*
The ground, solid as it was, prevented any sort of burial. Mother dragged Pa’s body to the fuel house, and we covered him with a wool blanket. For days we chipped away at our tomb, aided by the warming spring sun, until the doors opened and the sunshine reached through the windows. We polished the light’s great lens and filled the reservoir with kerosene. We oiled the wheels and replaced the belts that were cracked and waited for the arrival of the James Whalen. When the boat came, Mother wrapped Pa’s body in one of Sweet Pea’s tattered sails. They took him and buried him in the cemetery in Port Arthur. We did not go. We did not see Pa’s bones laid to rest. There was a light to keep. I would have buried him on Hardscrabble Island next to the grave marked Elizabeth. I would have kept him closer to me, closer to the island and the Lake that he loved. But Mother did not think of those things.
People deal with loss and death in so many different ways. I did not see Mother grieve, not in the traditional sense. I don’t believe it was something she would allow herself, having little tolerance for idleness and self-pity. Perhaps Pa’s death coming so soon after Peter’s was simply too much for her. In an effort to provide, to care for her family, to bring back a semblance of normalcy and cope with the harsh reality we faced, she confused hardness and strength. At a time when we needed each other more than ever, she became increasingly distant and pragmatic. And I missed Pa’s gentle nature and tenderness more than ever.
My mourning was done in private. When I could find a moment, I climbed up into the rafters, out of her sight, and sat amongst Pa’s newspapers, flipping through them until my fingers were black from the ink, letting my tears spill. Mother began to lose patience with Emily and all her oddities. Her words—You should have let her die. Emily will never be right—weighed heavily on me. It had been my father who was always quick to defend, to encourage his wife to accept my twin as she was. He didn’t understand her, not like I did, but he loved her. And now he was gone. Emily needed me more than ever.
It was 1943. Canada was still very much at war. Young, capable men were fighting in the trenches of Europe. And while the conflict conspired to steal my family, at that point, it worked to serve our need. Mother had for years been listed as assistant keeper, first with the Department of Marine and Fisheries, and now with the recently formed Department of Transport, and with few proficient men available to fill the position of head keeper, she assumed the role by default. It suited her well. It had been her vision to have the mantle pass from father to son. We would do it, she said, for Charlie. We would light the beacon and carry the fuel and paint the buildings until he returned home to us, stepping again onto the shore of the island and assuming his rightful role as lighthouse keeper at Porphyry Point Light Station.
Her promotion left vacant the assistant’s position. I was eighteen, barely old enough, but still, I applied. I highlighted my experience growing up on Porphyry, my knowledge of the Lake, my familiarity with the great Fresnel lens. I explained my expertise starting up the diaphone foghorn and glossed over my abilities as a sailor. I never heard from the Department of Transport. They chose instead to award the position to a veteran, a young man whose only qualification was the debt Canada owed for his time in service and the German bullet embedded in his hip.
We had never needed an assistant keeper’s dwelling before, but sharing our rooms beneath the light would not be acceptable. The department was required to provide accommodations, and before the new assistant arrived, the bush was cleared back of the main building and a simple two-room home constructed.
Your grandfather stepped onto Porphyry Island at the beginning of June, and Emily and I went to meet him.
He stumbled off the James Whalen’s tender with a fiddle clutched beneath his arm, his skin pale and his hands soft, his mouth tinged green from the residue of motion sickness which had plagued him on the crossing from Port Arthur. He wore gray flannel dress pants with a white shirt and tie, still tightly fastened about his neck, and a fedora perched on his head. And he had a cane. He leaned on it heavily as he clambered across the rocky shore to where his gear had been unloaded.
“Well, hello there, you must be Elizabeth and Emily,” he said, with just a faint trace of Scottish accent, hooking the cane over his left arm to free up his right hand to shake ours. “David Fletcher. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
I looked at that cane and up into his gaunt face and dark, nervous eyes. I did not see a man who had fought horrific battles, who had been gunned down in the heat of combat while his friends died around him, who had then resumed his fight, to live, to walk again, while the war that almost claimed him continued to rage. I saw what I wanted to see. A young man, crippled, defeated, vulnerable. He was out of his element, incapable of meeting the physical demands of the job and the mental stress of a life of isolation and hardship. This is whom the department had chosen over me. I resented him with every fiber of my being. I resented his newly constructed dwelling, which changed the landscape of our island home and disrupted the life Pa had so carefully constructed. He was weak. And he was an intruder.
I didn’t take his hand. Without a word, I grabbed his bags and headed toward the light.
“Here, allow me,” he said, hobbling along behind, attempting to relieve me of the load.
I ignored him, silently mocking his obvious inability to complete even such a simple task as he struggled with his cane and violin case on the uneven ground, and continued at a brisk pace. He turned to Emily, who had fallen in step beside me. She had gathered a posy of flowers and walked looking down at them, not at her feet nor ahead at the trail. When I think of it now, what a pair the two of us must have made, Emily being Emily, and me tangled up in righteous anger and misplaced resentment, storming through the woods.
“Lovely flowers, those,” he said. “What are they?”
Emily did not respond. She did not look at him. It was not a choice for her as it was for me.
“Right then. Deaf and dumb, are we? Shall we walk on, then?” His voice was colored with annoyance.