The Night Mark
Page 34
“I meant what I said.”
She smiled, but didn’t tell him Will would make the same vow decades from now. Why give the credit to Will when Carrick said it first? She tucked the vow in her heart, where she kept the vows Will had made to her. They glowed inside her like a beacon in the night, keeping watch over her.
Dolly took Faye and Carrick by the hands and dragged them to the porch, where she’d set up a wedding dinner. Marrying Pat had taken some doing. They’d had to register for a license and then had sit around for the two-day waiting period before they could get married. But Pat hadn’t minded sticking around in 1921. Being in a body that didn’t betray him with aches and pains and tremors was like being on vacation, he’d said. He slept in Carrick’s bed at night while Carrick worked in the lighthouse. Then he and Faye and Dolly had gone into town during the day to fill out the marriage license and be seen by the fine people of Beaufort.
It had scared Faye to see the town finally, the people in their period clothes that weren’t period clothes but simply their clothes. She’d passed a livery stable on the way to the justice of the peace. An actual livery stable. Carrick had pointed it out and said he’d kept a horse there for his once-a-month trips into town for supplies. A horse. Carrick owned a horse. For transportation. The way other people owned bikes in 2015. It amazed her, although it shouldn’t have. Rural South Carolina had one foot in the nineteenth century and barely a toe in the twentieth. But she understood the temptation to live in the past better than anyone. When people lost hope, they looked in the last place they remembered having it, and it was always in the past. Maybe someday they’d stop looking to the past to find their hope and start looking at one another, where hope really lived. Pat had traveled back ninety-four years to rescue her. Carrick had carried Dolly 110 steps to protect her from a storm. Dolly had stayed up all night to sew Faye a wedding dress, and it was as lovely as anything she’d ever worn—a sleeveless ivory sheath dress made from the same fabric Dolly had used to make her baby sister’s church dress. Hope was other people, no matter what the philosophers said.
And this was a time that needed hope. That morning in Beaufort, Faye had seen children sitting on house porches in the morning humidity looking unwashed and undernourished. She’d seen dogs roaming the streets snapping at one another and men kicking the dogs right in their skinny ribs. She’d smelled a fish plant on the water and gagged at the scent of rot and diesel. She’d seen an older white woman in a fine white dress being followed by a young black housemaid, who held a parasol over her head, a scene Faye found more noxious than the fish plant. These were ugly things, but she saw them with a photographer’s eye that needed to see all, to record all, to hold a mirror up to the world so it could see itself—see the stark ugliness, yes, but all the beauty, too.
After her quick and perfunctory wedding in town to Pat, they’d returned to the island by rowboat. Standing in the living room by the picture window, Pat became a priest again and performed a simple and lovely wedding ceremony with no one acting as witness but Dolly and God, which was more than good enough for Faye and Carrick.
By seven o’clock that evening, Faye had officially been married four times.
To which Faye could only say, “Give the lady a prize.”
Not long after dinner, Dolly’s father showed up in his little tin fishing boat. Dolly ran out to the dock to embrace her father. Faye followed and helped her into the boat.
“You’re looking mighty fine today, Miss Morgan.”
“I got married today, Mr. Rivers,” she said.
“Then my heartiest best wishes to you, Miss Morgan. Who is the lucky man?”
“Patrick Cahill. A sailor.”
“Well, I hope he’s real good to you, Mrs. Cahill.”
“He will be. And your lovely daughter made the dress. She’s very gifted. She should sell the clothes she makes.”
“That’s a fine idea. We’ll run that by her mama.”
“Tell Dolly she has the day off tomorrow. She’s more than earned it.”
“I’ll do that. You have a good night now,” he said with a little knowing grin that wasn’t quite a wink but served the same purpose.
She waved Dolly off and watched until she and her father were out of sight. She heard footsteps on the dock and turned to see Pat coming toward her, his hands in his pockets, a look on his face that told her it was time.
“Leaving so soon?” she asked.
“Carrick and I have said our goodbyes—for now. And I wouldn’t want to overstay my welcome. You and Carrick should have the house to yourself. It is your wedding night, remember?”
“And Carrick is a lighthouse keeper, remember? He’ll spend half the night in the watch room.”
“And the other half with his new wife. I should be on my way before I get too used to this body. Wish I could take it with me.”
“You are awfully handsome. Anyone ever told you that you look like Gregory Peck?”
“Once or twice. I never believed them.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and looked out to the sea.
“It’s just the damnedest thing, isn’t it? Us being here?” he asked.
“That’s one way to put it. You think this is God’s doing?”
“I’d like to think it is.” He stuck his foot out and toed a fishing net Carrick had left out to dry on the dock. “You know, I used to come out to the islands all the time to swim. I’d watch the fishermen mending their nets and I remember wondering if time was like that. They teach us in seminary that God is outside of time. He created it, knitted it, just like you knit a net. Sometimes you get a tear in that net and have to mend it. What Carrick lost, what you lost... That’s a big tear. Maybe this is God mending that rend. Maybe He’ll do it for all of us someday.”
“Maybe He will,” she said. “Maybe He is.”
“Coming here was good for me. I feel His greatness again, His majesty and mysteriousness.” Pat turned his face to the setting sun and smiled a beatific smile. “I’ll take that back with me. It’ll carry me to the end.”
“What will you do when you get back? Will you tell anyone what happened?”
“No. Some secrets are too beautiful to tell. And too dangerous. We’d have to build a fortress to keep people from jumping into the waters around here, hoping to find a time machine. I’ll paint my secrets instead. I’ll paint the lighthouse keeper’s daughter, and no one will know she’s really my wife.”
“You’re going to paint me?”
“Someone has to paint the Lady of the Light.”
“I hope they don’t still call me that in the future. I don’t want to be a ghost story.”
“I’m sure they’ll find something else to say about you now. Hopefully that you lived a long, happy life even though your bastard sailor husband knocked you up and abandoned you, never to return.”
“Why did I marry that guy? What was I thinking?”
“Pretty girl like you could do a lot better. But it’ll make for a good story, I imagine. Lighthouse keeper’s daughter marries her sailor lover, and he ships out never to return. Or maybe he does return once or twice, depending on how many children you have. He loves her and leaves her, but our poor Lady of the Light is a constant lover and waits for him, never remarrying in the hopes he will come back to her someday for good.”
“Nice story,” she said. “Totally bullshit, but still very nice.”
“The true story behind the legend is so much better.”
“It always is,” Faye said, reaching out for Pat’s hand. She felt it shaking, but didn’t know if that was her hand or his.
“I should go,” he said.
She squeezed his hand and kissed his cheek. She would never see him again.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“Watch yourself. You’re in deep waters here, remember?”
“It’s okay,” she said. “I have my own personal lighthouse.”
Pat smiled and turned from her, turned toward the end of the d
ock. He slipped out of his shoes and took a step forward. He looked back at her one more time.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing. Just trying to decide what color to use on your eyes when I paint you. Dioxazine violet, I think.”
“Go,” she said. “Go before I stop you.”
“My wife is nagging me already. I’m out of here.” He took one step forward and then stopped, turned around, looked at her without a smile, looked at her with a look that scared her.
“E. B. White once said—or maybe he’ll say it someday—that the worst time to become a father is eighteen years before a war.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because it’s 1921, Faye. In eighteen years and three months, Nazi Germany will invade Poland, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. Be safe, Faye. Keep your children safe.”
“I will.”
Pat looked out to the sea, back at her. “Let me know you’re all right.”
“How?”
He looked back at the house. “Put a note or something in a coffee can and bury it under the north end of the seawall. I’ll dig up. I want to know how you’re doing. Since you’re my wife and all.”
“I’ll let you know.” Because he was her husband and because he had saved her life and because she loved him as a friend and a priest, she kissed him on the lips.
“Safe travels,” she said. “Husband.”
With a last look back at her, back at the past, he took off running, bare feet slapping on the dock as he ran to the end and dived off into the water. Faye jogged after him and watched as he swam out deeper and deeper into the ocean. She saw waves rising higher and higher. One washed over Pat as he swam into the wave, and when the wind subsided, Pat was nowhere to be seen.
Faye watched the water until the waves subsided and the ocean quieted once more. She walked back to the cottage alone. Carrick stood on the porch waiting for her.
“He’s gone, is he?” Carrick asked.
Faye nodded.
“You all right?” he asked.
“It’s just strange knowing I’m never going to see him again. Or maybe I will...if I live long enough. But he won’t know me. Isn’t that weird?”
“Not homesick, are you?” Carrick searched her face.
She smiled. “Can’t be homesick when you’re home, right?” She leaned against him, and he held her in his arms and now...now she was home.
“Come inside,” he said. “We should make this marriage official before I have to go to work.”
“That’s the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me,” she said, glaring at him.
Carrick grinned, and the grin was a warning. He swept her up in his arms, opened the door and carried her over the threshold into the house. Their house. Their home. Their wedding night.
“Okay, put me down now,” she said. “I can walk the rest of the way.”
“I carried a girl up the lighthouse. I can carry you up to the bedroom.”
“I’d rather walk so you can save your strength and screw me longer.”
Carrick put her flat on her feet.
“I’m never going to get used to hearing a woman talk like that,” he said, shutting the door behind them.
“Shocking, is it?”
“Hard to shock an old sailor,” he said. “But I’d love to see you try.”
“Come upstairs,” she said. “We’ll see what I can do.”
She started for the stairs, and Carrick grabbed her from behind, picked her up and carried her to the bedroom. He threw her down onto the bed before she could even get the lamp lit.
Screw it. Who needed light?
Carrick kissed her, his hands threading through her hair, his mouth to her mouth and his heart beating hard enough she felt it against her chest. Quickly, like he couldn’t bear to wait a single second longer, he stripped her out of her clothes and took off his. As he entered her, Faye wrapped her arms around his shoulders and clung to him as he went deep, lifting her hips to take him deeper. He had his arms around her back, and he kissed her neck and collarbone, biting her bare shoulders. Later they would go slow, take their time with each other. But not now. Now it felt urgent, necessary. She needed it from him, and he gave it to her so hard he grunted with every thrust as she groaned with every withdrawal. It was hot in the room, and the sweat and her wetness sealed them together. Her hips pulsed against his. She couldn’t get enough of him, no matter how hard he took her. The weight of him on top of her was the weight of her happiness. She’d die if she didn’t come, but she needn’t have worried. Carrick rolled her back on the bed and grabbed her by the backs of her knees, forcing her legs as wide as she’d ever opened them. God, they were married and this was missionary position, and yet it felt like the dirtiest sex she’d ever had. It was the sounds he made, and the bed made, and she made, and the sweat and the smell in the heat. All of it was so unbearably erotic and arousing, and when she couldn’t bear any more of the overwhelming pleasure, she came with a cry that would have woken the neighbors if they’d had any. She lay back, spent, but still held on to Carrick as he moved inside her. When she came, he did, too, wrapped in the full embrace of her arms around his neck and her legs around his back and her heart around his heart.
For a long time afterward, they lay together on the bed, still entwined.
“This...” Faye said. “I remember this.”
“What?” Carrick asked.
“Being happily married,” she said. “I’d almost forgotten what that feels like. Are you happy?”
Carrick chuckled softly as he rolled off her and ran his hands through his sweat-soaked hair.
“Very. So happy you’re not really a girl of twenty I could cry. There are things I want to do to you...”
Faye laughed, drunk on postcoital bliss.
“Do them,” she said. “Do them all. But in a few minutes. I need to recover here. Been a long time?”
“Too long,” Carrick said and laughed against her sweating skin. “Did I hurt you?”
“Only in the best ways.”
Faye tried to sit up and promptly fell back on the bed. She was so raw inside she could barely close her legs. “I wish we had an ice maker.”
“Ice maker?”
“One other thing I’ll miss about my time. My ice maker. I could use an ice pack right about now and right about here.” She pointed between her legs.
“I can’t do that, I’m afraid. How about this instead?”
He dipped his head between her open legs and licked her gently. She twitched with pleasure, and Carrick groaned in annoyance.
“Hold still,” he ordered. “I’ve been dreaming of this for days.”
Faye laughed, but Carrick was serious. He took her thighs in his large strong hands and held her down in a death grip to keep her moving out of reach of his mouth. As he made love to her with his tongue and lips, Faye raised her head to see him. The last rays of evening sunlight spilled into the room, and in the shadows created by the dusk, Carrick looked nothing like Will at all. He looked only like Carrick; he looked like the man she loved.
“I’m so glad pussy-eating exists in 1921,” she said.
Carrick looked up at her, one eyebrow cocked high.
“Pussy? That’s what they call it in your time?”
“That’s what they call it. Maybe because of the hair?”
“Really?” Carrick said. “How queer.”
“We’re going to have a long talk about that word. Later,” she said. Carrick slid a finger into her and she collapsed back onto the bed. “Much later...”
Much later Faye lay on top of Carrick, listening to his heart beating and relishing the rise and fall of his broad chest with every breath.
“She gave you to me,” Faye said.
“Maybe your Will gave you to me,” Carrick said.
“Maybe he did. Will always said ‘Give the lady a prize.’ You make a fine prize, Chief.” Faye raised her head and met Carrick’s eyes. “You miss her?”
“Yes,” she said. He wrapped his arms around her naked back and she turned her face to kiss the center of his chest. “I’ll miss him a little later tonight. I’ll miss him a little tomorrow. I’ll always miss him a little.” She smiled up at him. “I hope that doesn’t hurt you. Does it? Tell me if it does.”