The Lightkeepers (21 page)

33

C
HARLENE CAME BACK
today. That is, she came and went.

The islands had not been the same without her—no swish of red hair, no musical laugh, no warm, diffident presence at the dinner table. I had missed her. I wanted to verify with my own eyes that she was all in one piece, hale and hearty, completely recovered.

Still, my enthusiasm was somewhat tempered. In truth, I was not sure why she was bothering to return. As glad as I would be to see her, her actions did not quite add up. She had said she wanted to collect her things—but Galen had offered to ship them to her. She had said she wanted to say goodbye to everyone—but she could have done this over the phone. Or not at all. I had the distinct impression that she had some other agenda. What it might be, I could not imagine.

The others showed no excitement about her visit. Perhaps they were as baffled by her behavior as I was. Lucy had been up too late the night before, catching and tagging the storm-petrels. She stomped back and forth to the kitchen to refill her coffee cup and glowered when anyone made too much noise. Forest had concocted a new scheme for calculating the total population of the rhinoceros auklets. It was hard to keep track of the exact amount of these elusive birds, since they dug deep burrows and were secretive by
nature. Forest, however, had a mathematical equation and a graph paper chart. He was far more interested in visiting the study plots and trying out his new system than he was in seeing Charlene. Even Mick was all biologist that morning, scientific and detached. He sat at the table with Galen, filling out an order form for more flea collars, which we sorely needed.

In general, Galen and I have been getting along well. He has softened toward me since our midnight heart-to-heart. Recently, he even showed me his collection of seal stones. Over the years, he has amassed a pile of them in a battered plastic tub. He did not invite me inside his private museum—his bedroom. We are not yet at that level of intimacy, it seems. Instead, he hefted the bucket out into the hallway and beckoned me over to see its contents. With a welcoming smile, he urged me to pick through the rocks, which I politely did, though they were all exactly the same, black and smooth, weathered and rounded, fitting in the palm of the hand.

By noon, the biologists were all gone. Nobody else stayed to meet the helicopter. Forest went to the rhinoceros auklets, Lucy and Mick to the murre blind. One corner had come loose in a wind-storm, and they were trying to come up with a way to fix it without making undue noise and spooking the birds. (If the murres were startled, they would rise en masse. Their eggs would be undefended, and the gulls would move in for the kill. One thoughtless act by the biologists could lead to a catastrophic event.) Galen spent a while fiddling with a little green notebook, scribbling in it furtively. Then he stumped off to observe the tufted puffins—and, presumably, to
avoid an encounter with the intern who I now know reminds him of his late wife.

I must have dozed off. I do nothing but sleep lately. I had settled on the couch, with a view to the east, where the helicopter would eventually appear. But the sun was in my eyes. The air vibrated with light and heat. My head grew heavy. And then someone was shaking me awake.

I caught a glimpse of hair—a sweep of rust around a freckled face.

“Hey, sleepyhead,” Charlene said.

I sat up, rubbing my eyes. The sun had moved in the sky. There was a foul taste in my mouth. Outside the window, the helicopter had appeared. Its wings were motionless. Perched on the helipad, that glass bubble glinted in the light. The pilot was visible inside, a shadowed figure hunched over a newspaper. In my sleep-addled state, this struck me as funny—like a limo driver cooling his heels in a high school parking lot, waiting for a bunch of teenagers to finish their prom.

“Come on,” Charlene said. “Help me pack.”

I followed her to the door of her little bedroom. I tried to follow her inside too, but of course there wasn’t space for me. Charlene’s room had once been a closet, and the bed—a tiny twin—allowed a gap of only a few inches on all sides. After a moment, I crawled onto the mattress. Charlene flitted around me, filling a suitcase with her pillows and teddy bear.

“You look good,” I said approvingly.

“Yup.” She flexed her elbow. “The dislocation has been healing fine. No more sling for me! My concussion wasn’t too bad, either. Sometimes my head aches in rainy weather, but that should pass.”

“Great,” I said.

She tugged a pair of jeans off a shelf and looked them over with a grimace. After holding them to her nose, she tossed them into the garbage can.

“How is it?” I asked. “Being back on the mainland?”

“Oh, fine,” she said.

“Do you miss us?”

She lobbed a sweater at me. “Do you want this? It used to be my favorite, but I can’t see wearing it out in public.”

“Sure. Thanks.”

I waited for her to reciprocate, asking questions about us, about the islands, but she did not. Instead, she kept busy, moving around the room.

“Do you have to go right back?” I asked. “Can you stay for dinner?”

“The pilot’s waiting. My parents are paying him by the hour.”

Something about her was different. She looked as though she had been varnished. After a while, I realized that she had makeup on. It was subtle, but I could tell—a darkening of the lashes, the cheeks unnaturally rosy. There was an odor in the air, too. Lavender and incense. Charlene was wearing perfume.

Finally she spoke. “Is Galen around?”

“Sure. I think he’s at Dead Sea Lion Beach. I could go—”

“No, no.” She waved a hand airily. “I wanted to ask him something, that’s all.”

“You could leave him a note.”

“It’s nothing,” she said.

But she seemed somehow defeated. I wondered whether she had come all this way just to talk to Galen. I wondered why.

She upended a heap of socks onto the bed. They all appeared to be mismatched, and many had visible holes. She sorted through them, flinging pair after pair into the garbage can, her lip curling in disgust.

“Charlene,” I said.

“Hm?” she murmured, intent on her task.

“The day you got hurt,” I said.

“These are Mick’s,” she said.

“Why was I wearing Mick’s socks?”

“Were you alone on Lighthouse Hill?”

“Alone?” she asked, now starting on a collection of underwear.

“On the hill. When you fell.”

At last, Charlene gave me her full attention. Her hands were suspended in midair, holding a black cotton bra with a rip in the right cup. She gazed at me with the look I remembered, as focused and inquisitive as a bird.

“I need to know,” I said. “Was anybody with you?”

Her eyes were wide, the pupils dilated.

“I don’t remember anything about that whole day,” she said. “Nothing. My doctors said it’s not unusual with a head trauma.” She frowned. “Sometimes I get flashes. The hill, the rocks. The
morning light. But when I actually fell—” She shook her head. “I don’t remember. That may never come back.”

“Right,” I said softly.

There was a silence, broken only by the chatter of the birds. I glanced toward the window in time to see a spray of feathers—a gull brushing the glass.

“That’s actually what I wanted to ask Galen about,” Charlene said. “Now that you mention it.”

“What is?”

In a convulsive gesture, she reached up with both hands and tugged at her red hair.

“I thought he might know what happened,” she said.

I gave her a searching look.

“He and I have talked on the phone a few times,” she said. “From the hospital, mostly. I kept getting the feeling that he knew more than he was letting on. I asked him directly once or twice, but he would never quite—”

She broke off.

“I was hoping he would be here,” she said.

“I see.”

A gull squawked outside—a chick, from the sound of it. Charlene seemed to recollect herself. She flashed me a smile that did not quite touch her eyes.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I’m going to be fine.”

I was not sure how to respond; I had not fully followed her train of thought. But she did not seem to expect a reply. She knelt
down, tugging a box from under the bed. I had the sense that she was avoiding my eyes.

Within the hour, I found myself accompanying her to the helicopter, both of us in hard hats and ponchos. Charlene would shed her flea collars and mask as soon as she was safely away from the islands. The pilot saw us coming, and the rotor began to spin above my head, lazily at first, then with greater intensity. It was enough to disturb the gulls, who took flight, a geyser of wings and beaks. Their cries were deafening. I was carrying one of Charlene’s suitcases, while she struggled with the other. The pilot threw open the helicopter door. Charlene screamed something, and he screamed back, but the avian clamor was such that I did not catch a word.

Then Charlene turned to me. She tugged down her mask so I could see her face, which wore an amiable expression. She leaned in and planted a kiss on my cheek. I wanted to say something to her, some final words of affection. But before I could come up with anything meaningful, I felt a hand on my belly. Charlene’s touch was gentle, yet she moved unerringly, pushing through the layers of sweaters I was using to cover up my bump. Her palm was warm.

“Congratulations,” she whispered.

She withdrew her hand.

“You should leave too, Melissa,” she said. “You should leave soon. It’s not safe for you here.”

34

M
ICK AND
F
OREST
are no longer able to make their nightly jaunts to the coast guard house. Until recently, these evening trysts did continue. Waking in the night, I would hear voices outside my window. I’m not sure how often the two of them engaged in these perilous nights of love. Sometimes it seemed that they were out there every day, and sometimes it was more like twice a month. Now and then, waking to the sound of Mick’s soft chuckle, I would smile to myself and reach for my camera. Each time, though, I resisted the urge to snoop. Somewhere under my bed, piled among the debris I had accumulated—jeans too tattered to wear without revealing the color of my underwear, a seal stone I had found on the shoreline, books falling apart under the influence of mildew, watertight tubs filled with precious caches of undeveloped film—there was a digital camera full of glorious images. On the evening that I’d taken those photos, I had promised myself that I would leave well enough alone. I would give Mick and Forest the privacy they so obviously craved.

Now, however, the situation is different. Bird Season means that Southeast Farallon is a battleground, strewn with enemy combatants. Mick and Forest would have to be crazy to sneak to the coast guard house under these circumstances. In the darkness, they
could step off the path into the nesting areas. Within seconds, they would have attracted the rage of the gulls. I can picture the scene. The crunch of an eggshell. The squawk of birds. Mick and Forest might try to run. The gulls would take to the air. It would become a free-for-all. Birds would come whizzing in from every corner of the islands—the avian version of a feeding frenzy. Mick and Forest would be found in the morning, bare skeletons, their flesh picked clean.

Over the past few weeks, there has been friction between the two men. This is hardly surprising. They are lovers who cannot indulge in lovemaking. (I still don’t understand why they can’t do their business, safely and discreetly, in the comfort of their shared bedroom.) At mealtimes, they will often engage in little bouts of grouchiness. A discussion about who should pass the salt will devolve into a war of polite, irritated words, both men flashing hard, fixed smiles. Once or twice, I have even caught them arguing—really arguing—when they think they are alone.

All of us are tense. Perhaps it is the loss of Charlene—her geniality and ease. Perhaps it is the aggressiveness of the birds seeping into our own behavior. There have been more spats and disagreements than usual. Galen and Mick have quarreled over the proper procedure for tagging the storm-petrels. Lucy and Forest have fallen into door-slamming over whose turn it is to do the dishes.

But Mick and Forest are a special case. A few days ago, I came home from a walk and heard Forest shouting at the top of his lungs. Standing at the back door, I couldn’t make out a single word. His voice had climbed into the realm of watery hysteria. A moment
later, Mick came barreling outside. I had to jump to get out of his way. His face was flushed, his eyes glittering like coal. He did not seem to notice me hovering there. He was in too much of a state. He strode off in a rage.

I
AM STILL
busy with Galen’s book. Every so often, he will ask me about my progress—eyebrows raised, a pointed glance—as though the text is somehow important for me. Ever the dutiful student, I have been hard at work. I have learned about the reign of the eggers. I have learned, too, about the appearance of the lightkeepers. I have studied the history of my adopted home.

On a blustery afternoon in May, I took the book upstairs. I settled in my chair, rather than the bed, so I would not doze—my spine awkwardly bent, my shoulders taut. The baby was jammed inside my uterus at an uncomfortable angle. Flipping through the pages, I read about the lightkeepers.

In the 1800s, it seemed, there had been no lighthouses along the Pacific coast. None at all. Ship captains either had to voyage in daylight or cross their fingers and pray. The Islands of the Dead were such a flagrant hazard to passing boats that the government began to pay attention. Nautical travel was on the rise. It was absurd that the place had yet not been marked with a lighthouse. A crew was sent to remedy this situation.

But the archipelago did not make the work easy. The builders could not transport their usual tools to shore. They could barely get to shore themselves. It was not possible to bring bricks and mortar
from the mainland either. Instead, the workers had to mine their materials out of the living rock. (As I read, I remembered the gashes I had often noticed in the landscape, rough-hewn scars. These quarries had, in the centuries since their creation, eroded until they did not look man-made anymore. They had the appearance of marks scored into the earth by an alien spacecraft.) The crew would chisel bricks out of the ground, then crawl up Lighthouse Hill bearing the stones on their backs, like the slaves who had once built the pyramids.

In 1855, after many failures and injuries, the lighthouse was completed. Four lightkeepers were stationed there. They did not have a cabin, like ours. Even the coast guard house had yet to be conceived of, let alone built. Instead, the lightkeepers lived in a stone shack. Food was scarce. Four men, no women. On top of everything else, the pay was wretched. And there were the eggers to contend with.

I sat up straighter, lengthening my spine. Then the baby engaged in a particular maneuver, one I had experienced just a few times before. It felt as though the fetus were skiing down the interior slopes of my body. It never failed to startle and delight me. I had described the sensation to Mick once, and he had explained that in all likelihood it was the baby turning over, doing loop-the-loops in my womb.

I flipped to the next page in the book, recalling myself to my work. There was an illustration at the top of the chapter: a man with a devious expression and a handful of orbs clutched against his chest. An egger.

At the time the lighthouse was built, no one had officially laid claim to the archipelago. Vast portions of the United States were still unowned. So the eggers had overrun the islands. The situation among these men amounted to something between a black market economy and outright piracy. The lightkeepers were caught in the crossfire. As they slept in their shack and made the trek up the hill to work the mechanism, they were aware of squabbles taking place on the other side of Southeast Farallon. Eggers versus eggers. Fistfights were common. Now and then, knives or guns would make an appearance—at which point the lightkeepers would signal the mainland for help. Soldiers would be sent to break things up.

From there, the situation continued to deteriorate. The avarice of the eggers was unending. Once, after a skirmish, an enemy faction decided to hide out in Great Murre Cave and pretend they’d fled the islands. While inside, they were showered by guano. Soon, there was so much ammonia in the air that it became toxic. Driven by greed, the men refused to leave, and so they died there, one by one.

I resettled myself, trying to accommodate the baby’s girth. The eggers had begun to remind me of the gulls I saw outside every day—motivated by voracity and anger, bent on the ruthless extermination of all others. The gulls, too, would risk their own safety, even their own lives, to attack an intruder.

The lightkeepers, on the other hand, seemed rather like the biologists. They did not intervene in the natural world. They observed and recorded without interfering. They tended the lighthouse and left the animals alone.

Eventually—inevitably—the eggers had turned their attention to the lightkeepers, too. The eggers had damaged and defaced the government’s property. They put up signs warning the lightkeepers not to set foot on their turf. They insisted that the lightkeepers pay for every murre egg they ate. Perhaps the strain of the long war had affected the eggers’ minds. At last they attempted to oust the lightkeepers entirely. There was a skirmish in which several people were injured.

The murre population was, by then, in a downward spiral. There were fewer and fewer eggs on the ground—and chickens had finally begun to appear en masse in California. There was nothing left to fight for. But the eggers fought anyway.

In 1881, the government took action. Soldiers came and removed the eggers in one clean sweep. Only the lightkeepers remained.

I
WOKE TO
a knock at the door. I did not realize I’d dozed off until I opened my eyes. I was still in the chair, spine molded against the wooden slats, book in hand. One finger held my place. There was a crick in my neck.

Mick appeared in the doorway, his hair sticking up. His face was burnished brown from a day in the sun.

“You’re busy,” he said.

“No. Come in.”

I laid the book aside. Mick wandered around the room for a minute, touching things in what appeared to be a random way. He
seemed nervous. He spent a while examining the knob of my closet door, fiddling with a loose screw.

Finally he turned to me.

“I was thinking about our conversation,” he said.

“About the gulls?”

“No.” He pointed to my belly. “About this.”

His expression was hesitant. He sat on the edge of the bed, a safe distance away, his weight making the mattress slope.

“You haven’t told anyone else, have you?” he said.

“No. Just you.”

“Good,” he said.

He bit his lip. He seemed to be struggling with an idea—something weighty, out of character with his usual sweetness and jollity. I waited. Mick’s mind moved in slow, determined shifts, like the changing of the tides.

“Say it was me,” he said.

“What?”

“Say it was me,” he repeated. “To the others.”

Still, I did not understand. Mick clicked his tongue impatiently.

“Galen and Forest,” he said. “And especially Lucy. We’ll tell them I’m the father.”

He reached across the empty air between us and collected my hand, pressing it between his hot palms.

“I want to do this for you,” he said. “I can’t do much, but I can do this.”

“I don’t—” I began.

His grip intensified, crushing my fingers.

“Please,” he said. “I mean it. You can tell everyone it was me. Even your family. Your dad. Everyone. It’ll make your life easier, won’t it? No more questions to answer?”

I could not speak. I threw myself forward, landing against his chest. We nearly tumbled off the bed. Mick burst out laughing. His arms closed around me, holding me, steadying me.

L
ATER THAT NIGHT
, as I drifted off to sleep, I found myself thinking about Galen’s book again. The eggers. The lighthouse. The sea. It occurred to me that the book had not used the term “lighthouse keepers.” I was glad of this. To do so would have implied that the primary task of those people had been to maintain a building, a human structure. Instead, the book had referred to them as the keepers of the light itself. There was something important in that. Something fundamental. My pillow was warm, the radiator grunting, the air thick with steam. Perhaps there were only two kinds of people in the world—the takers and the watchers—the plunderers and the protectors—the eggers and the lightkeepers. Just as I felt myself on the verge of an epiphany, the wind outside gave a deep sigh, and I slipped into sleep.