.
“Hi,” he said, grinning down at her and the dog.
“Hi.”
The power of suggestion, Brenda talking earlier about Aubrey’s lips. Here she was on the sand, ripples of surf foaming around her shoulders as she looked up at him, her hair plastered against her face like strands of seaweed. Mox wiggled away and shook himself, spraying both their faces. She shook her head, laughing. Light from the windows in the houses on the cliff above reflected in her eyes.
Aubrey stopped laughing when he lowered his mouth to hers.
Her mouth opened at his slight touch. On her lips, he tasted salt. Oh, yes. He knew now that he had imagined it this way, had thought about kissing her more often than he cared to admit. He could feel her breath, could smell her Beeman’s gum.
A wave lapped over their legs but neither of them noticed. In the back of his mind, he thought he ought to check on Brenda. When they’d rescued the dog, they’d left his sister alone on the outcropping, watching the sea.
“Why’d you do that?” Aubrey asked.
“Because.”
“Because why?”
“Because I wanted to.”
Against his T-shirt, Sam’s pulse rattled in counterpoint to hers. He felt her small breasts pressing against his chest.
“Why did you want to?”
“I don’t know.”
Breaking waves drummed in the distance. Finally she asked, “We wouldn’t want anyone to think we liked each other, would we?”
“No,” he said with great certainty, shaking his head.
“Or that we were boyfriend and girlfriend or anything.”
“No, we wouldn’t.”
“Because we’re friends.” But her voice sounded stupefied, as if she needed to convince herself that the words were true.
“Yes.”
Lanterns swayed in the distance on a Coast Guard cutter patrolling the shore. On the far horizon, the last remaining light smudged the line between earth and sky. A buoy bell rang out past Lex’s Landing.
“Sam?”
He didn’t answer.
“Why so quiet? Didn’t you like kissing me?”
Silence.
“You’re shaking. Are you scared of me?”
Sam shook his head no, said yes.
She rose to her knees and he arose with her, cradling her neck with his hand, his fingers shoving her hair from her ear. I’ll show you who’s scared. He kissed her again, and Sam felt her hands fall to his shoulders. He felt goose bumps rise on her arms, heard the small sound at the back of her throat. He wasn’t shaking anymore.
Somewhere over the roar of the surf he heard a plaintive voice calling him. “Sam?”
The sound didn’t register at first.
“Sam? Are you there?”
They scrambled up, stepping away from each other.
“Sam? Are you coming to get me?”
He turned to Aubrey. “It’s Brenda.” Sam trudged into the waves again, sloshing toward the rock. He held up his arms toward his sister.
“I thought you’d forgotten me.”
“I wouldn’t do that. Come on down now.” Brenda slid toward him and Sam broke her descent with his arms. “You want to walk to shore yourself, or you want me to carry you?” But she was ahead of him, already blundering toward shore.
When they arrived on dry ground, Aubrey was waiting for them with her arms wrapped around herself, her palms sliding up and down against her goose bumps. “I have to get to the dock. I promised my father I’d go by the marina tonight and restock the bait cooler.”
Sam didn’t want her to leave them. He stepped forward, wiped the wet legs of his jeans as if he could dry them. “You have to go?”
“Kenneth’s shirts need washing, too.”
“How come you have to do house chores and your brother doesn’t?”
“He takes care of the boats.”
“But you want to do that.”
Suddenly Mox was upon them again, leaping in the air and shaking and spreading sand. When Sam tried to grab him, he ran in widening, playful circles, just out of reach. “Aubrey, couldn’t you stay longer tonight? You could do those things later, couldn’t you?”
“I’ll get grounded.” She clapped her hands to attract the puppy. Mox came to her without hesitating. “Let’s go, Mox.”
It occurred to Sam that, as long as he knew Aubrey, he would watch her walk away across the sand. And that night in the confines of the motor court, Sam couldn’t sleep. On the opposite side of the narrow room from his snoring father, his mother sighing in her sleep, Sam laid awake, awash in this new sensation of kissing someone. His expectant heart throbbed with uncertainty. The ache inside him felt as big and uncomfortable as hunger.
CHAPTER FOUR
A day came during Sam’s sixteenth summer when the Westerly, the Stately Mary, and the No Nonsense did not leave their moorings in the after
noon. Sam, who had gone looking for his father, stood hidden at dock’s edge and saw it all—Walt McCart’s stern jaw, the desperate set of his shoulders.
“Why didn’t you tell me before now, Kenneth?” McCart shook a fistful of papers at his son. “I would have done everything I could to talk you out of it.”
“I know that. That’s why I did it without you.”
“You have everything you want waiting here for you. The family business. Your reputation. Why would you need anything else?”
“I’m bigger than this town, Dad. I’ve outgrown it.”
“You’re young. Don’t you understand that you can’t ever outgrow the place that you come from?”
Kenneth opened the ice bin and began pitching fish out, unloading the morning’s catch. “There’s nothing else I can be taught here. I’ve seen everything this town has to show me. There is more to life than Piddock Beach and Tillamook County.”
His father began pitching fish out too, right beside him. “Foolhardy.” A nice-sized Kokanee slapped the floor and slid, shimmered opalescent in the sun. “That’s what you are, boy. Just plain foolhardy.”
“You saw Bailey Phelps when he came home from basic training this spring. Bailey, who ran his Impala through a fence and got arrested for throwing beer cans off the water tower and was never able to make a curfew?” Kenneth hauled out fish with righteous vigor. They sailed past and landed in a sliding heap—a Chinook salmon, another Kokanee. “You saw him in uniform, snapping a salute to George Bauer. You saw him walking down the street with his chin up and his shoulders back, as if he was ready to face a dragon and win.”
“Is this what it’s all about, then? You can’t stand to let somebody else be a hero? It always has to be you?”
“Self-respect, that’s what Bailey has now. You could see it in his steps. He’s come home a different man.”
“I’m proud of you, son. Is that what you need to know?” McCart wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeve. “You don’t have to do anything else to make me feel that way.”
“This isn’t about you, Dad. It’s about me. Maybe I love this country so much that I want to fight for it. Did you ever think of that?”
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