Lightkeeper's Wife (16 page)

Captain Otis looked her over, from her surly expression to her well-polished boots. “I've been told you've built trade relationships among the Jamaicans. That's part of your success, I suppose.”

“Treating them fairly, like equals, has earned their trust.”

“That's difficult for many businessmen.”

“True, they want something for nothing.” The lies came easily. William Pike spoke with authority.

“Do you do business with the same people on each of your trips?”

“I typically purchase the same goods, so yes.”

“It's hard to imagine them as businessmen.”

“And women.”

“Really?”

Blue glanced toward the navigation table where brass instruments lay scattered across a chart. She ran her hand along her jaw, as if bored by his conversation, and scratched an imaginary beard. Her skin was weathered and too tanned for him to notice that she didn't have a beard.

When she took her leave, John Otis shook her hand, and wished her well on her voyage. “You'll be home soon enough,” he said. “Your wife needn't worry. You're safe aboard the
Cynthia
Rose
.”

The captain believed in William Pike. Blue stood at the stern rail. She wished her past could drift away in the foamy wake left in the ship's path. William Pike turned from the rail and strode toward the cabin, his boots steady against the deck.

“Evening, Mr. Pike,” a crewmen called after him, but he ignored the voice. He was William Pike, and everyone knew it. Now, he knew it, too.

The next morning, when Billy began to rustle around in the loft, Hannah called up to him, “Looks like a good one today. You might want to get yourself up and moving before you waste the whole day.”

“Methinks me needs a bath,” he said.

“About time,” Hannah said.

“You're still angry, aren't you?” Billy asked, climbing down the ladder and landing with a heavy thud in the middle of the room.

“Why should I be? You can't make me angry, Billy, I hardly know you.”

“You know me as good as anyone and you're mad 'cause you know I'm right. You wouldn't be doing your rescues if your husband was here.”

Hannah stood and faced him with her shoulders squared. “John and I were partners in all things. But you could never know that. If he saw me handle that boat in the surf, he'd want me out there.” She lied, because it was none of his business and she couldn't stand the smug expression on his face. “We'd be partners in the truest sense of the word, sharing all the responsibilities of this place.”

“And he'd help with the house chores, the sewing and laundry?” He wasn't malicious, only curious and perhaps trying to make a point she didn't want to admit.

Hannah could no more picture John sewing than she could picture herself killing a chicken, but she lied, “Sewing's no different than repairing sails on a ship, and John's done plenty of that. But men are men, after all,” she conceded, “and there's only so much they can tolerate from a woman. It's almost like it hurt his pride for me to do real work. He felt it was his duty to protect me from that, and there was something about my ability to do his work that could make him feel weak, as if he was supposed to be stronger than me, and if he wasn't, well then we at least have to keep up appearances.”

Billy nodded as he poured water from the bucket into the washbasin to clean his face. Unlike John, Billy didn't rush through his chores. He took his time to enjoy the feel of the water under his fingers. No slamming and rushing around like John. It interested her how men could be so different. She'd only lived with her father and John, and they were more alike in their habits. Billy was different with his baggy shirt hanging from his shoulders and his skinny ankles poking out the bottom of his trousers.

At that moment, Hannah felt the urge to reach out and touch his shoulder, as if to say, all is okay between us, but instead, she said, “I'll be out in the barn for a while. If you want to bathe, you know where the tub is.”

In the barn, Hannah ducked beneath the lifeline Billy had rigged from the loft to the far corner where the wall met the floor. She had to credit his ingenuity. Standing over John's workbench, she looked at the confusion of hammers, screwdrivers, and planes. She poked through the disarray until she found a heavy hammer with a comfortable wooden grip, shaped by John's thick, square hand, and a fistful of long nails and two strips of wood for repairing any cracks in the existing fence. Fully armed, Hannah stepped outside into the chilling air. The open blisters on her hands still burned from her foray into the storm. She needed gloves if she was going to work on the fences, and so she dropped her gear into the wheelbarrow on her way back into the house.

Hannah swung through the door and saw Billy standing near the kitchen sink, his white linen shirt tucked into his pant waist and hanging down like a skirt so that his naked torso was revealed as he bathed over the basin. Hannah wanted to see what he did when he thought he was alone, but her eyes focused on the steam rising from the washbasin. A washcloth was draped neatly over the metal rim, and he picked it up, ran it along his arm slowly as if letting the warmth seep into his bones. The kitchen windows cast squares of light that fell onto the floor just before Billy's feet, which were bare and white as paper, the bones protruding beneath the skin like branches. His trousers reached his anklebone, which stuck out like a knot in a tree. He was rooted to this earth and solid. She wanted to reach out and touch him, but she remained still, as her eyes moved up his legs, to his thin torso, tapered to his waist. She stepped back to take in the length of him, as if there was some way to understand his curve of waist. Then he turned slowly toward her to reveal his upper body, the firm set of his shoulders, and his flat stomach, and there, right there, two small breasts.

Hannah searched his face, searched as if to find him beneath this woman, but he
was
this woman.

Billy met her gaze. Staring into the level depths of his eyes, the gray-blue clouds of them, Hannah tried to understand what she was seeing before her. She wanted to speak but found no words.

She stepped closer, as if to see more clearly. “Who are you?”

Billy didn't answer, but he didn't look away. His eyes held Hannah like two gentle hands.

“You've been living in my house pretending to be a man,” Hannah stammered. She thought of the bandages wrapped around his chest, the muscles in his arms, and his sailor's swagger. She tried to match the man she knew as Billy with this woman standing before her. Billy with breasts, but more than that, the slight curve of hips, the sad, tender look in his eyes that gave him an allure she wanted to deny. He'd never told her anything about his past. It terrified her that she could be so naive as to let someone like him into her house.

She turned away and went to the kitchen counter where she could look out the windows over the ocean. She'd always thought she would stand here with John, that her life would be spent with him watching over the coast. Now this man had intruded on her safety with his strangeness.

“Hannah,” he said.

The woman who was Billy stepped toward her, but she avoided him. “Quiet! Just be quiet! What kind of person are you? I trusted you. You
let
me trust you.” She nearly spat the words and then turned from him. Her anger got away from her like a skiff let loose in a hurricane, and it shamed her. But who was she to be ashamed with this stranger in her house? When she spoke, her voice was softer and revealed her hurt in a way that pierced Billy. “Why? I want to know why.”

Billy stepped toward her, but she turned her back to him.

“I want you to leave,” Hannah said. “Get out.”

“Where do you want me to go?”

She turned to face him now. “Just get away from me! Get out of my house!”

He didn't gather his sketchbook or clothes from the loft, no food or extra socks. When the door closed behind him, Hannah fell into a chair at the dining table. The sky hung low over the yard, heavy with oncoming rain. She wouldn't cry. Not after his lies. She found her gloves and stepped outside, the cold like a hard slap across her face. How could she have been so wrong? Her foolishness drove her outside to sit on the edge of the porch, her head in her hands, and her gloves soaked with tears.

Hannah tried to convince herself that if she could fix the fence, she could hold back her anger. How could she not have seen that those small hands were a woman's? Two hours since she'd seen Billy naked, and with each swing of the hammer toward the post, Hannah ticked through the deceptions. The bandage around Billy's chest was not treatment for broken ribs, but a disguise to flatten small breasts.
Breasts!
She spit like a man and worked like a man, but Billy was a
she
. Her muscles roped beneath her skin, as if her blood was thicker or pumped harder.

The most Hannah was able to learn about Billy she learned working alongside her, watching her throw herself into a task until she exhausted her energy, or the way she worked and reworked her drawings for the rig. Yet, behind Billy's swagger something softer lingered. Hannah recognized it in the careful way she watched out for her during the rescues, and in the portrait she'd drawn with Hannah's hair wild around her face, her sorrow palpable on the page. It had startled her in its intimacy.
No
man
could
know
me
like
that
. Still, she had not recognized Billy as a woman. How could she know? She recalled the way Billy stumbled around the room when she first woke on the hearth, as if land was an unsteady thing. Then later how she'd swaggered along the beach like she owned it, like she'd earned it and deserved it. But there had been a quality to Billy's listening, a kind of presence that had startled her in its affinity.

Hannah's anger took charge of the hammer, driving iron nails into the post where the fence had splintered. Nothing would hold it together now, but still she pounded until the wood collapsed. There were so many times Billy could've told her the truth. When she'd first woken in her living room. Hannah had saved her life after all. Didn't she deserve the courtesy of knowing who this person really was? Or when Billy decided to stay on, what about then? Billy was a liar and a sneak. Hannah couldn't trust her or anything she said. Hannah sat on the ground and swung the hammer into the frozen earth again and again, bombarding the dirt with her rage and a sadness she didn't want to claim.

Hannah leaned against the fence post, the hammer dangling from one hand, the weight of it an anchor against an endless sky that could have swept her up with the sheer force of everything she didn't know.

***

Billy stayed away for four days, then one morning she appeared in the doorway like an apparition. Hannah was sorting through clothing she'd tossed onto the chair by the front door. Inside the windowpanes, crystals of ice froze the glass. She didn't want to look at Billy, yet an ocean swell of feeling rose within her.

“You might as well come in,” she said.

Hannah led them into the kitchen where Billy took a seat at the table and waited for Hannah to speak. She moved crumbs back and forth with the edge of a spoon. The dishrag in Hannah's hand surprised her each time she folded it. Over and again, she folded it. If she had any sense at all, she wouldn't have let Billy in. She would demand that she leave. But she couldn't speak. She needed Billy if she wanted to keep the lighthouse and the rescues going. The past four days had been long and burdensome, with barn chores and repairs piling up on top of her lighthouse duties. Yet, she'd let herself get attached to someone who was untrustworthy, a liar.

“I don't know anything about you,” Hannah said finally, pushing the hair from her eyes, oceanic now with emotion. “You have to explain this to me. You can't pretend to be one thing and turn out to be another.” She wound the dishrag around her hands, then threw it down in the center of the table. “You've been living in my house.”

“It was the only way—”

“No, it wasn't. That's no excuse for not telling me. You lied to me!” Hannah paced back and forth by the table.

“You have to let me explain,” Billy said. She stood from the table and shoved her chair in. “I signed on to the
Cynthia
Rose
as William Pike for my own safety.”

“I saved your life! I deserve the truth. You could've told me at any time.” She tried to keep her voice down. She spun from Billy to face the fireplace. Arms across her chest, she stared into the ashes.

“I'm telling you now, Hannah.” When Billy stepped toward her, she moved away, as if she was being chased.

“What kind of a person does this? Do you think you're a man? Is that what you want?”

Billy stood before her like a wall, refusing to give in to her rage. “No, that's not what I want. I had to do this, Hannah. Now it's just easier.”

“Easier for who? For you? What did you suppose I would think?”

Billy leaned back against the wall and watched Hannah drop herself into the chair by the table. The wind outside shivered in the windows. It was time to get a fire going.

“I need to trust you, but you've hidden yourself all this time. You've made me and everyone else believe you were William Pike.”

“It's still me, Hannah.”

“But you're not who I thought you were. You're a stranger to me now. What am I supposed to think?” She wanted Tom to walk in the door with his familiar ease and set things right. He'd know what to do. But she didn't want to admit her failure. Was the Billy who'd drawn her likeness a fake? Did he pretend his intimacy and care for her?

Hannah couldn't take her eyes from the place where Billy flattened her small breasts with a cotton wrap. She couldn't forget the thin torso curved down into the hard lines of a female waist. A woman's body with a man's demeanor that was in part natural and in part practiced until it got down into her and became her. The woman was barely detectable beneath the sailor's swagger. What had seemed a man's silent reserve was in fact a woman's desire not to be known.

“I don't understand why you continue with this disguise. Is it your preference?”

“I became William Pike for my own safety. Now it just feels more like myself. If I could live as a woman dressed like this, without having to be a wife or a servant or a whore, I would, but the world isn't like that, Hannah.”

“You weren't afraid of being found out?”

“At first I was, but once I passed with the men on the ship, I got comfortable. I'm not the first, you know. There're other women who do what they have to do to get by. I met a woman who dressed as a man to sign on to a whaler.”

“I can't imagine that.”

“Well, it's true.”

“Still, you've lied to me. You've met people, Tom, Everett, the others.” Hannah shook her hands by her head as if to clarify her thoughts. “It would've been easier if you'd arrived as a woman to avoid the gossip of my taking in a strange man. So what do we do now?”

“I'll continue to live as William Pike, your workman. This is who I am now, Hannah. I can't go back.”

“What's your real name?”

“It's Blue.”

“I'll call you Billy.”

***

No matter what Hannah was doing—washing the dishes, fetching eggs from the coop, climbing the lighthouse stairs—she wondered how Billy had trained herself into that swagger, those rough manners and muscled arms. What was Billy and what was the disguise? Standing on the front porch, she watched Billy carry the toolbox toward the far fence, holding it out to one side with her elbow flexed, using the strength of her arm like a man. Hannah had come to rely on Billy's strength, on her hard work and companionship.

She wanted to trust her again, this stranger moving through her house with the same smells and bad habits. Nothing in her demeanor had changed. Not the way she cleaned her fingernails with her knife when she thought Hannah couldn't see her, nor the way she poked at the fire with a piece of kindling.

One night, as they sat in front of the fire, Hannah stared hard at Billy, about to say something, but she stopped herself.

“Just say it,” Billy said.

“Why? I just don't understand why.”

“I'm still the same person, Hannah.”

Her gaze lost in the orange and yellow glow of the fire, Hannah tried to understand who Billy was as a woman, who she was as the man Billy, and who she was now, this tangled combination of both. She didn't know if it mattered. She was still the Billy who'd created the lifesaving rig, the Billy she'd pulled from the water. Billy had helped her recover after the little girl drowned. She worked hard around the lighthouse and looked out for Hannah during the storms. Had she really done anything wrong? Yes, she'd lied. Still, Billy was this person sitting beside her, the same person who'd been sitting beside her for months now.

“We need to work on the lifesaving rig,” Billy said. “How long before we can test it on the water?”

“How do you propose we do that?” She held Billy's gaze.

“You'll anchor the old skiff offshore, then come in and run the line out to it. Even though there's no mast, we can test the system for running the rig back and forth over the water.”

“If that works, we'll have to take our chances and use it on a rescue. There's no further way to test it,” Hannah said. She stared into the fire, calm now and filled with thoughts of the lifesaving rig stretched over the water, running men from ship to shore while Billy maneuvered the ropes.

***

The next morning, Hannah stormed the kitchen, her skirt flapping around long johns, jacket flailing around her body as if trying to get hold. Water ran down the drainpipes from the gutters, and rain pelted Billy as she rubbed at her eyes to wake herself up. “You can't go out in this. We have to wait until it blows over.”

“It's not going to blow over. Hurry up.”

Hannah waited by the door, checking the length of wick on the lantern. Billy stepped into a pair of damp trousers and scurried down the ladder from the loft. She stuffed a hunk of cheese into her pocket and drank from the remains of Hannah's coffee. With one arm through the life ring, she carried it over her shoulder like a different kind of woman might carry a purse.

Outside, the violence of the rain silenced them. Hannah signaled Billy with a nod of her head,
this
way
, or a flick of her hand,
over
there
. Billy followed Hannah down the swaying staircase, matching each footstep one to the other so that she didn't slip on the small treads and fall to the beach below. The wind against the stairs terrified Billy. Rain ran down her jacket, chilling her through the oilskin. Hannah glided down the stairs as if there was no cold, no rain. She sailed on the wind, her skirt ballooning beneath her jacket.

On the beach, wet sand sucked at Billy's feet, and the weight of the life ring on her shoulder made walking strenuous. They patrolled to the north, heads down against the wind and rain. Billy scanned the waves for unfamiliar flecks of color, anything that should not be there, then her eyes drifted down to the beach where Hannah had pulled her from the wreck of the
Cynthia
Rose
. Why was she following Hannah through the rain?

“We're not going to find anything,” Billy said.

“You don't know that.”

A black wooden doll floated in on the wash. It stared out with startled white eyes, a yellow gash of a mouth, and red brush strokes of hair. Billy had seen dolls like this one. Ishema had put one on the shelf by her bed. The Jamaican children carried these dolls like totems. Women sold them in the streets and on the docks to travelers.

“What's that?” Hannah asked, stepping toward her, her breath hot, cheeks flushed with exercise. “Some kind of doll?”

Billy nodded.

“We ought to go out and take a look around, don't you think?” Hannah waded in to pluck the doll from the surf. She scanned the surfboat where Billy had organized the ropes and the life ring. “C'mon, what are you waiting for?”

They pushed the surfboat into the breakers, and Billy rowed them out past the surf to deep water. The sky smoldered. Billy matched the rhythm of the oars with the rise and fall of the boat. When the bow rose too high, she lifted herself up to avoid the shock of slamming down.

“Keep your eye out,” Hannah said.

A cluster of seagulls rose from the distance and dove near the boat, squawking like hungry children. There was the faintest snap of tattered sails. She held the oars still for a moment. The sounds of the wreck of the
Cynthia
Rose
swam through her, the men crying out as they leapt into the water, and her holding on to the creaking mast so that she didn't get swept into the cold. Then she'd found herself in the water all the same.

Hannah slapped her on the leg. “Look alive. You want to do rescues, you have to stay alert.”

“There's something over there!” Billy pointed to the small brig with its decks tilted at a steep incline and the bottom rail underwater. Several men stood on the high rail waving, one of them holding a small child, a Negro girl in a pale blue shift who clung to the man like an animal. Surf battered the windward side of the boat. A wall of water splashed the rail and soaked the men who hunched against the cold. Sails fluttered overhead, shredded and regretful. As they rowed closer, the hull took on greater proportions, its size exaggerated by the strange angle it formed against the sea, like an iceberg with most of its bulk underwater.

“Bring us alongside, but not close enough for them to climb aboard. They'll swamp us,” Hannah shouted, making sure the lifeline was available to run free and clear.

“Hallo! Over here! We're saved!” one of the men shouted in desperation and relief.

Hannah surveyed the group of people, noting their size and weight and shape, their physical condition. The mast tilted over waves that sloshed the ship's remains as the men braced their feet against the bulwark for balance. Billy scanned the crew for reasons of her own, her head down but her eyes furtive, always alert.