Authors: Paulette Jiles
Lighthouse Island (36 page)
W
ithin a month Little Radio broadcasters appropriated parts, stole antennas, and cobbled together a network that radiated laterally like a sparkling network of unofficial news, some of it true, some not. They listened to Big Radio, they relayed all they could gather.
Nutrition Enforcement Teams and Black Ops from Furniture Supply are at war with each other, fighting going on now in Gerrymander Seven, Neighborhood Seventy-Two.
Among the listeners was Farrell Orotov, far in the south where he and his mother, his wife and two children lived in a mansion formerly inhabited by a Mariculture executive, on Les Isles Dernieres, which were once again becoming islands.
Farrell pressed the earphones to his head.
From the Middle Kingdom and its delicate music, its enthralling landscapes, the poetry of Tao Qian,
said Male Voice One.
Let us begin
.
Mistakenly I fell into the worldly net and thus remained for thirteen years . . .
Then without warning a different male voice broke in
.
Bargage Maru,
do you read?
A pause and then it said again, Bargage Maru,
do you read?
This is Lighthouse
.
Farrell began to laugh aloud. Thank God, he said. Thank God.
So now I want to go to the southern lands
. . . Again the new male voice broke in.
You are out of range. Primary gunship bearing north toward Nootka
.
I am sending out a general notice that the
Bargage Maru
is bearing south to Banefield with explosives expert, a cartographer, coal supplies, and seven willing hands.
Then Male Voice One returned.
Before the hall are gathered peaches and plums. Beyond the dark and distance lies a village
 . . .
D
own in the ship's cabin the elderly Toastmaster, much worn by the voyage, sat with his knobby hands clasped one in the other and listened to the radio. Smoke from the galley streamed forward with the smell of a thick pudding and from farther up in the pointy nose the racketing sound of a hand-cranked sewing machine as a sailor ran a piece of white cloth under the needle. Oli and Nadia decided they would design the flag. A round blue circle partly covered by a yellow star. That seemed noncommittal and generally peaceful. Later they could add things like leaping salmon, the Big Dipper, lightning bolts. On top, “The Lincolnshire” and at the bottom, “Poachers.” Nadia and Oli sat in the captain's bunk, with quick and furious stitches, hemming the circle and the star by hand.
Female Voice One said, in delicate tones,
And now it is time, in the beginning months of the New Year, that we turn to fable, legend, and myth. We step into the land of mystery. We move on to the graceful and moving No¯ plays of ancient Japan.
The night grows late. Eastward the bells of the three pagodas toll. By the moonlight that gleams through the needles of the thick cedar trees I begin to put on my armor.
Do it, said Oli.
Nadia said, in a perfect Female Voice One voice,
The night grows late. In case you are reading me there is a Primary gunship bearing north toward Nootka. By the moonlight that gleams through the needles of the thick cedar trees I begin to put on my armor
.
I
n the slanting afternoon light the
Bargage Maru
passed the remains of the old Amphitrite light station; the ruins sat, a low square stub, stained with the sea fogs, draining rain, at the top of a mass of volcanic rock. It warned of shoals and the entrance to the sound. The Pacific swarmed white at her feet.
T
hat night James and Nadia lay together in a space between secured pallets of hydrated lime packages on a bed made of sacking and what blankets they could find and felt themselves rising and falling with the
Bargage Maru
as she rode like a dark swan over the eastbound waves. Coats and bags hung from overhead beams; they swung forward and back, forward and back, a water bottle galloped down the hold until somebody grabbed it, whispered voices from the others came to them over the creak of strakes and the rush of the sea. A light gleamed. The others were still talking, Chan and Oli and Everett and the Toastmaster. Talk of hopes and plans and dreams and dangers but in all that happy imagining you still had to hang on to your courage and your traveling bags.
Nadia, said James. Listen to me.
Nadia lay with her arm thrown across his chest and her nose on his shoulder.
He said, If I were to die I think we will meet in another world. Some other life.
James! Her hand shut tight on his biceps. James, how could you? Die?
Shhh.
People die. They will do it, sooner or later. I just wanted to tell you that. James's hand stroked her back under the blankets and the yellow parka. You are destroying my arm.
She loosened her grip on his biceps. Don't say that. Don't talk like that.
Shhh.
The medication could allow for tumors, he said. Various blood cancers, there's that. We are in danger now of a great many things. I just want you to know what it means to me that you chose me when I was still in that wheelchair. I remember how you stood back so I didn't have to look up at you. And so many things. Seeing you running in from the rain in those red shoes. I can't tell you how much I love you. So I want you to know that if something happens to me we will meet in another life. This can't be all. I know it is not all.
The colors of the nighttime hold were all dark beams and the gold of the distant flame shining in bars through Chan's cigarette smoke and the errant sparkle of seawater as it dripped through the seams of the deck overhead. Up on deck the watch called out a line of song and was answered by a thin chorus, and the Pacific roared past on the other side of the hull, only six inches between themselves and the great ocean.
Yes, said Nadia. I know, I know.
And so both of them, having been so close to death, knew it was not themselves but something beyond the universe they had been left with and also the human voices among the cargo pallets, the Toastmaster telling a story, Oli laughing.
Chan turned and regarded her, and then laid his hand on her shoulder. Oli sat very still, feeling the weight of his broad hand.
Â
T
he
Bargage Maru
ran under a jib and a sprit sail as they moved up the channel into Barking Sound. The waves became shorter, then came on faster. It was close to dark now and it seemed to them that ahead, the bottoms of the racing clouds were faintly lit as if from some sort of lights or maybe fire. Nadia's hands shut around the heavy lines. It was spitting snow still. They were all worn and stained by the long days of hard sailing, their hair salty and bound down with wraps of spare cloth under the sea hats, but their flag streamed from the mainmast declaring a blue moon and a morning star.
To their right the volcanic mountains slid past and the broom and gorse and the endless bracken were all weighted with snow. Before them lay perhaps an end to hunger, maybe an end to constant fear, and all their future and their fate.
Nadia stood in the jib shrouds with one foot on the bowsprit and around her neck she wore Thin Sam's silver dangle as an appeal for good fortune. James stood beside her and grasped the back of her parka. Then she heard Oli shouting.
Look, look! A horse, it's a horse!
A white horse stood stiffly in the tall snowy growth, staring. It had enormous black eyes. It snorted and then turned and ran in the most amazing fluid movements and galloped away through the golden fern as if it were made to run and born to run and as its long white legs struck out in flight it scattered snow like powder. It ran headlong upon some familiar path it knew well as if it could not bear to let them out of its sight. The horse's mane streamed out like a rippling banner, rising and falling. It leaped over stones and logs and galloped on. Now it was ahead and it seemed to be leading them on into some country of mystery and peril. It was leading them toward the brightness ahead, now reflected on the wave tops.
And the horse stopped and turned and looked back at them with its ears up.
Nadia, James, I have looked for you since the beginning of the world.
James took hold of Nadia's arm and said, Go to the cabin. He held the old Mossberg twenty-gauge shotgun loaded with cut shot in one hand and Chan stood beside him with the medium-caliber rifle. Gandy was in the crosstrees conning the strait. For some reason the horse gave James a thrill of fear. As if it were some illusion, something projected and made of pixels to lure them on. Some new kind of illusion that went far beyond mere television.
Wait, James, she said. Not yet, not yet.
They came around a headland. Before them was a grinding white surf of shoal water and a town or village spread along a low shore. The horse pelted into the town and disappeared among houses with mossy roofs, scattering dark-faced goats. A bonfire was burning on the shore. There were people in bright clothing staring at them, standing in front of the small houses and others walking out onto a wharf. The snow sifted from the low sky. Among the crowd was an old man with thick glasses and steel front teeth, waving his hat, on his arm glittering bracelets made of woven foils.
Sam! Nadia screamed. Sam! Sam!
A man with a halo of wild frizzy black hair paddled toward them in an orange kayak. The paddle blades flashed with fire reflections. His eyes were wide and anxious. He brought the kayak up to the side of the
Bargage Maru
and bobbed in the foaming sea
.
He shouted up at them, We thought you would never come! We thought you were just our imagination! Then he smiled and the light sparkled around his edges and on every hair of his head.
Chan leaned over the side. The
Bargage Maru
went up on one wave while the kayak sank with another and their flag snapped out overhead. Do you know who we are?
Yes! Yes! You are the Lincolnshire Poachers and you know where the coal seams are! You have a cartographer! You have the uplink! We need your help! We heard about you on Big Radio! Welcome, welcome!
A bell began to ring. A big bell, with a deep tone. James and Nadia moved to the rail. She wiped rain from her eyes to see better and James pulled the load from the Mossberg, slid the bolt home.
Tie up, he shouted. We are having a Pig Fest in your honor!
The people onshore gestured; Come on, come on. The old man waved his hat and in the light of the bonfire his eyes shone behind the thick glasses. Come on!
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Thanks to my editor, Jennifer Brehl, and my agent, Liz Darhansoff, for their encouragement and attentiveness to this new work, and the new direction I was taking, over three years. Many thanks to lightkeepers Jeff George and Caroline Woodward on Lennard Island Light Station, three miles offshore Vancouver Island, dear friends for many years, for their hospitality and terrific cooking and granting me the privilege of experiencing life at a lighthouse. Jeff's photo of the Lennard Island Light graces the cover of this book. Caroline's books and Jeff's photography tell the stories of the North Pacific. I owe a great debt to Laurie Jameson, poet and novelist, for her attentive line-editing and suggestions, hard work done out of friendship and love of writing. And thanks to Shane and Blake Kurtz, two ingenious and hardworking boys, for cutting cedar and their brilliant conversation. Writers are always in debt to their enablers and we know no other way to repay than to express gratitude in these acknowledgments, inadequate though they may be.
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Paulette Jiles is a poet and memoirist. She is the author of
Cousins
, a memoir, and the bestselling novels
Enemy Women
,
Stormy Weather
, and
The Color of Lightning
. She lives on a ranch near San Antonio, Texas.
www.paulettejiles.com
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Sitting in the Club Car Drinking Rum and Karma-Kola
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This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
LIGHTHOUSE ISLAND.
Copyright © 2013 by Paulette Jiles. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
ISBN 978-0-06-223250-2
Epub Edition OCTOBER 2013 ISBN: 9780062232526
FIRST EDITION
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