not to worry about it. He said he was teaching for his country, that’s what he was doing. Educating the next generation. Teaching them why the war was happening, helping them see why we should never let things get so bad again. I felt doubly awful when he said that. We stood there for a few minutes, with my bicycle and wagon between us, talking about The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and that was fun. The truth is, there aren’t many people around here who understand much about the books I’m reading. Dennis thinks I’m real smart and that I should be a teacher when I grow up. That’s actually my plan. He says I need to get a better education than I’m getting here, though, if I want to be a teacher. I don’t know what it is about Dennis. He is nice and smart and mostly kind, but he irritates me to no end when he acts like he knows everything and I sometimes end up in a tiff with him. He corrects my grammar all the time, and when he criticizes my education, saying I can’t be getting a good one here with just twenty-three students of all grades and ages jumbled up together in one classroom out in the middle of nowhere, I get mad. I don’t like that he comes here all the time, saying how much he loves it and all, and then puts us Bankers down.
I made a stupid mistake and told him how I’d like to be a sandpounder and he laughed at that and said, “The sandpounders are men who have little else to offer the world. They are just a bunch of trigger-happy hooligans with guns, ready to shoot at anything that moves.” That really made me mad, although I’ve heard other people say the same thing about the patrollers. They just don’t know those boys and how serious they take their duty. Anyhow, see what I mean about sometimes getting into a tiff with Dennis?
He asked me if I want to go to church with him tomorrow. He goes all the way up to Corolla for church, where they have a Catholic service. I told him no, thanks. I always go with my parents to the Methodist church down in Duck. I don’t understand much about Catholics. Last summer, Dennis was wearing a short-sleeved shirt that was open a little at the neck and I could see he was wearing a necklace made of brown cord. I asked him about it, and he pulled it out and showed it to me. It had these two rectangles of wool attached to the cord, one that goes on his back and one on his chest, and they have pictures of Jesus and Mary on them. I don’t remember what the necklace is called, but he said he wears it all the time, that it makes him feel closer to God. Anyhow, when I said yesterday that I was going to the Methodist church, I was afraid he was going to start mocking my religion like he does my education, so I told him that I had to go home, I was late (which was true). I’ll take him a pie next weekend, to make up for being so rude to him.
I just realized that I’m starting to feel uncomfortable around Dennis. It’s not just the way he criticizes us Bankers, but it’s also that I know he looks at me different this year. He tells me I’ve gotten real pretty and actually said if I was a bit older, he would ask me to marry him! “You have potential,” he said. “I’d like to marry you and take you to High Point, where you could get a real education.” I admit I am flattered by all he says, but also I feel creepy, like I don’t want to be close enough to him for him to touch me. I think that’s why I wanted to keep my bicycle between us on the Pole Road. There was no one else around and it made me a little nervous. He’s not bad-looking. He wears glasses he looks nice in, and I like his dark hair. But he is ancient, eight years older than me, and I am definitely not interested in him as a boyfriend. Besides, I don’t like how “Bess Kittering” sounds. (I love how “Bess Brown” sounds, though!)
Mama scolded me when I got home. I stayed too long at the Coast Guard station, she said. I am supposed to just drop the pies off and leave, not stay and expect those boys to entertain me. I told her I was late because I met Mr. Kittering on the way home and we got to talking, and that made her even angrier. She thinks Dennis is strange to come out here every weekend. She’s never even met him, only seen him from a distance, and I told her how nice he is, how I like to talk about books with him, but she just kept yelling at me. I think Mama must have been born an old lady.
Chapter Eight
THE SUN WAS STILL HIGH IN THE SKY WHEN CLAY pulled into the short gravel driveway of the small cottage, which, like many other soundside cottages, was set on stilts above the water. Getting out of his car, he could see that the front gutter was a bit askew and a section of the deck railing was missing. He would have to spend a day over here soon working on those repairs and the other inevitable problems with this house that were not immediately visible. The old cottage took a great deal of his time—much like the old man living inside it. But these days, he loved nothing better than to fill up his time to the mind-numbing brim.
Standing on the front porch, he rapped his knuckles against the frame of the flimsy screen door, leaning close to peer inside the small living room of the cottage. Henry quickly appeared in the living room, obviously champing at the bit to get out of there. Clay pulled the screen door open, and the dapper old man stood in front of him, dressed in his usual white shirt and dark tie. He had to be the only Outer Banks resident who wore a tie every single day, Clay thought. With the exception of Henry’s three-day hospital stay after having his appendix removed, Clay couldn’t remember ever seeing him without one. Or without his hat.
“Hey, Henry,” he said, resting his hand on the man’s shoulder. “How are you doing?”
“Got ants in my pants.” Henry placed his straw fedora on his head and stepped onto the porch. He flexed his knobby, arthritic hands. “Need a good game of chess at Shorty’s,” he said, and Clay knew he’d been waiting all day for this outing. He wished now that he’d stopped his work on the cistern to pick him up earlier.
“What happened to the railing there?” Clay pointed to the spot where the two-by-four was missing.
“Woke up one morning and it was gone.” Henry shrugged his shoulders. “’Twas the day after I caught twenty-two crabs, so I think their pals must’ve up and took it to get back at me.” He chuckled. Henry could crab without even leaving his house. All he needed to do was walk around the deck and scrape the crabs off the pilings with a net. Even at seventy-nine, Henry could make some of the best crab cakes Clay had ever tasted.
“You be careful there,” Clay said, pointing to the railing again. “I’ll come over soon to fix it.”
Henry liked to boast that he lived in a house as old as he was. In theory, he was right. The house had been built sometime in the twenties. But it had suffered a massive fire in the forties, and flooding off and on over the years, with a bit of the house being replaced here, another bit there, until very little of the original structure still stood.
The old man still had a bounce in his step, and he walked ahead of Clay toward the car. He was lively and sharp-witted—and he was now Clay’s responsibility entirely.
Henry Hazelwood was Terri’s grandfather, and she had taken on his care as he’d aged. Her father, Henry’s son, had died four years ago, and her mother lived in California, so she had been the only relative nearby. She’d adored Henry, though, and had never complained about that obligation falling on her shoulders. Clay liked Henry, too, but at the age of twenty-nine, he had expected to be creating a family of little rugrats, not caring for an old man. He was all Henry had, though, and letting him down was not part of his nature. Henry’s eyesight was going, and he’d been wise enough to give up driving a couple of years ago. That meant that Clay frequently had to take time off from work to drive him to doctor’s appointments, the grocery store, and most important to the old man, Shorty’s Grill, where he could play chess and visit with his old friends, Walter Liscott and Brian Cass.
The one thing about Henry that Clay simultaneously loved and hated was that he reminded him of Terri. Both Terri and her father had had a slant to their eyebrows above steel-gray eyes, and those features were mirrored in Henry’s face. Clay saw his wife there every time he looked at his grandfather-in-law.
“What did you do this morning?” Clay asked once they were in his car and crossing the island to the beach road.
“What do you think?” Henry asked him.
“Crabbed?”
“What else?” Henry chuckled again. “Snared my dinner. And how about you?”
“Oh.”