Lightkeeper's Wife

by Sarah Anne Johnson

  He sipped from the cup and licked the broth from his upper lip. Hannah kept her eyes on him in the most intimate way.

  “You said earlier you were going to Portland.”

  “Yes, ma’am, from Jamaica. We stopped in Virginia to pick up cargo, but I don’t know what it was. I didn’t go ashore.” He didn’t look at her but stared straight ahead, his head resting on the pillow.

  “Do you know who owned the ship?”

  “It was owned by a company in New York. The captain was a Theodore Walker of New Bedford, been in the merchant marine for years but never owned his own ship. Guess he never will now, eh?”

  “And how about you, where were you headed?”

  He turned his cloudy eyes on her. “Anywhere north. I swore if I made it, I’d never get on another boat again. Now here I am, and all I can think about is signing myself aboard the first ship that crosses my path.”

  Hannah watched Billy poke at the logs with a broken twig. She’d never met a man who could be still in front of a fire. They had to adjust the lay of the logs with their boot, or add more wood, or bring out the bellows, or wonder about the draft of the flue and whether the wood had dried enough and if locust or oak was better for burning. “What is this place anyways?”

  “Dangerfield Light, at the outermost edge of Cape Cod. Nor’easters drive more ships onto the shoals here than anywhere else on the eastern seaboard. You’re not alone in finding yourself stranded.”

  Hannah’s wavy brown hair fell over her shoulders as she leaned down to loosen the laces on her boots. A single strand of gray hair. Her hazel eyes reflected the gray afternoon. She had a strong jaw and sultry lips, skin lightly freckled by the sun. She watched Billy notice her. She let him look.

  “What drove you north?” Hannah asked.

  “Many things,” he said. “Lost my family, lost everything. Thought if I got back north, I could start over.”

  The wind shuddered against the house as if to remind them that it was there. She offered him another cup of broth, and when he refused, she left him to rest.

  ***

  Billy’s cough was the first thing she heard in the morning now. Not John’s boots scuffing the passageway from the lights. Not his distracted whistle as he fried some eggs. Not his voice whispering in her ear to wake her for breakfast, even though he knew she was already awake and enjoying the remnants of his heat in the bed. The lights kept flashing and she wanted to get up and douse them to save oil, but she couldn’t rouse herself. She wanted to stay in bed, but she couldn’t give in.

  She pulled herself from the sheets and made her way to her feet. The kitchen held no promise. Eggs, she needed eggs, and so filled the pail with chicken seed. The sound of bickering and feathers beating back reached her before she saw the chickens in the coop. The egg hens perched in the cubbies John had built. Others clustered near the wire gate as she approached and fought over the arcs of seed she cast. A hole in the wall let them go outside to a larger pen. John kept a pig and cow before they married, but with his pay from the lighthouse, and the expense and work of keeping the animals, it was better to barter for their provisions or buy them outright.

  Outside, Hannah walked along the edge of the vegetable garden, covered in sea hay. She grew turnips, sweet potatoes, onions, and squash in the sandy soil. The best soil blew away in the stormy winds. Root vegetables kept all winter in the dirt cellar. They still ate salt pork and salt beef that Hannah had brined six months ago. Hannah’s mother had taught her well how to survive the winter months.

  If the vegetables are sprouting or decaying, spread them to a drier place.

  Keep the beef and pork under brine that is sweet and clean.

  Lamps will have a less disagreeable smell if you dip your wick yarn in strong, hot vinegar and dry it.

  Then it occurred to her. Her mother’s remedy, equal parts camphor and hartshorn spread along the throat, could cure a hard cough. “So simple,” she muttered on her way back to the house.

  ***

  Four days since the wreck and Hannah cursed another day of not knowing where her husband was. With John’s trousers drawn up around her, she knotted the waist with a piece of rope and left her upper body bare. The cold water in the basin was clean. She thought of heating it but didn’t want to go into the front room where Billy slept. As she opened one of the curtains, her bedroom took on an amber hue. She touched a water-soaked cloth to her skin, scrubbed under her arms and all over her torso and the parts of her back that she could reach, working as fast as she could. When John was home and he came upon her washing, he stepped up behind her and wrapped his arms around to cup her breasts. She would lean back against him and feel the length of him along her body. He’d be home soon, she told herself.

  She dressed in a long-sleeved shirt and a sweater from John’s closet. Wearing his clothes was the closest she’d been to him in six days. What had started as a practicality had become her only intimacy with her husband. She favored clothes that he’d already worn, clothes that still carried his distinct smell of sweat, salt, and sex. Without him here, she didn’t care how she looked. She tried to push her fear away, but he was due four days ago, and it was only a day’s ride from Barnstable to the lighthouse. There was no reason he wouldn’t be home by now. She brushed out her hair and tied it back, pulling all the loose strands off her face. Anyone who saw her would think she’d lost her mind. Never mind that she wasn’t properly corseted, but wearing men’s clothes!

  On her way into the kitchen, she turned to the hearth to make sure the fire hadn’t gone out. Billy was gone, the blankets heaped like discarded clothing. “Billy!” she called. She fumbled through his blankets as if they contained some clue. There was nothing but the odor of his sweat, fever, and camphor. The cure must’ve worked. She followed the passageway to the bottom of the lighthouse and called his name, but only the cold sound of her voice called back to her. “Where on earth are you, you stupid fool,” she muttered. He was too weak to go anywhere, and why would he bother? She was insulted one minute that he had the nerve to leave, and relieved the next that she wouldn’t have to explain him to John or deal with him anymore. But he didn’t have the money or means to go anywhere. She grabbed her jacket from the back of the chair and pulled the front door shut behind her. The brown fields roved toward a line of beech trees sketched against a metal gray sky, white fog drifted over the fields and showed the speed of the wind, faster than a man could walk.

  She circled the house by the outhouse, peered over the edge of the dunes and down the long staircase to the beach. Then she started across the yard toward the barn. The worn cedar shingles and high barn door were painted green, but chipped and peeling like so many of the barns in Dangerfield. The heavy door slid back along its track, leaking afternoon light into the barn. “I know you’re in here, Billy,” she said. “There’s nowhere else you could be.”

  Her voice echoed, and Nellie stomped the hay in her stall, and the chickens flapped their useless wings.

  “You should’ve let me drown.” His voice wavered and slurred, and he couldn’t get hold of it.

  Hannah walked toward the sound. “Where are you? What are you doing out here?” She inched her way toward the back of the barn where she thought he was hiding in one of the stalls. Then she spoke in a gentle voice, as if coaxing a skittish dog. “Come on out of there now, Billy. It’s not good for you to be out in this cold air.”

  As she stepped forward, a cluster of barn swallows swept down from a railing over the loft and performed an uncanny display of acrobatics as they darted around her.

  Billy dragged himself out from the stall at the end of the barn and staggered toward Hannah with his head in his hands, the smell of whiskey emanating from his every pore. When he lifted his face, his eyes were rimmed in red, bloodshot, and wet. “You don’t even know me. I could be anyone,” he said.

  “You’re drunk.” Hannah stood with her hand
s on her hips, the sharp edge of her anger rising. “I risked my own life to save you, and now you’re out here drinking and feeling sorry for yourself? You think I don’t know you’re hiding things? You think I’ve never met a liar? I’m not afraid of you.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “If you’re drinking and acting like a fool, I can’t do my job.” Her voice was angry now, and she couldn’t stop. “My job as keeper here is more important than you. Do you understand?”

  Billy’s emotions shifted across his face like weather: angry at first, then startled and contrite.

  “We’ve got weather coming in. You can leave here if you want to, or else you can go inside and sleep it off so you can help me later on. Looks like you’re strong enough to make yourself useful. You can start by closing that door,” Hannah said. “I’ll be up at the lights.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Billy said quietly. He fastened the barn door by swinging the wooden boom down into the clamp, and then he walked unsteadily back to the house.

  Hannah’s livid energy carried her swiftly up the lighthouse stairs. He had no business drinking the liquor she kept on hand, no business wasting her time. Who did he think he was? By the time she reached the landing atop the lighthouse, her duties took her attention off her anger. She took her time filling the oil lanterns, trimming the wicks, and wiping the windows. No dousing the lights this morning, not with this fog.

  She didn’t want to go back to the house. Who was to say what this William Pike was capable of? Her father’s drinking had never frightened her, but she’d seen other men become dangerous. Once when she went fishing with Tom, they were approached by a group of drunken men swaggering down the beach. It was during the end of her first year at the lighthouse. She and Tom carried rods and some live eels in a wicker basket and walked north where the wind was at their backs and they could cast over the outgoing tide.

  As the men neared she saw them handing a bottle back and forth.

  “Hey, you catch anything? We seen you casting,” one of the men called out. The others laughed, snickered, and did not meet her eyes.

  “What’s in the basket?” A face that caved in on itself, rheumy eyes and drooping eyelids, seemed no match for the man’s broad shoulders and legs strong as stanchions.

  “What do you want?” Tom asked.

  “Maybe we just want to talk to your woman. I want to see her catch something.” The man moved toward Hannah, an eye on Tom, watchful. “Go ahead, little miss.”

  “No thank you,” Hannah said, her words dry like salt on her tongue. His eyes taunted her. She wanted to beat him back like a dog, but that would only satisfy him.

  “Listen to her. No thank you,” he said, mocking her. “Who do you think you are?”

  “I’m the lightkeeper’s wife at Dangerfield.”

  “So you think you’re somebody. That it?”

  “And who are you? What brings you to this coast?”

  “You got no place asking me nothing,” he said, and thrust his hand toward her throat as if that’s where it had been headed all along. Hannah stepped aside, and in one fluid motion Tom had his fishing knife unsheathed and held firmly across the man’s neck, the glinting blade scraping black whiskers.

  “Don’t think I won’t do it. I’ve killed men like you for less. I’d be happy to do it again and let the tide get rid of you for good.”

  The man searched his gang for help, but they stood mute as children.

  “Go back north from wherever you came and keep walking. I don’t want to see you here again. Next time I’ll be down here with a gun, you hear me?”

  The man nodded.

  “You hear me?” Tom said.

  The man’s shoulders hunched and he said, “Couldn’t help but hear ya. You’re screaming in my goddamned ear. Now, soon as you get your knife off my throat, we’ll head on out.”

  Tom slid his knife across the man’s throat so that it left a thin scratch, then shoved the man away from him. Without stopping or looking back, the man led his gang away. Tom vibrated with energy and fear. He had been ready to kill, and for her. She saw it in him and was overcome with her own fear and relief. She collapsed against him, his arms around her so different from John’s in their longing. His heart was a solid force against her cheek and when she tilted her face up, his passion was fierce and she received his kiss willingly, felt it through her body like wind. When he pulled away from her, they were both embarrassed and stared down the beach after the men.

  “Have you really?” Hannah asked. “Killed someone, I mean.”

  “I never have, but I would’ve just then. I would’ve cut his throat.”

  She felt safe with him, with John’s best friend. He would look out for her. They never spoke of the kiss again.

  5

  Billy put himself to work stacking wood on the front porch and closing the storm windows. He carried wood inside and stoked the fire, put water on for coffee and swept the kitchen floor. If Hannah kicked him out, where would he go? He had no money, no strength. He felt trapped in her house as Annie had been trapped aboard the Intrepid. After losing the baby, Annie was no longer content to sit belowdecks mending or stitching samplers, reading or writing letters for Daniel. The confines of the captain’s quarters, the grief and loneliness that resided there, drove her mad. He remembered her frenzy as she fetched a bucket of hot water and lye soap and set to scrubbing the floors and walls of the small berth until there wasn’t a particle of the cabin board she hadn’t cleansed.

  He’d do the same for Hannah. He couldn’t lie in bed knowing all his shipmates had perished. He couldn’t rest. Why was he the one to survive? After everything he’d done. On his knees, he ran a wet rag over the floorboards, scrubbing at the day’s grime while Annie’s faraway world drew him back.

  During her years at sea with Daniel, Annie had collected small dolls from every port. It was customary to give a gift upon boarding another captain’s ship, and she usually brought small drawings she made of islands they’d visited, or a handkerchief with a border of yellow daisies. She received gifts from other captains’ wives in return.

  She gathered her collection of dolls and dropped them into a canvas sack, and she remembered the dolls the island women had brought to her for luck, small wooden totems painted bright colors. With the sack over her shoulder she stepped up to the deck. At the ship’s transom, the wake rippled behind them, indicating their progress across the expanse of sea. Annie leaned against the aft rail and dumped the sack of dolls into the water. Then she watched them bob in the ship’s wake and drift like buoys. When she dropped the sack in after them, it caught the wind like a sail and drifted up and swirled before falling into the sea.

  Day in and day out the sailors ran up the rigging to carry out the first mate’s order to trim the topsail, or raise the main to flatten the sails. They maneuvered rigging, spars, and sails in easy, fluid motions, bending their bodies into the work so that they became part of the system of wind, water, and sail. Annie watched one sailor make a halyard fast around a belaying pin with several quick flicks of his wrist. “What’s your name?”

  “Robinson, ma’am,” the sailor stuttered, surprised to find the captain’s wife speaking directly to him. He was no more than a boy, the stubble on his chin barely grown.

  “Robinson, I want you to show me how to do that.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He responded as if given a direct order. The belaying pin was a large wooden peg stuck down through a hole in the ship’s rail so that there were two vertical sections of peg exposed. “Okay, ma’am, you wrap the end of the line around the top part, like this, then take it down and cross it over and around behind the bottom part like this, then around front and cross over again to go behind the top part. You make figure eights around the pin like that,” he said, pulling on the loose end of rope to show how it held. “There you have it.”

  Annie waited while h
e unfastened the rope, then she made awkward figure eights around the peg as instructed and pulled on the rope to test her knot.

  “It only takes practice, ma’am.”

  With Daniel, Annie maintained a distracted silence. There was nothing to say. For all his authority with the crew, Daniel appeared to be at a loss as to how to reach her. To humor her, he encouraged her curiosity about the boat. At least it created conversation between them.

  Once she spent more time on deck, she began eating again, and the color came back to her cheeks. She sat across the table from Daniel in his cabin and asked endless questions. “I’d like to learn to steer the ship,” she told him one afternoon. “I sailed a small boat as a girl. The principle’s the same, isn’t it?”

  The whale oil lanterns flickered across the beadboard walls and left a slight stink in the small quarters. But the light was soft, and the food was good, and they ate hungrily after a day’s hard work. Daniel wiped his bread across his plate, then looked up at her, surprised. “Yes, it is, but this is not a small boat. There are twenty-three sails to watch and keep trim, not to mention the weight on the helm. It’s no easy task.”

  “Let me try taking the wheel, Daniel. With you alongside,” she said.

  Daniel shook his head and put down the bread. His voice rose with authority. “You don’t understand, Annie. I’ve a reputation to uphold in front of my men. If you gallivant around the ship doing as you please, the crew loses faith in me as captain of this vessel. I must maintain my authority at all costs. I cannot have you manning the helm. It’s just not done. There’s many a sailor on this ship that objects to a woman aboard at all. Women are considered bad luck. You know that, Annie.”

  “That’s rubbish, Daniel. I’ve been sailing with you for years. If you believed in that nonsense, you wouldn’t have allowed me to come in the first place.” Annie dropped her utensils across her plate with a violent clatter. She fixed her eyes on Daniel. He wasn’t handsome, but he wasn’t unattractive either, tall and lean, with broad shoulders, olive complexion, and dark close-cropped hair.