Stern Men (12 page)

So, for ten years, Lanford Ellis had been spending his summers in Fort Niles alone. He kept no horses and invited no guests. He did not play croquet or take boating excursions. He had no staff with him at Ellis House except one man, Cal Cooley, who was both groundskeeper and assistant. Cal Cooley even cooked the old man’s meals. Cal Cooley lived in Ellis House throughout the year, keeping his eye on things.

Senator Simon Addams, Webster Pommeroy, and Ruth Thomas walked on toward Ellis House. They walked side by side, Webster holding the tusk against one of his shoulders as if it were a Revolutionary War musket. On their left ran the stagnant Ellis Rail. Deep in the woods on their right stood the morbid remains of the “peanut houses,” the tiny shacks built by the Ellis Granite Company a century earlier to house its Italian immigrant workers. There were once over three hundred Italian immigrants packed into these shacks. They were not welcome in the community at large, although they were allowed to have the occasional parade down Ellis Road on their holidays. There used to be a small Catholic church on the island to accommodate the Italians. No more. By 1976, the Catholic church had long since burned to the ground.

During the reign of the Ellis Granite Company, Fort Niles was like a real town, busy and useful. It was like a Fabergé egg—an object encrusted in the greatest detail. So much crowded on to such a small surface! There had been two dry-goods stores on the island. There had been a dime museum, a skating rink, a taxidermist, a newspaper, a pony racetrack, a hotel with a piano bar, and, across the street from each other, the Ellis Eureka Theater and the Ellis Olympia Dance Hall. Everything had been burned or wrecked by 1976.
Where had it all gone?
Ruth wondered.
And how had everything fit there, in the first place?
Most of the land had returned to woods. Of the Ellis empire, only two buildings remained: the Ellis Granite Company Store and Ellis House. And the company store, a three-story wooden structure down by the harbor, was vacant and falling in on itself. Of course, the quarries were there, holes in the earth over a thousand feet deep—smooth and oblique—now filled with spring water.

Ruth Thomas’s father called the peanut houses in the back of the woods “guinea huts,” a term he must have learned from his father or grandfather, because the peanut houses were empty even when Ruth’s father was a boy. Even when Senator Simon Addams was a boy, the peanut houses were emptying out. The granite business was dying by 1910 and dead by 1930. The need for granite ran out before the granite itself did. The Ellis Granite Company would have dug in the quarries forever, if there had been a market. The company would have dug the granite until both Fort Niles and Courne Haven were gutted. Until the islands were thin shells of granite in the ocean. That’s what the islanders said, anyway. They said the Ellis family would have taken everything, but for the fact that no one any longer wanted the stuff from which the islands were made.

The threesome walked up Ellis Road and slowed down only once, when Webster saw a dead snake in their path and stopped to poke it with the tip of the elephant tusk.

“Snake,” he said.

“Harmless,” said Senator Simon.

At another point, Webster stopped walking and tried to hand the tusk to the Senator.

“You take it,” he said. “I don’t want to go up there and see any Mr. Ellis.”

But Senator Simon refused. He said Webster had found the tusk and should get the credit for his find. He said there was nothing to fear in Mr. Ellis. Mr. Ellis was a good man. Although there had been people in the Ellis family to fear in the past, Mr. Lanford Ellis was a decent man, who, by the way, thought of Ruthie as practically his own granddaughter.

“Isn’t that right, Ruthie? Doesn’t he always give you a big grin? And hasn’t he always been good to your family?”

Ruth did not answer. The three continued walking.

They did not speak again until they reached Ellis House. There were no open windows, not even any open curtains. The hedges outside were still wrapped in protective material against the vicious winter winds. The place looked abandoned. The Senator climbed the broad, black granite steps to the dark front doors and rang the bell. And knocked. And called. There was no answer. In the noose-shaped driveway was parked a green pickup truck, which the three recognized as Cal Cooley’s.

“Well, it looks like old Cal Cooley is here,” the Senator said.

He walked around to the back of the house, and Ruth and Webster followed. They walked past the gardens, which were not gardens anymore so much as unkempt brush piles. They walked past the tennis court, which was overgrown and wet. They walked past the fountain, which was overgrown and dry. They walked toward the stable, and found its wide, sliding door gaping open. The entrance was big enough for two carriages, side by side. It was a beautiful stable, but it had been so long out of use that it no longer even had a trace of the smell of horses.

“Cal Cooley!” Senator Simon called. “Mr. Cooley?”

Inside the stable, with its stone floors and cool, empty, odorless stalls, was Cal Cooley, sitting in the middle of the floor. He was sitting on a simple stool before something enormous and was polishing the object with a rag.

“My God!” the Senator said. “Look what you’ve got!”

What Cal Cooley had was a huge piece of a lighthouse, the top piece of a lighthouse. It was, in fact, the magnificent glass-and-brass circular lens of a lighthouse. It was probably seven feet tall. Cal Cooley stood up from his stool, and he was close to seven feet tall, too. Cal Cooley had thick, combed-back blue-black hair and oversized blue-black eyes. He had a big square frame and a thick nose and a huge chin and a deep, straight line right across his forehead that made him look as if he’d run into a clothesline. He looked as if he might be part Indian. Cal Cooley had been with the Ellis family for about twenty years, but he hadn’t seemed to age a day, and it would have been difficult for a stranger to guess whether he was forty years old or sixty.

“Why, it’s my good friend the Senator,” Cal Cooley drawled.

Cal Cooley was originally from Missouri, a place he insisted on pronouncing
Missourah.
He had a prominent Southern accent, which—although Ruth Thomas had never been to the South—she believed he had a tendency to exaggerate. She believed, for the most part, that Cal Cooley’s whole demeanor was phony. There were many things about Cal Cooley that she hated, but she was particularly offended by his phony accent and his habit of referring to himself as Old Cal Cooley. As in “Old Cal Cooley can’t wait for spring,” or “Old Cal Cooley looks like he needs another drink.”

Ruth could not tolerate this affectation.

“And look! It’s Miss Ruth Thomas!” Cal Cooley drawled on. “She is always such an oasis to behold. And look who’s with her: a savage.”

Webster Pommeroy, muddied and silent under Cal Cooley’s gaze, stood with the elephant’s tusk in his hand. His feet shifted about quickly, nervously, as if he were preparing to race.

“I know what this is,” Senator Simon Addams said, approaching the huge and magnificent glass that Cal Cooley had been polishing. “I know exactly what this is!”

“Can you guess, my friend?” Cal Cooley asked, winking at Ruth Thomas as if they had a wonderful shared secret. She looked away. She felt her face get hot. She wondered if there was some way she could arrange her life so that she could live on Fort Niles forever without ever seeing Cal Cooley again.

“It’s the Fresnel lens from the Goat’s Rock lighthouse, isn’t it?” the Senator asked.

“Yes, it is. Exactly right. Have you ever visited it? You must have been to Goat’s Rock, eh?”

“Well, no,” the Senator admitted, flushing. “I can never go out to a place like Goat’s Rock. I don’t go on boats, you know.”

Which Cal Cooley knew perfectly well,
Ruth thought.

“Is that so?” Cal asked innocently.

“I have a fear of water, you see.”

“What a terrible affliction,” Cal Cooley murmured.

Ruth wondered whether Cal Cooley had ever been severely beaten up in his life. She would have enjoyed seeing it.

“My goodness,” the Senator marveled. “My goodness. How did you ever acquire the lighthouse from Goat’s Rock? It’s a remarkable lighthouse. It’s one of the oldest lighthouses in the country.”

“Well, my friend. We bought it. Mr. Ellis has always fancied it. So we bought it.”

“But how did you get it here?”

“On a boat and then a truck.”

“But how did you get it here without anyone knowing about it?”

“Does nobody know about it?”

“It’s gorgeous.”

“I am restoring it for Mr. Ellis. I am polishing every individual inch and every single screw. I’ve already been polishing for ninety hours, I estimate. I expect that it will take me months to finish. But won’t it gleam then?”

“I didn’t know the Goat’s Rock lighthouse was for sale. I didn’t know you could
buy
such a thing.”

“The Coast Guard has replaced this beautiful artifact with a modern device. The new lighthouse doesn’t even need an attendant. Isn’t that remarkable? Everything is all automated. Very inexpensive to operate. The new lighthouse is completely electric and perfectly ugly.”

“This
is
an artifact,” the Senator said. “You’re right. Why, it’s suitable for a museum!”

“That’s right, my friend.”

Senator Simon Addams studied the Fresnel lens. It was a beautiful thing to see, all brass and glass, with beveled panes as thick as planks, layered over one another in tiers. The small section that Cal Cooley had already disassembled, polished, and reassembled was a gleam of gold and crystal. When Senator Simon Addams passed behind the lens to look at the whole thing, his image became distorted and wavy, as though seen through ice.

“I have never seen a lighthouse before,” he said. His voice was choked with emotion. “Not in person. I have never had the opportunity.”

“It’s not a lighthouse,” Cal Cooley corrected fastidiously. “It is merely the lens of a lighthouse, sir.”

Ruth rolled her eyes.

“I have never seen one. Oh, my goodness, this is such a treat for me, such a treat. Of course, I’ve seen pictures. I’ve seen pictures of this very lighthouse.”

“This is a pet project for me and Mr. Ellis. Mr. Ellis asked the state whether he could buy it, they named a price, and he accepted. And, as I say, I have been working on this for approximately ninety hours.”

“Ninety hours,” the Senator repeated, staring at the Fresnel lens as if he had been tranquilized.

“Built in 1929, by the French,” Cal said. “She weighs five thousand pounds, my friend.”

The Fresnel lens was perched on its original brass turntable, which Cal Cooley now gave a slight push. The entire lens, at that touch, began to spin with a freakish lightness—huge, silent, and exquisitely balanced.

“Two fingers,” Cal Cooley said, holding up two of his own fingers. “Two fingers is all it takes to spin that five-thousand-pound weight. Can you believe it? Have you ever seen such remarkable engineering?”

“No,” Senator Simon Addams answered. “No, I have not.”

Cal Cooley spun the Fresnel lens again. What little light was in that stable seemed to throw itself at the great spinning lens and then leap away, bursting into sparks across the walls.

“Look how it eats up the light,” Cal said. He somehow pronounced
light
so that it rhymed with
hot.

“There was a woman on a Maine island once,” the Senator said, “who was burned to death when the sunlight went through the lens and hit her.”

“They used to cover the lenses with dark gunnysacks on sunny days,” Cal Cooley said. “Otherwise, the lenses would have set everything on fire; they’re that strong.”

“I have always loved lighthouses.”

“So have I, sir. So has Mr. Ellis.”

“During the reign of Ptolemy the Second, there was a lighthouse built in Alexandria that was regarded as one of the wonders of the ancient world. It was destroyed by an earthquake in the fourteenth century.”

“Or so history has recorded,” said Cal Cooley. “There is some debate on that.”

“The earliest lighthouses,” the Senator mused, “were built by the Libyans in Egypt.”

“I am familiar with the lighthouses of the Libyans,” said Cal Cooley, evenly.

The Goat’s Rock lighthouse antique Fresnel lens spun and spun in the vast empty stable, and the Senator stared at it, captivated. It spun more and more slowly, and quietly whispered to a stop. The Senator was silent, hypnotized.

“And what do
you
have?” Cal Cooley asked, finally.

Cal was regarding Webster Pommeroy, holding the elephant’s tusk. Webster, caked with mud and looking most pathetic, clung desperately to his small find. He did not answer Cal, but his feet were tapping nervously. The Senator did not answer, either. He was still entranced by the Fresnel lens.

And so Ruth Thomas said, “Webster found an elephant’s tusk today, Cal. It’s from the wreck of the
Clarice Monroe,
138 years ago. Webster and Simon have been looking for it for almost a year. Isn’t it wonderful?”

And it was wonderful. Under any other circumstances, the tusk would have been recognized as an undeniably wonderful object. But not in the shadow of Ellis House, and not in the presence of the intact and beautiful brass-and-glass Fresnel lens crafted by the French in 1929. The tusk seemed suddenly foolish. Besides, Cal Cooley, with his height and demeanor, could diminish anything. Cal Cooley made his ninety hours of polishing seem heroic and productive, while—without saying a word, of course—making a year of a lost boy’s life searching through the mud seem a depressing prank.

The elephant’s tusk suddenly looked like a sad little bone.

“How very interesting,” Cal Cooley said, at length. “What a perfectly interesting project.”

“I thought Mr. Ellis might like to see it,” the Senator said. He had snapped out of his gaze at the Fresnel lens and was now giving Cal Cooley a most unattractive look of supplication. “I thought he might grin when he sees the tusk.”