Lightkeeper's Wife (6 page)

She circled the house by the outhouse, peered over the edge of the dunes and down the long staircase to the beach. Then she started across the yard toward the barn. The worn cedar shingles and high barn door were painted green, but chipped and peeling like so many of the barns in Dangerfield. The heavy door slid back along its track, leaking afternoon light into the barn. “I know you're in here, Billy,” she said. “There's nowhere else you could be.”

Her voice echoed, and Nellie stomped the hay in her stall, and the chickens flapped their useless wings.

“You should've let me drown.” His voice wavered and slurred, and he couldn't get hold of it.

Hannah walked toward the sound. “Where are you? What are you doing out here?” She inched her way toward the back of the barn where she thought he was hiding in one of the stalls. Then she spoke in a gentle voice, as if coaxing a skittish dog. “Come on out of there now, Billy. It's not good for you to be out in this cold air.”

As she stepped forward, a cluster of barn swallows swept down from a railing over the loft and performed an uncanny display of acrobatics as they darted around her.

Billy dragged himself out from the stall at the end of the barn and staggered toward Hannah with his head in his hands, the smell of whiskey emanating from his every pore. When he lifted his face, his eyes were rimmed in red, bloodshot, and wet. “You don't even know me. I could be anyone,” he said.

“You're drunk.” Hannah stood with her hands on her hips, the sharp edge of her anger rising. “I risked my own life to save you, and now you're out here drinking and feeling sorry for yourself? You think I don't know you're hiding things? You think I've never met a liar? I'm not afraid of you.”

He didn't say anything.

“If you're drinking and acting like a fool, I can't do my job.” Her voice was angry now, and she couldn't stop. “My job as keeper here is more important than you. Do you understand?”

Billy's emotions shifted across his face like weather: angry at first, then startled and contrite.

“We've got weather coming in. You can leave here if you want to, or else you can go inside and sleep it off so you can help me later on. Looks like you're strong enough to make yourself useful. You can start by closing that door,” Hannah said. “I'll be up at the lights.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Billy said quietly. He fastened the barn door by swinging the wooden boom down into the clamp, and then he walked unsteadily back to the house.

Hannah's livid energy carried her swiftly up the lighthouse stairs. He had no business drinking the liquor she kept on hand, no business wasting her time. Who did he think he was? By the time she reached the landing atop the lighthouse, her duties took her attention off her anger. She took her time filling the oil lanterns, trimming the wicks, and wiping the windows. No dousing the lights this morning, not with this fog.

She didn't want to go back to the house. Who was to say what this William Pike was capable of? Her father's drinking had never frightened her, but she'd seen other men become dangerous. Once when she went fishing with Tom, they were approached by a group of drunken men swaggering down the beach. It was during the end of her first year at the lighthouse. She and Tom carried rods and some live eels in a wicker basket and walked north where the wind was at their backs and they could cast over the outgoing tide.

As the men neared she saw them handing a bottle back and forth.

“Hey, you catch anything? We seen you casting,” one of the men called out. The others laughed, snickered, and did not meet her eyes.

“What's in the basket?” A face that caved in on itself, rheumy eyes and drooping eyelids, seemed no match for the man's broad shoulders and legs strong as stanchions.

“What do you want?” Tom asked.

“Maybe we just want to talk to your woman. I want to see her catch something.” The man moved toward Hannah, an eye on Tom, watchful. “Go ahead, little miss.”

“No thank you,” Hannah said, her words dry like salt on her tongue. His eyes taunted her. She wanted to beat him back like a dog, but that would only satisfy him.

“Listen to her.
No
thank
you
,” he said, mocking her. “Who do you think you are?”

“I'm the lightkeeper's wife at Dangerfield.”

“So you think you're somebody. That it?”

“And who are you? What brings you to this coast?”

“You got no place asking me nothing,” he said, and thrust his hand toward her throat as if that's where it had been headed all along. Hannah stepped aside, and in one fluid motion Tom had his fishing knife unsheathed and held firmly across the man's neck, the glinting blade scraping black whiskers.

“Don't think I won't do it. I've killed men like you for less. I'd be happy to do it again and let the tide get rid of you for good.”

The man searched his gang for help, but they stood mute as children.

“Go back north from wherever you came and keep walking. I don't want to see you here again. Next time I'll be down here with a gun, you hear me?”

The man nodded.

“You hear me?” Tom said.

The man's shoulders hunched and he said, “Couldn't help but hear ya. You're screaming in my goddamned ear. Now, soon as you get your knife off my throat, we'll head on out.”

Tom slid his knife across the man's throat so that it left a thin scratch, then shoved the man away from him. Without stopping or looking back, the man led his gang away. Tom vibrated with energy and fear. He had been ready to kill, and for her. She saw it in him and was overcome with her own fear and relief. She collapsed against him, his arms around her so different from John's in their longing. His heart was a solid force against her cheek and when she tilted her face up, his passion was fierce and she received his kiss willingly, felt it through her body like wind. When he pulled away from her, they were both embarrassed and stared down the beach after the men.

“Have you really?” Hannah asked. “Killed someone, I mean.”

“I never have, but I would've just then. I would've cut his throat.”

She felt safe with him, with John's best friend. He would look out for her. They never spoke of the kiss again.

Billy put himself to work stacking wood on the front porch and closing the storm windows. He carried wood inside and stoked the fire, put water on for coffee and swept the kitchen floor. If Hannah kicked him out, where would he go? He had no money, no strength. He felt trapped in her house as Annie had been trapped aboard the
Intrepid
. After losing the baby, Annie was no longer content to sit belowdecks mending or stitching samplers, reading or writing letters for Daniel. The confines of the captain's quarters, the grief and loneliness that resided there, drove her mad. He remembered her frenzy as she fetched a bucket of hot water and lye soap and set to scrubbing the floors and walls of the small berth until there wasn't a particle of the cabin board she hadn't cleansed.

He'd do the same for Hannah. He couldn't lie in bed knowing all his shipmates had perished. He couldn't rest. Why was he the one to survive? After everything he'd done. On his knees, he ran a wet rag over the floorboards, scrubbing at the day's grime while Annie's faraway world drew him back.

During her years at sea with Daniel, Annie had collected small dolls from every port. It was customary to give a gift upon boarding another captain's ship, and she usually brought small drawings she made of islands they'd visited, or a handkerchief with a border of yellow daisies. She received gifts from other captains' wives in return.

She gathered her collection of dolls and dropped them into a canvas sack, and she remembered the dolls the island women had brought to her for luck, small wooden totems painted bright colors. With the sack over her shoulder she stepped up to the deck. At the ship's transom, the wake rippled behind them, indicating their progress across the expanse of sea. Annie leaned against the aft rail and dumped the sack of dolls into the water. Then she watched them bob in the ship's wake and drift like buoys. When she dropped the sack in after them, it caught the wind like a sail and drifted up and swirled before falling into the sea.

Day in and day out the sailors ran up the rigging to carry out the first mate's order to trim the topsail, or raise the main to flatten the sails. They maneuvered rigging, spars, and sails in easy, fluid motions, bending their bodies into the work so that they became part of the system of wind, water, and sail. Annie watched one sailor make a halyard fast around a belaying pin with several quick flicks of his wrist. “What's your name?”

“Robinson, ma'am,” the sailor stuttered, surprised to find the captain's wife speaking directly to him. He was no more than a boy, the stubble on his chin barely grown.

“Robinson, I want you to show me how to do that.”

“Yes, ma'am.” He responded as if given a direct order. The belaying pin was a large wooden peg stuck down through a hole in the ship's rail so that there were two vertical sections of peg exposed. “Okay, ma'am, you wrap the end of the line around the top part, like this, then take it down and cross it over and around behind the bottom part like this, then around front and cross over again to go behind the top part. You make figure eights around the pin like that,” he said, pulling on the loose end of rope to show how it held. “There you have it.”

Annie waited while he unfastened the rope, then she made awkward figure eights around the peg as instructed and pulled on the rope to test her knot.

“It only takes practice, ma'am.”

With Daniel, Annie maintained a distracted silence. There was nothing to say. For all his authority with the crew, Daniel appeared to be at a loss as to how to reach her. To humor her, he encouraged her curiosity about the boat. At least it created conversation between them.

Once she spent more time on deck, she began eating again, and the color came back to her cheeks. She sat across the table from Daniel in his cabin and asked endless questions. “I'd like to learn to steer the ship,” she told him one afternoon. “I sailed a small boat as a girl. The principle's the same, isn't it?”

The whale oil lanterns flickered across the beadboard walls and left a slight stink in the small quarters. But the light was soft, and the food was good, and they ate hungrily after a day's hard work. Daniel wiped his bread across his plate, then looked up at her, surprised. “Yes, it is, but this is not a small boat. There are twenty-three sails to watch and keep trim, not to mention the weight on the helm. It's no easy task.”

“Let me try taking the wheel, Daniel. With you alongside,” she said.

Daniel shook his head and put down the bread. His voice rose with authority. “You don't understand, Annie. I've a reputation to uphold in front of my men. If you gallivant around the ship doing as you please, the crew loses faith in me as captain of this vessel. I must maintain my authority at all costs. I cannot have you manning the helm. It's just not done. There's many a sailor on this ship that objects to a woman aboard at all. Women are considered bad luck. You know that, Annie.”

“That's rubbish, Daniel. I've been sailing with you for years. If you believed in that nonsense, you wouldn't have allowed me to come in the first place.” Annie dropped her utensils across her plate with a violent clatter. She fixed her eyes on Daniel. He wasn't handsome, but he wasn't unattractive either, tall and lean, with broad shoulders, olive complexion, and dark close-cropped hair.

He reached for her hand. “I must ask you to respect my decision,” he said, his words gentle now.

She pulled her hand from his.
And
if
I
cannot?

Daniel stood. “I don't understand your reckless mood.” He tossed his linen napkin onto the table and stormed from the cabin.

***

The wind blew steady from the northwest, and
Intrepid
sailed close-hauled, the sails trimmed and full. Annie stood with the first mate, Donovan, a freckled Irishman. He was compliant and followed orders in a way that made him invisible, like part of the ship that functioned so well one barely noticed it. His red hair curled up in the back as if caught by the wind, and he always tried to flatten it with spit on the tips of his fingers, trying to rid himself of his one distinctive feature. Daniel was belowdecks, scanning the blue-backed sea charts. “The captain has said you could explain to me how to read the compass and hold the ship's heading.”

“He did, did he, ma'am?”

“Yes,” Annie said. “Do you question it, Donovan? Because I can have him deliver the order himself, if you like.”

“No, no, no. That's okay, ma'am. I can teach you. It's just…never mind. Come stand over here by the binnacle compass.”

The compass was situated by the helm in a housing three and a half feet off the deck and protected beneath a glass globe. From the wheel the ship's heading could easily be read. Annie took her position beside Donovan and awaited instructions.

“If you want to head down a few points east, you steer toward east on the compass.” He demonstrated, tilting the wheel slightly to change the ship's course. “Give it a try, ma'am. Take the helm and hold your course.”

At first, standing behind the huge wheel with her skirts billowing in the wind and her body braced against the lean of the boat, Annie was surprised by the weight of water against the ship's rudder.

“You steer with your whole body, ma'am, like this,” Donovan said, leaning his weight in the direction he wanted the wheel to turn, using his legs and arms and torso to guide the vessel through the wind. “Now take us two points into the wind and keep her as close to the wind as you can get her,” he said, relinquishing the wheel.

Annie took the steering pegs in her hands, braced her legs, and leaned her body into the wheel, her eyes shifting from the compass, up to the sail to check for a luff, back and forth, until she held the ship's position as Donovan had requested.

“Fine job, ma'am,” he said.

“You get the heading from the navigator, who gets it off the charts, is that right?”

“Yes, ma'am,” he said.

Annie learned to handle the sextant, how to balance it against the horizon and take a mark, how to look up the figures in the tables and locate the ship's position on the chart. When Daniel ventured belowdecks one afternoon, he discovered her bent over a book containing columns of numbers, her finger running up and down the page as she wrote on a piece of scrap paper. “What have we here?” Daniel asked. “I've not allowed you to steer the ship, so you've found another way to direct our course?”

“I thought I could teach myself some navigation to pass the time, Daniel, then we could talk about it over dinner. You could instruct me.”

“I've told you how I feel about you working on the ship. It undermines my authority with the men. I'll not have it.”

“What are you so afraid of? That I might be good at this?” she asked, glaring at Daniel, her eyes a hot beam of light. Then they heard the noise overhead, a scuffling on deck as a group of eavesdroppers dispersed.

“There, now you've done it,” Daniel said. “I'll not have you talk to me like that again!”

Daniel's anger didn't discourage Annie from steering the ship and watching the crew in the rigging as they tied a yardarm off in rough weather. She asked the men questions about the rigging and learned which line hauled which sail. After mastering the differences, she watched the sailors on deck and bribed them with Daniel's money into teaching her how to tie a square knot, sheet bend, bowline, and to tell her what each knot was for. It was clear that some members of the crew resented her presence among them.

“That was my wife I'd swat her right back into the kitchen. She don't like her fancy cabin, I'd put her to work scrubbing the decks. Who does she think she is?”

“Nothing but bad luck.”

“Ladies on ships always are. I'll not go near her for any price.”

Annie stepped out from behind the foremast where she'd been eyeing the halyards and glowered down at the two men weaving monkey's fists into the ends of frayed lines. “I could have you cowards banished to the bilge to sleep with the rats for the rest of this journey. You dislike my being on this ship and trying to make myself useful, then speak to me directly.”

One of the sailors, a man named O'Malley, leaned back to take in the length of her. He was a tall Irishman from Dublin, freckled and weathered by thirty-one years of life, nineteen of them at sea. She knew from Daniel that he was discontented with his position among the crew and wanted a promotion with higher pay, but he wasn't going to get either. Daniel had taken a natural disliking to the man, and there was nothing to be done about it. “We're not to speak to the captain's wife.”

“She just gave you permission,” Annie said.

“We're hired men, ma'am, paid to do our job, nothing else,” the other, called Nickerson, said. She knew he was respected among the crew. His opinion carried weight. He often sat on the bulwark dressing the men down for lazy seamanship, or rallying them to change sails in rough seas.

“It's wrong for a woman to be working on a ship,” O'Malley said, meeting her eye. “It ain't done, and the men don't like it.”

Annie listened without interrupting.

“With you roaming around we have to watch our language and worry you're going to see something or report back to the captain. If you were one of the crew, that's one thing, but you're not. You're the captain's wife.”

“I'll not report anyone, if you'll agree not to report me. In fact, I'll pay each of you to persuade the men that I'm one of you, not against you, but with you.”

The sailors looked back and forth between each other. “With us how?”

“I intend to sail this ship.”

“How do we know we can trust you?”

“I care more about learning to sail this ship than I do about whatever trouble you and your mates manage to get yourselves into. You've seen me take the helm. You know I'm serious.”

O'Malley had an odd habit of pinching his cheek when he was thinking or bothered by something, and he went at it good and hard now. Annie wasn't sure how to assuage him. “I'll bring the coins after your dinner this evening.”

O'Malley smiled and nodded, as if she'd solved a puzzle he'd been trying to figure.

“How do I know I can trust you?” Annie said.

“We'll get the men to come around, ma'am. We can help them see things different. Will that prove it to you?”

She looked at the men, their eager eyes and serious faces. “All right, then we have a deal?”

The men nodded. “Yes, ma'am.”

***

On a bright, nearly windless afternoon Annie announced to Donovan, “I want to go up into the rigging.”

“That's taking it too far. You have to talk to the captain about that, ma'am. I couldn't allow it. It's dangerous up there, even for a man, with the waves tossing the spars back and forth and the swing of the mast. You have to be strong to hold on. The captain wouldn't allow it. I'm sorry.”

“I'll talk to him.” Annie disappeared belowdecks and reappeared sometime later with Daniel's old breeches pulled on beneath her calico dress. Her loose skirts swelled in the air around her and she let them fly. With the ocean in her lungs, she grabbed the ship's rigging and swung her weight around to climb the rope ladder. There was no reason she couldn't make it to the crow's nest. At first, she gripped the ropes so hard that her knuckles went white, but then she got her footing and kept her weight on her feet, using her hands for balance. Her legs did the work of climbing up, up, over the decks and the sea and the men. The air was silent except for the sound of the wind against the sails. No voices, no boots scuffing the decks, no hammers pounding or hatch covers slamming. Just air and sky. As she climbed, she felt herself entering another world entirely, as if she could become part of the sky to look across at flying birds and see their wings and fine heads cutting the wind instead of looking up to see their bellies and feet pressed flat against their white breasts. She ducked under the rim of the crow's nest and sat against the mast, her arms draped over the rim.