by Sarah Jio
“That was strange,” Stella said, leaning in to me a few moments later.
It was strange, but I wasn’t going to discuss it with her, not when Kitty might overhear. “What’s so strange about Lance buying cigarettes from a female?” I said instead.
Stella smirked and continued on, stopping at a table of brightly colored beads.
“You OK?” I said to Kitty, once Lance was a safe distance away.
“Of course,” she said. “Why?”
Good. She wasn’t upset by the interaction. Then I’ll just leave it alone. “Oh, nothing,” I said. “Just wanted to make sure the heat wasn’t getting to you.”
She took a deep breath of the humid island air and smiled. “I’m having the time of my life,” she said gleefully.
Stella laid a blanket out on the beach, careful to secure a spot next to Elliot. “I’m starved, are you?” she said, attempting to catch his attention, but he merely shrugged and muttered, “I ate a big breakfast,” before leaning back against a large piece of driftwood wedged into the sand, snuffing out all further conversation by pulling his hat over his eyes.
We’d driven back around to the other side of the island, close to base. Though we selected a spot beneath the shade of a palm for our picnic, the white sand still radiated heat. I shifted my legs uncomfortably as Kitty set out a loaf of bread, a cheerful bunch of miniature bananas, four bottles of Coca-Cola, and a wedge of cheese—our improvised lunch cobbled together at the market.
We ate in silence at first, watching the waves crash onto the shore. Then Kitty pointed to the sea and said what we all felt: “It’s hard to believe there’s a war happening out there. This corner of the world is too beautiful for destruction.”
I nodded, helping myself to another banana. They tasted different than the bananas at home, a little tarter, with a hint of lemon. “But there is,” I said practically.
“And a serious one, at that,” Lance added. “Just yesterday, the Japs shot down three of our planes.”
Stella looked worried. “Do you think we’ll see fighting right here on the island?”
“I think we might,” Lance said gravely. “Colonel Donahue doesn’t see it that way, though. He’s a fool. I tell you, we’ll be all asleep in our bunks when the Japs fly over, bombarding us when we least expect it.”
Kitty looked up with concerned eyes, then shook her head. “Colonel Donahue will protect this island.”
Lance shrugged. “If you say so.” He smirked, before muttering, “I could run this operation better blindfolded.”
The statement was too boastful for a man of twenty-five, but Kitty must have been unaffected by his arrogance, because she laid her head lightly in his lap. I could tell by his smile that he liked it.
Elliot began to snore. Stella brooded.
“I think I’ll take a walk,” I said, standing. Kitty’s eyes were closed in pretend slumber as I adjusted the brim of my hat and kicked off my shoes. “I’ll be back,” I said, though I don’t think anyone looked up.
I walked down the beach, stopping occasionally to examine a rock or a shell, or to marvel at the growth patterns of the palms, reaching out to the sea in horizontal fashion. Years of wind and tropical storms had sculpted their trunks, but I liked to think they grew that way because the sea was calling. It made me remember what Westry had said about the island changing people. Will I be able to resist its force?
I strengthened my footing in the sand and charged onward. After the morning at the market, it felt good to be alone with my thoughts and the quiet lull of the waves on the shore. The deserted beach seemed to stretch toward infinity. I walked closer to the water, relishing the feeling of the cool, sea-kissed sand on my feet. Each step left an inch-thick indentation.
A seabird squawked from its perch on a rock a few feet away, which is where I first noticed another set of footprints, fainter, older, but still relatively fresh. Whose?
It would be silly to follow them, I told myself. What if they’re a native’s? A cannibal’s? I shook my head. I’m alone. I should turn back. And yet, they lured me farther down the beach, beyond the bend. Just a few steps farther.
The footprints stopped at a crumpled beige blanket, anchored to the sand by nothing but a book. I recognized the fabric instantly because I had the same standard military-issue on my bed in the barracks. But who was here?
I turned quickly when I heard a rustling sound in the thick brush behind the palms at the edge of the beach.
“Hello there,” said a man appearing out of nowhere a few hundred yards away. He carried a large palm frond that shrouded his face, but when he moved it aside, I could see that it was Westry.
“Hello,” I said, a bit surprised, but grateful to have avoided an encounter of a grimmer nature.
“Are you following me?” he said teasingly.
I felt foolish, then irritated. “Of course not!” I said, my voice thick with pride. I can’t have him thinking I’m chasing after him. “I was merely taking a walk—which reminds me, I need to be going. My friends are expecting me.”
Westry smiled. “Oh, don’t go,” he said, pushing the base of the palm branch into the sand and then sitting under it. “Look, the perfect shade. Won’t you sit down? Just for a minute?”
His smile was impossible to resist. I hesitated, then felt the corners of my mouth turn upward, without my permission. “All right,” I said, grinning in spite of myself. “Just for a minute.”
“Nice day,” he said, leaning back on his elbows.
“Quite,” I said, pulling the hem of my dress lower on my legs.
“What brings you to my beach?”
“Your beach?”
“Yes,” he said matter-of-factly. “I discovered it.”
I let out a little laugh. “You’re really something.”
“It’s all virgin coastline, you know,” Westry continued. “Of course, the natives have been here forever, and it will always be theirs. But the rest of the world isn’t onto it. For now, this little slice of heaven is mine.” He looked at me. “Well, ours. I’ll let you have half.”
“Well, that’s awfully generous of you,” I said, playing along.
“Do you know what I’m going to do, after the war’s over?”
“What?”
“I’m going to buy this stretch of beach,” he said earnestly. “As much as I can afford. I’m going to build a house and raise a family, right here. My wife and I, we’ll watch the sun rise every morning from our porch and listen to the surf crash onto the shore at night.”
“It all sounds terribly romantic,” I said. “But I think you’re bluffing. You’d actually want to live here after”—I pointed out to the Pacific, where Japanese warships may have been taking up residence at that very moment—“after all this? After the war?”
Westry nodded. “Sure,” he said. “It’s paradise.”
It was paradise, I reminded myself. “But don’t you have a life waiting for you at home?”
“No,” he said, without hesitating. “But you do.”
It wasn’t a question, but a statement. He’d seen the ring on my finger.
“I do,” I said honestly.
“Do you love him?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“A simple one,” he said, grinning. “So, what’s the verdict?”
“Of course I love him,” I said, looking away. Why does he have to stare at me that way?
“Is he a good man?”
I nodded. “I wouldn’t marry any man who wasn’t.”
The waves crept in closer to the blanket, prompting Westry to stand up, and I followed. “We better shift our camp a bit, or else Old Man Sea is going to swallow us up.”
I smiled. “I really should be getting back. My friends are waiting for me.”
Westry nodded. “I’ll walk you.”
The shoreline looked different in reverse, perhaps because I was seeing it through Westry’s eyes now. I imagined his life on the island years from now, with a hous
e and a wife, and two or three barefoot children, and smiled to myself.
“How’s your hand?” I asked.
He held it up, and I took it in mine, feeling a flutter deep inside that I told myself to ignore.
“I think I’m going to pull through,” he said mockingly.
“It’s filthy,” I scolded. “You really must let me change the bandage when we get back. You’ll risk infection.”
“Yes, nurse,” he said playfully.
Moments later Westry gestured toward something in the brush line, where palms grew thick. We walked closer and stopped, just as the beach ended and vegetation began. Birds sang and animals howled under the cover of shady green plants with gargantuan leaves, just as I’d always imagined a jungle.
“Do you see that?”
I shook my head. “What?”
“Look closer,” he said.
“No,” I whispered, “I don’t see anything.”
Westry reached for my hand, and I took it, only because I feared danger lurking, and I followed him a few paces beyond the beach, which is when I finally saw what he did: a thatched-roof hut, just beyond the thicket. Though constructed in as makeshift a manner as the homes along the roadside, this one had a charm all its own. The exterior was built of bamboo canes, into which someone had painstakingly cut holes to approximate ocean-facing windows. A small door dangled from a single hinge, creaking in the afternoon breeze.
“I don’t know if we should be here,” I whispered.
“Why not?” he said, grinning mischievously. “Now that we’ve found it, we have to see what’s inside.”
Before I could protest, Westry set foot on the little step to the front door. The sound of his shoe striking the wood startled me, and I jumped back a few feet.
He lifted the collapsing door off its lone hinge and set it down on the sand, peering inside before turning to me with a wink. “All clear.”
He helped me up the step, and we surveyed the place in silence. The interior walls, made of woven palm branches weathered to a light shade of caramel, had been beautifully strung together in a V-shaped pattern. They provided a perfect backdrop to a dark mahogany chair paired with a small desk containing a single drawer. Westry reached for its handle and pulled out a book, some French coins and bills, and a piece of paper, yellowed and curled from the humidity. He held it up so I could have a look. “Can you read French?”
I shook my head. “I wish I’d paid more attention in school.”
“Me too,” he said, slipping the paper back in the drawer.
The bed, big enough for just one person, looked tidy, even with a layer of dust on top, as if someone had woken up one morning and tucked the linens in place in anticipation of a return that never occurred.
My eyes darted around the space, landing anywhere but on Westry’s face. Here I was, an engaged woman, alone in a bedroom with a soldier I knew nothing of.
My reverie broke when a spider the size of my palm crawled out from under the desk and raced out the open doorway, causing me to leap on top of the bed in terror. “Did you see that thing?” I shrieked, certain that another would jump out at any moment.
“They’re harmless,” Westry said, grinning. “Plus, they eat the mosquitoes, so we ought to lay out a buffet table for the critters.”
I cautiously stepped down from the bed. “Who do you think lived here?”
Westry looked out at the sea. “My best guess?” He turned back to the bungalow, studying it carefully. “A shipwrecked sailor.”
I nodded. It sounded plausible enough. “But what happened to the ship?”
“Maybe it sunk.”
“So how did he recover the paper and”—I opened the desk drawer and pulled out the book with its dark brown leather cover—“and this book?”
Westry touched his index finger to his chin, as if to ponder the fate of our shipwrecked sailor. “Maybe he had a knapsack packed with a few rations.” He pointed to the lamp on the desk. “A lantern, this book, a tin of biscuits. And he managed to find a piece of wood to drift on until he reached the island.”
“The book would have gotten wet,” I said.
“So it may have,” Westry conceded. “But he might have let it dry in the sun.” He fanned the book’s pages, and sure enough, they were covered in water stains. “See?”
I nodded. “But where was he heading? He was clearly French.”
“And poor,” Westry added, pointing to the small stash of coins in the drawer.
“Could he have been a pirate?”
Westry shook his head. “Domestic trappings would hardly hold the interest of a pirate.”
I eyed the curtains on the windows, ragged from the weather, yet still a brilliant burgundy, as if the fabric had been soaked in wine.
“OK, so he’s a poor, shipwrecked, French sailor who likes to read,” I said.
“And likes to drink,” Westry added, holding up a dusty green glass vessel, sealed with a cork. “Red wine.”
“And appreciates art,” I said, pulling away a scrap of burlap that covered a painting hanging over the bed. The canvas depicted an arresting scene: a bungalow, just like the very one we found ourselves in, nestled between impossibly blue water and a hibiscus bush flowering vibrant yellow. Two figures stood in the distance.
“My God,” Westry gasped. “It’s beautiful.”
I nodded. “Do you know much about art?”
“A little,” he said. “Let me have a closer look.” He stood up on the bed to gaze at the painting. “It looks”—he scratched his head—“familiar somehow.”
Mother had prided herself on teaching me about the French impressionists, and yet, I feared my artistic knowledge was still woefully inadequate. Even so, I reveled in the potential of the discovery.
“Do you think the artist lived here?”
“Maybe,” Westry said, his eyes still fixed on the painting. “What year was that book printed?”
I thumbed the opening pages of the book for a date. “Here, found it. Copyright 1877.”
“It might have been one of the master impressionists,” he said.
“You can’t be serious,” I said, in awe.
“Well, it’s as possible as anything,” he replied, grinning. “I’m almost certain I’ve seen this one in books before, or maybe something similar. And this island, all of these islands in the Pacific, they were popular among the French artists. It could have been any one of the greats.” His eyes were wild with excitement. “You know what this means, don’t you?”
“What?”
“We have to protect this place.”
I nodded. “But how?”
“It will be our project,” he said, “while we’re here. We’ll restore it.”
“It does need a good scrub.”
“And a new door,” Westry added.
“And the curtains are rags,” I said. “I can make new ones.”
“So you’re in?” He was looking at me with slightly mischievous eyes.
Why not? It will pass the hours Kitty spends with Lance. “I’m in,” I said. “But how will we ever find the time, and how will we get here?”
“We’ll walk,” he said simply. “The base is less than a half mile up shore. You can slip out and be back before anyone knows you’ve even left. There’s a trail that leads up to the road, so I’ll bring the tools and the wood out in a jeep, of course. It will take some planning, but we’ll figure it out.”
Westry turned to the door and a weak floorboard creaked and bowed from the pressure of his foot. He knelt down and pulled it up, exposing the rickety subfloor and a small alcove just below the surface. “Here,” he said. “This will be our ‘mailbox.’ I’ll leave you letters when I’m here without you, and you can do the same.”
My heart leapt with excitement—for the bungalow, for the artist, for the prospect of letters tucked under floorboards, but especially for this man who held the key to it all.
Westry wrapped the painting in its burlap covering and carefully slid it un
der the bed for safekeeping.
“There’s just one thing,” he said.
“What?”
“We can’t tell a soul about this place, not anyone.”
It pained me to think of keeping a find this marvelous from Kitty, and yet, I couldn’t imagine her here in the bungalow, a place that already felt special to me, sacred, even after only a few minutes. I touched my hand to Kitty’s pin, and felt a pang of guilt. Is it wrong to want to harbor this little hut to myself, especially after we’ve vowed not to keep secrets from each other?
“What do you say?” Westry continued.
I let my hand fall to my side and nodded. “Cross my heart,” I said, convincing myself that Kitty didn’t need to know—not yet, anyway. “I won’t tell a soul.”
“Good. Shall I walk you back?”
“Yes,” I said. “They’re probably wondering if I drowned.”
“Or got eaten by a shark,” he added, grinning.
The beauty of the island wasn’t limited to its turquoise waters or green hills. That was mere surface beauty. The real awe of the place was evident in its stories. There was one waiting beyond every curve of the shore.
Chapter 5
“Westry seems nice,” Kitty said as soon as we��d shut the door to our room later that day.
“He’s all right,” I said vaguely, taking off my hat and placing it on the top shelf of the closet.
“Where’s he from?”
I shrugged. “Not sure. We only spoke for a moment. He was kind enough to walk me back.”
I could sense Kitty’s grin, even without looking up to confirm it. “Seems like you and Lance are getting along fine,” I said, changing the subject.
“Yes,” Kitty replied, leaning back against the headboard of her bed. “I do like him. Very much. It’s just”—she paused and shook her head—“it’s just, well, I don’t care for the way he speaks of Colonel Donahue. Don’t you think he should show him more respect than he does?”
I shrugged. I hadn’t yet determined the lesser evil for Kitty: the cocky soldier or his overbearing superior.
“Well,” Kitty continued, “I suppose it’s a small detail. Lance has so many stand-out qualities.”