Lighthouse Island (33 page)

 

Chapter 49

T
hen the hurricanes arrived, typhoons of wind that did not stop. Winds drove white-topped waves up the inlet in violent ranks and they could no longer set nets or make a way through the whipping bracken on a pig hunt. Like everyone else, they were hungry. Like everyone else, they were unnerved by the news that the Facilitator had been executed. It was not broadcast because of his rank but the people in the cinder-block houses had now seen at least five executions and so they knew. They could imagine. In fact they could not unimagine it.

The new Facilitator, Standford West, was supposed to be reassuring but he was suspect, probably a computer-generated image.

Chan the Uncanny stared out his window at the tempest and when electrical storms struck, the bottle house was filled with an illumination like the methylated spirits of lightning decanted throughout the rooms.

Then in the middle of the night a shock of stunning thunder roared down the inlet with a force that shook the windows. The next morning Chan went up the road on foot to see what had happened, slogging foot by foot through the mud, head down against the wind. At the end of the inlet, as Old Number Four Road began its climb upward, he came upon the site where an avalanche had come down along with half the mountain. The rains had loosened the scree on the treeless mountainside and the road ended in a great rockfall, spattered with the wiglike bracken torn up by the roots. They were out of food and cut off from any deliveries and Chan knew that no more would come. He stood at the foot of millions of tons of fallen rock with his ax in his hand.

As Chan looked at the barricade, a man in a uniform came climbing down the tipped and smoking stone. He was soaked dark and his lips were white. He was netted all over with thin streams of blood as if he had been hit with rat shot. The wind shrieked among thin edges of slabs and boulders freshly broken and pale as doves. The man's khaki pants were torn at the knees and elbows. He paused on a slab, looking down.

You, he said. Rain cascaded all around him, stone to stone.

They stared at each other.

What? said Chan.

I know you. I know your face. It's on the flyers. Escapee.

Yes, said Chan.

You low-life shit. You scum. Important big man higher-up. Convicted of abusing children. I read it.

They made it up, said Chan. His face was expressionless and he leaned on the ax handle, casual in the tearing rain.

Yeah, yeah. Get up here and help me with Inspector Grandin. He's injured. The truck is smashed. It's on the other side of the rockfall. We barely escaped it.

No, said Chan.

Yes, you will, asshole. You're under arrest. That ax is classified as a weapon. Put it down.

Come and take it, said Chan.

There were no more fuel pellets, no soap or citrus-drink powder, tobacco, or baking powder or the heavy flour from unknown grains. The children were hungry and a father sat behind his leaking cinder-block house and wept into his hands. What could you do, what could you do?

Others in the leaking houses could hear him and their hearts ached for him but that night was the trial of James Orotov and his accomplice, Sendra Bentley, the sexual brigand. They sat riveted; it was something to take your mind off images of the Facilitator in handcuffs, the flooding. Sendra Bentley had escaped from a maximum-security prison by shoving a guard into a giant clothes dryer and turning it to “permanent press.” She and Orotov had been arrested while trying to board an expensive and luxurious private jet in a tony higher-up estate. The crime was so serious there was extreme pressure from the watching public for their televised execution. James Orotov bent forward in his wheelchair and put his hands in his face and cried out,
You can't imagine the things she knows how to do. I was her slave!

And Sendra Bentley in a beret and tight sweater and red lipstick struck him and said,
Shut up, you fool
.

After that, the television failed. It winked several times and the picture shrank to a point of blue light and went dead.

C
olin stood in the doorway and handed the bannock to Oli and then hung his dripping coat on a nail. Best I could do, he said.

Everett the printer wrote on the first page of his wallpaper book:
The Five Companions met on the 25th day of continual storm.
I suppose this is a kind of chronicle now, he said. It seems a little overambitious. I mean, are we that important?

Yes, said Oli. We're alive and we have souls. She laid the bannock to one side of the fire to warm it and then turned back with a whirl of her skirts, stitched together from the brightest scraps she could find in the used-clothing bales. You matter to yourself anyway, don't you? The stone floor gleamed with water and mud.

“The Chronicle of the Five Companions.” Everett hesitated. This was supposed to be for my interviews with old people.

We don't have any old people, said Oli. So just go ahead and keep a chronicle of . . . She paused. Well, of us.

I'm old, said the Toastmaster. He slipped the shuttle into the net weave, his tatty coat shining with stiff nap. But, sir, I would be willing to not be counted as old. Verily, I forgo the honor.

We just made ourselves up, said Everett. He was still hesitant and a deep layer of doubt writhed about in his mind over the audacity of making yourself up. It was kind of a little clandestine amusement.

But we
are
the Five Companions, said Oli. She draped her wet shawl on a chair back and turned it toward the flames. Because we say so. We get to say. She laid her hand on Everett's steaming sleeve. Have courage.

It could be found, said Everett. My handwriting could be identified.

They sat in silence.

We could assign somebody to throw it in the sea, said Colin.

I will, said the Toastmaster. If it came to that. And me with it.

It was another night of hammering wind and the surf whipped into volcanoes of snowy water hurling boards and barrels and roofs at the shoal rocks at the mouth of the inlet. Chan held the egg in his hand as if it were one of those Celtic eggs that had inside it a falcon and inside the falcon's beak a ring and engraved on the inside of the ring some magic word. He revolved the egg between two palms and said that the time was upon them to both pray and do.

We have to leave, he said. The five of us. Or starve.

To where? said Everett. Where
is
there?

Banefield, said the Toastmaster. The agricultural station at Banefield.

How? said Oli.

Chan said, We hire Gandy. We hire his ship.

He isn't a taxi, sir, said the Toastmaster. And he's a hard man.

What have we got to pay him with? Chan sat with his thick forearms across his knees. We must have something he needs. Listen up. There is great peril facing us. Chan slapped the egg from one palm into the other. They could hear the booming of the surf beyond the windows as it tore the old dock to pieces. Great peril and starvation. We have to imagine striking out, onto the land, or the sea.

There may be limits to thinking things up, said Everett. I don't know what they would be but they're probably
there
.

Chan said, So let them come and confiscate my imagination, go for it, bring it on.

The Toastmaster gripped the arms of his chair. They'll do worse than that, my dear sir, he said. Take care what you say.

Bring it on, said Chan. His Oriental eyes were fixed on the leaping flames, the deep scar through his lip was outlined and his expression was hard. Here I am, I'll tell them my name, that's my front door. We can sit here and do this huddling thing. But if we think and plan and move, I tell you we will dance before the gates of our enemies.

Silence; they thought about it. None of them knew how to garden and it was too wet and too late in the year and there were no tools, there were no seeds. Where to get seeds? No goats or sheep or donkeys or cows or chickens and anyway they did not know how to feed animals or take care of them. They had no way to leave except on foot. They would have to fill out applications for travel permits to go anywhere. None of them knew what lay in the interior. And where was Primary now? Where were the inspectors? Who would accept their applications?

We don't even know how to make soap, said Oli. How do you make soap?

With ashes, said Chan. He shoved the rebar poker into the coals again. Every time has its time and this time's time is now. His hair drifted in frosted spirals in the heat of the fire. I imagine a dragon will come out of the sea and it will attack us but we will defeat it. We will set the dragon's body on fire and out of the fire something mean and small screams and flies away. Nothing left but ashes.

Everett said to himself,
Then the Companions set the dragon on fire.

Chan turned and stared at the other Four Companions and a gust of wind roared down the chimney and blew evaporating sparks out of the fireplace. He said, We are going to have to find out if Banefield is real because hey, news to you, otherwise we are going to starve.

Everett thought for a moment. His expression grew dreamy. He said, A journey by sea, to strange countries. He ran his hand over the flocking and garlands of the wallpaper pages, generic birds that flew from edge to edge and far beyond.

They handed around triangles of smoking bannock and ate them carefully. They considered Banefield, the mythical village of Barkley Sound. Oli had heard that it was called Barkley Sound either because of barking seals sliding from the rocks there, or because of a black-and-white dog that sat on a headland among the gorse flowers and barked at boats going past. It was some unknown distance to the south, on the edge of a dangerous coast called the Graveyard. It was there that scientists or perhaps magicians had saved all the old heirloom seeds and knew how to raise animals, the secret chemistry of yeast breads; they knew how to build cider mills and presses, which is to say, how to make a wheel roll on an axle.

Gandy says there are people on the island with the lighthouse, said Oli. We need more people than just us, don't we?

Yes, said Colin, and I triangulated . . .

Exactly, said the Toastmaster. Sir, I know who they are. That Orotov man, the crippled one, is a cartographer, sir. He would know the way. The Toastmaster tied off the last warp string of the net and laid down the shuttle. The Shalamovs, talkative people that they were, told me all about the Orotov brothers when they shipped out of here. Said the Orotovs might come someday. Indeed, it must be them.

We can't take a crippled man, said Chan.

Gandy said he saw the guy walking around, said Everett.

Let me speak, said Colin. He made a nervous gesture at his elderly father.

Chan jumped up and put the china egg in Colin's hand and took the top hat from the Toastmaster's silvery head, jammed it onto Colin's, and said, Everybody shut up.

Colin said, The uplink to Big Radio is in the lighthouse tower. He returned the top hat to his father and sat down again with a determined look and crossed arms.

What? said Chan.

I triangulated it, said Colin. Yes, for sure.

Big
Radio
? In that lighthouse?

It is, it is, and there's a transmitter that feeds through the satellite uplink. The woman there, probably the crippled man's wife, must be messing with the radio transmitter. I think probably by mistake. She's turned the mike on by mistake.

I thought it was down in Houston! Chan stared at him. Or what used to be called Houston.

Trust me, said Colin, and took off his taped-together glasses and wiped them. It would be so nice if somebody would.

Oli took the egg and said, The sea has many voices, many gods and many voices.

The Dry Salvages, said Everett.

Then, we go to the lighthouse and get them to come with us, said the Toastmaster.

Everett jumped up, clutching his book in his fingers stained with experimental ink. Why not? The television is dead, why not?

Why not! cried Oli. The inspectors will never get past the rockfall!

The inspectors are
dead,
said the Toastmaster. Squashed under the landslide!

Chan hesitated a moment and then said, Yes, the inspectors are dead.

They all began to yell and dance up and down. Oli cried out, in a fit of daring, We'll just leave! I don't care if I die, it would be worth it!

Colin stood by the FM radio, his hand on the bar dial.

Think of sea-journeys to unknown coasts and risk and discovery and all those in peril on the sea. Think of curious and vigorous people and the ridicule they have endured, now standing on the prow of a ship shaped like a raven skimming into the fog of Barking or Barkley Sound with a black-and-white dog running along a shoreline after them because the first shall be last and the last shall be first. Think of the brave crews and a person who has a chart and explosive thoughts and azimuth compasses and sextants, master of longitudes.

We have to go, said Oli. And I will not be left behind.

Then let's start figuring this out, said Chan. Supplies, stuff to offer Gandy.

Something was gathering in the room, ghosts, or things of another world, bodiless visitors out of the storm or the people who had belonged to the Feet who had walked all the way over the ocean bottom to say,
Now, now
.

Chan said, To the lighthouse. And then to Barking Sound. The time has come. He stood up and spun an unlit cigarette between his fingers. They know it and we know it; the time has come for the kingdom of dreams to go on the offensive.

To Barking Sound, then, said Everett, with his blank book in his hands.

Colin the Radio Guy said, To Barking Sound.

 

Chapter 50

C
olin lived for words and signals floating out of the stormy air and into his headphones, up on the mountain in his radio shack. He traded for point contact diodes, capacitators, and breadboards from the black market scrapper ships. Late at night he listened to the pirate station in Nootka and the TV audio and numbers stations with his thin shoulders hunched and his taped glasses askew. Once upon a midnight he had heard the legendary “Lincolnshire Poacher,” eight bars of a folk tune played over and over, coming from some distant place. He could not figure it out and so left it. He stalked Primary transmissions and handed on the information to the Five Companions. They had all cheered when he brought the news that the
Primary Enforcer
had gone down, and they gloated over her Mayday.

Colin was an adept at lines of sight, a Druid of invisible talk. In his suffocating shack he put on his handmade headphones and smoked cheap tobacco. He ran his antenna up a hundred-foot Douglas fir that the loggers had missed, and then strung it sideways to another. It was powered by a jerry-built wind charger. His antenna swayed and sprayed rainwater as the Douglas fir was battered by winds.

Colin could receive but not reply to anyone, nor could he call for help or ask where the supply truck was or determine what was happening elsewhere or ask for local weather or find out who had charts. All FM and VHF radio traffic was coastal, broadcasting no more than thirty miles up and down the coast and nothing could reach the interior. This was because all FM traveled line-of-sight and so struck the sides of mountains and rebounded or was absorbed by wet bracken or eaten in flight by lightning. But Big Radio, from its satellite relay twenty thousand feet above, could reach all the coasts and the interior and all the ships at sea.

Chan sat patiently with his thick forearms on his thighs and his coat collar turned up. Outside the radio shack the winter bracken was starched with frost and the mountaintops sprinkled with their first winter snow. Colin's wind charger purred like a cat. Chan listened and smoked. Colin turned his FM dial to 88.3 and Big Radio told them of the Christmas celebrations at Dingley Dell, but around and behind Male Voice One was another voice, barely audible. It sounded like Female Voice One, as if they were together.

Is that her?

Colin nudged the bar dial. That's her. She's breaking in, Chan. There's a transmitter in that rig and she's turned it on by mistake. The people living there. Her. She doesn't even know it.

You're amazing, said Chan.

Oh, thanks, said Colin.

You did this triangulation thing.

Yes, said Colin. And see, see, if we could
get
it, we could
transmit
. Oh, oh, transmit. Colin grabbed his own cheeks. I could die. Transmit.

Yes, and if a Primary gunship picks us up? Forty-millimeter mortars, right through the lighthouse tower.

And before they hit us I would say, “You are evil, we are going to kill you all, come to us, we are waiting for you.” Colin smirked a nerdlike murderous smirk.

You are bloodthirsty, said Chan.

I dream bloodthirsty things, said Colin. I want that uplink. In an avid, personal sort of way. If Forensics or Primary gets a fix on the tower, yes, then they'll hit the base and the sea will roar past in white procession filled with wreck. He crushed out his cigarette in an oyster shell. Chan, where did you get that egg?

Chan smiled and punched Colin lightly in the shoulder. Son, I laid it.

T
he next night Chan jumped out of the rowboat into the surf that surged around the little island at the mouth of the inlet. Colin and Everett jammed the oars in sand as he fought his way through the freezing, sucking undertow and hung the light on one little juniper. It was a signal for Captain Gandy or Captain Britt Contreras. They hoped it would not be drowned out or blown out, and that one of the captains would see it.

Afterward Chan sloshed up the path through the dark and the lashing fern, the spiny gorse. He hoped his fire was not out. He slept alone and would always sleep alone because when some woman discovered the false charges that had sent him to the labor camps she would gasp and turn away. Door slam, so long, how could you? Beast. A tiny rose of light gleamed out of the streaming bottle house, the last of the fire.

T
he Five Companions sat at the table in the main cabin of the
Bargage Maru.
The schooner rocked on its lines at the collapsing dock in the noise of the beating sea. Chan and Colin had managed to net one sockeye as a gift for the lighthouse people and it thumped steadily in a tub.

Gandy regarded the pile of coins, the sack of coal, a new gillnet woven of some kind of stolen and valuable nylon line, a carpenter's level, and a come-along.

Any of you get seasick?

None of them did or none of them would admit to it.

Gandy leaned forward and said, Miss Oli, are you the only woman?

I can sleep anywhere! she cried. She weltered anxiously in her bright layers. I don't need a cabin!

Chan said, And Colin can fix your radios and there's more coal if you want it to trade.

Gandy said, I can use the coal. My radios are fine. He shifted in his chair and his waxed yellow slicker made cracking noises. His lower teeth gleamed in the blond beard of his undershot jaw. They say there was an old experimental station in Barking Sound but I always thought it was defunct a long time ago. Called Bamfield. Changed to Banefield. Maybe because it turned dangerous, like “bane.” Barking Sound is south of here, past Lighthouse Island. It's just before that coast they call the Graveyard. I have no charts, just my rutter.

Just a rutter, said Chan. Oh man. Handmade, sea-level observation.

Yes. And if we pass the entrance to the sound by mistake in the night or in a fog, we end up in the Graveyard. The storms are pretty steady from the northwest now and they'll drive us onto the coast. It's all cliffs, straight up and down as a wall. It will smash us like a sawmill. So we can
not
miss that entrance, eh? Beyond that, I have no word. I think this Banefield place is supposed to lie inside the sound to the northeast. You make your own deals at Lighthouse Island with this uplink, but I would give some vital part of my anatomy for charts.

The Toastmaster cried out, Well, sir, well now, the Shalamovs said the man on Lighthouse Island is supposed to be a cartographer as well as a demolition expert.

Ah, said Gandy. You don't say.

Yes, the guy in the wheelchair.

He's not, said Gandy. Or one of them isn't.

So, we should find out, said Chan.

The Five Companions tried not to look at Gandy but at their hands or somewhere else for fear of a refusal. The Toastmaster turned his worn silk top hat around and around in his hands. He had carefully waxed the seams in all their shoes against the salt water and Oli had stitched travel bags for each of them out of pants legs with her avid, winking needle. The bags lay in a pile beside all the food they could collect, wrapped in a rubber sheet and tied. They had fashioned for themselves clumsy sea hats. Into each of the travel bags they had portioned out their treasures: matches, a metal mirror, a knife, a spoon, squares of chenille for towels, slivers of coarse brown soap. When they had pulled the drawstrings shut they felt like Argonauts.

Well then. Chan regarded the glow of his cigarette.

Finally Gandy said, I have a shotgun and a rifle. Are you prepared to shoot?

Chan said, Damn straight.

The others looked at one another nervously.

Captain Gandy spread his hand on the table. And what about the people here?

I showed them how to set nets, said Chan. And traps and where the pig trails are. He lifted his shoulders. They'll do it if they got kids.

Gandy shook his head. Maybe, he said. He turned to Colin. You better take care of those glasses, he said. Because there's a big breakdown in the city. Bad, bad flooding. There may never be any more eyeglasses.

Colin took off his glasses and wiped the lenses and stared at them thoughtfully.

Chan said, Then you'll take us? Yes or no.

Yes.

The Toastmaster said, Gentlemen, and lady, we must all swear on something in immortal and gripping phrases.

A
nd so they sailed away from Saturday Inlet and the long black schooner's keel bit into salt water the color of jade and her patched sails filled with storm and tore her onward and south, her prow bursting into the cresting rollers.