The Lightkeepers

by Abby Geni

  I nodded, gripping my camera. The white sharks were black. I had not been expecting this. Not only were they black, but Galen began to explain that they tanned in the sunlight until they glittered like coal. Only their bellies lived up to their name. From beneath, they were as pale as icebergs. This configuration of coloring was common in the aquatic world, where light was everything. Seen from above, the fish hoped to blend into the rocky bottom. Seen from beneath, they wanted to be mistaken for the sky.

  “There,” Forest cried. “Right there!”

  Galen almost knocked me overboard as he dashed across the boat. The Janus rocked under his feet. I gave an indignant, terrified cry, but nobody was paying the slightest bit of attention to me.

  The Sister rose up like a submarine. She moored herself alongside our craft. Her dorsal fin was a black flag. I felt the threat of her. I felt it all the way down my spine. A bulb went on in some part of my brain that had hitherto lain unused. In my daily life, I did not typically keep an eye out for predators. Now I was acutely aware of my place on the food chain. The Sister was twenty feet of menace in a tight, scaly skin.

  Forest nudged me. “Take pictures, dummy.”

  I snapped the greedy mouth and shimmering hide. I could not cope with the size of her. Her length was less startling than her girth. At eight feet across, she was broader than the boat. I could have lain down widthwise on her back. I understood now what all the fuss was about. The Rat Pack was interesting, to be sure. But a Sister was royalty. Certain cultures had worshiped sharks as gods. Seeing one now made it easy to understand why.

  Her tail swished. The Janus swayed a little; the Sister had moved the entire boat. My hand was beginning to cramp up, curled around the camera. I saw an eye, dark and inscrutable. A row of teeth appeared. The Sister mouthed her prey like a dog deciding whether to accept a treat from its master. Then she swallowed the dead seal. She took it down whole. The gulls, I noticed, were gone. The presence of the Sister had scattered them like leaves in strong wind. The scene was eerily quiet.

  “She’s on her own for once,” Forest said. “I wonder where the Twins are?”

  “When shall we three meet again?” Galen said.

  For half an hour, we watched her. Galen retrieved the dummy, a Styrofoam surfboard, from beneath a bench. He pushed it over the side. The Sister seemed uninterested, though. She continued to nose through the slick of blood, verifying that she had devoured every last morsel of meat. Her dorsal fin was peppered with holes; it looked as though she had taken a round of buckshot. Galen shook the surfboard temptingly so it quivered like a seal. But the Sister was not fooled. Having finished her snack, she lounged on the surface. She did not hold still—without motion, her gills would cease to function and she would suffocate—but she swam forward in the smallest possible increments, inch by inch. Basking in the sun, she appeared to be taking the shark version of a catnap.

  Forest gunned the engine. The Janus trolled toward the Sister’s retreating frame. I shivered as we pulled up alongside her again. She was big enough to take her place as an islet in the archipelago.

  “Pet her,” Forest told me.

  Galen stretched out a hand and laid it on the shark’s back. Cringing, I waited for her to react. One swipe of her tail could have shattered our hull. If she was in the wrong mood, she could swamp the boat and devour us all in a matter of minutes. Galen kept his fingers planted on the patchwork of scales. There was no discernible response to his touch. He patted softly, his eyes wild. After a moment, I reached out too. The shark’s flesh was cold, rough to the touch. I stroked her rib cage, a gentle, caressing movement, then drew my hand away with a cry of pain.

  My fingertips were bleeding. It looked as though I had used a cheese grater on them. Behind me, I heard Forest chortle. Everything in this place, even the shark’s skin, was dangerous.

  WHALE SEASON

  9

  THEY COME IN the late autumn, passing the islands in droves. I have seen them sliding through the sea like nightmares. Despite their size, the whales have an elusive quality. They camouflage themselves as waves, as clouds, as islets, as reflections of light. Blue whales. Gray whales. More than once I have found myself staring at what appears to be an empty ocean, only to observe a column of mist rising against the sky—a gasping exhalation—and realize the sea is full of bodies.

  Mick is our whale expert. It is his job to count and catalog the animals’ numbers, to keep track of the males, females, and juveniles. They are heading north in search of krill. Baleen whales, the largest animals on earth, survive by eating some of the smallest. They are traveling to the ice caps, where there are fields of krill so dense they make the water opaque. Mick has been there. He has seen gray whales swimming blindly in a bath of food, singing to one another in apparent joy.

  The humpbacks are his favorite. They move in family groupings, forming intense bonds. Nomadic by nature, they lack any notion of permanence or home. They are the opera singers of the aquatic world, yet most of their music falls into the subsonic or supersonic range, beyond human hearing. Our ears are paltry, tiny things. My whole body could fit into a humpback’s lung.

  Before people filled the ocean with noise—boats churning, oil rigs thrumming, undersea cables vibrating—whales were able to sing across the entire planet. Mick told me this. I was struck by the image, not of the animal, but of the music itself. A single, throbbing note. I imagined the vibration passing through forests of kelp, setting jellyfish to movement, tricking shellfish with its resemblance to thunder so they cowered in their homespun caves. One strong note over sandy, wave-swept terrain—the oceanic equivalent of deserts—where nothing could grow and no fish lingered. One strong note over coral reefs and canyons, teasing dolphins into an answering chatter, bothering the seabirds where they rested between sea and sky. Finally this music would find its audience: another whale, clear on the other side of the world.

  The presence of these animals has unsettled me. They are not predators, and they are not prey. They exist outside the food chain. In some ways, they exist outside normal space and time. They live in a realm of large, slow things—tides, storms, and magnetic currents. They often plunge into the inky depths of the ocean, down where the sunlight fails. They inhabit a blue world, away from land, dipping from water to air and back again, sliding between darkness and glow. It is rare for them to come close enough to the coast to be seen by human eyes. The Farallon Islands are unusual in this way, as in so many others. Autumn in this place is Whale Season.

  It is November. Early November, I think, though I can’t be sure. I haven’t looked at the calendar in quite some time.

  Thus far, I have failed to photograph the whales. I have tried, but they have defeated me. They are always too far away to succumb to my telephoto lens. They are too big to fit into the frame. There is something inartistic about their bodies, too. Some quality is lost in translation. Their ears and eyes vanish among their barnacles and scars. Their mouths are oddly shaped. Their blowholes are grotesque orifices, falling somewhere in appearance between a volcano and a rectum. Even the babies aren’t photogenic. Gray whales are fifteen feet long when they’re born, clocking in at two thousand pounds.

  Undaunted, I continue to work. I have climbed Lighthouse Hill and sat on the slope for hours, looking to the west, where the whales pass by at irregular, unpredictable intervals. They are mysterious. They have been cropping up in my dreams, swimming through the moonless oceans of my mind, swishing their tails, displacing gallons of water, singing loudly enough to wake me.

  The other day, I saw a blue whale. I was high on the hill, trying to plant my tripod on the crumbling granite. The creature rose up without warning. The noise caught my attention first—the whistling gasp of its breath. Fifty feet from shore. A rare thing. A marvel. It was bigger than a building, bigger than a dinosaur. I knew the numbers—the amount of school buses that would balance out its body on a scale, the quantity of football fields that would constitute its spine.

  But
I could not capture this girth on film. I got a snapshot of its nose. Its maw, mottled with algae. A gigantic flipper flinging droplets like throwing stars. The tail, off-kilter. It reminded me of the parable about an elephant in a dark room. One person touches the trunk and describes the animal as a tree, the next touches the torso and describes the animal as a wall, and the third touches the tail and describes the animal as a rope. My photographs were similarly fragmented. Only pieces, rather than the whole. No grandeur. No force. No sense of power and size.

  I was scrolling through the images I had taken—all unsuccessful and unbeautiful—when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned so swiftly that I lost my footing. Andrew stood there grinning. His red cap was askew, the gold emblem winking at me. I skidded down the slope, flinging out a hand. Andrew caught my arm. He pulled me up, then yanked me against him. He wrapped me in a hug.

  “Poor Melissa,” he said. “Always falling down.”

  “Let me go.”

  He tightened his hold. My camera was pinned between us, digging into my chest.

  “You’re hurting me,” I said.

  He released me, stepping back. I shivered.

  There was a scuffle, and Lucy appeared on the hill. I was glad to see her—a novel sensation. She was panting, her cheeks scarlet from exertion. A coil of hair trailed across her cheek. Her expression was mulish.

  “You walk too fast,” she said to Andrew. “You never wait for me.”

  “Look who I found,” he said.

  Lucy glanced up, wiping her brow with her sleeve.

  “Oh, mouse girl,” she said. “Have you seen any burrowing owls?”

  I wasn’t sure how to respond to this.

  “They’re an invasive species,” Andrew explained. “They feed on the mice.”

  “They don’t belong here,” Lucy said. “We chase them off, but they always come back. It’s a constant battle.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  She turned away. “Let’s check Garbage Gulch, babe. I saw a couple there yesterday.”

  She did not say goodbye to me. She marched down the slope, her braid swinging behind her. Andrew blew me a kiss.

  THAT EVENING, LUCY brought the octopus into the living room. We were all downstairs, as we are every evening, seven bodies crammed into the tiny space, Galen and Forest reading on opposite ends of the couch, Mick scribbling notes about whales in the daily log, Andrew at the table, Charlene washing dishes. I was sitting on the floor, scrolling again through the images on my digital camera, deleting the duds. This is a nightly ritual. It will be months before I will be able to convert my pictures into prints. For now, they remain in a half-real state, glimmering on the screen, stored in electronic impulses in the memory card, more idea than art.

  I was aware of Andrew’s gaze on my back. Galen’s noisy breathing. The odor of Mick’s sweat. The restless jiggle of Forest’s legs. There is no peace here, no solitude. I have not yet learned to tune out the constant presence of the others. I will have to acquire this skill soon, for the sake of my sanity.

  Then Lucy laughed. The sound startled me. She was standing in her bedroom doorway with something cupped in her hands. She set the octopus on the floor. Evidently she had removed him from the aquarium on her bureau. She flicked the damp off her fingers. For a moment, Oliver stayed curled in a protective ball. His suckers were flipped outward, rumpled like lace. One yellow eye gleamed.

  He unfolded all at once, a remarkable gesture, eight legs tumbling in every direction. The sac of his body sagged like a deflated balloon. No bones. He had no bones. He began to drag himself right toward me.

  I got to my feet, backing away. I bumped into the couch. Oliver changed color, his flesh darkening from sandy ochre to furious red. The same hue as Andrew’s stocking cap. His progress made a surprising amount of noise. Suck and slide. Slither and coil. Suddenly, he changed direction. One long arm snaked to the side and tugged. His body rolled over, the skin puckered with dust.

  “He can’t breathe,” I said. “Won’t he die?”

  Lucy did not answer. She was watching her pet with something like pride. I found that I was standing by Mick, my fingers hooked in his sweater.

  “He’s fine,” Mick said. “They can hold their breath for thirty minutes or so. Look at him run! He’s trying to find a way out of here.”

  There was something both hopeful and hopeless in the scene. The octopus did not know that he was half a mile inland. He did not know about the obstacles he would have to overcome to return to the ocean. Acres of sharp, uneven granite. Gallons of dry, unforgiving air. The predatory seabirds overhead. The detached, amused gaze of the biologists. The octopus was unaware of how trapped he truly was.

  “There’s no escape,” Lucy said.

  10

  I WISH YOU WERE here. I wish you were anywhere.

  Over the years, I have tried to reconcile myself to the fact that I write to you, and you don’t write back. I have pretended that there is something therapeutic about all of this, in simply putting pen to paper. I have imagined that by storing up anecdotes for you all day long, I will be able to keep you with me. A relationship is a two-sided thing, both parties reaching toward one another across the empty air. You may be gone, but if I keep reaching, some element of our bond may remain.

  I even find myself narrating my own life, in my mind, throughout the hours—notes for my next letter to you. Sometimes it feels as though I’m two different people—the one doing the action and the one describing it afterward.

  Pouring a cup of tea, I will think, The steam billowed over the rim and filled the air with cinnamon. Taking a walk along the grounds, I will think, I saw five birds circling the lighthouse, climbing higher and higher on a current of air, their wings open but unmoving, folded and fixed like the flaps of a kite. This is not the way most adults live their lives: narrating every moment as it occurs, in the past tense, as a detached observer. But for me, the act has become reflexive. I have been writing to you for so long that I don’t feel as if something has happened until I have told you about it. The life cycle of any event begins with action, crescendos in observation, and finishes with nouns and verbs. It isn’t over until I have recorded it on the page. For you.

  But recently, I have not written to you. I have not been able to. Something terrible happened—so terrible that it took away my words.

  During that time, I have tried to write. God knows I have tried. But I could never seem to begin. My mind has been empty. I have taken out paper and pencil, sat staring for a while, and walked away, leaving the page blank. The other day I sent my father a postcard that said simply, Status quo. A big, fat lie. I could not write the truth. When Charlene has settled deferentially beside me at the kitchen table, asking how I am, I have made noncommittal noises and shaken my head. I have said nothing of consequence. Even my usual narration, internal and constant, has deserted me. Mick and I have taken our customary long walks in the chilly air, pushing through the fog. Holding his arm, steadying myself, I have been as silent as a stone.

  IT ALL BEGAN on a November evening. The afternoon was long and exhausting for everyone. A broken window. An injured auklet. A choppy, treacherous ocean that kept Galen and Forest on land against their will with nothing to do but sulk. For my part, I spent the hours on the grounds, attempting to get a few good images of the humpbacks. I was on the coast with Charles, my dear old friend and camera, for far too long, forgetting to eat, straining my ankle on the rocks, freezing myself to the bone. The humpbacks remained unhelpful. Despite my best efforts, they were in a coy mood, bobbing offshore, a glimmer of eyes and flippers. I came home with nothing to show for my efforts except a sore leg and the sniffles.

  By dinnertime, we were all worn out. Mick boiled the pasta as Andrew assembled a fruit salad out of the remainder of our canned goods. Every detail of that meal is still illuminated in my mind. Lucy’s braid, slung around her shoulders like a snake. Galen’s thumb, wrapped in a bandage. Andrew’s red stocking cap, with the little flash of gold o
n the side, a tiny phoenix stitched onto the fabric. How sick I am of seeing that hat. The conversation was rapid and ardent, though a lot of it, even now, zoomed right over my head. Galen and Forest sniped at one another in undecipherable biologist code. Lucy chattered on about common murres. Andrew did not say much. He sat there looking bored. His few comments were a bit risqué, I noticed—the relatively enormous size of a barnacle’s penis, the aggressive mating habits of the gulls. I could not tell if he was watching me or if I merely happened to be in his line of sight across the table. Charlene was a spot of color. She mostly asked questions, and I found it reassuring that someone else was confused too. I never asked questions. I was too far behind, left in the dust. What’s a common murre? I might have inquired, or, Who cares whether sharks mate for life? Only blank stares would have resulted.

  We had wine. Remember that, because it will be important later. It has never been my habit to drink; I don’t particularly like the sharp bite of alcohol, much less the ensuing mental muddle. I am not a person who enjoys a confused mind. But Mick had been storing a few bottles under the porch for weeks, hiding them from everyone. That night, we all needed a little cheering up. That night, I figured that it would be festive to raise a glass—or three, or four—with the rest of them.

  I went to bed late. I remember cannoning into my doorjamb, under the impression that it had moved a few inches to the left. I could hear Lucy’s soft voice in her bedroom downstairs. Galen, I knew, was out cold on the sofa, a bottle still hooked in his limp fingers. Charlene was in her room with headphones on. She often listened to music before bed, claiming it helped her sleep. In my drunken state, I’d found amusement in watching her work the apparatus over her mane of red.

  I heard a sound in the corridor. Mick and Forest were whispering. Then the front door creaked. They were outside on the porch. Evidently they were heading off to whale-watch by starlight. This was a wild risk, but I was too tired to consider its ramifications. The wine had reduced us all to drunken fools. I lay down in bed, feeling that my body was an enormous weight, one I had been carrying far too long. As I drifted off, I caught sight of a shape in the corner of the room. It was moonlight—I was almost sure it was only a streak of moonlight. Pale and gaunt. A suggestion of movement. I was already tumbling into sleep.