Harbor Lights

by Theodore Weesner

  * * *

  Well, you did have to be there, Marian thought as she ran it through her mind once again. Having a baby was something else Ron could not incorporate, and she remained surprised at her own impulse to protect her tiny creature back when the only world she had ever known came crashing down around her. Her hand had gone to her baby in primal awareness of its welfare. A year earlier she might have dashed from the store to save her skin, but in the crisis her hand had gone to her baby just as her heart had gone to her parents.

  If only Ron had come to her side in the aftermath, she thought. He appeared to try, when things had been at their worst, but seemed incapable of really doing so. Often she pitied him, felt sorry for his shallowness, and kept knowing all over again that she could not live with him as the parent of their child. Separation was something she had to make happen. She had no wish to hurt him, to hurt anyone in any way—not now, not ever—but was more convinced each day that she had no choice. Life had assumed new meaning for her. You had to know what you were doing, and just letting things happen was as maddening as all else that lay unresolved around her.

  Even here on the desolate beach, and as she felt she was returning to herself, the stain of blood remained. Her mother’s blood could as well have been paint; it felt so unremovable. Blood and the ever-clinging nightmare. She knew she was improving—while her heart would come up trembling all over again now and then, and she’d bite her knuckles to keep from crying.

  Today promised to be one of her most difficult days: her mother was buried in Kittery, Virgil was at rest in his family plot in York Village, ten miles to the north, and she was scheduled to meet with her father at the York County jail—their first meeting since the slaughter and the final meeting of their lives—for purposes of naming her power of attorney over whatever remained of family and property, including his life in terms of possible resuscitation. She did not intend to be in his presence again after today—he had been arraigned, but was so near death that the formality of scheduling had been put on hold—and, like others, she regarded the promise of avoiding a trial as a small blessing. Every day since it had happened what he had done was unforgivable, and so it was today—a lens over her eyes guiding each step. There could never be an excuse for causing such loss and bloodshed. Something else could have been done. Anything but the ending of lives.

  One meeting would be more than enough, and her thought—as she weighed the prospect—was to look at him without expression and say nothing unless it was to answer yes or no to a lawyer’s or deputy’s question. He may have been betrayed in life, but nothing under the sun gave him the right to do what he had done. That was her bottom line. Lori alone had dared say that inflicting death might at times be a person’s only psychological option. Virgil might be held accountable for provocation, she said, for a lifetime of abusing his office for personal gain. They were issues with which Marian decided she would have to live, and while disagreeing that inflicting death might be a man’s only option, she accepted Lori’s honesty, believing she wanted as a friend to help her move beyond the anger she held for her father.

  A figure with a dog emerged from dune grass two hundred yards away, and fear seized Marian’s heart. Then she saw it was a woman, and her heart began parachuting back to earth. She knew she could use professional help. All at once the shock of what had happened would threaten her, and her impulse would be to get in her car and drive to a town where she wasn’t known. Other times, sinking into depression, she lost respect for fear and walked wherever she wished and left doors unlocked. Or she began sobbing as if she were five years old, and her mother had left her on a street in town where fire engines were screaming by.

  From fearing everything to fearing nothing. From being shaken by the shriek of a gull to crossing a street between moving cars as if they did not exist. And, rarely, a thought of her father—and still another closing of her heart against him. What he had done was unforgivable. He may have been provoked, but nothing gave anyone the right to kill. Why hadn’t he moved out twenty-five years ago?

  Now these new feelings of resolve: she would say and do whatever was necessary. The lessons had been horrible, the cost incalculable, still it had been an education and she was going to use it as a stepping stone to the future.

  She returned over gravel and blacktop to her car. The first frost had come in the day after her mother’s funeral, and along the stretch of pavement, under shedding trees, there was now the brisk air of autumn. Let the season hurry up and change, she thought. Let the leaves disappear, and the snow come in great depths. Let her baby be blessed with health, and let this season in her own life be replaced by memories of smiles on her mother’s face, her mother serving customers, and, on the side, giving her tips on getting people to like her for who she was.

  Should her baby be a girl, she knew what her name would be.

  Five or six men in suits and uniforms stood within the anteroom, and Marian, introduced to each, filed away which were lawyers and which were county officials. She moved with the flow into a large room with a long table in the center and sunlight streaking through high-screened windows on one side. The sheriff, a man with thinning beige-colored hair matching his uniform, explained what would happen. “Mrs. Slemm, your father’s very sick,” he said. “He’s devastated over what he did and wants to say something to you by way of apology. You may listen to what he has to say, and respond, or not, as you wish. He’ll be in restraints and will be brought in by deputies, so there’s nothing to fear. We understand how difficult this has to be, and want only to help in any way possible. Fine so far?” he said.

  Marian nodded.

  “There’ll be documents for you to sign as, I believe, has been explained. After the signing, your father wants to speak, but at that time, or at any time, you may terminate things by giving me a nod. Now, we don’t know if you’ll want physical contact with your father or not. It’s up to you, and you may do as you wish at the time. As a formality, we are required to sweep you with a metal detector, which I hope you don’t mind. It won’t be intrusive, and it’s just a formality as required by law. We all set then?”

  Once more Marian nodded. She perceived the elderly sheriff giving a nod, whereupon another man in uniform approached and swept over her—up one side and down the other—something like a divining rod, before stepping back.

  Another nod from the sheriff followed and, across the room, a door opened and a group of uniformed deputies entered at a snail’s pace. Marian looked mainly to the floor, but within her peripheral vision, as the frail figure in restraints and orange coveralls was there in the midst of uniformed guards, and as she stiffened to hold her heart in check, she perceived a pale and sick old man, as if, in the passing days, he had foregone eating and failed all the more. She took in, too, that his head was hanging as if no strength remained in his neck. And she saw a family likeness with herself in his lifelong shyness. Her nature had come more from this man, she knew, than from her mother.

  The procession stopped and her father remained downcast. The sheriff articulated softly in ways that required no response from either of them, and each took a turn reaching to the table to scratch with a ballpoint beside one x and another. Though the guards and others remained at hand and there would be nothing like privacy, the sheriff said, “Mr. Hudon, if you have something to say, this is the time.”

  Marian sensed her father trying to lift his face, and as he did so, and against her intentions not to open to him, emotion broke in her throat like the crack of a lightbulb. She had to inhale not to sob aloud. “Marian,” he uttered through tears of his own. As she forced her eyes to look up, she saw that he was unable for the moment to continue. Nor was it the restraints that had had him taking baby steps, but his health, hanging by a thread. Far from restraining him, the guards were holding him up.

  He gasped, needed another moment to compose himself. “You can’t forgive me,” he got out. “I …” He appeared unable to get anything more to come forth, appeared to su
rrender.

  When another moment passed and nothing more was said, the sheriff gave a nod and the guards appeared to lift and return him the way they had come. Marian struggled against reaching to him. In her mind’s eye she saw herself emerging from napping in the pilothouse, taking a sip of coffee, and an urge was in her to undo all that had gone wrong. Still, she checked herself, restrained her heart. And when the sheriff touched her elbow, though hesitating, she moved as guided. Something within may have broken for a moment, but she knew the course she had to follow, knew she had to remain strong if she was going to survive the uncertain path before her.

  Warren

  Guards and kitchen staff pressed medication on him, but he lay curled on his cot in a wheezing stupor and did not look at them. They spoke in whispers, and it came to him that they were trying to help him die. It was peace they were trying to grant him, and their kindness was a mystery to him. If he had a wish, it was to be relieved of life and of himself as soon as possible. He had proved unworthy of being helped or of being remembered. Obstacles had been placed before him, and he had proven himself unworthy as a human being.

  * * *

  “These pills will help,” someone said close by.

  “It gets bad, you let us know,” the voice said another time.

  A doctor, upon a cursory examination, whispered, “Morphine will help, Mr. Hudon, but it can’t be prescribed until they move you to the hospital—which should happen soon. The paperwork’s in.”

  Warren asked for nothing, said nothing, continued to suffer from faltering perception, and wanted only to be gone from awareness of the failure his life had been, gone from himself and the crimes he had committed. The doctor sat on the side of his cot and spoke, in a near-whisper, of last-minute intervention, aggressive procedures, unnecessary pain. He spoke of one’s inner life, and Warren believed the doctor knew what he was talking about. Warren regretted that his inner life did not deserve to know peace and tried to indicate no to life being extended. The doctor leaned close. “It’ll be better on the other side,” he whispered, and Warren gave no sign unless it was to shift his pupils, perhaps to blink his eyes.

  Being awake was to be in pain in his conscience, and dozing was barely different. Moments awake passed like dirty ice melting in March. He had no way of refusing medications, which paved over the gravel in his throat and let him escape into semiconsciousness. His ability to breathe had diminished to one wheezing breath, then another, and running out of breath was a promise waiting at the end, a sliding into many-colored radiance. Take me unto Thee, O Lord, he prayed in one moment, while feeling undeserving even of the mysterious joy of death.

  Wakefulness persisted. His actions with the heavy Colt Python hovered like hallucinations and made his mind swirl with anxiety. He could not speak or give any sign and lay half comatose. Persons clanged into the cell, pressed tablets and a tiny paper cup of water between his lips, clanged out, slid needles into his arm. Still he saw himself firing into Beatrice, grabbing Virgil’s hair, firing into his skull.

  “Your move to the hospital is in the works,” a familiar voice whispered.

  Then the voice said experimental drugs were available, CPR could be used, asked if he wouldn’t change his mind. Warren wanted only to disappear. Nor did he wish to lie in the ground next to Beatrice, if any such possibility remained, though no one had asked, and he had neither strength nor voice enough to object. His ploy to lie beside her repulsed him in his self-abasement, while he retained no capacity for asking to be cast into the sea and lost to awareness once and for all.

  When daylight in the high windows gave way to evening, shadows spread over him and offered a cover within which to lie concealed. All his life he had taken pleasure in day breaking from the ocean, and now it was twilight that afforded pleasure—until fluorescent lights crackled with sudden wavering glare, shattering the early and peaceful close of day. Fluorescent lights and sounds of television suggested eternal hell.

  For moments in the dying afternoon, seeing shapes within shadows, there came feelings of serenity. The sun lowering beneath the horizon and darkness following was a work of art in nature he had rarely regarded before seeing it violated here by milk-colored and hissing fluorescent lights. Color, departing the sky, gave way to shadows and shapes of immortality: closing of day on the harbor was a gift he had been too mortal to appreciate. The harbor at dusk, lights wavering from shore, was all he wanted his eyes ever to see again.

  It came to him in darkness that in killing Beatrice he had killed himself, had killed in her what she had allowed him, from their earliest days together, to be. It wasn’t justifiable homicide at all, but murder, he admitted to his conscience. From the moment of clearing his boat and hefting the Python, his heart had known what it wanted to do. From that moment on, God had known it wasn’t forgiveness he was seeking but vengeance. And God was the judge before him now.

  * * *

  The voice came again. “Now and at the hour of our death, may the Lord bless thee and be with thee,” it said. Then it said, “Amen.”

  So it was that when death came for Warren Hudon, television sounds hovered above his thin perception. A ballplayer loped bases, entering an increasing roar while fluorescent lights buzzed overall. Heaven and hell. Like a trap sliding from his boat and being left behind, he began cascading away from awareness. Buzzing persisted while his breath missed one beat and another, rattled faintly, disappeared into watery darkness.

  Marian

  Neither Ron nor the store would leave her alone. Ron was like a fist holding the back of her neck. The more she thought of him, the more certain she was in her judgment, and she kept looking for an excuse or occasion to end their hopeless marriage. Once in a while he would say or do something, or she would have a tender thought of him from the past, or of the baby being their product, and uncertainty over breaking up would travel her veins like a lyric from a song. Then he would say or do something—anything—and certainty would once more take charge of the center of her skull. She’d have a child by him—she had no choice—but would not raise a child with him. Getting free of him was a problem she had to solve, for she knew well the folly of staying in a bad marriage.

  The store was more complicated. As much as it was a burden, it was like a difficult research project in which she was hopelessly behind. Simply thinking of its demands and problems raised panic in her, made her want to cash it all in and run away to something clear and simple. Then she knew she could not run away, for it would be cowardice of the worst kind, defeat for which neither she nor her mother would ever be able to forgive her. She might get out of retail, in time, but not in the wake of her mother’s death and not as an act of cowardice. She could not just give up. She had to get a handle on the store and keep it from careening off-track. She had no choice but to fill her mother’s shoes. Anything less would haunt her forever.

  Nor was the store without hope or rewards, she’d have to admit. As often as she grew weary of the hours and pressure, of the tedium of chores, she relished the people and the talk, the fun of a busy morning and a pleasure in satisfying customers, in feeling quiet fulfillment at the end of a long day of working hard and getting things accomplished, if they had to do with mastering the accounts payable program or staying late to clean shelves and polish a hundred goblets. At times, having lunch with Lori and being moved to tears by her friendship, being visited and offered support by neighboring merchants, just depositing receipts late at night, satisfaction would fill her on driving home and at bedtime—premature urges to be back on the job, working with friends, picking up where they left off, would race through her confused heart.

  Then next season’s inventory, holiday help, tax payments, and quarterly statements would return her to near panic, and she’d long all over again for a simple life. Running a business was a hundred problems at once, and, however petty some of them seemed to be, at times she feared she was incapable of handling one or two. How had her mother pulled it off and maintained her sanity an
d niceness? Had she been stronger than Marian had known? Craftier? More versatile? More gifted than her daughter?

  Throughout all, Marian had yet to determine where to bury the man who was her father. Their family plot, a block of four, had been purchased years ago, and three of the spaces remained available. The first question she faced, the morning after the call reporting his death, was in having a service and, if so, what kind of service? He had no relatives to be invited, though he did have acquaintances in the area, fishermen friends who belonged to the Co-op and who, no matter recent events, might choose to attend.

  Would she herself attend?

  Her impulse was to say no to both. There was no need to provide a service, and if one were offered, there was no need for her to be present. But as hours slipped by and she gained added distance, she wondered if she did not owe her father a service for his better years and would regret, later, not having provided one. It would not be a gesture of forgiveness, not on her part, but she determined that offering a small ceremony, if only for his friends, would be a taking of the high road. And she could quietly attend, if only as a family witness.

  Would such a service help put the mess behind her? She believed it would, then would swing back to not wishing to honor or acknowledge in any way the man who had ended her mother’s life in cold blood. She could not forgive that which might never be forgiven. He deserved nothing. Her resolve may have slipped for a moment at the jail, but she continued to believe she had to hold firm, or surrender to what was unacceptable.