by Amanda Dykes
She goes to Jeremiah. He’s pleading with her, wordless.
Annie scoops up the hand at his side, threads her fingers between his. These hands, the ones that have saved so many lives . . . how she aches to hold his heart. To belong there. To be with him, come what may.
His hand tightens around hers, his forehead meeting hers in bowed silence. Hair wet, entwining with her own.
She breathes his name. “Jeremiah . . .” Loving the valleys and strength of it, the whole story of him.
“Go,” he says. “Please. Get down there.”
She shakes her head. “I can’t leave you.”
“I can’t—” The timbre of his voice tremors. Another clap of thunder, another flash. Closer. “I. Can’t. Lose you.”
And with that, his free hand moves to her face, stroking the curve of her jaw with his hand, running his thumb across her cheek. Pulling her toward him, he lowers his face toward hers, meeting her lips with his.
The wind is regaining its force, awakening again. And with it, the waves. Rising, rising, rising.
Slowly, Jeremiah pulls away.
The air buzzes with electricity, raising the hair on Jeremiah’s forearm. She runs her hands down his skin, wishing she could chase away anything that might hurt this man.
“Go,” he says.
A pounding on the stairs tells her William’s about to come above board to retrieve her. She’s endangering them all, staying here.
She feels her heart cracking as she pulls away. She turns, meeting Jeremiah’s gaze with a look she hopes tells him she’s leaving her heart here with his. And then she grips the wooden banister, stepping down one step, two steps, three—and freezing at a sound so deafening it’s surely splintered the entire world.
Electricity, spear-thrown by the sky itself. The force of an entire storm behind it. Colliding with the Glad Tidings in an explosion so bright she sees only swimming bits of the boat before her, hazy and haloed.
And all is dark.
forty
Ed taps his shoe against the Savvy Mae’s deck, raising his wrist as if he’s checking a watch he cannot see. Laughing at his own silent joke. “Think he’ll be much longer?”
Bob squints into the dark. They’ve docked near the school in the harbor, and Arthur had vowed he’d only be a few minutes. Before long, a squeaking sounds, wheels in protest—and the dark shadow of Arthur clatters over the dock with a rusted-out red children’s wagon. In it, perched on its edges and spilling over its sides, is the Skyblaster 3000. Rich’s searchlight.
It’s no Fresnel lens, but it’s something. It’ll reach a few miles out to sea, anyway.
They can’t cross the bay fast enough. But as they round its southern inner curve, Bob takes in a sight that makes him sit forward on his seat.
Small lights, like a string of fireflies, bouncing in a line around the harbor.
The power is out all over town. This can only be one thing.
People. Flashlights. Some old Coleman lanterns. A headlamp or two. Bobbing at a clipped pace, headed toward Sailor’s Rest.
Arthur gets the boat close enough to holler. “Hey!” Bob can’t see who it is he’s shouting to. “What’s the story?”
Margie Lillian shouts back. “You’re all off your rockers,” she says.
“Yeah, so?” Arthur used to have social niceties. They vanished about twenty years back.
“So . . . we’re here to help.” Margie’s voice is iron.
“What?”
“I said we’re here to help!”
Arthur cuts the engine.
“There’s something you need to know.” Margie’s tone softens. “The coast guard lost them on VMS.”
The sound of hope shutting down rides on the wind.
If the vessel monitoring system dropped them . . . no one wants to put words to what that might mean. It could mean the signal is down, or their electronics—but they all know, it could be that they’ve gone under.
Bob leans in from his seat on deck. He’d give anything to stand but knows he has to save what little strength is left. “You all go home,” he says. “If they’re out in this, we’ll give them a way home. You go”—he tries to catch his breath—“be safe.”
Bess’s voice pipes up from the line of lights. “You can’t leave us out of this!”
A hearty cheer traveling down the line of faceless townspeople resounds, and before Bob knows it, they’re running a makeshift ferry between dock and island. Thankfully the waters have calmed enough here, but off at sea they can see the storm’s still thick.
Rich arrives on the last shift, climbing out of the boat and pulling off a sling backpack with metal bars protruding and netted pockets stuffed with survival gear.
“Planning to stay awhile?” Bob leans forward in the wheelchair long enough to shake the man’s hand.
“As long as it takes,” he says. “Heard you all went and looted my searchlight,” he says. There’s pride in his voice.
“We did at that. Gonna bring them home,” Bob says.
Rich claps him, albeit gently, on the shoulder. “Yes, we are,” he says, and starts to climb the path, pulling a CamelBak straw from his backpack and taking a swig. “Stay hydrated!” he shouts back over his shoulder, joining some of the younger men, who are easing the light up the trail. It’s in the wagon, but that’s not doing much good on the slick runneled mud. Up top, Bess and the others are clearing the way of branches and other debris, making a path to the tower.
Ed, Arthur, and Bess have threatened mutiny if Bob dares set foot on that path. He’s been relegated to beach watch, with the promise that Bess will keep him posted by walkie-talkie, and he’s not to leave the chair. The lightning offshore has ceased, and if it weren’t for this confounded dizziness that keeps lassoing him, he would never have agreed to stay put.
Alone on this island, as he has been countless times before . . . but never feeling more so.
Bess gives the blow-by-blow from the top as the men hoist the spotlight on the count of three. In the background, Bob hears the echoes of their struggles as they leverage it step by step up the wet spiraling staircase.
He holds his breath as they arrive at last on the platform, the one that’s waited a lifetime for its light.
He does not like this. There shouldn’t be so many men up there. Not with the weather what it is. The wood of the tower is no doubt weak.
He’s about to holler across the air waves for them to hurry down. Not another life should be lost to make this light tower possible. But as he opens his mouth and musters all the breath and volume he can, Bess’s shout sounds first. Not over the walkie, but down the trail itself. Bob winces against the rain to see up the path—to no avail.
He depresses the button on the walkie. “What happened?”
Silence.
“Bess, is everyone all right.” It comes out a desperate statement rather than a question.
“Rich,” she says, voice breaking up against storm-induced white fuzz, “on . . . edge . . . cord . . . ankle—”
She cuts out completely.
“Get him a knife!” Bob hollers, digging into his pocket for his own. It’s not there.
Bess is holding down the transmitter button because he can hear it all now.
“Who’s got a knife?”
Four different voices shout “Here!” and he can just picture them all thrusting their wielded Leatherman knives at the entangled Rich.
He hears Sully’s voice. “Cut it loose.” Good. They’ve got a mountaineer up there. “Get him back!”
A second of silence. Another. And then—a fracturing crash once—twice. Silence over the radio.
“Rich,” Bob says into the unit. “Is Rich okay?”
Someone hollers that they’ve got him. Rich is safe. The light is not. Bob makes his way out around shore to the bottom of the cliff, to where the cauldron roils yards away. And in the grip of its white foam, churning shards of the searchlight.
The lights of a small vessel approach the be
ach, and a stiff, soggy figure steps out. Bob squints. He must be worse off than he thought, hallucinating.
Spencer T. Ripley would not be out in this. He’d be buried in a library somewhere, eating words like dessert.
“Mr. Bliss,” the polished voice says.
“So, it is you,” Bob says. “I thought maybe I escaped you.”
Spencer doesn’t laugh. He pulls off his glasses and tries to wipe them dry, finding his soaked sport coat to be of little help. “We heard you were ill,” he says. “The festival honored you in your absence, and I came to give you the certificate of recognition for—”
Oh boy. Bob does like a jest with this guy, but he’s not about to keep an innocent man out in this. “That’s kind of you, son. But as you can see, this is not the best place or time for you to be out. Go on back, dry off.”
Spencer looks over his shoulder at the little boat, then back at Bob.
“I’ll take you back,” he says, eyeing Bob’s shaking body with growing concern. “You should be home.”
The words float like black splotches across his consciousness. He’s fading, he can feel it.
“You ever get that next poem I left for you?”
“Yes, sir. A life well lived is a life well given.”
“Gived.”
Spencer drops his stare to the beach. “Yes, gived.”
Bob tries not to relish the boy speaking nonsense words so much. But he can’t help a chuckle.
The waves fill a space of silence.
“That’s what I’m here for tonight,” Bob says.
Spencer folds up the paper Bob has yet to take and tucks it back inside his jacket.
“I’ll stay, too,” he says, “if it’s all the same to you.”
Bob looks him up and down. He’s a soggy noodle, but there’s no denying the courage seeping through. “Attaboy.”
Bob asks for Spencer’s help fetching something from the Savvy Mae. He wants to do it himself but knows he’s got to preserve what strength is left for what’s ahead. Spencer brings him the requested tackle box.
Bob thrusts a hand inside, his stiff joints feeling like jelly and making practiced fingers clumsy around his tools. But buried beneath a hammer, a spool of fishing twine, and an orphaned work glove, he finds what he needs.
He wraps his fingers around the cool stainless steel, stuffs it in his pocket, and moves his hands to turn the wheels of his chair. But face-to-face with his own weakness, he is forced to ask . . .
“I have a request, Mr. Spencer T. Ripley.”
“Anything.”
Grudgingly and gratefully, he spits out his request. “Help a guy up a mountain? I’m afraid this old body won’t climb it just now. But this soul . . . it has to.”
Spencer looks at the steep incline and back at the wheelchair. Without missing a beat, he plants his Oxfords in the slick mud and begins to push.
For once, the young man blessedly restrains his overstuffed noggin. No spouting of rhymes, no quoting “the inestimable Wordsworth.” Until now, Bob had cursed the day the kid had showed up on his doorstep. But now . . . even Bob knew he was a godsend.
The ascent invigorates Bob. Saps him, yes, but strengthens him somehow, too. Was this not what he’d climbed this very mountain for, all those years ago? To tell his brother he meant to go to battle for him?
That battle has come.
Spencer wheels Eva’s mud-caked chair into the clearing to find the group huddled under the stone overhang, fussing over Rich, whose shoulders are draped in an old tarp.
Rich sees him first. Stands and approaches him slowly, his lanky form limping.
He clears his throat. “I’m awful sorry, Mr. Bliss.”
The rain falls steady. But the torment on Rich’s face speaks of an entirely different storm, one deep-running.
“It’s not your fault. I owe you my thanks,” he says.
A quick glance around shows a sea of somber faces. He knows that look. Defeat. It has no place here. This island has housed it too long already.
“Hey,” he says to the huddled group. It’s a simple idea and needs a simple introduction. “Know what lit lighthouses before they had lenses or generators or even windows? Before all the fancy fixings?”
Sorrowful faces stare blankly at him.
He leans in and utters that single, magical, terrifying word.
“Fire.”
Silence meets him. Followed by a low, resonant laugh. Ed, with that rolling pitch of understanding, laughing with his arms crossed over his chest, seeing what no one else does.
“Crazy, Robert Bliss. That’s what you are.” His laughter tapers off, and he shakes his head and stoops, feeling for sticks on the ground. This man whose own country refused him wood for a house . . . gathering wood up into his arms. “Point me where to go,” he says. “I’ll build your fire.”
And in that single act—the stooping down to the ground and holding wood up, the darkness cracks open. Hope seeps back in.
“Thank you.” Bob pulls in all the breath he can. “If we assemble a line from out here, on up the stairs, we can pass whatever we find up there until we have enough.”
Arthur saunters over. “You don’t mean . . .”
“We’re going medieval, Arthur. Going to torch this thing until they see it and come on home.”
“We can’t do that,” Arthur says. “It’s not what this place was built for.”
Bob crosses the small clearing, runs his fingers across the tower’s wet stones. Thinks of the lives they represent. The families who dragged rocks, mailed rocks, scraped together pennies to ship a piece of earth for this moment.
“It’s exactly what it was built for,” he mutters. “Fire won’t harm these stones. We’ll pile on as much as we can on the platform, and—”
“It won’t burn long enough,” Arthur says. “If we wait for the coast guard when the storm’s passed, there’s a better chance—”
“This is just kindling,” Bob says. He looks up, and in the tiniest sliver of moon emerging from the dark clouds, sees the makeshift roof, the beams.
It might only burn a short time, but God is not bound by time. He could make as much of a second as He could an eternity.
Bob leans forward and grabs a fallen branch, passes it to Rich, who passes it on up the line that’s already forming. And when the platform is piled to the roof with storm debris, leaves, whatever they could find that would flame, and everyone is clear to safety again, Bob sets his hands on the wheels Eva had gripped year upon year and pushes himself to where he can grip the stones, steady himself along.
Ignoring the protests of his friends, he shoves a foot on those steps for the first time since William left. With every ounce of strength he can muster—and some he cannot account for—he grasps the stone handholds along the way. Each one a life. Each one cherished. Rocks crying out, ushering him on to trust the One who brought him here . . . for such a time as this.
And at the top, head reaching into the now-packed alcove of the platform, he pulls out his scavenged artifact from the boat.
Brushed steel. State of the art. Exclusive to the Sharper Image, as Rich liked to remind him. And destined never to touch a crème brûlée in its life. He releases the torch’s safety latch and presses down the ignition. Bright blue flame hisses. He ratchets the gas lever all the way to its highest setting, aiming it at the grasses and papers, leaves, and other tinder piled before him.
“Come on,” he says. They’re damp, not catching. “Come on . . .” His fist trembles, the continued pressure asking much of his atrophied muscles. “Light,” he says, a prayer to the Maker of fire. “Please . . .”
He braces his shaking hand with his other, and waits.
A spark.
A smolder.
Another spark. The sweet scent of spent leaves burning. They flicker into light, embers dancing over their veins until they ignite, taking on the work of the torch and passing fire to the next thing, and the next.
Urgent shouts rise from below. “
Get down!” Bob shakes himself into the present and does just that.
But on the painstaking journey down the stairs, joints creaking and heart pumping hard, he pauses, his weathered, wrinkled fingers bracing against the wall beside him.
He is caught here. Some strong force stills him, harkening him to listen, to take note of the snapping fire above him . . . and the scaffolding of stone around him.
He slides his palm over the gentle strength of those rocks and remembers the faces from the photos tucked into boxes with those rocks, the stories penned with care on tear-splotched pages, arriving from around the country. He sees Liesl, the horror and hope of what she’d been through etched in her face as she unwrapped that stone from her threadbare handkerchief.
He sees Omaha Beach. U-boats. Paris celebrating, bathed in light. He sees the frozen passes of Russia, winding river currents in Burma, jungles in the Philippines.
The stones begin to warm beneath his touch, jolting him back as someone reaches for his hand from below to help him down those last steps. The pillar dances with shadows and echoes, the fire above crackling to greater life.
Out in the night, the others are gathered a safe distance away. He pauses before joining them, watching as he sits against a boulder away on his own, off where he and Roy had their last bonfire.
It’s as if time and space scooped up that fire and transported it to here and now, where this vaulted bonfire takes shape. Flames growing in strength until they engulf the roof, escape the bounds of the open beams, and lap rain from the sky.
It rages. Brave into the storm. Bold into the night.
Spencer T. Ripley sidles up near him.
“Everything all right, Mr. Bliss?”
Arthur comes up on the other side, listening.
Bob has only one thought, watching the flames. “Now that,” he says, pulling in a shuddering breath, “is poetry.”
forty-one
A daze. Dark daze. The first thing Annie registers, there at the top of the boat stairs, is the soles of black Grundéns boots.
Jeremiah.
She moves toward him and feels the muted beat of steps behind her. Her father. His mouth is moving, but all she hears is a foggy, shapeless voice.
