by Amanda Dykes
His gaze falls on a bouquet of wilted lilies of the valley beside Luka’s blue-streaked stone, and he smiles. Liesl has been here. She comes every few years without notice. She leaves a bunch of flowers on the ground, directly below the stone with a promise etched for the ages. She eventually finds him and Eva before she leaves the area. And this time, he’ll be able to introduce her to William. He prays it will be healing for them both.
Near the top, the stone Ed hand-carried all the way from Mississippi is nestled, placed by the hands that cradled transformation. The same rock he took from Michael’s grave site with the intent to shatter had ended up here, states away, fused with strength instead.
To William, the tower no doubt looks like a ruin. Unfinished, with heaps of rocks strewn on the ground. They are cataloged there with care—by size, shape, fit, to place pieces as in a puzzle—but to the unknowing eye, it is chaos.
William, though, seems to sense something. He draws back and crosses his arms over his chest. Not challenging. He just waits. Something’s shifted in his demeanor. His jaw is still clenched tight, but Bob senses he is ready to listen.
How does one explain something so . . . so unexplainable? Something he still can’t account for, the way it all happened? So he goes to the thing he knows best: Roy. Tells William about their escapades, the bonfires, the rock-throwing, the dares. Tells him of conquering this island together, the three of them. Tells of the war and—with care but also truth—tells of his father’s death. It seems he knows much of this—Jenny at least told him that.
But that doesn’t explain the hollow pillar in front of them, rising out of nowhere.
“There’s a grief so deep it leaves a body desperate,” Bob says, and looks into knowing eyes. He nods, acknowledging that William perhaps knows even more of this than Bob. “I got there. Clean shattered. Right here on this spot.” He scuffs a boot, recalls spilling those tears, mingled with his mother’s. “Enough to drive a man mad.”
William nods.
“I was on the brink. The grief was so thick around me, I was drowning in it. And then words just punched right through it, imprinted inside like someone had taken a typewriter to my soul and spelled it out, telling me what I was to do. It’s the only way I can explain it.”
“Explain what?”
“This.” He points at the lighthouse. “It was like God just settled right down there in the dust with me and gathered up what was left of me and said, Now. To build.”
He would never forget the impression of that voice on his heart. It was the voice of the man who, king of the universe, stooped to wash His own disciples’ earth-crusted feet. Who rubbed spit into dirt and used the mud to make a blind man see. Whose royal day of birth was enrobed in dust, right there with the animals in a barn.
That man was accustomed to doing great things in humble places, and it usually involved dirt. Or rocks, as it were. The same God who told a solitary man to build a boat to prepare for a flood when no one had so much as seen a drop of water fall from the sky in all their lives.
Whenever Bob felt the press of attempting something insane for a reason only he could hear, he thanked God for the example of men and women who went before him.
William, hands stuffed in pockets, leans forward and concentrates. Finally, he asks, “But . . . what is it?”
Bob goes to the alcove in the wall of boulders behind them, pulls out the wooden box where lies a now-yellowed news clipping of the words. The poem. The only copy he’s ever kept—clipped right from their own Pier Review. People had sent more over the years, from the Boston Globe, New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, places he would never set foot in his life. He kept only the local copy.
He hands it to William who reads it once. Looks at the tower, still not seeing. Reads it again, and Bob can almost see the way the Words enter him this time. Threading through him, from him, round the tower and back.
“I wrote that the night God told me to build, the night your mother told me she was moving away. My last moments with your father were still so fresh, the words came easily.” He can hear the crack of the gun salute, see his brother slipping beneath the waves at sundown.
“I’m no writer,” he says. “No stonemason, either.” He laughs, gesturing at the tower. “But a body does what it’s got to. What its soul finds it must do.” He moves to the tower, running his hands over the multi-colored stones.
He explains about the rocks, how they came—still come—from all over the country. And how each one, as he mixes mortar, seals rocks together, builds this tower higher, has carved William himself deeper into Bob.
“I stopped writing the two of you after Jenny . . . after your mother married.” He falters, unsure how much to say. He didn’t want to taint anything to do with Jenny for William. “She explained your stepfather—”
William scoffs, kicking the dirt. “Don’t call him that.”
Bob nods slowly, pondering.
William speaks. “He never really . . . took to me. When the neighbor kid and I learned to ride our bikes, his dad would run beside his bike saying ‘I’ve got you, son. I’ve got you.’” William shakes his head. “Theodore just left me to figure it out. Pointed at the bike and went back inside to read his paper.”
The story smolders inside Bob, his hands fisting. What he wouldn’t give to have shown up on that street, to have run alongside that bike. To have said I’ve got you, William, a thousand times over.
He puts a hand on William’s shoulder. William shrugs it back off.
A deep breath in, and Bob tries to explain. “Her new husband . . . didn’t like the idea of her writing back and forth with another man. And I can’t say I blame him.” Let alone one who was identical to her late husband. Bob left that part unsaid.
“Maybe he would have been okay with me writing to you when you got older, but I didn’t know where to begin. I was a stranger to you. I convinced myself you had a father and didn’t need me muddling things.”
William shakes his head. “You didn’t have to know where to begin. You just . . . start. Say something.” His voice tremors. “Anything.”
He’s scratching the surface, but something’s running deeper than the resentment coating his words.
“I needed you,” he says at last.
The air shivers around them, turning chill as the sun disappears behind thick clouds. Pines bend in a gust of wind, haunting whispers through their boughs.
Bob is stiff, words eluding him. How can a body undo a hurt so deep? William, too, stands statue-like, fingers furling and unfurling into fists. This is one of those moments that life hinges on, marking the course of whatever comes next, years and years of it. Will they stuff it down and seal this chasm with mortar, hiding the broken . . . or will they let the hammer above them come down in its full force, split it wide open?
Bob takes a step. Another. And more. Until his feet plant him in front of his nephew, his arms coming around him strong. He waits. The boy remains stiff for a breath, circled there—and then, in the fleeting drop of his shoulders, the unleashing begins. Sobs. Wracking his young body, releasing pain held in for who knows how long. It’s a rending and a cleansing. It’s a thousand apologies, a thousand forgivings.
When William pulls away at last, eyes red and swollen, he’s different. Not healed . . . but held. Like the pieces of him have been gathered right up, and that is enough for now. The rest will follow.
Some of William’s youth has dropped away. And in him, Bob sees Roy, rasping his last words with every ounce of strength he could summon. It is time—no, it is long past time—to deliver them.
“Your dad told me to tell you four things.” He’d fallen asleep reciting them so many times they were emblazoned on the back of his eyelids.
William’s presence is urgent for the words.
“He said he loves you, that it’ll be all right, that life is big . . . and God is bigger.”
William is still as he lets the message burrow deep. Bob prays the truth of it does its work.<
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The kid pulls something from his pocket and runs his hand over it. “I found this in Mom’s things,” he said, looking as if he doesn’t want to hand it over. Bob takes in the jagged scrap of paper, handled so much it’s worn soft.
He knows it. It’s the message Roy passed to him with his last ounce of strength, the one he’d tucked in William’s blanket so that Jenny would find it.
“Seventy-seven fathoms,” William says. “Once I found her sitting on the end of her bed with it, just holding it.”
There’s more to the story, Bob can sense, but it’s making William uncomfortable.
At length, he spits the words out. “She just sat there and cried, running her finger over the writing. I know it’s my dad’s handwriting. It matches what I’ve found in the attic.” He pulls in a shuddering breath. “What’s it mean?”
This, at least, is a story Bob can be proud of. He tells of Roy and Jenny, their mounting fathoms of love. Something so good . . . it should never have ended. “It’s the number of a complete but always-growing love,” he finishes. “One that’d give anything to give life.”
William’s jaw is locked, and all he can do is nod as he stares hard at that paper.
Sensing it is time to move from the past, for now, Bob claps William on the shoulder. “Come, see inside.” He leads him to the far side of the lighthouse, where an arched doorway stands, and explains how someday, he’ll build a heavy door, paint it red, make it seaworthy. For now, they duck inside the open archway and the walls rise round about them.
At one point, Bob had begun to worry he’d never be able to use all the rocks coming. But when he turned his sights to the inside, he realized the outside of this tower was just the tip of the iceberg. There was the stairway yet to build.
Stone upon stone, spiraling the inner walls of the tower, steps climbed one upon another. They were what allowed him to keep building the tower at its height. Climbing up, scaling the wide ledge at the top as he added new layers.
“We’re close,” he says, hearing the desperate hope in his own voice.
“We?” William’s brows furrow. “Is someone helping?”
Yes, he says, there’s Eva, and Ed. But the truth is, he can never be on this island without thinking of the souls of the soldiers—and of the others, like Liesl and Luka—what they gave. It’s what keeps him going, though he is weary as the wailing wind. The longer he’s worked, the more his eyes burn and his skin chafes and his joints lock . . . the more his heart yearns to light this flame at last and bring others home.
“I’ll help,” William says, standing just where his father had that last night on the island, the same look of unwavering determination on his face.
A wide smile overtakes Bob. “We’re close,” he says again. “Now that summer’s here the building can start back up. Those crates that came, the same night you did? They’ll make up the lens.” He shakes his head in disbelief. “Still can’t believe we got ’em. It’s a miracle, really. And even more of a family legacy.” He tells of the tract of woods up the mountain—how it brought his own parents together and now has funded the future of—he hopes—countless more.
He points to the rough but sturdy wooden hut built atop the tower. Only temporary, he explains—wooden beams pulled from the old railway shed behind Birchdown Mountain, walled in with planks and holding up a peaked roof to keep the rain off their heads as they build. It’ll all be stone and steel one day.
He breathes in the spiced air of soil and history, thinks of the sale of the family woods that made it possible. “Lifetimes in the making, this is.”
It’s a feeling that lingers in the coming days, as William joins him more and more on the island. He steals away for work at the Gables each morning, and each evening to see his Anneliese, but tucks in every ounce of building that he can in between times.
On an ordinary Thursday, when the harbor’s fogged in and Bob can’t go out fishing, the two of them heave and pull and stack and slick mortar like a symphony. Eva sits on a boulder, clipboard balanced on her knees as she sketches diagrams for the top of the lighthouse. Anneliese has a family commitment that evening, which leaves William to work long with Bob. The three are settled into an easy camaraderie with only the crack of a campfire adding to their rhythm as Eva hums, when the sound of footsteps slips in.
“William?” The voice is sweet and light, like the alyssum Eva grows along the front walk.
William stands and swipes work away from his face with his sleeve, trowel in hand. “H-Hi,” he says, with a glance at Bob and then back at the young woman. She looks familiar, with dark hair and a presence that suits the mist gentling around her.
William’s crossing the clearing to her, and their conversation is quiet, tones bright. This can only be one person. William takes her by the hand, leading her over to Bob, who is joined by Eva.
“Uncle Bob, Aunt Eva . . . this is Anneliese.”
The girl offers a hand, and though it’s delicate, it is strong, too. Not a stranger to work, despite its porcelain appearance.
“Well,” Bob says, enveloping her hand in his and slipping his other arm around Eva. “We’re honored to meet you, Anneliese. Seems you’ve made quite an impression on our William.”
William ducks his head and scuffs the ground, but he can’t keep from grinning. He turns to Anneliese. “I thought you’d be off with your family.”
Her forehead creases. “I am,” she says. “That’s why I was surprised to find you here. My parents brought us here to meet someone.”
“‘Us’?” Bob looks around, and two silhouettes approach through the misty veil.
Anneliese nods. “Yes, sir. My older brother and sister.” The two young adults approach, their gazes captured upward by the tower. They’re dressed in their Sunday best. Simple clothing, but too nice for a hike up the island trail.
“I’m wondering if you have the wrong island,” Bob says. “Everlea Island, maybe. There’s a fine house there, and the Phelps family moved in there not too long ago. If they’re expecting you, we can point you in the right direction. It’s easy to get turned around in this fog mull.”
He’s turning to point beyond the lighthouse, in the direction of Everlea Island, when his name is spoken.
“Mister Robert Bliss.”
Bob turns, to find a man he’s never seen before. Light hair tumbling out of lines it had been neatly combed into. Black-rimmed glasses and behind them, a haunted but overflowing look he has only seen on one other face before.
Soon, that other face emerges from the mist, lit with unbridled joy.
Connections are firing in his mind faster than he can keep up. The lilies of the valley by Luka’s stone. Anneliese’s family having some connection to Ansel . . . “Liesl?”
Eva’s joy bursts to life beside him as she clasps her hands together before her heart. “But that means . . . Is this . . .?” She looks to the man, and on to Anneliese. Bob has never seen Eva at a loss for words before. She takes Liesl’s hand, rubbing it gently, as if to fill in the words that are too wonderful to be spoken.
“Yes.” Liesl’s voice is lined in a laugh of her own. “You told me once God does not keep count of miracles. He has surely been too good to us, but . . .” She pulls her hand away, loops it through the arm of her love. “It is true. This is my Luka.”
The man steps forward, stretching his hand toward Bob. He grips it in a steady shake. Much is said in his silent stare, as Liesl and Eva erupt into stories. He clasps his hands behind his back in a humble stance, listening to the tale being told. An account of his broken mind and body healing after years, then years of searching for Liesl, his children, a letter to his sister, lost long in the post-war mail . . . until he’d found them, at last.
He wanders over to the tower, fingering rocks one by one as his wife speaks on about his passage to America. Before leaving Europe, he’d learned of the daring rescue of his family by a seaman he owed everything to. And every evening at sundown as he crossed the Atlantic, Luka had pa
id tribute to the American sailor by saluting toward where he imagined the destroyer had been, and falling to his knees in prayer afterward, to give thanks to his God for the coming reunion.
He’d gathered his wife in his arms there in an October cornfield, hugged his children—including the one he’d never met, Anneliese. He’d taken Anneliese’s hand in his, covering her fingers in tender kisses.
And now those fingers are intertwined with William’s. These two lives—standing here on this rock, both of them well and breathing because of Roy. Bob can’t help wondering—does Roy know? He prays so. Prays there is much rejoicing over this redemption moment that wraps around the eight souls on the island.
Bob joins Luka at the rock, pointing out the stone his bride pulled from the earth for him. And as the man stoops to trace the words Eines Tages, Bob longs for the day this tower will do more such home-bringing.
A few months, he guesses. A few months is all it’ll take to get there, to light this thing up at last and finally, finally let this memorial live.
thirty-two
Winter is upon them, a magic in the air. Lobster boats sport scarlet bows or wreaths of fresh-cut evergreen. Off-season lobster traps are stacked with care in skyward-stretching pyramids like so many Christmas trees, strung with lights in yards around the harbor for decoration. Smoke perpetually curls from chimneys.
At Sailor’s Rest, evenings are spent stoking the fire, drawing up plans for how they’ll transport and install the Fresnel lens once spring, and warmer weather, comes. William has given the project a new fire, lending his passion and logistical mind to it with abandon. William’s mind lights with an understanding Bob does not have, whenever they speak of the lens, its parts, how so many individual pieces work to make the light stronger than one unified piece.