The Keeper of Dawn

by Hickman, J. B.

With only the occasional flicker of lightning to see by, Chris fumbled with the keys for what felt like an eternity. Roland and I crowded behind him, our arms full of wet chains. I kept looking over my shoulder, expecting to see Mr. Noble at any second.

  “Got it!” Chris slid the door open and we piled inside.

  “We made it!” Roland said, slamming the door shut and locking it. “We actually made it.”

  Inside, the storm was reduced to a steady patter above our heads. We slowly felt our way through the shadowy interior.

  “Stay out of sight,” Chris said, climbing into the cockpit. “This place will light up once I get things going.”

  “There’s a tarp or something back here,” Roland said, pulling at something beneath our feet.

  “Good. Use it to cover up.”

  Roland got behind Chris and I crouched behind the co-pilot’s chair. The tarp, or whatever it was, was big enough for both of us, and after a minute of adjusting, I was covered from the neck down. The tarp smelled like mildew, and the rain hitting the roof made a hollow sound like water dripping into a tin can. Chris had the instrument panel illuminated in green and red lights.

  “Looks like a Christmas tree,” Roland said.

  “Quiet in the peanut gallery,” Chris replied, running his finger over countless dials and switches. “Santa’s trying to operate his sleigh. Ah, here we are. Lights, camera … action!”

  At the flip of a switch, the aircraft’s exterior lights turned on. Mr. Noble stood no more than ten feet away. Dressed in his usual attire, he glared at Chris. His face, always so animated when telling stories, was deadly serious. Chris looked up from the controls and waved. Mr. Noble’s expression darkened, then he tried the door, but finding it locked, returned to the front of the aircraft and proceeded to stare ruthlessly into the cockpit.

  “Get out of my helicopter!” he bellowed.

  Chris continued to study the instrument panel.

  “Get out of there!” Mr. Noble shouted, pounding on the cockpit window. “Playtime is over. Very clever with your girlfriends stealing my keys. The joke is on me. Now out you go.”

  “Not a chance.”

  “Where are your friends?”

  “They chickened out. I’m gonna give those pussies an earful too.”

  “Your fun is over. My pilot is on his way with his keys. So you might as well get out of there.”

  “This guy is clueless,” Chris said. “He underestimates the seriousness of the situation.” Then, pointing his finger in the air with self-importance, he stated: “But what really upsets me is that he doesn’t respect me as a pilot. I’ve got a feeling this might change his attitude. Engine numero uno!”

  A loud, high-pitched whine sounded from above, which was followed by the steady roar of an engine coming to life.

  Mr. Noble’s face dropped. I watched his eyes go methodically to each of the tie-down points, where chains should have secured the aircraft to the ground, where ropes should have fastened the rotors. When a blank look crossed the Coast Guardsman’s face, I suspected he was recalling the time he had explained to Chris the Pelican’s controls in great detail.

  “SHUT IT DOWN! SHUT IT DOWN! SHUT IT DOWN!” he screamed, his frantic voice audible over the roar of the engine.

  Mr. Noble beat his fists on the glass, causing me to shrink back in the tarp. He yelled something I couldn’t understand, and then ran back and gave the door another try, but the lock held.

  “Engine number two!” Chris yelled.

  There was another high-pitched whine as the second engine started, and then Mr. Noble reappeared in front of the cockpit, his face inches from the glass.

  “YOU’LL NEVER GET OFF THE GROUND!”

  Chris pointed toward the ceiling and joined his hands together, flapping his fingers like they were wings.

  Mr. Noble shook his head. “OVER THE OCEAN. AT NIGHT. IN A STORM! YOU’RE COMMITTING SUICIDE!”

  Chris responded by taking off his jacket and, in one clean motion, pulling his shirt over his head.

  “ROCK-AND-ROLL!” he screamed.

  Mr. Noble stared in disbelief at the bare-chested seventeen-year-old behind the controls of his helicopter.

  From overhead came the sound of the rotors whirling to life. Outside the aircraft, Mr. Noble refused to back away. He faced the hurricane-speed winds head-on, his coat flapping violently. Finally his cap blew off. There was a moment of indecisiveness in which he looked back and forth between the helicopter and where his cap had disappeared, but finally he turned and ran into the darkness.

  What would Grandpa think, I asked myself, if he could witness all the chaos that was occurring on his behalf?

  Suddenly the helicopter jerked to one side, knocking me back into the tarp. Chris’ bravado from a moment before had vanished. He was bent over the controls, his left foot pressed to the floor. I closed my eyes and prayed that we had not made a terrible mistake. I came very close to telling Chris to shut everything down. It still wasn’t too late to turn back. But then I thought of Grandpa, clutching his chest as his heart contracted. I watched as he clawed his way across the floor, reaching out with a trembling hand for the phone. I hadn’t been there for him. He had died alone. I couldn’t change what had happened, but I could no longer afford to look the other way.

  The vibrations in the floor increased when we lifted off the ground. I pushed the tarp aside and struggled to my feet. My eyes never left Chris, especially his hands clutching the controls, as if I could somehow prevent him from making another mistake. When Chris pushed the control stick between his legs forward, the nose of the helicopter dipped down, causing me to tumble into the back of the co-pilot’s chair.

  I couldn’t hear what he shouted back. He worked the controls with both hands, and we flew over the field with increasing speed. The wind came from all sides, rocking us like a boat on choppy water. Roland freed himself from the tarp and climbed into the co-pilot’s seat. We were about forty feet in the air, heading straight for the school. Lightning flashed without thunder, and raindrops beaded on the cockpit window before the wind wiped them away. Chris looked more confident now that we were airborne, and I got the sense that lifting off had been the greatest challenge.

  The school looked dignified from the air. Come Tuesday, I thought, this will be how the television audience sees us. I could already hear the derogatory rich-kid comments, no one imagining how out of control our lives really were.

  Chris leaned over and shouted in my ear, “Let’s give ‘em a buzz cut!”

  Grinning, Roland passed his hand over his once short-cropped hair.

  We flew over the wall, pulling up above the courtyard fountain. Chris, smiling but serious, jerked the controls with his hands and pushed pedals on the floor with both feet, rotating the helicopter a full three-hundred-and-sixty degrees. The tattoo on his back glistened with sweat, the moisture making his wings drip like they were melting.

  It felt like being at the center of a tornado. The downdraft pushed water out of the fountain and onto the sidewalk. The rainfall was redirected horizontally, battering the courtyard windows. Shingles on the rooftop tore loose; a gutter on Bowers Hall collapsed; a nearby trashcan toppled over, its contents spilling out like angry hornets before scattering in a cloud of debris. The grass was flattened, the trees of Oak Yard bent at such severe angles I expected them to snap. The newly hung “Welcome to Wellington Academy” banner broke free and flew out of sight like a long, white kite.

  It was beautiful.

  Chris lifted us out of the courtyard, stopping when we came level with the lighthouse. We hovered there for a moment, with the school spread out below and the rain coming at us from all sides. At first I wasn’t sure why we had stopped, but then I looked over. Chris was exultant. I thought back to that first day when his father had flown him to the island and realized that he needed this flight as much as I did.

  When Chris pushed forward, I felt my weight sink into my feet. Within seconds the school vanished. For an instant th
e football field appeared, and then we were traveling down the spine of the island. Every so often the gravel road would flash across our path, a gray vein amidst the dark trees as we bisected the switchbacks that scribbled back and forth beneath us. The tops of the trees swayed in the wind, blurring together as we picked up more speed.

  Chris was steady at the controls. His maneuvering in the courtyard had given him confidence, and he had the indescribable look of someone performing a task they love. Roland sat beside him, staring out of the cockpit as if viewing the climax of a suspenseful movie. I was crouched in the narrow space between them, my hands gripping the back of their seats. Was this really happening?

  A burst of lightning—as bright as daylight—illuminated the sky, providing a split-second glimpse of our surroundings. We were crossing the last stretch of land; beyond was the ocean, terrible and immense, churning beneath a low ceiling of turbulent clouds. Chris took us higher, obscuring the view, but the image stayed with me. Memories of the rising tide and the ice-cold grip of the ocean resurfaced. If we went too low out here …

  The storm was stronger over the water. The clouds shrieked at us, the rain hammered the windshield. The only assurance was that the Coast Guard used this helicopter for search and rescue operations. The storm—no matter how intense—couldn’t get to us. Flying over the island had felt like traveling down a broad highway, but now we were on our own, freefalling across the ocean. The helicopter deafened us and the storm took away our sight. All that remained was a vital sense of movement.

  Through it all, Chris remained calm. No sense of panic or urgency came back from him. His eyes never left the instrument panel, which had so many controls and gauges that nothing made sense; it was all part of some equation I couldn’t begin to solve. I guessed that there was some dial that told him how high we were, and that if nothing else, he would keep it above zero. Though his face was relaxed, the muscles in his upper body were tense, as if he had pushed all the stress into this area. Each adjustment of the controls resulted in a complication of small muscles flexing in his arms and back. The great rotor twirling above was an extension of his body, and it was this precise movement of his arms and the resulting spasms and flutters of the dark wings on his back that drove us through the storm.

  I kept expecting to see water or maybe even the coastline, but there was no end to the clouds. It felt like we should be there by now, but time had become indefinite, as hard to measure as everything else. I found it difficult to disbelieve my senses. Staring into the never-ending tunnel of gray, the vertigo began to set in. I closed my eyes, but this wasn’t enough. I sank into one of the seats in the back and put my head between my knees. I had felt safe watching Chris work the controls. I wanted to run up and ask him where we were, but my biggest fear was that he was as lost as I was. If we were too high, how would we know when we reached the coast?

  When the helicopter veered left, I stood up and peered out the window. Below us were trees, then a road, followed by a row of beach houses. My sense of direction was telling me we were going farther inland, but I couldn’t be sure. I couldn’t find any landmarks—only open fields and dark trees—but then the coast swept into view.

  Chris swung us back around and followed the road. We waited for the beach houses to give way to Miskapaug, but the town never appeared. Finally Chris pulled up and hovered above a field near the highway.

  “We can’t go back!” Roland shouted.

  Chris gave him a strange look.

  “We can’t go back! We won’t be able to find the island!”

  “I’ll find it!” Chris assured him.

  Roland shook his head. “If you can’t find Miskapaug, you’ll never find Raker! Not in this storm! We’ll get lost! We should go with Jake!”

  “And leave the Pelican? No way! We’re going back!”

  Now that we had made it, I didn’t want to leave them. Everything had happened too quickly. Getting off the island had loomed as such a farfetched possibility that I hadn’t considered what to do once we reached the coast.

  “Find Miskapaug!” Chris shouted, noticing my hesitation. “It can’t be more than a mile! If you can’t get a taxi, you’ll have to hitchhike! You got money, right?”

  I felt my jacket and nodded.

  “Then you’ll be fine!” He smiled. “Didn’t I tell you I’d get you here?”

  “I owe you one!”

  He shook his head. “You don’t owe me shit, Hawthorne! Now get out of here!”

  “You ever jump out of a perfectly good helicopter, soldier?” Roland asked with a John Wayne accent.

  “No, sir!”

  It took both of us to open the door. The rain came shrieking in; the rotors screamed in my ears. I jumped to the ground and backed away. The wind made it an effort to look back, but I caught one last look at them before they swung out of view. Chris was bent over the controls, his face illuminated in the cockpit’s ghostly light. Roland stared straight ahead as they circled around and flew across the ocean.

  When I turned toward the highway, a gust of wind swept across the field, dislodging the wad of money from my jacket. Before I could stop it, a cloud of dollar bills exploded into the air. I yelled and waved my arms, grabbing for the money. My eyes hadn’t had time to adjust to the dark, and by the time I found the flashlight at the bottom of my pack, most of the money had scattered across the field. I hunted through the mud and tall grass, but only recovered five dollars.

  I made my way out to the road. The strength of the storm surprised me. In all the rush I had forgotten to bring an umbrella, and the cold rain stung my skin and got in my eyes.

  Despite the lost money, I couldn’t stop thinking about Roland and Chris. How would they ever find the island? What if they went out too far and got lost?

  When a light flashed over my shoulder, I assumed it was more lightning. But when it began to flash in a repetitive pattern, I turned and looked back. On the horizon a distant light shone through the clouds. At first I thought it was the helicopter—Chris and Roland had come back for me. But this light rotated, disappearing before coming back around and, for an instant, shining in my eyes. Then, quite suddenly, I knew: Raker’s eye, blinded for so many years, once again shone forth from the island.

  CHAPTER 21: RELEASED TO THE WILD

  I stood on the shoulder of the dark highway. Somewhere to my left lay Miskapaug and a late-night search for a taxi or bus, neither of which would get me out of Rhode Island for five bucks, let alone to New York. In the opposite direction was the empty road and the distant possibility of hitching a ride: which, the longer I considered it, was my only option. Though the promise of a town seemed like the obvious choice, it would be pointless without money. I would be hitchhiking regardless. I might as well be going in the right direction.

  I walked the shoulder of the road, following the thin beam of my flashlight. When a dollar bill blew across the highway, I scooped it up and jammed it in my pocket. The rain refused to let up. I vaguely remembered not having eaten dinner, which triggered a concert of rumbles from my stomach. I ate two of Derek’s candy bars which brought little satisfaction. Every so often a car went by, and for a few hopeful seconds my outstretched thumb was illuminated in the blinding glare of its headlights. But on this road of abandoned beach houses, no one stopped.

  The road wound back and forth in frustrating curves. I remembered it being a pleasant drive in the car, but it was a nuisance on foot, undermining my already slow progress. When it finally stopped raining, I could hear the ocean again, the waves a reminder that I was no farther from the coast than when I had started. My clothes clung to my skin, and despite the unseasonably warm temperature, a numbness had crept into my toes, making me feel clubfooted as I plodded ahead.

  Time was against me. Whatever hope I had of catching a ride diminished with each passing car. Though it was too late to turn around, I regretted not having gone to Miskapaug. The farther I went, the more tempting it became to stop. After all, what was the point of continuing?
It wasn’t like I could walk to New York. It was nearing midnight, and what little traffic there had been had disappeared. In the end, it was my friends who kept me putting one foot in front of the other. How could I stop when they had risked so much?

  The darkness of a country highway fell over me when the flashlight died. Though the storm had passed, clouds still blotted the sky. Wasn’t there a town up ahead? I couldn’t remember. Nothing looked familiar. The monotony was interrupted when I came across a vacant gas station. Most of the windows were broken; weeds had risen through the cracked cement. A nearby streetlight flickered and hissed, illuminating the graffitied “Pump-and-Go” sign.

  I sat with my back to the building. I was so tired that the concrete felt comfortable, and the longer I remained, the more difficult it became to get back up. How far had I traveled? Three miles? Maybe four? I closed my eyes and imagined riding in Derek’s convertible, the dashed lines of the highway streaming by in a continuous blur. More than food, even more than sleep, I desired effortless motion. Somewhere in the distance arose the steady purr of an engine, and I imagined the miles ticking down one by one …

  I must have dozed off, for when I lifted my head, a car was parked at the pump. The driver was eyeing the deserted gas station as if he couldn’t believe his luck.

  “Hey kid,” he said, rolling down the passenger window. “You know where I can get some gas? I’m running on fumes here.”

  Still drowsy, I approached the idling car, stepping lightly on the blister on my heel. The car looked like a Cadillac from the sixties. It didn’t have any hubcaps, and the rear tire looked to be a spare. When a low cough sounded from beneath the hood, I was reminded of Perry, my father’s chauffeur. “It’s running with a hitch. It’ll ride about like I walk,” I imagined him saying, referring to his bad knee that would stiffen up after long car rides.

  “I’m not really familiar with the area,” I said.

  At the sound of my voice, a short-haired dog with a black, snub-nosed face sat up in the passenger seat, its breath fogging up the half-rolled down window.