The Lightkeepers (10 page)

In the past, I had always assumed that there were only two mental states: waking and dreaming. The former was conscious, logical, and sane. The latter was chaotic and bizarre. I had never confused the two before. But in recent days, I seemed to have stumbled on a third state of being: a twilight haze, somewhere in between. In this half-lit realm, everything around me looked and felt like the reality I had always known. The ocean and sky still met in a precise line. Gravity functioned. The laws of daily life continued unabated. And yet monsters walked abroad. Rape, drowning, Andrew himself—these things belonged in the land of nightmares. Waking and dreaming were no longer distinct. Now the moon, the cabin, and
Mick at the window were all happy reminders of the wide-awake world. But the federal agents, the helicopter, and Andrew’s dead body had sprung out of a bad dream.

After a while, Galen got to his feet. He shot me a searching glance, which I pretended not to notice. He wandered over to Dr. Alfred.

“Well,” he said. “You’re definitely doing an autopsy, then?”

“Oh yes,” the doctor said.

“I must say, I don’t see why. It seems like a clear-cut case of accidental death to me.”

Dr. Alfred set his pencil aside with an impatient gesture. “These things can be interpreted many different ways. We never want to rush to judgment.”

“There’s only one interpretation here, surely,” Galen said.

“In layman’s terms—” Dr. Alfred began.

At that moment, there was a clatter on the stairs. Lucy was descending. She had divested herself of her blanket, and without that sweeping cape, she looked smaller than usual. Normally there was a solidity about her hips, but now her frame seemed to have shrunk like a doll left in the wash. She kept her head bowed, her hair falling in her face, and slipped into her bedroom without speaking to any of us.

“Mr. Audino?” called a voice from upstairs.

“That’s me,” Mick said. “Jesus, this is awful.”

The rest of the evening passed that way. One by one, we were summoned. The use of everyone’s last names lent a formality to the proceedings. Mick came down after a few minutes. He shot me a
consoling wink, then he picked up a book and began to read. Forest was called up next—Mr. Cohen, I should say. A few moments afterward, Charlene was sent for—Ms. Westerman, that is.

I got to my feet and went to the window. Lighthouse Hill stood against a watercolor sky. A few boulders were silhouetted, spills of ink. Two seabirds were calling in harsh voices, back and forth, like a married couple engaging in a well-rehearsed spat. The sea roared. The clock ticked like thunder. The doctor was dozing, his chin sunk onto his chest. His glasses were sliding down his nose, millimeter by millimeter. I wondered whether it was worth it to wake him or whether I should let the inevitable happen and hope the fall didn’t break the fragile frame.

Soon Galen succumbed to habit. At the table, he got out a small green notebook. Murmuring to himself, he made some notes. Mick went up to bed. Forest went with him. I heard feet in the corridor. There was a whooshing in the pipes—teeth cleaned, toilet flushed. They shared a room at the end of the hallway, and for a while there was shuffling and banging in there. Then two bunks squealed audibly.

But I was wide awake. I lifted a hand and touched the window, as cold and slick as a sheet of ice. In the distance, a seabird gave one last cry, the final word in the argument. I barely noticed when Charlene came back downstairs, sniffling a bit, and disappeared into her bedroom beside the front door.

I was thinking about the whales. Mick had recently told me an interesting fact. Humpbacks are known for their family life. They play games with their calves, make lasting mates, follow one strong
leader, and sing without cessation. They stick together. But over the years, whalers noticed something odd. (Mick can’t say the word
whalers
without grimacing. He knows a lot about them. Too much.) Whenever a humpback was harpooned, its pod would swim off and leave it. For a time, the sailors believed that humpbacks were incapable of affection. The animals smelled blood in the water, heard cries of pain, and did not stay to render aid or comfort.

Yet the truth was more complicated. Human beings are visual creatures. The whalers imagined that because they couldn’t see the pod anymore, the wounded animal had been abandoned for good. But Mick knows better. Whales are tactile, auditory, alive to sonar and magnetism. The harpooned creature would be pulled away, salting the sea with its blood. As it was dragged into shallow water, where the worst of fates awaited it, its pod would keep pace nearby—staying deep, out of sight of the sailors—and sing to it. They would sing until the very end.

“Excuse me,” someone said.

I spun around. The beta agent was standing behind me, hand outstretched, as though about to tap my shoulder. He had plainly been trying to get my attention for some time.

“We’re ready for you now,” he said. “Ms.—I’m sorry—”

He fumbled for the clipboard in his hand, running his finger down a list. I sighed. No one on the islands seemed able to keep track of my identity.

“Her name is Miranda,” Galen said.

His voice was quiet but firm, carrying from the table where he sat. I looked at him in consternation. It had been a while since I had
heard my real name. I almost didn’t recognize it. At the expression on my face, Galen smiled.

“Wonderful,” he said. “Worthy of admiration.”

“What?” I said.

“Miranda,” he said. “That’s what it means.”

15

Y
OU MIGHT BE
surprised to hear that I still find joy in the islands. In truth, I love this place as I have never loved anything else. (Except for you, of course.) Every morning, I climb out of bed and smile involuntarily at the view. The landscape is a charcoal drawing, varying from smudgy black to ash gray. The tumbled shoreline. The granite of the nearby islets. The flicker and dart of the mice. The clouds are gauzy. The sea lions are the hue of slate. Distant whales pass by like metallic submarines. It is a colorless world, yet I find it as beautiful as a rainbow. My affection for the islands has only deepened in the past few weeks. I have come to see the archipelago as more than eerie, more than wild. It is a nurturing, protective place.

I have felt this way since the night Andrew assaulted me. My alleged friends and companions were nowhere to be found then. No one defended me. Galen drank himself into a blackout state. Charlene put on headphones and stopped listening. Mick and Forest left the premises, abandoning me completely. And Lucy was asleep. Andrew used to joke about how she went down like a ton of bricks. It would happen suddenly, sometimes midsentence. Her normal whirl of energy used up so much juice that she would remain in a near coma until morning. (Apparently hummingbirds
were the same way. During the daylight hours, their wings moved in a blur and their hearts beat several times each second. At night, however, they dropped into a temporary hibernation. Their hearts slowed to one beat per minute.) Lucy the hummingbird slept right through my ordeal.

But the islands were awake. The islands were listening.

I often imagine Andrew’s death. In fact, I like imagining it. The islands paid attention when no one else did. They protected me when no one else would. Andrew hurt me, so the islands took care of it. They took him away.

Lately I have been studying the others here. For once, I am the biologist, and they are the specimens. Everyone has reacted differently to Andrew’s passing. Mick has grown louder, more jovial. His bonhomie is almost painful in its intensity. Charlene, on the other hand, has withdrawn. She has always been quiet—cowed by the others—but now she has melted into the wallpaper. More than once, I have entered a room, found it empty, settled down with a book, and just about had a heart attack half an hour later when a cough or sigh behind me indicated that Charlene had been there all along. Watching me or lost in thought, I cannot tell.

For his part, Forest has become an automaton. His steely focus has increased by an order of magnitude. It is December, rainy and cold. There are only a few more weeks before the last of the sharks will depart for warmer climes. I have begun to hear Forest’s alarm clock going off at three in the morning. Mick, his roommate, will toss and turn, the squeal of bedsprings echoing down the hallway. Even before the sun is up, Forest wants to be in the lighthouse, on call.

And Galen—poor Galen—seems a little lost. For the first time, I can see that he is a man in his sixties, twice the age of anyone else here. He has become absent-minded. Sometimes he seems to be on the verge of asking me a question, but decides against it, averting his gaze. I have come across him wandering around the kitchen, looking everywhere for his reading glasses, unaware that they are perched on his brow. He trails off in the middle of telling stories, staring at me.

If I were a fanciful person, I would say that in those moments, he hears death speaking to him. More than ever before, death is with us on the Farallon Islands. In the past, it was like the sound of the sea caught in a shell’s curl—distant, vague, half-imagined. Now, however, death is front and center. It is there at the breakfast table. It appears amid the silences in an everyday conversation. It lingers outside the window in the evenings. Perhaps Galen is distracted by that cloaked figure, barely glimpsed out of the corner of the eye. Another ghost in an already-crowded cabin.

The days are growing shorter. The constellations have pivoted, the autumn shapes dipping beneath the horizon, the winter stars shining with greater urgency. The sea seems different too. The islands sit on the edge of the coastal plateau. To the west, the ocean floor plummets into black depths. Storms blow in now from the deeper water. They do not last long; they are brief, vicious squalls that have stripped our two little trees of leaves. Rain has battered the cabin and soaked the porch. We have all taken to wearing ponchos around even when the sky is clear, just in case.

I am still expecting Lucy to leave. Indeed, I am amazed that she is not gone already—that she did not board the helicopter
with the federal agents and flee without a backward glance. But instead she is hard at work. She is on a mission to tag more birds than anyone else on the planet ever has. She does not eat; she barely sleeps. Her hummingbird energy seems perilous now. The mechanism that drives her is clearly working beyond its capacities. I can just about smell the smoke from the overheated gears. Lucy continues, each evening, to scrub and mop the house; I have woken in the night to hear the vacuum cleaner running. She polishes the knives and wipes the countertops as though the grime and dust are the physical manifestations of her own sorrow. By eradicating mold, by making each countertop shine, she might wash her soul clean of suffering, leaving herself burnished and bright.

A
FEW DAYS
ago, I lay in bed, awake. I had been dreaming about the whales again—their slippery weight, their unearthly song. The sun was rising. My room brimmed with light like a wood stove. I had grown accustomed to perching in the bedroom like a spider on a web, determining where the others might be by the shake of floorboards, the chime of voices. Today there was someone in the kitchen. I caught the scrape of a chair. Someone was making coffee; that earthy odor wafted up the stairs. Forest and Galen were out on the grounds. I could hear them calling to one another.

Getting to my feet, I saw that a slip of paper had been pushed under my door. On one side, my name was printed in block letters.
MELISSA
—my name here. On the other side was written,
Lucy
Crayle would appreciate your attendance at a memorial service for Andrew Metzger. It will be held at sunset on Friday
.

I read it twice. I could imagine Lucy cutting up a sheet of paper; there was a faint pencil mark where she had measured it out. She had evidently made formal invitations for each of us. I was aware that she would not be attending Andrew’s real funeral. His family was in Maine, and the trip would be too long, too expensive. This, apparently, was her solution. I stood there for a long while, holding the square of paper, a lump in my throat.

T
HERE WAS SOME
excitement that afternoon. Mick, Forest, and I walked to the Tit—a rotund promontory on the northern shore—to get a look at a pod of gray whales that were frolicking there. The day was chilly. I positioned myself on the plateau with my tripod. The granite seemed especially loose, sliding and crunching beneath my shoes like melting ice. I leaned forward, eye to the viewfinder, and I experienced the mental shift I always feel in those moments—the physical falling away, my sensory organs dimming, aware of nothing but color and exposure and light.

The gray whales were in an obliging mood. There were ten or twelve of them in the group, and they seemed to be playing. I captured a flash of baleen slats, glistening inside a wide mouth. I caught an image of several tails cresting together, flinging a tsunami of droplets upward. The animals lived up to their name, deep gray, patched with white like a cloudy sky. For the first time, I was able to get what I wanted from the whales on film. The size of them.
Their breath climbing in columns of steam. Their enormous flippers. Their elegance. Their mystery.

Mick and Forest were standing by the water’s edge. From what I could tell, they were arguing. Mick had the daily log in his hands. Forest had been deputized as his assistant and note-taker. This was the way of things on the islands. No one ever had time off. All the biologists had seasons in which they could focus on their areas of expertise (when their animals ruled the roost) and seasons when they were required to help the others (when their animals were absent). During the summer, Forest, the shark specialist, had been in command. He and Galen had given orders, and everyone else had jumped to obey. But autumn had brought the whales, and winter would give way to Seal Season, which would be followed by Bird Season. Each biologist had a moment in the sun. This was Mick’s time to shine.

Just then, one of the gray whales decided to “spy-hop.” It was a behavior Mick had described to me, but one I hadn’t expected to see in person. The creature poked his monstrous head out of the water. He rose vertically, perhaps ten feet in the air. Then he began to rotate. He pivoted on the spot like a barber pole. Camera in hand, I clicked gleefully away. I knew what he was doing—scouting the surrounding area—but there was such beauty and strangeness in the action that for a moment I felt that he was dancing for me. He was performing for the camera.

I heard a shout. Mick was waving in my direction. Forest appeared to be injured; he was bent double, holding his calf and grimacing.

“What happened?” I cried.

“He lost his balance,” Mick said. “He wasn’t listening to me.”

“Don’t start,” Forest said.

I hurried over, my camera bouncing on my chest. Forest’s pant leg was stained crimson. He had left smudges on the rocks, marking his path in blood.

Mick and I organized ourselves into makeshift crutches, one on either side of him. With my arm around Forest’s waist, I could feel his thinness. He was a surfboard of a man. His ropy musculature flexed beneath my fingers. His ribs were iron bars. He limped and winced, and we steadied him all the way home.

Back at the cabin, Mick stitched him up. First a shot of anesthetic, then the needle and thread. I knew the drill now. It had been the same for me. Forest sat at the table, reading a book, leg extended, as Mick worked away with reading glasses perched on his nose. Forest turned a page. Mick sewed in silence. I could not tell if Forest was genuinely uninterested in the progress of his injury—so accustomed to wounds, to stitches and scars, that he could not be bothered to attend—or whether he was keeping his mind occupied out of a dislike of syringes and blood.

I myself felt oddly detached. The sight of that pulpy gash, the trickle of red—I found these things engaging, rather than upsetting. I was glad to see Forest injured. Hurt, not killed. Already beginning to heal. He’d been dinged—Mick’s phrase. The islands were dangerous, but they did not have to be deadly.

At last Mick leaned forward and severed the thread with his teeth.

“Done.”

“Thanks,” Forest said.

He glanced down at his wound. He flexed his ankle, teeth bared in discomfort.

This is how we know we’re alive, I guess: we continue to feel pain.