He completed the circle and jumped down beside me. When I looked into his face—full of devotion—it was all I could do to keep from reaching out to him.
“All seven ripped right out of the ground, roots and all,” I said, which made Tyler laugh.
“You never told me that,” Josh said.
“Well, I had to save a few things until we got here, didn’t I?”
Josh nodded, apparently convinced. Tyler yanked weeds out of the ground and threw them into the air.
Roland had called to do more than catch up on old times. There had been a point in our conversation when his voice changed. I had heard the same reassuring tone before when he had talked me through the haze of hypothermia. The change was subtle, but I guessed that this was the voice that parents and spouses of fallen soldiers heard as they were informed of their loved one’s fate. And suddenly, I knew why he had called.
When a drunk driver swerved into oncoming traffic on Little Falls Parkway and caused a seven-car pileup, Chris was dispatched to the scene. The victim was a woman, six months pregnant, on her way to a friend’s bridal shower. She was driving an economy car half the size of the drunk driver’s flatbed pickup. The collision’s impact sent the car’s engine through the dash and into the cabin, severing the woman’s femoral artery. Her body, hemorrhaging blood, induced itself into labor by the time Georgetown University Hospital’s trauma team descended onto the freeway. Chris called in the woman’s condition over the radio to prep the Emergency Department. But the helicopter never reached the hospital. It crashed into left field of the Deerfield Park baseball diamond that had just concluded that night’s Junior T-ball game. The weather was clear; no distress message was called in over the radio. Miraculously, the woman and her premature baby survived. Both pilots and the trauma technician were pronounced dead at the scene. Roland’s voice choked up over the phone, and a full minute expired before he told me where the funeral was being held.
It wasn’t until I stood beside Chris’ coffin that I felt my grief subside. Those gathered together on that gloomy day in March had taken it from me. It felt wrong to mourn a rebellious seventeen-year-old when a wife had lost her husband, and a son had lost his father. The ex-Governor of Maryland wept as his only child was lowered into the ground. Not until that moment was all the bad blood forgotten.
There we were for this unwanted reunion—Roland, Derek and myself—together again for the first time since the night I had escaped Raker Island. Chris had reunited us one final time. And as if two decades of grieving alongside families hadn’t prepared him, Roland wept openly over the loss of his one true friend.
I had seen something haunting that day in the somber young boy standing over his father’s grave. I felt compelled to reach out to him, to assure him that whatever had once stood between his father and grandfather meant nothing. After the service, I promised him that if he ever wanted to visit Raker Island, I would take him there. Two months later Chris’ wife had called, saying that it would mean a great deal if her son could see the place his father had always talked about. She felt it might bring him the closure he needed.
“Can we go in the lighthouse?” Tyler asked.
I opened my mouth to reply, but stopped, afraid of what might come out. I wanted to tell him that I knew what it was like to grow up without a father. More than anything, I wanted him to know that no one would ever be able to replace him. I looked at Tyler then, and what I saw staring back at me was discovery, for that’s what death of a loved one is: a dark, horrible discovery that brings to light all that’s been lost. Only later do you think of what’s left behind.
But there was a difference in our tragedies. Our fathers had died different deaths—one in shame, the other in glory. And where I had made my father a villain, in Tyler’s eyes, Chris would always be a hero. For that part, at least, I envied him. He would never be exposed to a family so determined to cover up its disgrace that it convinced itself that nothing had happened.
“Of course you can,” Max said. “In my opinion, it’s the only thing worth seeing.”
I watched as he led them down a path through Oak Yard.
“Come on, Dad!” Josh shouted back to me.
“I’ll be up in a minute,” I said, waiting until they had entered the lighthouse before going back the way I had come.
Memories are sharpest when one is alone, and I wandered down deserted hallways and into empty classrooms, surprised at Wellington’s degree of preservation. It took a keen eye, but beneath the layer of dust, many of the rooms looked as they had on the final day of class: chalkboards still listed exam instructions; a stack of commencement programs lay on Mrs. Lawrence’s desk; a sign on the bulletin board displayed the ferry’s departure times. Bits and pieces of the 1981 school year were still there, proof that Wellington had fled Raker Island and never looked back.
When I stepped into Mr. O’Leary’s classroom, I pictured the inquisitive history teacher leaning back in his chair, listening to a student introduce himself. To my surprise, there was a message written on the chalkboard in white paint.
Out, out brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more.
One final Shakespearean quote with Mr. O’Leary’s flair for the dramatic. He couldn’t have possibly guessed that his most reluctant and most grateful student would be reading it twenty-five years later.
Aside from these diversions, I had a destination in mind. Tucked into the back corner of one of the hallways was the old infirmary. The beds and medical equipment had been removed, but the walls still displayed the black and white photographs, though several had fallen to the floor. There were the parties and celebrations that marked the hotel’s heyday, and Max standing beside his father at the ribbon-cutting ceremony. “PREP SCHOOL MAROONED ON RAKER ISLAND” ran the headline of a laminated newspaper clipping on the mantle.
A nearby picture caught my eye. It was unframed and the only colored photograph in the collection. I had to look at it a second time to be sure it wasn’t my imagination. There we were: Chris, Roland and myself, teenagers again, flashing undaunted smiles, our bare feet half-buried in a sandy beach. Chris stood between us with his arms draped over our shoulders. Three boys who would go on to live different lives; but for that brief time, were inseparable. It was the picture Derek had taken during our first trip to the beach. The fact that it was here, in this room, filled with so many bygone memories, made it feel like we had become part of the island’s past.
I took out Father’s picture and placed it on the mantle next to my own. I ran my finger along the edge that had curled with age. I allowed myself to linger in this place where Max was still a boy, where the Hotel Nouveau was in full swing, where I stood arm-in-arm with my friends, and where Father smiled at the unseen beauty of his wife.
With hurried steps I returned to the courtyard, walked the narrow path through the weeds, climbed the spiral staircase that didn’t seem quite so high, and joined the others on the walkway.
The view was unforgettable.
###
The Keeper of Dawn Page 33
