CHAPTER 30
THE FOLLOWING WEEK, Oskar resumed his shift at the light. Now that he could walk more than a few feet at a time, he began pestering me to take him into the rocks. I was to guide him first to the tide pool where I’d found the amulet (the place I considered “our” tide pool, meaning Helen’s and mine) and then to her cave. I was to bring a logbook as well, so I could make a complete record in words and pictures of everything we observed. This would be important work, he explained, that we could do together.
“And we have to go early. I can’t move fast, so we must have plenty of time. Tell Euphemia you’re canceling school because you need to get on with your catalog.”
I remained uncertain about exposing the cave to Oskar. I did want to share this wonder with him. I could imagine no one appreciating it more. After all, he’d been eager to share with me all the wonders he’d observed. But my connection to Helen relied on stillness and waiting; I didn’t think Oskar was capable of that.
Nevertheless, he would go. I couldn’t hope that he would break another leg. If he were to go crashing around the rocks, better that I be with him.
? ? ?
We used the steam donkey to get down the morro; that was simple enough. As usual, I removed my shoes and stockings at the bottom. Oskar stood beside me, waiting, repeatedly plunging a walking stick he’d made from a piece of driftwood into the sand to mark his impatience.
“It’s easier to walk here with bare feet,” I explained.
“Maybe for you, who’ve been doing it for months, but my feet aren’t accustomed to it.”
The going was tedious. The uneven, dry sand was a labor to cross even for a person with two good legs, so Oskar had to plant his stick deep with every step. By the time we reached the packed sand, his face was twisted with the effort of coaxing his injured limb to rise and fall through the soft stuff and to bear his weight, and his forehead was slick with sweat. Even on the harder surface, his leg was obviously paining him.
“Maybe we should wait another week or so,” I suggested.
He shook his head without taking his eyes off the distant rocks that were our goal, and kept doggedly on.
It was difficult to slow my pace to match his. I couldn’t skim along as I usually did but frequently had to catch myself and wait, dragging rainbows in the sand with my toes to relieve my taut muscles. Physically trying as the experience was, I welcomed the delay, hoping that our window of tide might close before we reached it. Helen would be safe from his fierce scrutiny, at least for some time longer.
But the water was shallow, and once we’d stumbled through it and reached the rough and uneven rocks beyond, Oskar became surprisingly agile, using his hands to climb like a monkey. In some areas, he could move faster than I. To save the soles of my feet, I had to skirt the clusters of mussels and colonies of periwinkles with their sharp little peaks, but he walked right over them in his heavy shoes.
“Be careful!” I called as he started over a rock packed with the pursed mouths of closed anemones. “You’ll crush the animals.” He was far enough ahead to pretend he hadn’t heard me.
At the purple pool, I searched the surrounding shadows diligently, but Helen was nowhere near, or she was keeping herself well hidden, wary of Oskar. He couldn’t stay ahead of me for long, because he had no idea where he was going, at least until we entered the narrow channel that led directly to the cave. There, we started out together; as the passage between the rocks steadily narrowed, we brushed against each other, knocking first shoulders, then hips. At last the passage became so tight that we couldn’t walk abreast. Though I ought to have been the one to step into the lead, he pushed forward, not roughly but with an insistence that I couldn’t challenge without becoming ridiculous. He went ahead into the funnel while I fell back farther and farther, as every few steps I stopped to scan the rocks. There was no sign of her.
? ? ?
When I caught up with him, he was standing at the entrance to the cave, peering into that dim space. I could see he was overwhelmed at the scene that was now familiar to me. The tools she’d fashioned of stone and bone and the shell bowls filled with acorns and seaweeds were arranged in their places along the base of the walls. Strings of abalone and mussel shells were looped, as always, over bits of protruding rock. The sealskins stretched, impossibly rich, over the floor.
“This is marvelous,” Oskar breathed. “She is a real Indian.”
“Of course she is.”
“I wasn’t sure. What do you and the Crawleys know of Indians?”
I wanted to retort that I doubted he knew any more than I, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak as arrogantly as he. “We had Indians in Wisconsin.”
“Not wild ones.”
“Helen’s not exactly wild, either.” I used her name, reminding him that I knew her better.
“That’s not really her name,” he said.
Standing there with Oskar, staring at the accoutrements of her life, felt all at once like an intrusion, and I stepped back. “I’m not sure—” I began. “Oskar! Stop!”
He’d walked into the cave.
I was sincerely shocked. Although the place had no real door, even the children had known to hang back. How dare he breach her walls? Instinctively, I looked over my shoulders, right and then left. Was she watching him? Us?
“Oskar, come out!”
“Just a moment.” His boots trampled the sealskin.
“You shouldn’t be in there.”
“Why not?”
“It’s her home. You’re trespassing.”
“I’m not hurting anything.”
But he was fingering everything. Not only fingering but palming. I saw him slip something into his pocket.
“You can’t take that!” I plunged into the cave myself, the sealskin on the soles of my bare feet as soft as my mother’s blue velvet drapes. Already he’d lifted another item, a string of rocks, green like Chinese jade. I grabbed his wrist, and he turned on me.
“These are important artifacts,” he said.
“No! These are hers!”
He didn’t answer, but he must have heard the shrill horror in my voice, because he looked startled, as if I’d woken him from a dream. “You’re right. Of course you’re right. We shouldn’t disturb her things.” He let me take his arm and lead him back through the entrance until we were standing outside again. He looked about uncertainly, chastened by what he’d done but unwilling to leave the spot. “I tell you what we’ll do. We’ll just sit here outside the door, and you draw everything you can see. A sketch of the whole and then studies of some of the more detailed items. That would be all right, wouldn’t it? Look at those baskets, for instance. See how fine the weave is?” He pointed to a large round one near the entrance. “This jagged pattern—I bet it’s unique to her tribe. I wonder if it’s meant to symbolize water.”
Although I was still angry with Oskar, I felt more comfortable now that we were outside the cave, and I didn’t see how sketching was any different from staring, which I’d indulged in often enough. I began the project grudgingly, grumbling at the hardness of my rocky seat, the inadequacy of the light, and the difficulty of the angle, but once I began to sketch, the hours became among the best I had ever spent with Oskar. We reveled in the spectacle before us and felt transported by it, as if we were again viewing the panorama of Athens. As my drawing grew, Oskar studied it in relation to the scene, praising my use of perspective and pointing out details he thought should be emphasized—the texture of the baskets, the arrangement of what appeared to be fishhooks in a length of leather on the wall. He guided me to look so closely and methodically that I noticed details I’d overlooked on my own. While most of the baskets, for instance, had a dark design worked on a light background, on a few this pattern was reversed, as if she’d been trying an experiment or, as Oskar suggested, sometimes had access to different materials. He encouraged me to include every facet of every object, but he stopped me when I began to pencil in the pyramid of canned goods.
“Leave those out,” he said. “They shouldn’t be there.”
“But they are there,” I insisted stubbornly.
I could tell she treasured the cans and had arranged them with care. I had a notion that they, along with the neatly folded Lighthouse Service blanket, might be as important to her as the blue velvet drapes were to my mother and the wooden teeth were to Euphemia. It felt wrong to eliminate them.
“They’re imposed on her,” Oskar said. “They’re not authentic.”
I obeyed his wishes—after all, the drawing had been his idea—though I marked the placement of these objects in my mind, planning to do another copy for myself.
From time to time, Oskar moved around, studying the evidence of Helen’s life outside the cave. He pressed his fingertips against the fish scales that dusted the rocks, and when he held up his hand, his skin glittered as if covered in sequins.
“Are these from fish she eats?” he asked. “Or are they here for some other purpose? How does she catch them? Does she use those hooks, or does she have nets?”
“She spears them,” I said, experiencing a little flush of pleasure at being the one who knew.
We went on in this way for some hours, until I began to worry that the tide would be closing our route home, and I shut the logbook.
“Now, Oskar.” I’d decided to try wheedling, as if he were a little boy. “Before we go, I must be sure you’ve put everything back. She’ll miss her things if we take them.”
“I’m not going to take anything. I’m only borrowing. And it’s only this.” He held up a small piece of bone the color of oatmeal, one end sharply pointed, the other with a small hole drilled through. A needle. “I just want something to study at my leisure, so I can take measurements and make some notes when I have time to think. And you’ll draw it. This”—he swept his hand grandly across the entrance to the cave—“should be the subject of your catalog. When we’re finished, we’ll bring it back. Of course.”
I thought of the way she’d laughed with her toes in my shoe, and of the pendant she’d left for me. I convinced myself that she wouldn’t object to our borrowing such a small item. Probably she wouldn’t even notice it was missing.
? ? ?
We returned in the same tedious manner in which we’d come, although Oskar planted his stick with energy, exhilarated despite his pain, whereas I dragged my feet, drained by the tension of the day.
There was no time for a proper sleep before his shift, and he didn’t attempt it. Instead, he sat at the kitchen table and began to study the needle with such thoroughness that it might have been a relic of Christ.
Later, when he’d gone to tend the light, I looked at the pages he’d covered with coded notes. What could he have found to say about that bit of bone to fill a page with such a turmoil of symbols?
I was meticulous with my drawings. I did one close view to show texture and one with a ruler beside it to indicate size. I passed a thread through the eye and pushed the point into some material and drew the whole to indicate how the thing might be used. I tried to show the needle’s slightness and the spots where it had been worn down by fingers. In the morning, I set the children some compositions so I could complete my work.
“I’ve done every possible rendering,” I said, handing Oskar the book at dinner that evening. “So we can take it back.”
“Yes,” he said absently, turning the pages. “These are very good.”
“I’ll cancel school for tomorrow morning, then, and we can take it back,” I repeated.
We were eating oxtail stew again, and he paused to work a bone from his mouth before answering. “I’m going tonight.”
“Tonight? It’ll be dark soon. And what about your shift?”
“I thought you’d cover that. You don’t mind, do you?”
I didn’t want him to go alone. “Why risk your neck in the dark? This is as foolish as going in the middle of a rainstorm. Why not wait until tomorrow?”
“Because I think night is the best time to catch her there, and I want to see her. She obviously keeps away from the place during the day.” He cracked a square of pilot bread over the remains of his stew and stirred it vigorously in the gravy. “Don’t worry; I’m not going to go in the dark. I’m going to start immediately after I eat, give myself plenty of time to find a good place to hide. I’ll wait. Sooner or later, I bet she shows.”
I could tell that it was a good plan by the degree to which it dismayed me. “She obviously doesn’t want you to see her. Maybe she’s afraid of you. As she was of Archie. You don’t want to frighten her.”
“That’s silly. She has nothing to fear from me. I’m not going to hurt her.”
I tried a different tack. “I’m very tired. I don’t think I can manage your shift tonight.”
He shrugged. “We’ll have to hope for the best, then. What are the chances that a ship will need our signal on this particular night?”
I stared at him. “You wouldn’t leave the light without a keeper!”
“I think the important point,” he said, spooning up the last of his stew with gusto, “is that you wouldn’t.”