The Body in the Lighthouse (3 page)

“It was built a long time before I was born and has been there ever since,” she heard Ursula say. Faith hung the dish towel up to dry and went into the living room to join them at the big round table that served for playing games. A small rectangular table by the window had a puzzle on it—as always.

“What's been there?” she asked.

“The lighthouse. Ben was asking me about the lighthouse.”

Ursula's silver hair, cut short and slightly wavy, glistened in the light from an oil lamp that had been electrified. She was still a beautiful woman.

“I can remember when it was manned—you can see what's left of the keeper's house in the field, a few bits and pieces of the foundation. It burned to the ground twenty years ago. Some summer people owned it and left soup on the stove while they went sailing.

“The last keeper was Franklin Pomeroy. He
and his family came from Rhode Island. They were a lighthouse family. When the Coast Guard would automate the one they were in, they'd move on to another. I was friends with all three children, but especially Marcy, who was exactly my age. We were born on the same day, and until she passed away five years ago, we always sent each other a card. Marcy wanted to be another Abbie Burgess.”

“Who was that?” Ben asked excitedly.

“Abbie's father was the keeper of the light out on Matinicus Rock. A more isolated place you can't imagine, but wonderful if you want to see puffins. When Arnie—that's
my
son, Ben—comes, we'll get him to take us out in his boat. Anyway, Abbie lived on the Rock in the mid-1800s with her family. Captain Burgess didn't have anyone to help him, except his son. Later, the Lighthouse Service realized it was too dangerous a job for one person and kept a whole crew stationed there. At that time, Matinicus's light had two towers, so that meant keeping the oil lamps burning in both. This was before electricity, you understand. One January, Mrs. Burgess got sick, and the family was running very low on food, besides. Captain Burgess rowed over to Matinicus Island, about six miles away, intending only to be gone a few hours. As the day wore on, his son realized a storm was coming and went after him. The storm hit, and neither could get back to the Rock for three weeks.”

Ben's eyes were as round as Andersen's fairy-
tale dog guarding the tinderbox. “What happened? Abbie kept the lights burning, right?”

“Abbie kept the lights burning, took care of her mother and two younger sisters. She even rescued the hens, so they'd have eggs to eat, though she almost got washed off the Rock while she did it. That's what they were doing when her father and brother finally got home—eating scrambled eggs and some cornmeal mush. Abbie was fourteen, and at the same age, Marcy kept hoping
her
father would go off and she'd get to be a heroine. Of course, this light was built much later, so it was electrified and had a Fresnel lens.” Seeing the question form on Ben's lips, Ursula said, “And I'll explain about that another time. There are plenty more lighthouse stories, including some about ours—I'm not sure whom it belongs to these days. It's been through a lot of changes. No light or foghorn even, not anymore. We still consider it our very own lighthouse. It's as much a part of the landscape as the rocks below it and the trees behind. It was made from local granite, and that's why it's never needed much upkeep. Didn't have to be painted. We don't have a ghost, like some—I guess it isn't old enough.” She sounded disappointed.

Ben sympathized. “That's too bad, but maybe one will move in this summer. Maybe Abbie's. She's dead, right?”

“Yes, she is. Abbie Burgess's ghost. Now, that would be interesting,” Ursula mused.

Although the conversation had certainly taken an unusual turn and the two soul mates at her
side seemed one step away from table turning and a Ouija board, Faith realized it was getting late, time for Ben to go to bed. His protest was stillborn as Ursula put a large molasses cookie in his hand and told him firmly to sleep tight.

“I wonder what happened to Daddy?” Faith said as they mounted the stairs.

She and Ben both stifled their laughter at the picture Daddy presented—sound asleep, while Amy was placidly turning the pages of
Good Night Moon
and “reading” to herself.

“Tom,” Faith whispered to her husband, gently shaking his shoulder. Getting no response except a snore that sent both kids into peals of laughter, she repeated his name more loudly and the gesture more firmly. He woke with a start, took in the scene, and said, “Guess I'll go to bed.”

After tucking Ben in and turning off the light in the tiny room under the eaves that he had chosen, Faith was almost glad they'd had to vacate their new house. This was turning out to be a wonderfully suspended time out from all the cares of her everyday life. Tom could get up at the crack of dawn and do whatever it was he was doing at the new place. She'd take the kids to camp, hang out with Ursula, read, and cook up a storm. The Pines kitchen sported not only a recent-model gas stove (circa 1965) but also a fully functional wood-burning Wood and Bishop, perfect for Saturday-night baked beans. Gert kept the behemoth blackened, its Victorian metal trim gleaming.

From the window at the hall landing, she had a
fine view of the lighthouse. It was in good shape, except for the tangled mass of weeds and wild rosebushes that surrounded its base, creeping up the proud column in disorderly abandon. What was it about lighthouses that was so captivating, so romantic? People loved them, eagerly learned their histories, made pilgrimages to the famous—and not so famous—collecting these destinations the way others did the fifty states. West Quoddy Head, Minots Ledge, Cape Blanco, Barnegat, Manistee North Pierhead, Bolivar, Castle Hill. Much had to do with the tales of the people who had lived there, people like Abbie Burgess, and their many acts of courage. Keepers kept the lights burning, but they also rescued mariners, often at great peril. Perhaps the allure was the notion of perfect isolation—and isolation with a purpose. Or perhaps it was that the buildings were so beautiful—the perfect simplicity of their design, beacons of light jutting up into the sky from a rocky shore, a sandy beach, or some tiny outpost in the midst of the sea itself. They'd certainly given rise to a whole world of collectibles and home decor. You'd be hard put to find a home on the Maine coast that didn't have at least a pot holder with one of these noble edifices brightly stamped on it—and more likely would find a lamp, lawn ornament, bedspread, and a bank calendar to match. Faith herself had succumbed to dish towels and a key chain.

She went downstairs to say good night to Ursula, who had told her when she arrived that there
were no fixed rising or bedtimes at the Pines. Faith was relieved to hear she wouldn't be expected to accompany Ursula on her early-morning swim, a family tradition that no one had had the good sense to break. Pix had explained it patiently to Faith. “We never thought it was cold water. It was just water, and the only water we ever swam in, so it always felt fine. If you're not used to it, the trick is to jump in at once and swim like hell to get your blood flowing; then it's warm as toast.” British toast, Faith surmised. The kind they put out in those toast racks, until the slices are the consistency of Stonehenge. She had never followed Pix's advice, taking the kids instead to a small lily pond, the only freshwater swimming hole on the island—and considerably warmer than the ocean.

Ursula was reading, but she closed the book as soon as she heard Faith enter the room.

“You must be tired after the day you've had. I'll be going up soon myself, although I don't sleep the way I used to. I've always heard old people needed less sleep, and I suppose it's true.”

Old people? Ursula didn't often refer to herself as old—or anything else age-related, and it was a slight shock to hear her do so now. Looking closely, Faith thought Ursula seemed as if she could use a good night's sleep. There were faint shadows under her eyes and both lids drooped. For a moment, the two women sat in silence; then Ursula broke it.

“Something is very wrong on Sanpere this summer.”

Ursula sighed and pushed her chair away from the table. “It's late. I shouldn't have said anything. We can talk in the morning.”

“Oh no we can't,” Faith said, pulling her own chair in. “It's only nine o'clock. It just seems like the middle of the night because it gets so dark here.” Both in Aleford and on Sanpere, Faith had suffered terribly from light deprivation when she'd first arrived from New York after her marriage to Tom. Neither the Massachusetts nor Maine locale went in for streetlights, and porch lights went off early. Apparently, it was assumed one would be snug in one's trundle or up to no good—and the less illumination the better. Plus, there was the issue of good old Yankee thrift. Accustomed to bright lights, big city, Faith had complained bitterly, and still did on occasion.

“I'll make us some tea, cocoa, or whatever you want and you can tell me all about it.”

What Ursula wanted was a snifter of brandy, and Faith joined her. They moved to the over-stuffed easy chairs in front of one of the windows that looked out at the Reach. The moon was almost full and streaked across the water toward the lighthouse like its missing beacon.

“I've never gotten used to seeing the lighthouse dark—and silent,” Ursula said. “Loran and GPS and all those other fancy things put our light out of business. It was never even automated, although that might have been a blessing. The one over at Mark Island aimed right at Harborside and was so loud in the beginning that no one could hear themselves think until the Coast Guard finally fixed it.”

Faith waited.

“It's nothing I can put my finger on directly,” Ursula said slowly. She obviously wasn't talking about lighthouses anymore. “It's a lot of things—feelings I've been getting here and there. Mostly, it's change, I suppose. That's the hardest part of all…change.” She took a sip of her brandy.

Change.
The word was anathema to the entire Rowe and Miller clan when it applied to Sanpere, and Faith was fast becoming a convert. Like Pix, she'd bemoaned the influx of gift shops and galleries on Granville's Main Street. That they had replaced the small stores and offices serving Sanpere residents—stores and businesses unable to survive the long touristless season, when Sanpere's resi
dent population halved to about fifteen hundred people. In the past—well after the time of Champlain's sojourn, which had given the island its name, a corruption of Saint Pierre—the year-round population had been much larger than the seasonal invasion. Now, the granite quarries, fish cannery, and other means of employment were fast becoming distant memories; the tourists put the cash in the till. Tourists—people in need of balsam pillows, moose T-shirts, and caps with lobster claws; people who, in order to experience the “real” Maine, had to eat one steamed lobster, see one live moose, and meet one authentic Down-Easter, who would hopefully tell them, “You can't get there from here.” Two of the three were possible during the summer months on Sanpere. For the moose, you had to head north and inland. The only time moose were sighted on the island was during the hunting season, when a hardy soul or two would swim over to escape the barrage of ammo on the mainland, only to find themselves looking down the selfsame gun barrels. It always caused a lot of excitement, these moose sightings—for the moose, too.

“You don't get the paper in the wintertime, but Pix may have told you about some of the trouble.”

Ursula and Pix subscribed to the
Island Crier
year-round, reading it with the same intensity others brought to the
Wall Street Journal
's stock reports. They both read “Real Estate Transfers” first, as did the rest of the island, then the “Public
Notices” column, with its agendas of Planning Board and selectmen's meetings. If your neighbor was trying to sneak a deck on his house, smack in the middle of your view, that's where you'd find out about it before it was too late. Then Ursula read the obituaries and Pix read “Police Beat,” mostly a brief sentence or two about kids cutting rubber on the cemetery road or an occasional DUI. Both skimmed “From the Crow's Nest,” which carried the news from each section of the island: Sanpere Village, Granville, Harborside, Bonneville, South Beach, Little Harbor, and Little Sanpere—“Margery Sanford's brother, Fred, and his family are visiting from Bangor” “Hiram White is at Blue Hill Hospital and would appreciate cards” “Annie Marshall gave a birthday tea for her sister, Louise, but neither woman is saying which birthday it was.” “The Fisheries Log” reported the prices seafood was fetching: “Clams—$1.80 per lb. Pretty good dig now and then” “Halibut—$4.24 per lb. Not too exciting.” Faith read the paper when she was on the island in the summer, yet her passion didn't extend to the rest of the year. She had to admit that Pix had not told her about any trouble on Sanpere. Faith hoped it was true and that she hadn't forgotten it.

She hadn't.

“Last winter, some year-round residents started a group called Keep Sanpere Sanpere, or KSS.

Faith breathed a surreptitious sigh of relief.
This
she would have remembered. KSS!

“You know that for the last few years, people have been buying any shore frontage they can get their hands on and building houses that are…well, not like any we've ever had here before. You can see them best—though that's not the word I should be using—from the water. Deep water. Millionaires have yachts—can't moor one on a clam flat.”

“Mansionization,” Faith said. “It's happening all over the country. Even in Aleford. Remember that sweet little Cape on River Street? Now it's a six-bedroom, six-and-a-half-bath Colonial on steroids, with great room, gym, home theater, and wine cellar.”

Ursula nodded. “Fortunately, I haven't seen it, but I know about it. The town quickly passed a whole set of new zoning restrictions, although I understand they are being challenged in court. Anyway, that's what KSS wants—zoning.”

“You mean there's no zoning on Sanpere?”

“There's never been a need. The state has a very comprehensive set of regulations for shoreland property, including a seventy-five-foot setback from the spring high-tide mark for new building, all of which Sanpere enforces. KSS wants a greater setback, a limit on the size of dwellings, and a ratio of house size to lot size. Oh, and they want to make it impossible to build too close to an already-existing structure. There's much more, like the number of trees that can be removed.”

“But you can't take trees down on waterfront
property.” Tom and Faith had been scrupulous about clearing, sticking to the complicated point system in the Shoreland Zoning Ordinance, measuring the diameters of the trunks of the trees they wanted to take down and calculating the percentages. Faith had heard the jokes about the air being filled with “The Sound of Chain Saws” after a storm as people got rid of trees that had ostensibly blown down in the no'theaster. The same liberal interpretation of the law was often applied when it came to what was dead and what was alive in the seventy-five-foot setback from the shore.

“People go ahead anyway, clear-cut even, then pay the fine. It's not that much money to the kind of people building these places.”

This was something Faith hadn't known.

“That's terrible! They shouldn't be allowed to get away with this. Are you a KSS member?” Faith had to stifle a giggle at the sudden image of Ursula in face paint and rocker regalia.

“No, I'm not. Although I agree with many of their points, I don't agree with the way they're going about it all. For one thing, they've accused the selectmen and the Planning Board of favoring the builders and developers. It's true that many are related, but it would be hard not to be on this island. KSS says they've been making secret deals during executive sessions. It's all become quite ugly. There's so much shouting at meetings, nothing can get passed, which I suppose is the point.”

“But aren't the Keep Sanpere Sanpere people
cousins or whatever, too? You said they were year-rounders.”

“They're year-rounders, and many have lived here for a very long time, but they're not natives.”

“Oh, people from away. Why didn't you say so in the beginning? It's all clear now.”

“Clear as mud,” said Ursula, sounding slightly indignant. “They don't get it. That's the problem. And it's this divisiveness on the island that has me so worried. I can't recall a time when the groups have been so stridently defined. There have always been summer people, of course. I'm one and you're one. You can rent for two weeks and be one, or own a place for almost a hundred years, like my family, and you're still one. The short-termers, and tourists who come down from Bar Harbor for the day, don't have much impact on island life. We long-termers have a bit more, but we're not really from here—we don't have to worry about heat in the winter or where to get the money to pay our taxes, for example. Natives are natives. Born here, bred here since Noah. They know who they are. But the year-rounders who aren't from here
don't
know who they are. I'm not saying this right.” She paused.

“You mean they think they should be regarded as natives because they live here, too? Everybody all together in one big chowder pot.”

“Yes, and in theory, that would be lovely, except it's just not the way it is or ever has been. The problem I have with the KSS people is their attitude that they know what's best for this island,
and the people who have been here for generations don't.”

“Well, they must have done something right, if all these people want to come and live here.”

“Exactly. Sanpere is a paradise, supposedly, but it's going to go to hell in a handbasket if KSS doesn't take charge.”

Ursula must be very upset, Faith mused. Mrs. Arnold Rowe seldom swore.

“People on this island don't like to be told what to do. They may not be happy about these huge places going up, but if someone pays his money fair and square…well, the land is his and he can put up what he wants, so long as he doesn't break the laws that are in place. I hate these houses, especially the fact that most aren't going to be used for more than a month or so each year, but people probably hated the Pines when it was built. And yes, I'm upset that taxes on shore frontage have risen so high that local people are forced to sell. But on the other hand, this money coming into the island has given us a fine new school and a whole lot of work.”

“So what's the problem?” There was always some kind of turmoil on Sanpere, yet Ursula had been suggesting something more, something worse.

“Since last spring, several of the building sites have been vandalized. Slogans spray-painted in green—“A sea of fish, not a sea of houses” “Every day is Earth Day.” That sort of thing, and arson. Ironically, the worst fire did more damage to the
surrounding woods than clearing for the new house had.”

“Ecoterrorism! The Earth Liberation Front? Sounds like their work. Then there was that guy Sands in Arizona. He was setting all those movie star–type homes on fire outside Phoenix. He started because his favorite jogging trail was being destroyed! Ended up getting off on the whole arson thing. Do you think KSS and maybe ELF are behind this?”

“After the first incident—some spray painting—everyone thought it was kids. You know the problems we have with not enough for them to do here. The nearest movie theater is in Ellsworth, and a lot of the teenagers and adults in their twenties drink too much on the weekends and act foolish. But then more and more places were struck, and people began to suspect KSS. I don't know about ELF; no one has mentioned a connection. KSS issued a statement deploring the actions, but the whole island believes otherwise. It's quite horrible. At the Fourth of July lobster dinner at the Odd Fellows, everyone sat apart. You could have drawn a line down the middle of the room.”

“Sounds like a junior high cafeteria.”

“The Fish 'n' Fritter Fry is coming up, and I hope we don't see more of the same—or worse. You can't imagine what I've been hearing around the island, from both sides. Thinly veiled comments about the effects of inbreeding over time, and remarks like ‘Why did they have to come to our island in the first place?' Then, to make mat
ters worse—and give the KSS members more fuel for their theory that locals are semisavages—we have a full-scale lobster war going on.”

“Lobster war!” Faith had a sudden vivid image of catapults loaded with scarlet crustaceans.

“The Hamiltons and the Prescotts. It started when one of the Prescotts accused one of the Hamiltons of poaching his territory; then traplines started to be cut. And now neither family is talking to the other. Supposedly some of them are keeping guns on board. It
is
true that shots were exchanged one night off Long Point. Someone on land was watching, trying to catch someone on the water in the act of sabotaging a trap. A lobster war is a serious thing. There've been the ones with Canada over fishing grounds, and then our own internecine ones for as long as anyone can remember. These days especially, fishermen have to make enough money during the season for the entire year. There's been a boom these last few years, but nobody expects it to last forever, and I hear catches are already starting to go down. So people get worried—and maybe desperate. There's always a lot of stress. Fishing sounds romantic, but that's the rod-and-reel kind. Groundfishing, including lobstering, is the most dangerous occupation in the world. More so, even, than being a fireman or policeman.

“Now, we do have to go to bed. I'm talked out, but it's helped. Things go in cycles, and perhaps we're just in a downward one here at the moment. Maybe I'm overreacting.”

Faith reached for Ursula's hand. It was warm and smooth, the skin so thin, she could feel the outlines of slender bones and veins without the slightest pressure.