Mother didn’t move all day. She didn’t get up to make dinner, to sweep the floor, to add wood to the fire. I remembered how she looked at Peter the day of his wedding, straightening his tie, brushing off his uniform. She was so proud of him. I wondered if she realized then that she was saying good-bye.
I boiled eggs for supper and served them with thickly sliced bread, but neither Emily nor I were able to eat much of anything. When it grew dark, I slipped out alone, sat on the mist-shrouded point, and allowed my tears to spill onto the damp stones. I wept until my body ached, until exhaustion began to eclipse the anger and hate, until Emily came and led me to bed, tucking her small body against my back, wrapping her arms through mine, and we grieved as one.
Pa didn’t come back into the house all night. The foghorn ran for twenty-four hours, calling out across the Lake in a haunting, mournful voice.
Charlie visited the island that week. He had enlisted. My mother begged him not to go. He was still a child. She couldn’t risk losing another son, she said.
I shared Mother’s feelings. I wanted to add my pleas, to convince Charlie that he needed to stay. But I understood why he wanted—no, needed—to go. He managed to arrange a ride back to Port Arthur on a fishing tug that had stopped in at Walker’s Channel. We all stood on the headland, watching the boat rise and fall on the choppy waves, white spray surging off the bow as it rounded the point and then headed west toward the foot of the Sleeping Giant.
Emily and I stood close together, our hands clasped.
“He’ll come back.” My voice conveyed a confidence I did not feel. “You’ll see, Emily. Charlie will come back to us.”
When we could no longer see the tug, Pa climbed the stairs to the lamp and sat there without saying a word.
War and death can silence the strongest of men.
36
Morgan
She’s quiet. I know she’s thinking about her brothers. It must be especially painful not knowing what happened to Charlie. In an odd way, she received the same message about both of them, decades apart; missing and presumed dead.
“Did you find out what happened to Peter?”
“Peter was confirmed dead that fall. His body is buried in a military cemetery in Hong Kong. His ID tag was delivered to Maijlis, along with a letter from the commander of Peter’s unit. He conveyed the deepest sympathy of the Ministry of National Defense and gratitude for the sacrifice Peter made for his country and for freedom.”
“But Charlie came back.” It’s a stupid thing to say. I know he came back; he’s the reason we’re sitting here with these old books. He came back, but now he’s lost again.
“Yes, Charlie came back, as you know, years later. But not the Charlie who left. Not the Charlie that took us out sailing in Sweet Pea or happily read stories to Emily when it was hard to tell if she was even listening. That Charlie died, somewhere far across the ocean, with a gun in his hands and his heart full of hatred and revenge.”
“You said there were three deaths?” I almost don’t want to ask.
“Yes. Yes, there was one more.”
37
Elizabeth
It was before the opening of shipping season, late in March of the following year. The Lake was free of ice past Porphyry Point, and we had had several days of warm winds from the south. Our radio was able to pick up the signal from Michigan, and we gathered around to listen to a concert from Carnegie Hall and an episode of Fibber McGee and Molly. A fire roared in the stove, and for a brief moment, using precious battery power sparingly, we connected with the outside world. We listened and laughed. We heard the news, and after that the weather report. Pa never paid much heed to forecasts. He was much better at predicting the weather, having spent years watching the sky and the waves and tracking the wind direction. A barometer hung on the wall next to the chart of the Lake, and the pressure was marked in his logbooks every day, even in winter. He knew the storm was coming, and he didn’t need the announcers on the radio to tell him it would be a vast and vicious one.
Overnight, the sky grew heavy. The dark clouds that usually hovered over the open water at the center of the Lake began to build, sending gusts of wind to rattle the shutters and set the trees hissing. We filled up the woodbin and kerosene lamps and brought in buckets of snow to melt for water, settling in to wait out the storm. The winds increased steadily, pushing massive mountains of water that rolled and tumbled and crashed against the rocky point, sending a horrendous shower that reached as far as the light tower and our little home beneath.
The storm raged for days, building layer upon layer of water that froze like icing on a wedding cake and dripped enormous icicles that hung from the lighthouse gallery and roof. Our stove struggled, gasping for air as the water froze and smothered the chimney, until we could no longer get it to draw. We huddled around the smoky fire, the room dark, and the wind howling as waves collided against the obstinate land and cast themselves over us. In the end, Pa had no choice; we were being entombed by the Lake in our own home. With an ax he loosened the frozen grasp on one window, chopping through the pane and sheath of ice to the outside world. By then the storm was fading, replaced by clear blue skies that only made our ice-encased island seem more unearthly, an enchanted land of wizards and witches.
Pa climbed to the roof, ax in hand, to free the chimney while Mother watched from below. In all the years he had prevailed over the Lake, finding his way through blinding fog, charting safe passage around lurking rocks and hidden shoals, and weathering wind and waves, in the end it was the Lake herself that reached ashore and took the lightkeeper. He slid on the frozen water that clung to our home and died instantly when he hit the ground.
I can see him still. Emily and I stood at the broken window, the world outside glazed white and calm, seagulls wheeling overhead in the cobalt sky, the sun shining, and Pa crumpled, crooked, broken, a stain of red seeping across the ice.
*
I am not growing weary. I am finding the telling of it makes me stronger. These words that spill out of me and shape the story, that lead to us both being here, now, in this room, have been waiting for their life. It frees me and lightens me to share them. What an odd couple of conspirators we make, this girl and I.
“What did you do?” she asks, filling the pause in my narration.
“The only thing we could do,” I reply. “We survived.”