Free Shorecliff by Ursula Deyoung Page A

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 unsettling. 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.