Lightkeeper's Wife

by Sarah Anne Johnson

  Blue stuck her head above the hatch cover and saw men lunge across the deck only to be struck down by the pirates, who swung their weapons at anyone in striking distance. Blue unsheathed her cutlass and stepped into the foray. A tall sailor raised his machete over one shoulder, and she swung her blade across the front of his legs, not to kill him, but to disable him. He buckled onto the floor and dropped his weapon, which she kicked away from him. The smoke-filled air was infused with fear and the pirates used that fear to defeat the ship’s crew. Blue came up behind a crewman, held her blade at his throat. His fear surprised her and she led him to the rail, where she tied his hands and left him.

  She gathered as many sailors as she could until the merchant ship’s crew was either dead or crawling on all fours toward the rail. The work was easy until she approached an able-bodied crewman from behind, her blade to his throat, and he started to fight her off. She kicked him in the stomach and knocked him back, but he came at her again, wielding a heavy oak board. Blue sliced him across the belly and shoved him onto the floor. His blood pooled at her feet, and he groaned as he took his last breath. She felt nothing, and this frightened her. She’d saved herself. “Any one of you care to fight, come fight, I’m right here!” But the few men remaining held their hands in the air and walked, heads down, to the rail.

  The pirates worked in a long, slow procession, carrying boxes and crates of cargo, lumber, and sail bags and heaving with sighs and expelled breath as their reverent march continued. Blue lost herself in the work: carry one end of a swinging crate, pass over the water to the Alice K—until she was nothing more than the motion of her body. Without Annie to go back to, she only had this moment, this life, following the plank from one ship to another. By the time they’d stripped the ship of everything useful, the sun had started to sink and two of the injured men had died in pools of their own blood. When all of the pirates had disembarked, and only Blue and Jack remained on the schooner with the surrendered men, Jack paced the deck along the rail and spoke.

  “You’ll stay here for three days, then head on to wherever it is you’re going. Understood?” One or two murmured in agreement. Jack spun on one boot, strode across the deck with Blue at his side, and led her across the plank. When they were safely onboard the Alice K, he ordered the plank retrieved and the sails trimmed. The ship drifted back and headed across the wind while the schooner floundered in a haze of smoke, men still tied at the rail. Sailing away on a strong wind, Blue felt her body warm from the hard work of battle.

  “Come with me,” Jack said, leading her down into his quarters, and pointing to a chair. She was too fired up to sit still, and she poured them each a mug of rum in the dead captain’s pewter cups. Jack sat on the edge of his berth and rocked back and forth waiting for his rum, then drank it down and held his mug out for another. “Takes hours to ease off a fight. You’ll get used to it. First raid’s the hardest.”

  Blue filled both cups again. “Those weren’t men. We hardly had any challenge in ’em at all. We could’ve done better, wasted less time, less ammunition.”

  “You did good. You’re not dead.”

  The air inside the cabin felt close and hot. Blue removed her waistcoat and unbuttoned the top of her linen blouse and untied her blond hair so that it hung down. She shook her hair out as if she could free her mind.

  “You’re something to behold,” Jack said.

  Blue stepped across the small space, straddled Jack where he sat, and inhaled the musky salt stench of him, smelling her own odor against him and kissing his rum-soaked mouth until he lifted her up and dropped her back onto the table and removed her trousers. Freeing himself from his own trousers, he jerked himself into her and she wanted him to use her hard. He tore open her blouse so buttons scattered on the floor and he pressed against her. She locked her legs around him to pull him against her, away and across the water so that all she had was the sensation between her legs and the feeling of the boat rocking in the ocean, him rocking on top of her with a warm pulse inside her and his stinking breath matching with her own muffled groan, a voice not entirely hers but hers nonetheless. Before he came he finished her off and she let go into the heat that spread through her belly and a convulsion of limbs.

  Then it was over. She was just back where she started on the table and he was riding her while she stared at the slatted ceiling and the whorled knot in the wood that shone through the varnish until his final heaving jolt and groan, then the wet suck as he pulled out of her, his body relaxed. He stepped back and turned for the rum. There sat Blue on the edge of the table with her pants at her ankles and the whirling rush of the battle now mixed with the rum and a feeling of climax. She stood to pull up and fasten her trousers and reached for the cup of rum that Jack held out for her, drinking it down hard.

  “You killed again today. How did it feel?”

  “He would’ve killed me. What was I supposed to do?”

  Jack didn’t answer, but she eyed him without flinching. “You’re one of us now.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “You will.” Jack leaned back on his bunk, his body nearly steaming with the release of tension.

  “What brought you to this life?” Blue asked.

  “I sailed on a merchant ship, like your husband’s, but I couldn’t take orders. I only lasted three months before I jumped ship in Barbados. I sailed on small fishing boats and did odd jobs, then one night in a bar I met a sailor who told me about a pirate ship on the other side of the island that was looking for men.”

  “You wanted to be a criminal?”

  “No, I wanted the life. The freedom, the money.”

  “And are you glad of it?”

  “Glad enough.”

  Blue took her leave and went up into the dark on deck. On this ship there were no rules, no morals, nothing to hold her back or discourage her from anything she wanted to do, and she wanted to do everything. She’d killed a man today, without thinking. Not like killing her husband, under duress, to prove some point or take some punishment. She killed to save her own life. The rush of fighting for her life made her feel more alive than any safe haven she’d ever known. Fighting made fear drift into the dark corners of her awareness. What did she have to be afraid of when she could fight like that? She wanted to forget the life she’d known before with its stuffy little corners and women’s work and men telling her what to do, all of that expectation that brought no promise, no insurance, no guarantee of a safe life after all.

  10

  Her first year and a half aboard the Alice K passed in weeks and months of waiting, then two or three raids at a time followed by a month of debauchery. Blue had proven herself an equal fighter and earned her share of the money they stole and cash earned from selling stolen goods. She made friends with the crew as she pulled her weight in battle and didn’t back down in the face of an enemy. She’d learned to forget everything but the moment she was in. Annie existed in her mind like the memory of a friend lost long ago. There was no Annie anymore. Only this ship with the stink of liquor and unwashed men. Nothing to look forward to but a drink or a fuck or a fight. And she looked forward to these things ravenously, for each brought with it a blissful oblivion.

  The Alice K lifted and dropped, as Blue strode toward the rail, accommodating the lurch of the ship with her own swinging motion. The crew worked to raise the mainsail. Standing along the ratlines, sailors loosened the reef, until the sail filled into a smooth, billowing curve. Blue wished that she could unfurl herself like that, but she was wound tight as a monkey’s fist.

  She lent a hand and hauled on the halyards with the other sailors, heaving the sail with its great wooden boom. The strain in her arms and in her back sent a familiar burn through her body, and she pulled with her legs braced against a cleat until the expanse of canvas caught a gust of wind and the ship rushed forward.

  Johnson made the halyard fast. He was a wiry li
ttle man with coffee-colored hair, his face ravaged by pockmarks and roped scars that disguised any youth or innocence that might have remained in him, though he was only seventeen. He was quick to offer help but rarely followed through, often leaving a pile of lumber half stacked or a length of sail unfastened to the boom.

  As he coiled the ends of the halyards, he let one fly in his haste. When it whipped Blue across the face, she lunged at him. “You filthy little swine.” She grabbed him by the throat with one hand.

  “It got loose on me!”

  Blue stared into every crater, every filthy crease of skin and purple vein pressing against the surface of his skin. She tightened her grip. Cords of muscle and tendon vibrated beneath her fingers. Johnson’s cries sounded muffled and distant, as if it was him and not him whose veins rose beneath her fingers.

  “You’ve gone round the bend,” Johnson said.

  “I’ll kill you,” Blue said, but she hesitated long enough for Briggs to grab her by the wrist. She shook herself loose from his fat hand. Briggs was a son of a bitch with ruddy skin and black hair cut close to his scalp, so that in the sun it shone like a helmet. He hovered six feet tall and over two hundred pounds. Blue knew better than to cross him.

  Johnson sat down hard on the deck, his shoulders hunched forward, his head bent low to avoid further blows as he tried to catch his breath, careful not to look anywhere but at the deck by his feet.

  “He’ll live,” Blue said.

  “No thanks to you.”

  Blue spat over the side of the boat. She felt Briggs’s eyes on her as she strode the planks aft to the wheel, where the first mate maneuvered the ship. The ship’s wheel rocked back and forth with the force of the waves against the rudder. The rhythm located her as she rode the waves in her legs, feeling the boat fight the swells.

  “Bit of a sea,” she said, the rush of the fight singing through her.

  “She’s let up quite a bit,” Nate said. His nose scanned the air like a dog’s, as if he could read the news on the wind and smell the oncoming weather. Blue wanted to be able to sense something more than weather, but all she could see were lofty clouds and endless stretches of sea. She left Nate and stepped down the hatch to the captain’s room. The cabin stank of whale oil from the lanterns, damp wood, and unwashed clothes. The pirates were a democracy, but Jack was their captain in any raid, and for this reason, and for the respect his authority and charisma commanded, he was given the best quarters. He lay back in his bed, smiling, bushy black eyebrows twitching as he watched her. Blue reached into the cupboard for the bottle, poured the dark liquid into a tin cup, and drank it down before she poured a second cup. She drank without speaking. Jack rolled over and propped his head on one hand to watch her in the dim light.

  His square whiskered jaw lent his face a seriousness that belied his cynical amusement. When Blue finished the second cup of rum, she sat on the edge of the bunk beside him. He pulled her down to him. “I knew you’d come back,” he said.

  “I’m not back,” she said. “I’m just here.”

  ***

  Blue found herself pressed into the corner between the bedding and the wall of Jack’s bunk as if she’d tried to burrow through to another world in her sleep. She struggled to her feet and was shaking off the first sleep she’d had in days when the voices fell from above. “Look there! A stranded vessel four points off the starboard bow!”

  She stuck her head up through the hatch. Fresh air assaulted her, the sun and wind an affront. On the near horizon a small whaleboat drifted. Two sailors pulled on the oars and the sails fluttered in the morning air. The sea spread around the tiny craft as if it would swallow them in one gulp. One rogue wave or fleeting squall could send the small boat to the bottom faster than a rock dropped in the water.

  “There’s enough of us already,” she said, climbing up from below, shielding her eyes. “Let them save themselves.”

  But it wasn’t long before the Alice K headed into the wind so that the sailors could row alongside. Blue avoided the sunlight and activity. She lowered herself into the fo’c’sle. She lay in her hammock, listening to the commotion of lifting sailors onboard, stowing the whaleboat atop the deck, and the murmurs of the crew as they listened to the sailors’ tale of survival. Shipwrecks and stove boats, lives lost to drowning and sharks. She fingered her pistol, and the cold metal titillated her skin. These times in between raids, when all they did was sail and watch the empty sea, left her feeling raw and anxious. She wanted to peel her skin from her face, expose bone. She wanted to drink herself into an oblivion deeper than drowning. But for now she busied herself cleaning her gun, wiping down the barrel with oil, removing the cylinder and pushing the cloth inside with her finger, rubbing it around until she was satisfied. She was always alert, ready.

  ***

  On a sunny afternoon between raids, Jack and Blue drank rum on the quarterdeck and looked forward along the deck as it stretched before them. Jack told her about the Alice K, a merchant runner the pirate crew had acquired west of Jamaica, leaving the original captain and crew on an old brig not worth the cost of the wood it was built from.

  He drank straight from the bottle and carried on, telling her how the Alice K’s narrow hull and vast sail area made for fast sailing, which was essential for getting away from the ships they raided.

  She’d learned from her own experience that the pirates lived according to their own sets of rules. They conducted business through an intricate system of underground networks developed among a group of Jamaicans eager for a share of the pirates’ cargo. After a raid, the band laid up in a tiny bay in Jamaica where they sold or bartered their loot and replenished the galley with live goats and chickens, potatoes, bananas, mangoes, and anything of substance they could find on the island through the channels and networks that Jack had established. The islanders worked the pirates, maneuvering to get as much of the goods they wanted for as little in return as possible. The pirates were there to trade their stolen goods for money and supplies. The islanders wanted access to the pirates’ wealth and the opportunity to turn their knowledge of the island into money.

  Blue hadn’t gone ashore since she’d been taken onboard the Alice K. Nobody questioned her reasons. The first time Jack’s island connection came to the ship to examine the cargo, Blue had been sleeping in a hammock on the foredeck. It was the slow lilt of the woman’s voice that woke her. Even from behind, Blue recognized her stance. Blue watched from behind the mast, fascinated by the familiar confidence with which Therese conducted business. Therese was Jack’s woman on shore, and she handled the distribution of the loot and the collection of supplies and money. She offered herself to Jack in return for a share of the take. Whether in the form of food, tradable goods, or money, it didn’t matter. Therese knew how to get what she wanted. When Therese stood on shore waiting for the crew to come in, her body bent like a palm in the wind, a smooth curving arch. Blue waited to reveal herself until Therese came to the ship without Jack. She came on deck as Therese disembarked from her canoe, and when Therese saw her, she nodded. “Now you know,” Blue said.

  When Jack and the crew enjoyed the women ashore, Therese’s crew rowed out in canoes to retrieve the goods and carry them to shore. They worked in the hot sun until the hold was empty, and in five days they returned with the supplies the pirates needed to go back to sea. Therese informed Jack of the planned routes of merchant runners and the occasional bounty hunters around the island. While the rest of the crew went ashore to spend their money on drinking and women, Blue still remained onboard. She occupied herself studying charts, examined the rigging for worn lines or frayed ends that needed splicing. Oftentimes she sketched the ship’s rigging with charcoal that Jack had given her. She’d learned to draw as a girl, and found solace in rendering the Jamaican women who came aboard and the cliffs that hid the ship from the island cove that she remembered with its palm trees, huts, and overturned skiffs. It was a rel
ief to be alone without the crude clamor of the men around her. At the end of the day, she wore only bloomers and a torn blouse and dove off the transom into the impossibly blue water, so clear and deep that she could see the coral and sea grass, red and orange and green and black, shaped like hands, fingers and thumbs askew. Schools of tropical fish drifted like clouds of color through the water. Blue swam hard against the currents to wear herself out, and when night came, she drank herself into a stupor to escape the undertow of her dreams.

  ***

  The shipwrecked sailors had been onboard for only a few hours when Blue ducked into the mess quarters. Abbott, the cook, ladled soup into wooden bowls and handed over chunks of bread to the men. He had a habit of ingratiating himself by telling jokes that ranged from declaring the stale bread “fresh baked this afternoon” or the three-month-old salt beef “slaughtered today” to long-winded tales of drunken Irishmen, which as an Englishman he relished, pulling on his mustache harder and harder until he reached the punch line. He would’ve been a handsome man, a round face and huge green eyes, full lips and an eagerness to please, but the birthmark on the lower left quadrant of his face marred his features, and his passion for whiskey further drove his skin into an irritation of red splotches that caused Blue to look away. The hungry crew and rescued sailors sopped at fish stew with bread and ate until there was nothing left to eat. Mark, the taller of the two sailors, sat across from Blue, while Jeb, who was pale, small, wraithlike, sat in Mark’s shadow. Mark’s face had a hollow look. He reached for more bread. “Such good food,” he said.

  “This is a pirate ship, fool. We eat like kings so long as it lasts,” Briggs told him.