Lighthouse Island

by Paulette Jiles

  Nadia kept her schoolbooks under the bench and only occasionally flipped through them because they were so boring. She also kept old novels there. Nobody cared if she read. Child welfare didn’t care. So few people read that it was of no concern.

  Thin Sam Kenobi was loose inside his layers of clothes, several shirts and a tattered sweater and a coat. His knuckles were round as marbles. From below came a deep rumbling. The transport trains. He had taken to instructing her in matters of life, things an orphan girl ought to know.

  He said, Always, always hide food. Never, never sign anything.

  Why? she said. She rested her pointed chin on one fist and her dark-red hair stuck out in sprays.

  Because there are people who would arrest you and take you away. He turned a leaf of foil in his hand. You would be a happy child if only the world would let you be.

  This left Nadia confused. Was she supposed to be happy all the time? Would people love her then?

  Never mind. So. Thin Sam rooted around in his basket and came up with more foils and handed them to her. And you will see other girls who have parents and good lives, and when you find yourself getting angry, getting envious, say to yourself, Stop, stop. It’s a waste of mind. Okay?

  Yep, said Nadia. Will do.

  From the alcove of the doorway to the Riverdale Apartments they could see down the street where it fell away into the great, broad valley covered in the parquetry of hundreds of thousands of buildings, the city without end. It fell into a haze in the remote distance, a fog caused by the heat inside millions of trashy little apartments. Many blocks were painted with portraits of agency heads several stories high with windows for eyes so it appeared that people lived inside all-seeing brains. Nadia heard the engine of a hang glider carrying a day-flight watchman in thick goggles, spying out trouble, especially young lovers who whispered on rooftops, wanting to be alone.

  Sand and dust rose up out of the canyon streets in cold coils. It grew dark and the streets were emptied. Here and there someone walked home late with a pierced tin candle-lantern but most people were inside cooking dinner and watching the advertisements for vacation spots. Not that any of them would ever have enough work credits.

  You’ll never get there, he said. To Lighthouse Island.

  Hey, why not? She shoved her auburn hair back from her face and reached for another foil. Her breath smoked from her nose.

  You’ll meet some guy. He’ll say he loves you and that’ll be the end of it.

  I’ll make you a bet, she said. She was suddenly furious. I’ll bet you anything you want to bet.

  Nah. If you ever ran away you wouldn’t even know where to go. You wouldn’t know to go north and find the old Ritz-Carlton building. You’re going to take up with the first guy that pays any attention to you. That’s because you’re an orphan. It’s the way of the world with orphans.

  Nadia bit her lower lip against the feeling of weeping that crept up her neck and jaw. She was once again dressed in an oversized coat and dress, shoes like wastebaskets, clothing issued for someone her age by mechanical and repeated deliveries every year regardless of her actual size.

  Run away? she cried. What do you mean, run away? The way of the world with orphans, oh ha ha.

  Just remember what I said. Remember every word.

  She crinkled up the foil strips and wiped her nose on her sleeve and felt as if her heart were breaking and from the breakage tears were going to spill out in an extravagant, dehydrating stream because Thin Sam Kenobi sounded like the voice of God. He was wise and old and knew everything. He used tools and made things and he had an actual homemade radio that sometimes worked. It broadcast a voice reading from antique books and poetry and also classical music. There it was now; So then, they know it and we know it; the time has come for the kingdom of dreams to go on the offensive.

  Listen, he said. It’s Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky. Memories of the Future. It’s into the Russians now.

  I don’t understand any of it. She wiped quickly at her gray-green eyes.

  It’s too old for you.

  Where does it come from?

  From an old satellite, suspended up there, twenty thousand miles overhead.

  Jeez, fascinating. She blinked back tears. Thin Sam Kenobi had made a definitive pronouncement on Nadia’s life and against this declaration she had no appeal.

  He reached behind the bench into the paper sack of foils and brought out a quart bottle of water. It was partly frozen and wrapped in a woven koozie, strips of bright rags.

  Here.

  Thank you.

  Not a problem. Don’t ask where I got it.

  Very well.

  Very well. He imitated her stiff, choked voice. That’s so you can cry. You need more water than you’re getting. A young girl shouldn’t end up wrinkled like an old woman. You should be able to cry any time you want.

  His eyes were Baltic pale and he turned slowly to look at her where she sat wrapped in her layers of knit clothing, a canvas coat and fingerless gloves and her wizened adolescent face.

  She said, there’s plenty of water at Lighthouse Island. I could drown myself in it.

  Oh again. Again again. Okay, that’s what the TV says. But where is it? He laughed and showed a bridge of ill-fitting steel teeth. It’s close to the graveyard, where the daughter of Oceanus watches over the sea. Remember every word.

  It’s northward, said Nadia. Now, Sam, you show me where the North Star is. Her heart was apparently not broken yet or maybe it had repaired itself in the last few minutes.

  You show me first. Go ahead and guess.

  There. She pointed to a brilliant light rising over the rim of the valley and all the distant apartments with a pale and somewhat dirty forefinger.

  That’s an advertisement, he said. And the light expanded, threw out glowing arms that formed into spirals. It’s the sky ad for Savory Circles.

  Well, then, where is it? She turned up the bottle of water, drank as much as was unfrozen, capped it, put it under the bench.

  Hide that better, he said.

  She covered it with her book bag.

  It’s dim, said Sam. He handed her two bracelets and then began to fold other foils into star shapes. It’s between two big bright constellations. You’re so smart, I thought maybe you knew.

  Nadia put the foil bracelets into a basket woven from electrical wire that Thin Sam then carried into the streets and sold to women and girls who had neither jewelry nor coins to buy anything but these foil bracelets and rings that would sparkle for a short while, would lift spirits for a week or so. It was not illegal so far but you never knew. When the people at the top decided, they’d let you know. She clasped her hands under her armpits to warm them. I am smart, she said. And you know it and I know it.

  All right then, what are these? He laid out the star-shaped foils.

  That’s the Big Dipper and the Chair and I guess the little one is the North Star.

  Good! Okay now, where in the sky is it?

  Over Lighthouse Island.

  He swept up the foils and crushed them and began folding bracelets again. I told you, he said. You’ll never get there.

  Oh, how do you know! She put both hands in their tatty fingerless gloves over her eyes and fell, finally, into abandoned and hopeless weeping.

  I know, he said. He looked down at her. Nadia wiped her eyes and took deep breaths. His thick eyeglasses made his cloudy eyes shift and glint. It’s life.

  Somebody called, Nadia! Sam! Come inside!

  Because the wind is becoming stronger and stronger and supper is ready. Come in. Get away from the street. Hide from the cruising pickup vans. Come in where it was safe from the dark and the things that paced nervously in the dark.

  Sam, tell me, she said. If I just act happy all the time, will I be okay in life?

  You don’t know how to be, he sa
id. Orphan child. You don’t know who you are. He patted her on the top of her head and it was like being softly beaten with a baseball glove. Just hold out your two hands and pretend there’s a light there, and it’s all yours forever, and there are these huge stars on your left and your right, whose job is to look out for you.

  Nadia thought for a moment. Yes, wait, here, I got it. My mother and dad live on Lighthouse Island. They’re waiting for me to get there. She looked up at him with a delight in her own audacity.

  He sighed. Okay, he said. Okay, okay.

  Chapter 4

  Nadia slept in a nest of dreams and coverlets. It was deep in the night and deep in a dream of some performance where onstage an entertainer fell into a giant fan and was sliced to pieces. She was supposed to take one of these bloody pieces somewhere so they could put him back together. It was wrapped in a dishcloth. In the middle of all this her curtain was pulled back and a man came into her alcove; it was near Christmastime. He pulled the curtain shut behind him with a metallic sliding sound as the rings ran along the pole and he stepped to her bed.

  Hush, he said. Don’t say anything. His glasses flashed in front of his eyes. He was dark against the dark and the black wind gnawed at the windows of the long attic. The man in the empty night was a primitive demon come out from under the floorboards.

  Nadia sat up as if she had been lifted on wires and her hair crept strangely on her head and she could feel her eyes starting from their sockets. She put out both hands and said, Get out!

  She could smell him; it was Thin Sam there in the freezing dark standing over her with his odor of cigarette smoke and oily hair.

  Hush, he said. Listen.

  One of the other girls across the attic said from behind her curtain, Nadia?

  She sat unmoving and heard the tinny voice of a radio; not Big Radio but something else. They are coming to Riverdale Apartments, the voice said. Thin Sam, run, hide.

  Loud knocking and shouting and engines in the street below. Doors were smashed open. Men shouting commands.

  Thin Sam’s voice was a coarse whisper. There’s a trapdoor above your bed. Get up, get up. Nadia, get out of my way.

  She swung her legs out of bed and dragged a coverlet with her. All around the attic other girls woke up and cried out, What? What? Who’s there? Tiny lights in pinpoints as girls connected the wires of their battery lamps. Nadia stepped backward in the dark and the curtain tangled around her legs.

  Footsteps pounded up the stairs. The door to the attic was kicked open and Thin Sam stood in his broken old shoes on her bed shoving at the trapdoor, smashing at it until the dry plaster sprayed on her bed. In the piecemeal darkness he struck it with his fists while Nadia whispered, What are you doing? But then the attic dormitory was full of large agents with flashlights.

  Get out of bed! Line up! Who’s in there? Get out!

  Then Sam stopped with the trapdoor half open. He reached into his pocket and in the broken flashes and noise he took out a small silver thing and handed it to her.

  Hang on to it, he said. Don’t lose it. It’s the sign of St. Jude, patron saint of escapes and evasions.

  Nadia shut her hand around it just as the curtain was ripped aside. Thin Sam Kenobi stepped off her bed and held out both hands to his sides. Three men in gray uniforms with clashing belt tools and flashlights laid hands on Thin Sam in her private space, in a crush of loud voices and heavy shoes.

  Sam was illuminated by the flashlights like some kind of tramp celebrity, a joey clown with his two-day beard and glasses and slaty eyes now filled with artificial light. He threw up a hand to shield his eyes. An agent struck him behind the head with a heavy flashlight and when he went down they kicked him and his eyeglasses shot off his head and his bridge of steel teeth flew out of his mouth in a spray of blood and saliva. It landed on the linoleum and a girl screamed at it as if it were a live biting device. They took him away.

  Then the agents tore out drawers and turned over mattresses. They threw boxes upside down and the contents of small treasure hoards scattered; fortune-telling stones, tarot cards, plastic bracelets and rings. An old High School Jam eight-ball rolled to the answer, I’ve got nerve and I say no.

  Nadia had to abandon all her possessions on the linoleum, her tin box of hairpins scattered among perfume sticks, books, and pieces of fallen plaster. She was shouted at and pushed downstairs in her nightgown with all the others.

  Your name is Nadia Stepan.

  Yes, sir.

  Parentless dependent child. Adopted by this wacko outfit.

  Yes, sir.

  A quart a day plus basic shower privileges. Ah, let’s see, you’re grade nine, fourteen years old. Hmmmm. PR stream. Ever been interrogated before? Have you?

  No, sir.

  Fun, isn’t it?

  Nadia pulled the coverlet more tightly around her neck and said, I don’t know.

  The apartment building’s kitchen smelled of kerosene and rosemary and was oppressed by the usual low seven-foot ceiling. A windup wall clock hammered out the minutes. A scorpion eased down between the ceiling and the wall and inquired around itself to see if the coast were clear. Nadia held the silver thing in her hand as she had once gripped her jingle bell.

  Why was this Sam person hiding in your little place, there?

  I don’t know. He just came in. I just woke up and he was coming in.

  Yes, well, he had a resistance problem. Okay now, so Mrs. Bergolts gave you a lot of extra shower privileges and way over your regular water ration and like that. All you girls.

  She did?

  Yes. We already know this. So just tell me about this.

  What am I supposed to tell you?

  Quit crying. Listen here. You knew all about the tap line. The one down in the cooler well.

  I did? What’s a tap line? I don’t know what a tap line is.

  Sure you do. Who else was running lines off it?

  Off what?

  Shut up crying. I hate that. They tapped into an industrial water line and everybody here was living very well. It was Mrs. Bergolts and this Sam person and the Thrane couple and your friend Josie selling it by hundreds of gallons. You all had all the water you wanted while people like me got to get along on a quart a day. Little kids croaking in orphanages, everybody dying of thirst, and a great big girl like you swilling water and playing in a wading pool. Bawling isn’t going to get you out of this.

  I didn’t know they did that. I never heard anything about a wading pool. What’s a wading pool?

  Rubber thingie with ducks on it. About six inches deep.

  You fill it with water? And people stick their feet in it?

  Listen, if you weren’t in the PR stream you’d be in summer camp right now, did you know that?

  No, sir.

  Nadia could hear Thin Sam’s radio: Today the sun rose clear and continued so until twelve o’clock when the captain got an observation. This was very well for Cape Horn but the clear weather did not last very long. It was November and the radio time of sea tales.

  The interrogator turned to the door and shouted, Somebody go and shut that goddamn radio off. He returned to Nadia. That radio should be illegal. But nobody cares except weird people like Mr. Kenobi. Tell me about the wading pools.

  The agent sounded tired as if even he didn’t believe in the wading pools and the rubber ducks. Nadia stared at him with her mouth slightly open, breathing out clouds, wadded in the quilt.

  You think it’s smart? You see these felons on Sector Secrets and you think stealing water is smart?

  No, sir, I don’t. I don’t even watch television.

  You what?

  I don’t watch television. I don’t know what they do on Sector Secrets.

  You don’t watch television?

  No, sir. I can’t. I have eye problems.

  Eye problems? Are you leg
ally blind?

  No, sir.

  Well, let’s see. For instance could you see the Thrane couple down in the cooler well running a hose up to the kitchen? Eh?

  I never saw them stealing water. I just had my regular ration, that’s all.

  All right, all right. He cast about for something else. He turned up his wrist so he could see his watch. Now, you have to turn in your papers. Parentless Dependents have to submit all letters and diaries in the event of any arrests in the foster home. Go get them.

  I don’t have any. You can look.

  Well, hell. All right. Here. Sign this.

  What is it?

  Just sign it.

  I don’t know what it is.

  Nadia remembered Thin Sam’s dictum and clove to it like sacred scripture of some sort because orphans do not often get good advice and when they do they grasp it and never let go.

  You don’t need to know. It’s required that you sign it.

  But I can’t read it. Nadia stared blankly at the form in front of her.

  You said you weren’t legally blind.

  No, sir, I’m not, but I have eye problems. You have to get somebody to read it out loud to me and then I can sign it and they have to sign it too. Nadia was surprised at herself, at her convincing voice.

  I can check your medical, you know.

  Yes, sir, it says right there on my medical.

  Listen, Miss Stepan, if you weren’t in a PR stream you’d be in summer camp right now on a pint a day.

  Yes, sir, but you have to get somebody to read it out to me. I have the order from my counselor.

  Another bald-faced lie.

  Ah, you’re a pain in the ass. Don’t sign it, then. Get out. Tell the next girl to come in here. Get out.

  Everybody in the entire building called Riverdale Apartments had to stand outside in the frozen nighttime streets while the arrested ones were loaded onto a truck. Nadia and Widdy and Josie stood holding on to one another, their breath smoking in the cold air. They heaved Thin Sam onto the truck. The body was wrapped in gray and tattered canvas but Nadia could see Thin Sam’s shoes on feet that wobbled back and forth loose as rubber and she wept as if she would never stop. He had been courageous. Kindhearted. Maybe noble.