Lightkeeper's Wife

by Sarah Anne Johnson

  The itch in his body for physical work drove him down the stairs to the beach. He didn’t care if Tom followed him or not.

  “You can’t stop her,” Tom said, following too close.

  “I can help her if she needs it.”

  “But she won’t. You oughtta know that.”

  The skiff she’d used to rescue him was still nestled against the dune, the life ring and the oars tucked beneath the stairs should they need them. Billy kept her in sight now with the relief of proximity. Tom stood beside him and watched Hannah work the boat.

  ***

  Hannah pressed her water-soaked boots to the floorboards for balance and hoped the boat would take her shape the way a new pair of boots got worn to her tread. She rowed through the breakers, the surfboat buoyant, light in the water. Each drop of the skiff off the crest of a wave she felt in the hard wood seat. Overhead, seagulls dipped and rose on the air, gliding over waves, then tilting to catch a draft into the sky. They cried a dull, complaining encouragement, their white underbellies lost in the glare as the bow of the surfboat lifted in the waves. She wanted to become one with the boat as the boat became one with her. With her weight to starboard, she held the right oar firm to veer the boat around, feeling in its light swinging motion the beginnings of an intimacy. They were developing their own language.

  The icy wind pricked her cheeks and whipped her hair loose so that it wrapped around her head in wet strands. Muscles trembling, her back a vicious knot, she drove herself through the pain as if there was no pain.

  In a trough, she spun the skiff around, pushing first on the right oar, then pulling on the left. She caught the next wave, the boat rode high and fast, lifting up on a swell of water and surging forward. Hannah used the oars to hold her course as she surfed the boat in. That’s it, stay on top, surf in just like that. She balanced across the tops of the waves, maneuvering the boat as if it were a part of her body, tilting her weight on the seat and leaning into the surf until she rode into shallow water.

  Tom knew enough to hang back while Billy waded into the water. Hannah climbed over the side of the boat and lost her balance. When Billy grabbed her by the elbow, she felt the strength of his hand around her upper arm, the push of his body shoving her up from the waves. He knew how to move in the surf, how to accommodate the rush of water.

  “Did you see how I rode those waves? Did you see how fast the boat was? I’ve never handled a boat so well in my life. I can do any—”

  “You shouldn’t be risking life and limb for the sport of it.”

  “If I’d had this boat to rescue you, it would’ve gone so much easier. I can assure you of that,” Hannah said, and she shook herself free of him.

  Tom stood on the beach, shaking his head, as if to say, It’s no use. She’ll never listen. Hannah respected him for his silence as she brushed by him on her way out of the water. She didn’t need them here.

  ***

  Sylvie’s scarf trailed in the wind as she rode toward the lighthouse on a dark brown horse nearly the same color as her own hair. Hannah stood near the top of the stairs from the beach, exhilarated from her excursion in the surfboat, and watched Sylvie approach the house. She rode upright, confident, but in a loose and comfortable way as if she were as accustomed to riding the horse as to hanging a sheet on the clothesline or stepping over a pile of sea hay to reach the summer vegetables.

  She swung herself from the horse and waited for Hannah to approach from across the yard.

  “You have great timing. I just got in. First trial for the surfboat. Amazing. So buoyant and light. It’s really going to make a difference.” Hannah was still out of breath as she pushed through the front door and led Sylvie into the house.

  “I hope you don’t mind my visit,” Sylvie said. “After we dropped off the boat, I thought—”

  “No, I’m glad you’re here.”

  Hannah pointed to the rack where Sylvie could hang her coat, and dropped her own coat on the floor, stepping out of it like a shed skin. While Hannah made tea, she answered Sylvie’s questions about the workings of the light, what kind of oil they used, and how often she had to fill the lanterns.

  When they finally made themselves comfortable at the table, Sylvie said, “Have you asked that sailor to stay on?”

  “I haven’t decided.”

  “He appears to be a hard worker, and a nice sort.”

  A nice sort, ha! They were quiet for a while, feeling their way around the silence that was filled with the fact of their lost husbands. Hannah’s hands ached from rowing, and she opened and closed them into fists to stretch the muscles. John used to massage her hands, and the memory drew her eye to the veined ridges, her thick fingers and broad knuckles. Hers were hands meant to work, and now they closed themselves around the hot cup of tea with the memory of John’s bigger hands holding hers and rubbing out the muscles as if to squeeze out the pain, a sea of memory: the day he took her out in the skiff to watch a squall blow across the water in a dark mass, the night they ate bread and cheese in front of the fire and fell asleep on the floor, curled around each other for warmth after the fire went out.

  “You must miss him terribly,” Sylvie said. “I try to keep busy with my uncle’s business, and still, in the evening after dinner when the house is quiet, I fret over Job’s last moments, the terror he must have suffered. He was a brave man, but how brave can a man be when he knows he’s drowning?”

  Billy had clung to the spar that kept him afloat after the wreck, even when Hannah tried to pull him to safety. Fear had kept him holding on until she arrived. Fear wasn’t going to let him give up. “I’m sure he fought for his life with his last breath.”

  “So many men were lost, who am I to feel sorry for myself, and yet—”

  “You’ve a right to your grief.”

  Sylvie stood and warmed her back by the fire. She eyed John’s image in the daguerreotype on the mantel, touched her fingers to the glass before she turned to get her coat.

  “So, this Billy, where’s he from?”

  “I only know that he was sailing north toward Portland.”

  “No family?”

  “Not that he’s mentioned.”

  “Well, you’ll need help this winter. Maybe you should ask him to stay on.” She pulled on her coat, wrapped her scarf around her neck, and tucked it down beneath her lapels.

  “I’ve got Tom. He’s always about, and he’s just up the road.”

  “You should get someone who can help around the house with the chores and even the rescues, if you’re determined to continue.”

  Hannah walked her to the door, and they stood in a moment of silence, before Sylvie said, “About the boat, what shall I tell my uncle?”

  “It’s a wonderful success. You tell him I’m eager to put it to work. And you come again, won’t you?” Hannah didn’t usually enjoy other women from town, but Sylvie with her boat designs and her bookkeeping interested her.

  “I enjoyed our visit very much. I’ll come back soon,” Sylvie said, and stepped out into the cold, greeting Billy shyly as he passed her on his way into the house.

  When Billy came in, he draped his coat across a chair, stepped out of his boots, and bent his lithe body before the fire. He worked hard, wore himself out most days.

  “Come here for a minute, sit down.”

  Hannah gathered him to the dining table with a flick of her hand. She had to make use of him or he’d drive her crazy with his skulking around. He’d taken on chores in the barn, tending the chickens and horses, and he did his share around the house, but he still had too much time to waste brooding. “I have a proposition for you, if you’re interested.”

  He dragged himself across the room with the resistance of a man walking through water.

  “Do you enter every conversation with that look of dread?” He hardened himself at her words as if struck by an open hand.
“I only want to ask you a question. I’m wondering if there’s a way we can get a lifeline out to a shipwreck. Can I bring the crew ashore that way?”

  “A lifeline?” Billy thought of all the ways the pirates had conceived of killing shiploads of sailors. He’d never heard one idea for saving a single life.

  “Yes, it makes sense, don’t you think?”

  “No one could haul himself in on a rope. Not in the cold, and possibly injured.” Billy pulled out one of the mismatched wooden chairs and sat.

  “What if I rowed a lifeline out to the ship, and a sailor made it fast around the mast? Then would there be a way to bring them in?”

  “Maybe you could use the old skiff and fill it with men, and run it back and forth from ship to shore with a block and tackle.”

  The haze of his mood lifted and began to clear. Sometimes at night his dreams woke him to the sounds of a raid, and he smelled gunpowder that wasn’t there, heard shouts that didn’t exist. Then he was brought back to the hushed closeness of these rooms.

  “Most times the sea’s too rough for that,” Billy said. “I’m thinking about times it’s near too rough to take them in the surfboat. You need some kind of bosun’s chair or something you could jerry-rig like a swing to carry ’em in. But you got the wind to think about, then try convincing anyone to climb into something like that.”

  “What if it’s either that or drown?” Hannah’s face flushed and she swept her hair back, her eyes on Billy as he absorbed what she said.

  “There’s something else I need to ask you,” Hannah said, her voice more serious than she’d intended.

  Billy unsheathed his knife and started scraping beneath his fingernails, his sullen mood an undertow carrying him back to the depths. Hannah wanted to untie the knot of him and lay him out in a long, straight line, or smack him until he sat up straight and paid attention to her. He was nothing like John, who said what he felt and didn’t withdraw into his own silence. She stared at him until he sheathed his knife. “Well, I notice that your strength is back, and I’m concerned you may want to be getting on now that you’re feeling better.”

  Billy winced and stared at his boots.

  “The thing is, with John gone, and winter coming, I wonder if you’d consider staying. I can’t pay you, but you’ve got a roof over your head and plenty of food. You can work same as you do now. Nothing different.”

  Billy laughed, nervous as he looked up at her. “I thought you were going to ask me to leave.”

  “You’re a good worker. You’ve made yourself useful.”

  “That’s what I wanted to do.”

  “So, it’s settled then?”

  He nodded, trying to smile, but it looked to hurt him. “How about a drink to celebrate? We got that bourbon you use to heat up the sailors.”

  “That’s for emergencies.” Hannah had noticed the amber liquid diminishing since she’d found Billy drunk in the barn, and then lightening in color as he added water to compensate for his theft. “I know you’ve been going at it. You can’t drink and take care of the lights. Can’t run the risk of passing out or falling asleep.”

  “One belt won’t kill you,” he said.

  “How long have you been a drinker, Billy?”

  His eyes swooped toward the bottle on the mantel. Hannah realized that he could’ve spent the change from his trips to the grocery on a bottle from Millie Bragg, who worked the cod flakes down at the harbor, or maybe he found a bottle that John kept hidden in the barn.

  “If you stay here, you have to stop.”

  “I’m going to quit after tonight. I promise.”

  “How do I know I can trust you?”

  Billy gazed unflinchingly into her face. Rather than bear the intimacy of that look, she took the bottle from the mantel and poured a small amount into the bottom of a mug. “Here you are. I know you’ve got your own somewhere.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Just because I live out here in the middle of nowhere doesn’t mean I don’t know a few things. You think I haven’t met Millie myself? Isn’t a soul in this town hasn’t made use of her at one time or another.”

  Billy took the mug and swallowed his drink in one good gulp. He wiped his mouth and rubbed his fingers together, as if pressing whatever remained of the liquor into his skin. “I’ll need one more.”

  Hannah nodded toward the bottle and let him pour his own drink. Now that he’d agreed to stay, she was relieved.

  “Do you have charcoal and paper by chance?”

  “In the desk, bottom drawer on the right,” she said.

  He wiggled the drawer along its runner until it opened. Then he set himself up at the table, pulling the candle closer, shifting the slant of light across the room. “I’m gonna draw you,” he said, his head tilted back to take her in.

  “You’re going to draw me?”

  “Just stay as you are. Pretend I’m not here.”

  Billy worked fast, the charcoal scratching the paper. She tried to glimpse his work, but his body protected the page. There was something possessed in the way his drawing overtook him, his hands animated with new life as he worked the charcoal across the paper with his right, and made rubbing or smudging motions with his left. His rough fingers worked in brisk, loose strokes that appeared precise and effortless. In spite of his concentration, his face softened. Hannah tried to settle herself into waiting and watching the fire, but she couldn’t resist another look toward the drawing. The fire cast a fragile light across Billy, but it was the globe of light from the candle that captured his intensity and seemed to radiate from the heat of his focus on the page, his eyes no longer shifting to look toward Hannah but engrossed in his rendering.

  When he finished, he slapped the paper facedown on the table. Hannah wanted to see the drawing, but she refused to ask him for it. As if he’d forgotten the drawing altogether, he gathered a couple twigs from the kindling box, and a piece of string, and sat down again with his props. What was he fiddling with now? He pondered, and huffed, and made sketches. Was he drunk? Of course he was. He was a drinker and a fool, and she’d asked him to stay.

  Billy looked up, disoriented, his face full of shadows. The lighthouse beam flashed through the curtains, reminding Hannah why she was here. How would she have managed these past weeks without John if she hadn’t been able to rely on the steady demands of the light: fill the oil, light the lanterns, keep the logbook. Every time the beam flashed through her house, she thought, I am the lightkeeper.

  Billy blew across the sheet of paper and admired his work before holding it up for Hannah. There she was, her sweeping hair windblown around her face. He’d captured her amused yet doleful eyes, her small nose and high cheekbones, the planes of her face. His drawing revealed Hannah to herself more than any mirror. He’d rendered the distance in her expression and the light in her eye that was curiosity and nostalgia.

  “You don’t like it?” Billy asked tentatively.

  “No, that’s not it at all,” she said. “You draw well. It’s startling to see myself.”

  “You do like it then?”

  “Yes,” Hannah said, trying to find something in the room to focus on that wasn’t the drawing.

  “You can have it for another belt,” he said.

  She grabbed the bottle, then blew out the lanterns and the candle until the only light was the flash from the lighthouse. Then she went to her room. When her door slammed shut, the clatter of the cast-iron latch hung like a shrill note in the air.

  “Okay then,” Billy said. “That’s fine. Good night, then.”

  Hannah listened from her bedroom as he climbed the ladder to the loft where he slept now. He didn’t even get undressed before falling into a snore. She thought of the drawing faceup on the table and took her candle back into the kitchen to look at it. She held the candle over the table. He’d observed her in a most intima
te way. Why should this startle her? They spent every day working together. She’d gotten used to coming down from the lights and meeting him in the kitchen, or waiting for him to come in from the field for supper. But his drawing painted a different portrait of him than the one she’d carried in her mind. She’d thought him rough and insensitive, but here he was sketching her in the most sympathetic way. Every day they had lived together, he wasn’t lost in his own thoughts; he was with her.

  12

  Jan 21: Winds > 19, SW, A schooner moving along at a good clip near parallel to shore, topsails taken in and a reefed main, another farther north.

  Jan 21: Winds > 25, NE, Sm sch hd E, sm brig, hd E shore

  Two days after testing the surfboat, the northeast wind drove hard onto the shore. “We need to be at the ready,” Hannah told Billy. “Get everything you’ll need to get a fire going down there.”

  Billy hurried to the barn and packed the small cart with wood, whale oil, a life ring, and blankets, then covered it all with a canvas tarp. He’d learned to pack the cart quickly with everything they needed. Even if the storm was tapering off, they had to be prepared for survivors. Hannah watched him out the front window as he pushed the cart over the uneven yard toward the dunes. He worked with an animal force. She was drawn to him as he maneuvered the wagon against some frailty in himself, as if he was ruined and working against it. There was a wildness about him, the way he strode across the lawn, loose in his body and urgent. When Billy turned for the house, she hurried to the lighthouse passageway before he came back in.

  The afternoon became a monotony of drinking coffee, carrying in wood to dry by the fire, trips up the lighthouse, and endless waiting. Billy fell asleep in his chair at the table and Hannah resigned herself to lying down in her room. Without rest they’d be useless. She lay fully clothed beneath a single quilt, but she couldn’t sleep. She ran her hand along the front of her pants. How long had it been since she’d felt her own pleasure? She relaxed into the surge of feeling, moving beneath the blanket in rhythm to her own breath. She drove herself hard upon her hand, feeling for the places that heightened her pleasure. She kept an ear out for Billy. He could wake up and glance into her room, but she didn’t stop until the warm flush was over. Then the loneliness overcame her. She turned her face into the pillow to bury her tears. Only then did she finally rest.