Whose Waves These Are

by Amanda Dykes

  He stoops, brushes her tangled hair out of her face. Are you okay? She sees his words more than she hears them.

  She nods. She’s okay . . . she thinks. But Jeremiah is not moving. She points, says as much, and as they both run to him, the air breaks through the fog and sounds become clearer. Thunder is receding. But there’s a noise somewhere that’s new, unsettling. She can’t quite place it.

  Jeremiah’s face is to the side, head bleeding, unconscious.

  “Did he get hit?” she asks, the question making her voice waver. She remembers the blinding flash of lightning.

  “It could be, but I don’t see any burns, and”—he listens for breathing, checks his pulse—“he’s alive. I think he fell with the force of the hit to the boat and struck his head.”

  “We should wrap it,” Annie says. The rushing she hears grows louder as she unfastens her life vest, pulls off her outer jacket, and with her father, lifts Jeremiah’s head gently into its fold. Her hand lingers. The burning in her ribs swelling, recalling Melissa’s letter to him. She runs her fingers through Jeremiah’s dark, unruly hair, for Melissa . . . and for him. And—there is no ignoring it—for hope.

  They wrap the wound the best they can, and William looks toward the direction of the sound, down in the hull.

  “We’re taking on water.” He moves quickly to the bridge. Setting Jeremiah’s head down gently, Annie tears herself from him and switches on the GPS to see how far they are from land.

  Nothing happens.

  She does it again and then tries the plotter.

  Black screens.

  The VHF radio is silent—every channel, dead. There will be no Mayday call from them. No one to hear what their broken boat cannot send.

  William tries the engine, and Annie hears the faintest noise in response. “At least that’s not completely fried,” he says.

  “But even if we can move, where will we go?” She looks to the chart, where Jeremiah noted down their last coordinates. But the water has swept away his pencil marks, chewing up the paper in its wake.

  They’re back in 1890, with nothing but the invisible stars to guide them, and the hope of a lighthouse to reach them.

  “I can get the engine up,” William says. “But it’ll do no good if we don’t stop that water.” He squints, looking out on deck. “There.” He points to a hatch whose trapdoor is flapping in the slowing wind. Water sloshes down in sheets. “Can you fasten that?” He thrusts a hand flare her way. “Use that to see. I’ll check if there’s a manual pump for the bilge. We’ve got to get some balance back.”

  She nods, swallowing. On the floor, Jeremiah begins to stir but does not wake. “What about—”

  “I don’t know.” Her father’s voice is sad. “He might be fine in a few minutes. Or he might need a hospital, fast. Depends on if there’s brain bleeding. I think he’ll be okay, but—”

  Annie swipes away the hot tears. Her father squeezes her shoulder. “The best thing we can do for him right now is get this boat going.”

  Her marching orders.

  She nods and steps into the night. It’s cruel, almost, how quickly the storm has calmed, moving right along as if it hadn’t just chewed them up and spit them out. A mist lingers, but the rain is light, the waves seeming like dwarves at three feet, compared to the monstrosities of a few minutes ago.

  But the clouds still cover the night. They could be miles off course. Blown clear to Nova Scotia, for all they know. She lights the flare, lets its red glow bring enough light to guide her to the hatch.

  Hinges creak a warning. Too close, they seem to say as she creeps closer to the bow, to where the waves still splash over the railing, sending pools of cold.

  Kneeling, she tucks a rogue length of rope back into the compartment. She grabs an empty tin pail from within and bails out the small hold, then seals the lid down tight.

  Her work is done. But something keeps her here, beckons her farther, closer to the bow. She stands, gripping the rails where they meet at the front of the boat, and waits, wind lifting storm-matted locks from her neck.

  Her flare sputters into darkness. It’s just her, the night . . . and the waves, spraying a fine mist over her.

  This baptism of water sends a chill through her. Making her wish for her mat of sand from Bob. Something solid to stand on out here in the unknown. Afar off, the wind wails a hollow sound, tugging her to her knees, palms down.

  Somewhere between the wind’s lament and the steadying lap of the dark waves, so close she can taste them . . . she feels it. The whisper of a truth she can hear the tune of.

  “On Christ the solid rock I stand . . .”

  She spreads her fingers, aching for the comfort of solid ground.

  “All other ground is sinking sand . . .”

  She holds her breath, goose bumps rising to a keen awareness that something is about to happen.

  Here, in the middle of the dark abyss with no land in sight, the Rock of Ages offers himself to her.

  “What is it?” she whispers.

  Ahead, the waves gentle into a rolling sheet, reflecting the smallest sliver of moon.

  “Please,” she prays, her voice small in the great canopy of the night. “Guide us home.”

  All is still. She waits on the precipice of the dark, face-to-face with these waves, crying out to their Maker.

  And then, from the quiet, comes the sound of hope. A rumble—but not thunder, and not from above. Her palms against the wooden deck tremble with it.

  The engine.

  Thank you. She cannot force the words past the ache in her throat.

  She knows they are not home free, but somehow, she looks at these unpredictable waves and is not overcome by the old fear. She sees the waves that built a tower, that carried her grandfather home to heaven, released her mother back to life, before she was born. The waves that rocked Annie to sleep as a baby, that carried her parents far from her, yes, but nudged her back to them, too. Waves that tore her heart in two, and waves that caught that heart when it landed in Ansel in pieces, just weeks ago. She sees dark water that sparks with blue light as Jeremiah takes her hand and stirs the lightkeepers to life. A grit and a beauty, a grace.

  These are the waves that have brought her home. To these people, this place . . . and to life.

  Her own salt tears drop into them, head bowed.

  And then comes a voice. Strong and sure, right around her heart.

  Lift your head, Annie Bliss.

  She remembers Josef Krause, the very words he heard right out here on this sea. A God so personal He sounded like a fairy tale to Annie, sometimes.

  And yet . . . as she opens her eyes, lifts them, and peers through the veil of night . . . she sees it.

  Impossible fire. Blazing like the sun, atop a tower. They are close—a few miles, maybe.

  Home.

  There are flames, and there are shadows. Spinning. Bob staggers toward the cliff, bracing himself against a tree safe enough back. Watching.

  He’s submerged, heart, mind, and soul, sounds muted like he’s underwater. His own pulse marking time.

  “Please.” He can’t hear his own voice, but parched lips form the word.

  “Please.” Dredging the prayer up through rubble.

  No sign of anything on the horizon. Clouds breaking open, rain letting up, fire dimming from the tower as it consumes the last of its fuel.

  His muscles, too, are dimming fire. He drops to his knees. Grips earth, grips jagged hope.

  “Please.” The strength of the storm does not change whose waves these are. There is One mightier still.

  And then it comes. Carved like the day heaven told him to build. Words, right upon his heart. Lift your head, Robert Bliss.

  He does.

  It is dark. Waves, black; moonlight, white. All of it empty. He tells himself to breathe, makes his tired lungs reach for more air. The scene before him blurring until . . . there. Breaking into view between the islands yonder, the dark figure of a boat.

&nbs
p; The waves below are loud and strong and morph around him until it’s fog. He fights to hear what the others are saying, to not lose these dark blips of time as burning exhaustion claims him. He thinks somewhere in the clearing he sees Annie—drenched and wild-eyed, searching. Breathtakingly whole. A tall figure beside her, bandaged about the head and holding her hand, the two of them rushing toward him. He tries to keep watching. But in this swirl of night and smoke, light and stone, here on this soil charred with the bonfire of two brothers long ago . . . he cannot fight for consciousness. He has given all the fight he has to another battle.

  And just before this heavy weariness claims any vestige of lucid thought, he feels his weak limbs—limbs that once lifted stone—gathered up into strong arms. Lifting his eyelids with every bit of strength he can pull from the dregs inside . . . he sees blue eyes.

  William.

  The arms of the baby who stirred the air from a kitchen basket, now a grown man. Pulling Bob close to his chest, where a strong heart thuds hard. He speaks.

  “I’ve got you, Bob.”

  And although his voice has thickened and deepened, it still holds traces of the boy who showed up on Bob’s doorstep all those years ago. The voice that trembled as he told the tale of learning to ride a bike, needing those words, needing Bob.

  “I’ve got you.”

  Epilogue

  TEN MONTHS LATER

  “Every wave in that big old blue sea is a story.”

  Bob told me this a long time ago, his voice brined with wind and water.

  I remember my little-girl laugh, trying to count them before they disappeared. I thought it impossible then. I think it impossibly beautiful now.

  It’s spring in Ansel, which means two things: Bess is firing up her griddle for the season . . . and the town is trying to figure out what to do with the stream of people who keep coming and coming.

  It started last summer, after the storm. The Pier Review ran a piece about the lighthouse and our miraculous rescue. The weather experts confirmed that it was just that: miraculous.

  Jonesport picked up the story, then Bangor and Portland—and then the New York Times. Someone had caught a video clip of us from shore before we disappeared too far off—waves looking for all the world like they’d swallow us whole. The clip went viral. And then someone from TIME magazine came out to do a piece on it all.

  Bob—with a little help from Rich—slipped the memory card from their “newfangled digital camera.” Never did a face hold more glee.

  They managed to put a picture in, anyhow, from their own archives—the one of Bob, all those years ago. And next to it, a full-page picture taken from out on the water, showing the lighthouse. Completed. Radiant.

  After that, they started to come. Not the rocks—the people. Widows. Widowers. Sons. Daughters. Grandchildren. Great-grandchildren. Come to see the testament to legacy and courage of their soldiers, stones mortared together to light the way home.

  They crowded into the boathouse on their pilgrimage to see the letters and pictures so carefully kept. Some of the documents water-rippled from being doused by a brave soul in a fire long ago. All of them cataloged with care by those same hands, hands that have mounted a true lens upon the light tower, and hands that have helped Bob into the boathouse every day since the doctor grudgingly gave his leave. Dad and Bob have swung hammers side by side as they’ve turned the old boathouse into the best museum I’ve ever seen. A rustic, living, light-shaft-woven hall of history.

  Only the fierce Maine winter stopped the influx of people, and now with mud season coming to a close and summer around the bend, the tide of visitors is rising again.

  Halfway through those snowy months, a package came for me—from all the way across an ocean. A picture: the familiar faces of Alpenzell, holding up that TIME article and grinning bright as the day. The mayor wrote in his formal English: We are proud to be a part of your story, and for you to be a part of ours. Though the program we’d begun together had a rough beginning, with a few prudent adjustments requiring time commitments and scheduled payouts of stipends, it was flourishing, as was the village.

  Bob framed that letter and likes to make me blush about it. But I know the truth as deeply as he. A thing redeemed from a place of brokenness is a humbling honor. And priceless.

  Arthur comes to help whenever he’s not out fishing. Ed comes, too, always with a big smile—one probably having a lot to do with a certain mountain woman whose Victorian silverware brings music to his world. Sully’s with him more often than not, looping her arm through his and letting her long white braid brush against his hand.

  And just yesterday, two visitors tagged along, up all the way from Mississippi. Hosea Jones and his grandson Jimmy, come to see a certain stone, beaming ear to ear. Jimmy in particular lights up at this place, and he can’t stop poring over his application for one of the new grant-funded positions to obtain oral histories from relatives of the tower soldiers. It took all my courage to write that grant proposal, and I’m undone with gratitude at seeing this program come to life in Jimmy’s soul.

  And then there’s Jeremiah, who stayed away those first few nights after the storm. By the time we reached shore, he’d regained consciousness and insisted he didn’t need medical assistance. And that night he moved his boat. Once Bob was stable and settled at home, with Shirley bustling around like an efficient whirlwind to keep him in his place, it took me two days to find Jeremiah anchored over by Ed’s old driftwood shanty.

  When I finally came upon him, I worried his injury had taken on infection. He was in that old shanty, pacing the floor in what looked like a fevered fog, like he was bent on wearing a ditch into the ground.

  He took one look at me there in the doorway and froze. All covered in scruff, hair damp from washing himself in the sea, he had on that same old T-shirt from the first day I saw him. Go Away, it said. The Please he’d written in was fading.

  His face reflected the same message. Grim, eyes fierce, almost desperate. Longing for something—or someone—he could not have.

  The letter was out, planted on the mantel with a stone.

  So I turned to go, to hide the tears that came despite me gritting my teeth and wishing them away. What had I thought? That just because we’d survived a storm together—just because he’d shown me a sunrise—and sure, just because he’d gone and hooked his prickly, stubborn, maddeningly knowing heart right into mine, that he could somehow find it in his heart to love me?

  He deserved his space, and clearly wanted it. I could at least give him that.

  I returned to Sailor’s Rest and started packing. Bob and Dad needed time together. Jeremiah needed space. And I . . . I didn’t know what I needed. I needed to go back to Chicago and put in my notice—that was certain. Going back to spreadsheets and analytics after living—truly living—within the heartbeat of a town like this . . . it wasn’t possible.

  This was where I belonged.

  Maybe if I avoided Jeremiah for long enough, I could convince myself that friendship with him was enough. More than enough. To have his kindness, his blustery dry humor, his presence even as a friend . . . Surely it was worth it to put to rest this living devotion growing inside of me.

  And then the knock came.

  Everyone was away for a dinner in town. It was just me and that old creaky house. And when I opened the door, Jeremiah.

  It wasn’t so much the look on his face as his presence, the way his hands were stuffed in jeans pockets, looking like captive things. His whole self held back by some barely harnessed force.

  He did not say a word. The air was charged, and I wondered if the lightning had somehow gotten trapped inside this man when it struck the boat.

  Slowly, he dropped his gaze to the ground and let it linger there. Like he was trying, in his silence, to tell me something.

  “Jeremiah?” I said at last.

  He lifted an eyebrow and looked at me—a spark there: part hope, part mischief—then dashed his gaze back down just as quickly
.

  Only he wasn’t looking at the ground. He was looking at his T-shirt. He held out the hem of it, as if trying to read it, scratching his head. I couldn’t help feeling I was part of some skit, not picking up on my cues like I should.

  Go Away. Same old T-shirt. With that faded-out word on top: Please. But there, in the glow of the porch light, I saw he’d added something more. An arrow, pointing up from between the words to where he’d scrawled one word: Don’t.

  Please Don’t Go Away.

  I swallowed. Heart skittered, daring hope.

  He took my hand in his, covered it with his other. So warm . . . so secure.

  He leaned in, lowered his voice to just above a whisper, and said, “Ever.”

  We locked eyes. He must have seen the question pounding. Did he mean it? Was this just fevered ramblings? Did he truly want this? Or did he need medical care quite urgently?

  He sank to a knee and took my other hand, too. “Please don’t go away ever, Annie Bliss.”

  I sank down in front of him, running my hand over that face and wondering how, how in all the world, such a man could offer himself to me.

  The Great Wall of Jeremiah was lying on the ground. Nothing between us but air and two pounding hearts. I searched his eyes and saw forever there.

  “I’m all in, Jeremiah Fletcher.”

  He pulled me to himself in an embrace that was the beginning of a lifetime of together, hearts beating right into each other. He slipped something on my finger. Smooth and warm and feeling of the ages.

  “When I asked Bob and your father,” he explained, “first they told me I’d be off my rocker not to hitch myself to you. And then”—he traced the wooden ring on my finger, his touch tender—“they gave me this.”

  It was Grandma Jenny’s ring. Dad had shown it to me a couple of times over the years. I hurt for her, for this woman I’d never met, and yet I lingered on the deep devotion she and my grandfather had shared, even in so short a time.

  Such a mighty thing to begin a life with this heritage.

  I looked at my EMT-postman and wrapped his hand in mine, locking them together right then and there.