The Lightkeepers

by Abby Geni

  At this point, one of the beasts decided to jump completely out of the water. The snout, then the torso, then the tail rose into the air. It blocked the sun. I screamed. I could not help it. In that moment, I wanted my camera—partly so that I could get it on film, but mostly so that I would have a measure of distance against the fact of such raw wildness. Without that intermediate shield of glass, it was not safe for me to be so close to such things. I had been right on top of untamed animals before—the Sister, with her splintered rows of shimmering teeth, sprang to mind—but despite this physical proximity, I had always had a degree of intellectual remoteness, the keen observer’s eye overriding every other concern. I could not feel afraid when I was considering how best to frame the shot. Now there was nothing to insulate me.

  The whale rotated in midair, thirty feet away, the fins flung balletically outward. It might have been alive since the world was new. The shadow dwarfed our boat. As I watched, the creature seemed to fall in slow motion. The crash came like thunder. I grabbed at the railing, too stunned to scream. A wall of spray climbed above the waves. The boat rocked perilously. I staggered backward, colliding with Mick.

  “Relax,” he said, in my ear. “That’s just how they scratch an itch.”

  THAT EVENING, WE came upon Sea Pigeon Gulch. We were strolling toward the cabin, each hefting a carton of gear. I had not been paying attention to where we were going. My mind was still packed with a throng of whales. Mick and I were arguing happily about whether cetaceans might be sentient. There was evidence on both sides of the question. Then he stopped dead. We had reached the edge of the water. Sea Pigeon Gulch was its usual, sinister self. A shadowy chasm, filled with restless ocean. I had not been near the place since the discovery of Andrew’s body.

  I froze. Mick flushed a dark red. He grabbed my arm and tugged me away.

  “I can’t believe they’re doing an autopsy,” he said, pelting along as though his life depended on it.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Nothing.”

  “No, tell me,” I said eagerly. “Galen said the same exact thing when he was talking to the doctor.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I cast my mind back, trying to recall Galen’s phrasing. “Don’t they always do an autopsy when somebody dies?”

  “Only on TV,” Mick said. “In real life, not so much. If it’s obviously natural causes, like a heart attack or old age, they don’t bother. But in this case—oh, hell.”

  In his urgency, he had begun to outpace me. I doubled my strides to keep up, trotting in his wake like a poodle on a leash.

  “Think about it,” he said. “There are two ways the thing could have happened. Andrew is strolling by the sea. He slips. His ankle breaks. He falls, banging his head. He lands in the water. He drowns.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Exactly.”

  “That’s one interpretation,” Mick said sourly. “The other is that someone whacks him on the head first. That’s why he goes down. He’s already unconscious when he hits the sea.”

  I paused in shock. For a minute, I did not even draw breath. Mick strode onward, and I gathered my wits, jogging after his retreating form. We reached the porch together. He threw himself into a deck chair, gripping the armrests. I sank onto a bench beside him, setting down my carton of gear.

  “You get what’s coming to you,” he said. “I believe that.”

  “What?”

  “I never liked Andrew. It’s not much of a loss, in my opinion.”

  There was a small silence. Then Mick stood up with a sudden movement.

  “I’m heading in,” he said. “You coming?”

  I shook my head. I did not watch him go. He slammed the door hard enough that the entire cabin shook. There was a band of gold above the water. The sun was a crimson orb, its contours disfigured and distended by the clouds. When that fiery ball touched the sea, a bright arrow streaked toward me, a pointing finger, the reflection broken up by waves.

  17

  IT IS MID-DECEMBER. In Washington, D.C., this is the heart of winter. The sky over Dupont Circle will become as gray and smooth as a length of linen. The streets will be filthy, disfigured by mud and fallen leaves. The schools will occasionally close, not because of snow, but because of rain.

  I remember, as a child, strolling with you on a winter afternoon, right down the middle of the street. That was the only patch of solid ground left. You walked in front and I clutched at the hem of your poncho. The downpour hammered my umbrella. The sewers had been overwhelmed by the tempest, unable to accommodate so much liquid. The gutters had filled. The sidewalks had flooded. Cars had turned into islands, their wheels submerged. Water brimmed against shop windows and doorways, and the rain turned the pools into mosaics of light. There was a row of pedestrians moving along the double yellow line together like a parade, albeit a hurried and commonplace one, schoolchildren, mothers with shopping bags, and men in suits, all rushing to get home before the storm worsened. I remember that day perfectly. I remember that when night fell and the temperature dropped, the overspill left standing on the pavement froze solid. I woke to a glassy wilderness. That is winter to me: a lingering drizzle, the glitter of ice, and the schools closed, again.

  But in California—or rather, off the coast of California—there is no true winter. The season has changed, but not in any way I recognize. The nights are a little cooler, the wind a little wilder. The fog has become semipermanent. It begins in the morning, just a tuft or two on the ocean. In the afternoon it thickens, pale and bright. In the evening it smothers the house in an impenetrable blanket, every window rendered blind.

  I have dreamed of sharks. I dream of whales now.

  A month has passed. It has been a month since Andrew’s assault, and I am still here. Recently I walked outside barefoot. I put on gloves, a coat, even a hat—but halfway to Breaker Cove I glanced down and observed my poor, pale toes caked in mud. It took the shock of the cold to alert me to my error. One day I brushed my teeth with liquid soap rather than toothpaste. One day I fought with the coat rack. As I came in the front door, it seemed to lunge out at me, a bulky, man-sized shape. I struck it with both hands, knocking it sideways and sending the jackets thudding to the floor. I have found it difficult, too, to keep track of time. Andrew’s attack seems to have done some damage to my internal chronometer. I often find myself surprised by the sunset or startled by a meal being put on the table, unaware of the hour.

  Then there was the day I got into a screaming match with Forest. The conversation began civilly enough, a chat about the female white sharks. The Sisters had left for balmier waters, and Forest suggested that perhaps there would be a change in their breeding patterns soon. Global warming had begun to alter the character of entire oceans, reshaping the tides. Without warning, I flew into a rage. There in the kitchen, I shrieked that I was tired of hearing about the Sisters. I was tired of biologists in general. There had to be something more to talk about in the world than sharks, whales, seals, and birds. At this point, Mick intervened, marching me into the kitchen and force-feeding me cookies and tea. Forest slipped away, and the whole thing blew over. Still, I was shaken afterward. That anger had come out of nowhere, as unstoppable as a volcanic eruption, surprising even me.

  But an outside observer would not necessarily see a marked alteration in my behavior, a change from Before Andrew to After Andrew. My temper might be raw now, flaring on a hair trigger. I am sometimes antisocial, hiding in my room. I sleep a little more. I feel curiously absent, almost insubstantial, and I eat like a fur seal filling its belly with stones, trying to anchor myself to the earth.

  Still, it is easier than I would have imagined to feign normalcy. Every day, I walk the grounds, taking pictures. One morning I caught an albatross wheeling against the sky. Another day I found a flock of gulls circulating in an aggressive, erratic pattern, some close enough to touch, others so far away that they resembled snowflakes. Once, I captured a pod of dolphins, perhaps forty feet offshore, visible only throu
gh my telephoto lens. They were playing some elaborate game—leaping joyously out of the water, not spontaneously, but in predetermined groups, three or four at a time, with the sort of precise unison that synchronized swimmers could only dream of. Though I enjoy the ease and portability of my digital cameras, I have found myself more attached than ever to Jewel, my large-format behemoth. There is a wonderful ritual to using it: framing the shot, setting up the tripod, inserting the film, and throwing the cloak over my head. In the darkness under the cloth, I feel childlike, a kid hiding beneath a blanket. The image will appear before me, glowing in the gloom. The known, familiar world will be flipped over. The sky on the bottom. The sun shining at my feet. The sea rising above me—a gray, solid wall.

  We did eventually get word from the mainland, by the way. This was a few days back, on a gusty morning, the cabin whistling and sighing like a ship at sea. The federal agents had finished their work. Andrew’s body had been duly dissected. The verdict had been handed down. Galen received a call on the radiophone, and over breakfast he told us the news.

  “The autopsy—” he said, then cleared his throat and began again, booming over the breeze. “The results were inconclusive. That happens sometimes, apparently. But they ruled it an accidental death. The case is closed.”

  ON FRIDAY, LUCY held her memorial service. She waited until the workday was done. First Forest and Galen came home in a black humor. Their video camera was on the fritz again. Given my experience, I was deputized to help fix it, and soon the entire table was covered with viewfinders, memory cards, fiddly plastic shapes, tiny circuit boards, and pages of the falling-apart instruction manual. Galen kept reading passages of this useless document aloud to us. Forest and I treated the whole thing like a jigsaw puzzle, starting at the middle and working toward the edges. Mick emerged a while later, whistling cheerfully, having spotted a few elephant seals frolicking in the surf. He tried to participate in the great camera adventure, but almost immediately he snapped a section of the casing in two. As I taped it back together, he retreated in shame.

  “You men with your big, clumsy fingers,” Forest said unexpectedly in a Southern drawl. Mick hid a smile in his palm.

  For the rest of the afternoon, the four of us sheltered there. Forest and I reassembled the video camera. Galen complained that the manual shifted from English into French and then into what looked like Portuguese. Mick, in the corner, raved about the elephant seals. The room was filled with a cheery glow. The kitchen had always been the homey heart of the cabin to me.

  At sunset, we had finally finished putting the camera back together—minus a few cogs that Forest suspected were actually part of the toaster, which had been dismantled in the same spot a few weeks earlier. By this time, the sky was the color of a bruised plum. A sliver of moon had crested the horizon.

  Then Lucy strode out of her bedroom, followed by Charlene. I was unaware that they’d been in the house at all. Lucy held a bundle of long, slim, ivory candles. As Forest hastily tucked the camera out of the way, she distributed these tapers in silence, one for each of us. Charlene had a handful of round origami shapes—the sort that could be blown up like balloons. Lucy explained that these paper globes would shield our candles from the wind as we walked in procession down to the sea.

  I noticed that both women were dressed in dark hues. I wondered if I ought to change out of my hot-pink T-shirt—but it was too late, Lucy had whipped a lighter out of her pocket. Soon each of us held a dancing flame. It took a bit of work to attach the paper spheres to the top of the candles without setting the parchment alight. Galen was unsuccessful. There was a sudden flare, followed by a few curses, and a charred butterfly floated down to the floor.

  “We made extra,” Charlene said.

  The evening was suffused with a wintry chill. We moved toward the water in single file, Charlene and Lucy both hefting a satchel in their free hands. Despite my skepticism, I could not help but be impressed by the stateliness of our dark shapes, each bearing a glowing orb. There was a grandeur about the proceedings. We gave Sea Pigeon Gulch a wide berth. We headed toward Mussel Flat instead, where the shoreline was a gentle mound.

  At the water’s edge, Lucy turned. We gathered in a semicircle in front of her. Her face looked different, lit from beneath with gold.

  “Thank you all for coming,” she said.

  There was a round of murmurs.

  “This was Andrew’s favorite time of day,” she said. “He liked the evening. I thought that we might—” Her voice broke, and she paused. “Charlene has been kind enough to help me gather up some of his things. If we could—” She paused again. Hastily, she wiped her eyes.

  Lucy had been like a leaking sponge since Andrew’s death, spouting tears at the slightest provocation. I, on the other hand, had not cried once, though it seemed to me that I had greater cause. All this gushing emotion was indulgent. Even as a child, I had never been a crier. I ducked my head, letting the wind carry my hair across my cheek. Drawing a shaky breath, Lucy pulled herself together.

  “Galen let me have one of his model ships,” she said. “We’ll load it up with Andrew’s things and sail it out to sea. I think that’s fitting. A Viking burial for his best possessions.”

  She made a gesture, and Charlene bent over the bags, lifting out a miniature clipper ship, complete with rigging. In the past, this had sat on the mantelpiece, adding an extra bit of nautical flair to the living room. Now Lucy looked it over. She brushed a speck of dust off the hull. Charlene pulled out a yellow T-shirt. With a shudder, I recognized it as Andrew’s; I had often glimpsed that splash of ochre inside the collar of his jacket. There followed a bottle of cologne and a wristwatch. A fountain pen. A battered copy of The Catcher in the Rye. A pack of gum. Each item was settled importantly on the deck.

  At last it was done. Lucy turned to us again.

  “I wish we had his red hat,” she said. “His lucky hat. It’s the one thing I couldn’t find. The waves must have washed it away.”

  She and Charlene walked down to the water, holding the little boat between them. They set it in the shallows. Lucy gave it a push, and the tiny craft bobbed away, rotating to port, heading for Saddle Rock. The sea was coated with the last of the day’s light. The ship’s silhouette made a hole in that shimmering, silvery glaze. We all had our eyes fixed on it. From what I could tell, Mick was holding his breath, willing the thing onward. It traveled farther than I had expected. Finally the sea took matters into its own hands. The craft tilted to one side. It sank abruptly, as though a miniature submarine had breached its hull with a torpedo. Andrew’s T-shirt remained for a minute or two, drifting on the surface. Then it, too, slid underwater.

  “We’ll say a prayer,” Lucy said huskily. “I wasn’t raised in a religious environment. Andrew wasn’t either. Honestly, I don’t even know if he’d like us to pray for him. But I thought it would be appropriate. Just repeat after me, okay?”

  She bent her head over her guttering candle. The others raised their voices in an atonal chorus, Charlene’s soprano clashing against Galen’s growl. I did not pay much attention to the phrasing: God full of mercy—perfect rest—holy and pure—the soul of Andrew Metzger. Charlene had gone a little teary, a gleam around her eyes. As for me, I kept my lips closed. I did not say a word.

  SEAL SEASON

  18

  THERE WAS BLOOD on the rocks. The elephant seals were fighting again. I stood a safe distance away, eye to the viewfinder, framing the shot.

  This is a daily ritual now, in cold December, beneath clotted clouds. Dozens of male elephant seals have come on land to make war with one another. They have claimed Marine Terrace and Mirounga Bay. They have filled the air with their thundering cries. They are monstrous creatures. Mick has told me their dimensions: thirteen feet from nose to tail, two tons in weight. But the data don’t do justice to the animals’ physical presence, their unique combination of ferocity and silliness. The males have blubbery, lolling bodies. Their heads are misshapen—distorted by a
limp, waggling nose, a kind of prototrunk. The elephant seals lumber around the beaches, posturing at one another, swinging their headgear aggressively. They are making a hierarchy. They are preparing for the females to arrive.

  Their fights make for excellent photographs. Each confrontation begins with a display. One male will lift the top half of his body completely into the air and torque on the spot, showing off his bulk. A few feet away, a second elephant seal will do the same. Their noses will inflate, and they will bellow—a sharp, clapping cry, the pinniped version of a sonic boom. Often, the smaller male will concede at this stage.

  If not, however, the two will engage. These scuffles are brief, brutal things. Full contact. They fling and thrust with their immense torsos. They slash with their vicious teeth. Each elephant seal wears a chest plate of scar tissue. They are gray animals, ocean-colored, but their torsos are pink, veiny, and raw. The flesh there is enough to make me wince. After exchanging blows, the winner will pose and boom triumphantly. The loser will slink away, painting the stones with red.

  I have been using my large-format camera to photograph them. Each morning, I set up my tripod and slip the dark cloak over my head. This gives me the illusion of safety, as though I have been rendered invisible, my physical person erased by the fall of fabric. (In reality, of course, a photographer using this kind of instrument is thoroughly conspicuous: a hooded figure framed against the slope, shrouded in black like the specter of death.) On the viewfinder, the animals come into focus. This camera flips the world upside down: a granite sky, the earth made of clouds, the elephant seals floating above the horizon. I love the unreality of it.