Lightkeeper's Wife (12 page)

“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 intimate 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.

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.

When a snap in the wind woke her, she leapt from the tangle of quilts to stand at the window. Sails like broken wings in the soft gray air. Surf battered the hull, the keel caught in the shoals. The sounds were as familiar as her own quickening breath.

There was Billy standing in the doorway to her room. Panic held his eyes open wide. She wanted to press herself against him to quell the raft of her loneliness and quiet his fear. She stepped toward him, aware of his fear. He was thinking of his own shipwreck. “You can do this, Billy. I need you to help me.”

“Everything's in the cart ready to go,” he said.

Hannah went into the kitchen and peered through the window. “Rain's fallen off, that's good.” Her voice was calm as she pushed the front door open against the wind. The storm felt good on her face, the cold air a relief.

Once outside, Hannah pushed through the wind toward the tops of the stairs and descended in the flourish of her green scarf and trailing wool coat. Billy fastened his cart to the rope they'd used to haul him up the dunes a few months ago. He lowered the gear, let the rope out slowly, and felt the cart as it bounced over beach plum and scrub to land on the beach.

By the time he reached the beach, Hannah had already flipped the surfboat, so much lighter than the old skiff, and loaded it with the extra-long rope and life ring. The wreck tilted in the waves not more than a hundred yards from shore, the sails shredded like thin cotton sheets, the masts like winter trees stripped bare. The surf tapered off as the wind died down. They said nothing as they pushed the boat to water's edge where it bobbed in the shallows. Hannah settled herself on the middle seat while Billy held the boat steady. With the oars set, Hannah sighted the wreck, then turned to Billy. She knew with certainty that she could trust him. “You'll get that fire going and set the tarp.”

“I got it. Be quick, Hannah.” When she gave him a final nod, he rushed the boat through the surf and shoved off toward the wreck. The surfboat rode up on a cresting wave, tilting toward vertical. The length of Hannah's body, her feet against the stern seat for leverage, her arms down and pulling back on the oars, with the bow of the boat rising above her, appeared to him then as an angel rising up from the sea. But there was no ether to her presence, no heavenly wings to carry her, only the strength of her arms and a determination that frightened him in its pursuit of survivors.

She rowed hard against the breakers, checking over her right shoulder now and again to make sure that she was on course. The bow of the boat lifted and held itself high in the waves. Hannah felt powerful in the knowledge of her own stamina as the boat responded to the slightest shift of her oars, and she began to close in on the wreck. Billy's fire flared on the shore, and above, the white column of the lighthouse. Flotsam knocked against the hull and caught her oars. She listened for the telltale noise, water sloshing over decks or calls for help, but heard nothing, and so rowed harder, throwing her back into each pull upon the oars, hauling against the weight of the ocean to send the boat forward until she heard sails flapping. Above the wash of water over the ship's decks, a loud thumping racket caught Hannah's attention. As she approached, she heard muffled cries from the cabin.

“Hallooo! Anybody there?”

More muffled cries, louder this time. In that instant, she dismissed every warning she'd heard from John.
Never
get
close
to
a
wreck, Hannah. The masts crack in the wind, and when the hull fills with water, it can suck you and everything else down with it to the bottom. I have to keep my distance if I've any hope of saving anyone.
She turned and sought out Billy's fire on the beach, the black smoke a thin trail winding up. The pounding started again, a desperate racket that drove her alongside the wreck.
No, Hannah
, John's voice warned from the back of her mind, but she couldn't stop herself. There were men onboard.

The gunwale was underwater, and the waves lifted and dropped the skiff so that it rose above the sinking ship then slammed down below it, lifted up, then slammed down again. The breakers crashed over the decks. Hannah held on, ducked her head, and peered through the salt spray. If she tied the skiff to the rail and the ship went down, it would take the skiff with it. She stood with her legs straddling the center seat, feeling the sea in her knees, and keeping her eye on the ship's rail that rose as the skiff dropped. When the rail rose to meet the skiff, she quickly looped the rope through it and tied a slipknot with nervous hands.

Satisfied that if the ship began to sink, a quick tug on the rope would free the skiff so that she could pull it back to her, she climbed onto the submerged deck of the wreck. The frigid water filled her boots as she made her way toward the hatch cover where the pounding continued, louder now. Even pushing with all her weight didn't budge the hatch cover. It was locked from the inside.
Unlock
it. Find the latch.

“Help!” Voices hysterical and desperate came through the hatch.

Hannah turned around and searched the deck for anything she could use to bash the hatch open. The water inched up her shins. She couldn't let herself think about the cold. She had to keep moving.
Think, Hannah, think!
She found a heavy belaying pin and swung it viciously at the hatch. Each blow against hard wood reverberated painfully up her arm, but she kept at it until a sharp pain overtook her elbow and she had to rest. The boat shifted and threw her off balance, until she gripped a handrail along the cabin. Her heart battered the cage of her ribs as she beat more violently at the hatch. “Hold on, hold on, I'll be right back.”

She dragged the skiff's line to a cleat on the deck and tied it against her better judgment. Slogging her way aft, she held on to the cabin rail for balance and searched for anything that would free the hatch cover. Her feet had gone from numb to unbearable pain. A hatchet caught her eye. It was lashed to a bulwark underwater. She plunged her arm down to release it from its leather holster, and made her way back to the voices. “Step back. I've got it now. Step back!”

Beneath the blows from the ax, the hatch splintered and then she went at it more brutally. The ship tilted once again, groaned, and trembled. She eyed her skiff and continued heaving her arm back and thrashing it forward. Some terrified violence drove her. As the ship pitched hard to starboard, the hatch split wide open. Water rushed over the decks and rose from inside the ship to fill the cabin. She clutched the handrail once again, and this time the water was so high she let her legs float back while she peered inside. She took a deep breath and pulled herself under using the brass handrail that led down. Her clothes ballooned as they filled with water. The blur of a girl's dress billowed and she reached out, caught the fabric in her frozen hand. The boat shifted and the girl, her ghostly blue skin and frail limbs, spun away like an apparition. Hannah was out of breath now and dragged herself up by the railing until she broke the surface. One suck of breath and she went under again. Books floated past, a woman's scarf, a wooden spoon. Where was the girl? Into the depths of the cabin, past the chart table and benches, Hannah ventured, but there was no one. The pain in her chest exploded in a rush of air and she kicked against the anchor of her clothing, pulled hard on the railing, and kicked again until she broke through the surface to suck in the air.

The surfboat was still tied alongside the wreck, pitching in the waves. Hannah struggled to pull the skiff close enough to climb aboard, but she lost her footing and fell backward. The rope fell from her fingers; the boat drifted. She dove after the rope, caught it in one hand, and pulled herself toward the skiff. With her hands on the gunwale, she worked her way to the middle of the boat. When a wave lifted her, she swung her leg over the side and dropped into the bilge, now six inches deep with water. Her mind reeled. The ship was going to plummet. Her jaw rattled, limbs quivered as she set to rowing toward shore. Rowing hard was the only way to warm up. The surf continued to batter the disintegrating hull, and the masts and crossbeams strained like the sound of terror itself. The air vibrated with warning as the ship caved in. Masts thick as tree trunks snapped like skinny branches. From only fifty feet away, the sinking ship mesmerized and horrified her. Hannah heard the suck of water as the ocean pulled the wreck to the bottom. She stared until nothing was left but a foamy wash that faded across the ocean. The world went quiet, almost silent. Water swirled and rippled where the ship had been, and broken spars and shreds of sail and random bits of debris floated to the surface and knocked against the skiff.

Hannah trembled but rowed as hard as she could, using her breath to pull through each stroke. The air chambers Everett had built in the bow held it above the waves, and the boat sailed through the water. The lighthouse beam beckoned and she followed like a child called in from the cold.

On the beach, she staggered out of the boat. Billy grabbed her beneath her shoulders as she fell forward. He lifted her upright, then slung her arm over his shoulder. She let his strength take over where hers had succumbed. Her left side rested against him as he carried her to the fire and settled her on an overturned crate. From the bottle kept in the locker beneath the stairs, he poured a mug full of whiskey. “You gotta get warm, Hannah. I'll see to the boat.”

Hannah knelt at the fire and gasped for air, just as she had when she'd come up from underwater, but she was sobbing now and pulling at her wet clothes. She stripped off her gloves, wool sweater, and boots, and leaned in close to the fire to absorb the heat. She couldn't contain the sobs that rattled her rib cage. In her delirium, she tore off her trousers and shirt, until she stood in her underthings, as if the heat could assuage her grief.

She didn't hear Billy approach amid the sound of her crying and the crackling fire, and she didn't care enough to pull herself together, couldn't even if she wanted to. “It was a child,” she sobbed. “I tried…they were right there, then the wreck shifted and started to go down and I almost…but they floated away…I couldn't—”

Billy wrapped her in heavy wool blankets and positioned her in the lee of the tarp out of the wind. He sat in the sand beside her, pulling the blankets tight in front of her, swaddling her like a child. “You're slurring your words. You've got chilled to the bone, Hannah. We have to get you up to the house before you catch a fever.” He shook her by the shoulders to focus her attention. “Get hold of yourself. We have to go.” He gathered Hannah's clothing, packed the rest of the gear back into the cart, and kicked sand over the fire. Hannah stood near the bottom of the stairs wrapped in blankets. “Up we go,” he said, helping Hannah to her feet. “Can you make it up the steps?”

“Yes, yes.” She tried to stand, but she was light-headed. There had to be a better way to do the rescues. With one arm over Billy's shoulder, Hannah let him lead her up.

Jan 22: Winds > 15, NE, schooner Neptune's Daughter of Boston total loss.

Hannah didn't mention the little girl again. She slept and slept, and when the lights needed tending, Billy shook her awake and followed her to watch how she trimmed the wicks and filled the oil and lit the tiny fires. Mostly, he was afraid she'd fall down the stairs or burn herself in her half sleep. One morning, she said, “I'll show you in case something happens to me.”

“Those are the first words you've spoken in days,” he said. “I want no part. It's the only thing getting you out of that bed.”

She stopped talking after that.

In between trips to the lights, Hannah slept the dreamless sleep of the dead, a sleep in which she did not worry about the lights or the fog that rolled in on the wake of the nor'easter, or the bodies held captive in their watery deaths. When the sun crept through her windows and lit dusty bands of air, she pulled the quilts over her head. She couldn't get the image of the little girl's billowing dress from her head. The only feeling she could imagine upon waking was an inescapable darkness. She slept, and occasionally heard pots clanging on the stove, or the gentle stream of water from the pump at the kitchen sink, but never a voice until one afternoon when Tom stood by her bed. When she stirred, he retreated to the kitchen.