The Lightkeeper's Daughter (11 page)

She tried to prepare Murray for that, but of course he wouldn’t listen. “Och, they’ll never leave,” he said. “We’re too much of a unit for that.”

“A unit?” she said. “We’re drifting apart. We’ll be at each other’s throats if it goes on like this.”

And Murray said, “Alastair will be the keeper after me. Squid will catch the eye of one of those Coast Guard types. We’ll build her another house where she can bring up her children.”

She gaped at him. He had no idea that everyone but him was already thinking of leaving.

“I’ve picked out a spot,” he said. He was splicing new lines for the flag halyards, and he put down his tape and his fids. “Come on and I’ll show you,” he said.

It was a gusty day and the whirligigs rattled, then stopped. She followed Murray past the wooden lady at the pump, past the airplane that flapped its wings as they went by, like a bird they had startled, past the galloping horse and into the forest.

He veered off the boardwalk and went close to the cliffs. There was a circle of moss in a clearing. He said, “This is the place. Look at the view that they’ll have.”

She looked down the cliffs and across the channel. She saw a spot of bright red out on the reefs, tossed by the white of the surf. It was Alastair, paddling the kayak, heading straight out as the waves crashed on the rocks and shattered into feathery plumes. And then she saw the orcas, the killer whales, beyond him. Their fins flashed through the water, black scythes cutting thin little furrows. They spouted and breached. Alastair rode in a swell until she could see nothing but his head, and his hands with the paddle. Then the wave passed and he soared up on its green back, the kayak shedding water. The whales swam behind and before him, in a shimmering mist of breath.

“This will be the living room here,” Murray was saying. He had marked out the place with stakes and string and crimson ribbons of plastic. “They’ll have the best view on the island. The kitchen there; the bedrooms at the back.”

Alastair kept paddling. Leaning forward, he dragged himself through the water. He vanished in the trough, then rose again on the next wave. The whales went in circles around him.

“I suspect she’ll have two children,” said Murray. “So we’d better plan three bedrooms right off the bat. And maybe a study—what do you think?—where she can work with her shells and her jewelry.”

“It won’t happen,” she said. “She won’t stay.”

“Of course she will.” Murray came up through the moss and stood at the edge of the cliff. “Och, she might go away; I’ll grant you that. They both might go away for a while. But they’ll see what the world is like soon enough, and they’ll be home before the year is out. Mark my words, Hannah. They can’t stay away from the island.”

Alastair turned his kayak into the waves. They rolled below him, tilting him up their white-streaked faces, up their beards of foam, and he seesawed on the crests and went sliding down again. He put away his paddle and took up his flute instead, and the music that he made came to her in bits, in little squeals and shrieks that sounded to Hannah like voices in panic.

“Look at him there,” said Murray. “Where else could he do that? Why would he ever want to leave?”

She didn’t answer. It seemed to her that he’d left already.

“Poor Alastair,” says Hannah.

Squid mumbles something that Hannah can’t hear. Squid reaches out and, when Hannah steps closer, takes hold of her dress, squeezing big lumps in her fists.

“He couldn’t bear to go, and he couldn’t bear to stay,” says Hannah. She touches Squid’s shoulders. “But he loved you more than anyone.”

Squid groans.

“I blamed your father; God knows I did. I blamed myself and him.” She holds on to Squid with a fierceness. “But don’t think you had anything to do with it. You kept him alive.”

Squid pulls herself away. She wipes her nose with the back of her hand, then gets to her feet and shakes sand from her blouse and her jeans.

“I’m going up to the house,” she says. “Okay, Mom? I just want to go up to the house by myself.”

chapter eleven

September 13
.
They say that drowning is an easy way to die. They say that there’s a moment of panic and a moment of pain and after that there’s pleasure. You try to breathe but you can’t. Your body won’t let you. You go back through your life, and into a brightness of light. And at the end you’re happy and fearless.

So why do they scream? Why do they fight and struggle so
much? Why do they call for their mothers?

Squid lies on the bed in Alastair’s room. Stretched out on her stomach, her feet on his pillow, she props her chin on her left hand, and turns through the pages of Alastair’s book. In the pages, and in her mind, he’s thirteen years old again.

Last night we heard men drowning.

She remembers that day, the bleakest day in a long, bleak autumn. It brought a storm worse than any she had known and any that would follow. It was seven months before the
Odd Fellow
sank.

All through the morning, Murray tapped and tapped at the barometer, watching the pointer swing backward on the dial nearly as fast as a second hand moves. The clouds gathered in heaps, boiling dark tendrils as they swept up from the south. The wind rose with a fury that surprised even Murray. At noon it shrieked through the trees. At dusk it snatched the wooden lady from her pump and sent Old Glory galloping over the grass.

That evening, Alastair polished his oil-burning lantern and trimmed the wick. The chimney—thin as paper—tingled with a musical hum as each gust of wind howled at the side of the house. He set the lantern on his windowsill with a matchbook beside it, the cover open, one match torn out and left lying across the striker.

“If the beacon goes out,” he told her, “I want to be ready.”

But Murray kept them all together in the big house. He insisted on that, then insisted on going to the tower himself, though it wasn’t his turn for the weathers. He wore his oilskins and a black, floppy sou’wester. He called his boots Wellingtons. “Och, I’ll be needing my Wellingtons,” he said. “The lawn’s like an ocean out there.”

He was gone nearly an hour before they saw him— bent and staggering—fight his way back against the wind. A shrieking gust and a spray of cold rain came in behind him when he opened the door. His sou’wester had been torn from his head. His eyes, half blinded by spray, were as red as Christmas balls.

“The waves are breaking right over the bridge,” he said. “I’ve seen nothing like it. Nothing half so bad as this.”

The surf boomed and roared against the rocks. The bronze bell rang on the porch as a gust of wind pushed on the clapper.

“I thought I might get carried away,” said Murray. He hung his coat on a peg, and his shoulders were wet underneath. He pulled at his Wellingtons. “The flag’s gone. Nothing but tatters. The gusts are too strong for the meter to read, and it’s getting worse all the time.”

His feet came from his boots with a long, sucking squelch, and his woolen socks—sodden with water— drooped from his toes. A puddle spread around him. “I need a towel,” he said. “Hannah, can you fetch me a towel?”

Alastair squinted through the window. “Is the light still on?” he asked.

“Och, I didn’t look up,” said Murray.

But it was. Spray flew white as snow through the beacon’s twirling arms.

At eleven o’clock, Squid was in the kitchen with Alastair. The room was kept dark so that they could see through the big, south-facing window. A gust shook the house; the bell rang on the porch—a sharp, tingling peal. And Squid saw a flare sputter up into the rain and the wind, a thin line of red like an exclamation mark etched on the black of the pane.

Alastair went right to the window. He pressed his hands on the glass and leaned against it. He held his glasses in his hands, blinking his wet, gloomy eyes. “I wish I could see,” he said. “Oh, I wish I could see.”

“Dad!” shouted Squid. “Mom!” They came together into the kitchen. Rain slammed at the window, warping the glass, for an instant turning it white.

“Stand back from there!” said Murray. “That window’s next to go.”

Water went coursing down the glass, and another flare rose from the storm, swimming up through the ripples as the window shivered and crackled.

“Good lord,” said Murray. “There really is someone out there.”

Again, to Squid, it looked like an exclamation mark. And she saw a terrible sadness in the faintness of it, the futility. A scream for help without a sound.

Murray switched on the radio, the VHF. He unclipped the microphone from the little chrome holder. The cord twisted in coils round his wrist. From the speaker came a voice, a man’s voice that was surprisingly calm, though strange from the fear at the edge of it. He was saying, over and over, as steady as a machine, “Mayday, mayday, mayday.”

“Let go of the key,” said Murray, softly. “I can’t answer you, man, as long as you’re holding the key.”

Again the bell rang as they all faced the window, as the glass bulged toward them. The radio was over the sink, fixed under the cupboards. And the voice filled the room with its urgency.

“Mayday, mayday, mayday!”

“Let go of the key,” said Murray again.

At last the man did. And instantly another voice answered. It was deep and soothing, a God-like sound. “The vessel calling mayday,” it said. “This is Prince Rupert Coast Guard radio.”

There was a strength in that voice. It brought a calmness and a sense of trust, and Squid closed her eyes for a moment and let out a small sigh. That voice commanded a tranquility from the man on the boat, and asked, “What is the nature of your emergency?”

The boat, a troller named
Cape Caution
, was taking on water faster than the pumps could get it out. The boards that covered the cockpit had been torn away in the storm, and now the waves—rolling up from the stern—tumbled over the transom, pouring hundreds of gallons into the hull.

Murray replaced the microphone in its clip. He spoke straight at the window, as though his voice could carry clear across the sea. “Turn around, man. Go
into
the waves.” Hannah, close beside him, held on to his arm.

Then the God-like voice asked, “What is your position?”

The boat was just a few miles from Lizzie Island. It was making for the shelter of its sand and trees, heading for the beacon. Just a few miles to go, but right to leeward, chased by waves that hammered it down, that climbed aboard to sink it.

There were three people on board, the fisherman said. Himself, and two of his sons.

“Do you have a lifeboat?” asked the Coast Guard.

“No, sir,” said the fisherman.

“Do you have survival suits?” There was no answer. Again the Coast Guard asked, “Do you have survival suits?”

And the man answered, “One. We only have one.”

“Oh, God,” said Hannah. She leaned her head on Murray’s shoulder. “Oh, Murray, the poor man.”

What would he do? wondered Squid. What would anyone do? She saw the father tearing open the bag, hauling from it this big orange thing like a man without flesh. He throws it down on the deck. “Put it on!” he commands. But who does he look at? Which of his sons does he save? Do they fight to see who gets it, this one little chance to survive? Does son battle with son? Son against father? Or do they all stare at this thing lying on the deck and shout at one another, “You put it on!” Would the horror be greater, or less, if you were the one in the suit?

“For heaven’s sake,” said Murray. “
Someone
put it on.”

The Coast Guard sent a cutter. The voice like God said it would get there in ninety minutes.

“Too late,” said Murray. “That boat will either be here or be gone.”

For half an hour the Coast Guard coaxed the troller along. And the McCraes, in the kitchen, listened as the fisherman came toward them. In the background of his radio they heard a motor thrumming, and the whine of the wind in his rigging. They heard the fear come to his voice, leave it again, and return. It washed over him with the regularity of each giant wave.

“The stabilizers won’t stay in the water,” he said. “I can’t see the deck anymore.”

Calm and deep, the voice asked, “Are you making progress?”

“We can see the island. We can see the houses on the island.”

“Turn around, man,” said Murray.

“How could he?” said Squid. She still stared at the window, at the blackness. “He’s too close to go back.”

For a long time, the fisherman didn’t talk. A tree shattered outside. The gust of wind rushed on through the forest with a sound like tearing cloth, howled along the roof, and the bell rang twice as rain thundered on the shingles like cattle hooves. In the kitchen, Squid saw, Murray and Hannah and Alastair were all leaning forward, still facing the window.

“Cape Caution,”
said the Coast Guard, and waited for an answer.
“Cape Caution.”
Another long silence.
“Cape
Caution
, this is Prince Rupert Coast Guard radio.”

“They’re gone,” said Murray softly.

“No,” said Hannah. “They’ve come so close. They
have
to make it now.”

“Cape Caution. Cape Caution.”

Alastair rubbed his hands together. “Oh please, God,” he whispered.

“Cape Caution. Cape Caution.”

Murray reached for the radio switch. But his hand gave a jerk as the fisherman’s voice leapt from the speaker. It was so matter-of-fact.

“The engine’s gone; the water’s over the floor.” Behind him was a crashing sound, a breaking of the timbers. And then the screaming started. One voice, and then three, all of them hollering and screaming. It lasted only an instant, and then it was quiet again.

There was only a bleating, useless voice asking,
“Cape
Caution? Cape Caution?”

The cutter arrived just after midnight. It fired white flares into the storm, a stream of flares that sizzled and popped, making patches out on the ocean. Wreckage came ashore, but never a body. And never a survival suit.

September 14
. I keep wondering. What would I do if that
was me on the boat—me and Squid and Dad—and we only
had one survival suit? The best thing, really, would be for Dad
to put it on. And then he could hold us both and keep us out of
the water. Dad could float for a long, long time. But it would
never happen that way. Who would it be best to save, I wonder. Squid who’s youngest, or Dad who’s oldest. It would have
to be one or the other.

September 15.
What difference does it make if you live to be
ninety or only nineteen? Why is it so awful if a baby dies, but
not an old, old man? They’ll both be dead for the same length
of time. I think there must be a heaven to go to that sort of
evens things out. After all, if I was a tortoise I’d live a hundred
years, but if I was a mayfly I would be alive for just one day.
And then, after millions of years in heaven, I’d be the same age
either way. I think I’ve got it figured out. But Squid says it’s
wrong.

He came to her with his ideas. He’d made a graph that showed all of time, a trillion billion years in a line across the page. At the left side was the start of the world, and half an inch later he’d made a little mark and labeled it “Today.” Crowded to the right of that were a lot of little marks that made one giant smudge.

“What’s all that?” she asked.

“Lifetimes,” said Alastair, and told her about the mayfly and the tortoise. “See?” he said. “If you look at all the time in heaven they’re just the same age in the end.”

She said, “But would you rather be the tortoise or the fly?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, breathing through his nose. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

She pointed at the page. “So what’s the lifetime here for idiots?”

September 16
. I’ve decided to read the Bible. I snuck it up to
my room and started reading a little bit every night. Genesis
was pretty good, but I can’t figure out where all the people in
the valleys came from if God only made Adam and Eve. I’m
praying for Mom. I wish she was happier. And I’m praying
that my eyes get strong. I guess I should really just scrunch up
my glasses. But I don’t have enough faith for that yet.

She heard him praying at night, his quiet voice going on and on. He asked her strange questions: “How much rain do you think it would take to cover Lizzie Island? How big is a cubit, anyway?” And, slowly, he lapsed into the first of his times of lonely brooding.

He looked smaller because he was always hunched over. All four of them could be squashed into one little room, but she could look at Alastair and think he was all alone. She would walk with him down the boardwalk, and suddenly he would turn and sprint off through the trees.

In the days that followed the storm, they replaced battered shingles torn from the roof, then cleared the trees blown down on the boardwalk. Murray worked the chain saw in a cloud of oily smoke as the sawdust flew against his legs. Then he turned off the clattering engine and said, “That’s enough for today,” and Alastair was gone before the sentence was finished.

“We have to give the lad some time,” said Murray, later, while they sat on the grass as he sharpened the saw. Murray would never put away a tool that was dirty or dull.

“How much time?” asked Squid.

Murray shrugged. He sat with the chain saw between his legs, filing at the teeth. “He’s got to sort things out. Things he’s never fathomed.”

“And what if he can’t?” said Hannah. She’d put on a dress that was printed with flowers. A honeybee buzzed around her, darting in and out toward the gaudy colors on the cloth.

Squid lay between her parents, on her stomach on the grass.

“Well, he has to,” said Murray. “It’s as simple as that.” The file rasped across the teeth, three strokes to each one. Squid hated the sound it made.

“When I was a boy,” said Murray, “there was an explosion in the mine. For two days we didn’t know who was alive and who was dead, and my father was down there all the time.” He wiped his forehead, rubbing at the spot above his nose. “I remember the women, how they waited for news. And I remember the searchers coming up with their faces all black.”