The Lightkeepers (16 page)

24

A
FEW DAYS LATER
, I was roused by a guttural cry. I think I already knew on some level what had happened. I had been there before. Feet running. Voices on the wind. Some kind of emergency. Someone in trouble again.

This time it was Lucy who came barging into my bedroom. At the sound of the door opening, I tugged the blanket off my head. She had obviously just come from outside. She was wearing her hat and work boots, and she smelled like the ocean.

“Get up, for God’s sake,” she shouted. “We need you.”

I opened my mouth to ask a question, but she was already gone. I heard her thumping down the stairs. A door opened somewhere. Then the house was quiet. Through the window, I could see nothing unusual. There was a panel of clouds, solid and gray, with an odd ruffle at the top, as though someone had trimmed a stretch of brick wall with lace. I pulled on my long underwear. I found my scarf in the tumble of sheets. In the distance, the elephant seals were bellowing, the alpha males beating their vocal drums, engaging in their usual territorial battles.

“Hello?” I called, heading downstairs.

Nobody answered. The kitchen was empty. A pot sat on the stove with a ladle sticking out of it. There were beans inside. More
beans on a plate. Someone had been interrupted in the process of spooning out breakfast. I fingered the contents of the pot. Still warm.

Tugging on my coat, I stepped outside. A breeze scraped my cheek. The ocean had a clean, freshly washed look. The elephant seals were much louder now. The females hooted. The males made a gravelly bellow like a truck engine changing gears. There was another sound, too. A human voice was tangled up inside the chorus. It was hard to pinpoint where each noise was coming from.

I made my way around the cabin. No one on Marine Terrace. No one at Garbage Gulch. No one by the coast guard house. The helipad was abandoned. Yet the voices echoed all around me now, disembodied, like ghosts. The wind was a trickster, changing direction with each gust, blowing my hair into my face.

At last, I caught a hint of movement at the foot of Lighthouse Hill. The slope was backlit by the sun. The trailhead stood in shadow. Shading my eyes with a hand, I made out a mesh of figures there. Mick was planted beside the path—no mistaking that massive silhouette. Lucy was present too. I recognized the restless shift of her step, bobbing in place. More figures. Blobs against a gray landscape. Four bodies bending over something. There was a work-manlike quality about them, engaged in shared labor.

“Hey,” I called.

No one turned. My voice was lost in the wind. As I watched, they knelt in unison like a troupe of dancers doing a simultaneous plié. It was disconcerting. When they straightened up again, I glimpsed a shape at the center, a blur inside the bodies. Something
about the whole scene sent a chill down my spine. After a moment, I realized what it was: they looked like pallbearers, toting an object between them.

I began to run.

Mick saw me coming and shouted. The breeze picked up, and he was drowned out by the seals. I was close enough now to recognize the gleam of the surfboard. That was what they were carrying. On the surfboard was a human figure. I saw a blush of red hair. As I drew near, Galen signaled to me.

“She’s alive,” he said. “We need to get her to the house. Grab hold.”

Mick and Forest were on one side. Galen and Lucy, on the other, were struggling to keep their half aloft. I lunged into the breach, snatching at the slick plastic with both hands. The surfboard was heavy. It swayed in my fingers as though it retained some memory of its time among the waves.

Once I was sure of my hold, I was able to focus on Charlene. She lay on her back, her limbs akimbo, her hair fanned around her brow. A sacrificial victim on a litter. She appeared to be unconscious. Looking closer, I saw a bump on her temple. She had the beginnings of a black eye. Her elbow was dislocated; beneath the sleeve of her coat, one arm was bent the wrong way. The sight sent a wave of nausea through me. I lifted my gaze, fixing my attention on the cabin instead.

We were moving in lockstep now. The ground was slippery and treacherous. In front of me, Galen was cursing to himself. Lucy kept accidentally kicking my calves. We walked for what felt like hours,
bearing Charlene, trying not to jiggle her too much. Periodically she would give a breathy groan. Mick kept shouting encouragement over the breeze. “Nearly there.” Pause for breath. “Just a few more minutes.” Pause for breath. “Great work, guys!” Soon I found that I had to move sideways, crablike. The five of us stumbled along Petrel Bluff. The sea roared around us, and the elephant seals roared too. A flock of birds passed overhead, warbling to one another. The Farallon Islands continued to be unperturbed by our private disasters.

Finally we reached the porch. With all due ceremony, Charlene was ushered inside. We laid her down. She stirred for an instant, but she did not open her eyes. Around me, the others were already in motion.

“The radiophone,” Galen was saying. “I sent out a call earlier, but nobody seemed to be around. I have to—” Muttering, he hurried away.

“Has anybody seen the first aid kit?” Forest said.

“Come on.” Lucy took his hand and led him down the hall.

Mick pushed past me, saying, “Ice pack. Or some frozen peas, maybe.”

For a moment, I was alone with Charlene. Her breathing was labored. Quite plainly, she was unaware of my presence. She was not aware of anything at all. I looked her over. She was dressed in jeans, hiking boots, and a man’s jacket—her usual uniform. Other than the black eye and dislocated elbow, she did not appear to be wounded. But there was moss in her hair. A smear of mud on her brow. Her sleeve was torn. She had a stick jammed into one pocket.
Maybe it had caught there as she rolled down the hill. I reached toward her shoulder.

The octopus appeared suddenly. I drew my hand back with a grimace. On the coffee table, a few feet away, he ballooned into the center of his tank. He startled the life out of me as he oozed along the glass. His skin was a bright, aggressive red. His eyes swiveled on their stalks, glaring at Charlene.

The silence of him struck me anew. A dog might bark, a cat might yowl, but an octopus made no sound at all. Oliver hovered on a cloud of tentacles. I wondered how Charlene would appear to him, refracted through his bizarre, aquatic mind. I wondered what he might think had happened to her. She shifted on her surfboard, sighing. The octopus groped at the wall of his tank. He released a cloud of bubbles.

Before my eyes, the red started to wash from his skin like paint wrung from a rag. Crimson, I knew, was the color of wrath. I watched as he turned pink, then lavender, and finally blue. A pale, chalky azure. The color of concern.

25

I
BEGAN TO PHOTOGRAPH
the world around me when I was ten or eleven. I was not yet an artist; I was merely a child with a hobby. You indulged me, as you did with all my passions. You bought me rolls of film. You drove me to the store to have my pictures developed. You hung my best snapshots on the fridge.

Once, however, you did express a note of concern. I remember it well. It was autumn, and we were strolling through our neighborhood, window-shopping. The local boutiques had decorated themselves with paper leaves in orange and gold. We passed the post office. We stopped to gaze at the delightful wares on display at the toy store. The sky was blindingly clear as you and I rambled down K Street. I remember the jangle of your bracelet. I remember the sugar of your perfume.

A homeless man was asleep on the sidewalk. He lay in a sprawl, a stretch of newspaper over his face. It took me a moment to figure out whether he was breathing. The stench was terrible. His clothes were filthy and torn.

You fumbled in your pocket and came up with a coin to toss in his cup. I had my camera with me—a black and gray Olympus OM-1, barnacled with buttons and dials. It was an early single-lens reflex instrument, the best of its time, loaded with 35-millimeter
film, heavier than my purse. Using it was a wonderfully tactile experience: the grind and swivel of the image coming into focus, the clack of the shutter, the resistance of the film advance lever. I leaned over the man’s prone form. He was missing a shoe, and his bare foot was swollen. The toenails resembled bear claws.

You laid a hand on my arm.

“Don’t,” you said.

I looked at you in surprise. You led me away.

Later, you tried to explain. It had worried you to see me like that—gazing with such detachment at another human being so obviously in distress. It had unnerved you that my first instinct had been to try to capture him on film.

“I’m not sure about this,” you said, tapping my camera.

At the time, I found this unfair. I believed I had done nothing wrong in pointing my lens at a man asleep in public. I had not hurt anyone.

Now, of course, I know better. You were right. You were so often right. More than any other art form, photography requires coldness and dispassion. Perhaps I had those qualities as a child; perhaps I developed them over the decades that followed, the years without you. This work demands a mind that sits apart.

Trauma and pain are the foundations of art. I believe that. When tragedy strikes, however, a muralist or a watercolorist has the opportunity to be a human being in the moment and an artist afterward. Faced with the death of a loved one, a sculptor or portraitist can first grieve, suffer, and heal—then create. Most artists go through life this way. They can react normally to the trials and
tribulations of the human experience. They can pass through the world with compassion and comradeship.

They can make their art later. Outside, elsewhere, beyond.

But photography is immediate. It does not offer the luxury of time. Faced with blood, death, or transformation, a photographer has no choice but to reach for the camera. An artist first, a human being afterward. Photography is a neutral record of all events, a chronicle of things both sublime and terrible. By necessity, this work is made without emotion, without connection, without love.

W
E HAD TO
wait a long while for the helicopter. Everyone did the best they could in the meantime. Mick held a bag of frozen peas to Charlene’s head, alternating between the bump on her brow and the black eye. Forest did some exploratory palpating of her dislocated elbow. It was red and puffy, but not so swollen as to indicate a broken bone. Lucy made sure there were no other, unseen injuries, checking Charlene’s stomach and legs as the men kept their eyes averted. Charlene herself moved in and out of consciousness; she might frown when the ice touched her forehead or grumble something inaudible, but a moment later she would be out cold again.

There was not much I could to do help. I found myself tapping my fingers on my thigh, wishing I had my camera. I wanted to get a few shots of Charlene’s limp fingers, her bruised skin. This moment was ripe for capture. But I knew better than to go fetch Jewel or Gremlin. It would have seemed heartless to the others.

Finally Galen put his foot down. He summoned us all into the kitchen and insisted that we eat something.

“You’ll feel better,” he said. “This is not a request.”

Leaning against the kitchen counter, consuming a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I did not attempt to contribute to the conversation. I listened to the biologists, who seemed fairly unfazed. Everyone ate heartily. In steady, tranquil voices, they debated what might have happened to Charlene.

“Did anybody see her this morning?”

“She did say something about going up Lighthouse Hill.”

“I remember! The elephant seals—”

“She must have lost her footing.”

“The fog was bad. I got turned around at Breaker Cove.”

“Me too! I was at Dead Sea Lion Beach, and—”

“Did anyone notice if Charlene had her binoculars with her? Maybe she dropped them. They’re a good pair.”

“She shouldn’t have gone up alone.”

Still, I said nothing. Galen’s glance flicked my way. He was frowning. There was tension in the air, running beneath the casual conversation.

W
HEN THE HELICOPTER
arrived, I was in my bedroom. I watched through the window as Forest and Galen hurried across the grounds. The helicopter glinted in the sun. It had the look of an aerial ambulance, a red cross painted on the door. Awash in déjà vu, I watched it settle on the helipad.

Two figures emerged from inside, hefting a stretcher between them. I had been expecting more federal agents—more badges, more clipboards, more holsters tucked discreetly out of sight—but these men were clearly medics. They wore hospital green. I had been expecting, too, to see the same doctor who had attended Andrew. Now, though, I realized that he must be a medical examiner, specializing in the dead. This time the mainland had sent along two older gentlemen, one with gray hair, one black. Galen and Forest approached them and shook hands. The group made its way toward the cabin.

With some trepidation, I left my bedroom. There was a bustle at the front door. Lucy was heading outside for a little bird-watching. (Later on, she would justify her actions, claiming that she’d seen an albatross landing near Indian Head. More likely the incident had reminded her of the loss of Andrew. She couldn’t stick around for that.) I stepped into the living room in time to see the doctors negotiating their stretcher down the front hallway. One bent over Charlene, checking her pulse and peering beneath her eyelids. Mick was hovering against the wall, chewing on his fingernails as though he intended to gnaw them right off his hands. Forest and Galen were standing at attention. They had the demeanor of athletes on the bench during a key game.

With great efficiency, the medics hefted Charlene from the surf-board onto the stretcher. They held a conference, standing close together. Their aspect was unhurried. They clearly did not perceive Charlene to be in any immediate danger. The black-haired doctor tugged a notebook from his pocket. He stared at Mick, frowned at Galen, and examined me as though taking my measure.

“Sit,” he said.

“What?”

He pointed. “Sit there.”

I sank onto the couch. It was not a time to argue. The doctor peered at me a moment longer, then turned to Forest and beckoned him over.

“I need to know everything,” he said. “When did the accident happen?”

Forest began to speak in cool, thoughtful tones. On balance, I was glad to be seated. I felt dislocated, outside myself. Tiny details seemed of immense importance to me. The hum of the radiator. The scratch of the medic’s pen on his pad. Outside, the sea was breaking against the shoreline. The spray was wild, casting up a mist that glittered with rainbows like a sprinkler in the sunlight.

A sound caught my attention. The second doctor—a gray-haired fellow with a generous paunch—had left his post at Charlene’s side. He was approaching Galen. There was a diffident quality about him. I gave him a long glance, summing him up: gentle, bespectacled, a teddy bear of a man. Though he kept his voice low, I could hear every word.

“You look familiar,” he said. “Have we met?”

“I don’t think so,” Galen said.

“I’m good with faces. Are you from San Francisco originally?”

For a moment, I thought Galen wasn’t going to answer. Then, unwillingly, he said, “Yes, I am.”

“Are you married?” the doctor said.

Galen blushed. There was no mistaking it. He went pink all the way up to the tips of his ears. Seated on the couch, I shifted in surprise. I had never thought that Galen could be capable of such a human response.

“No,” he said.

“Really?”

“Yes,” Galen said, with a look of pure dislike.

The doctor took off his glasses and polished them thoughtfully. “For a moment there, I thought I had it.”

Galen’s blush had begun to curdle, turning an angry red. I was amazed at the doctor’s pluck—or else his obliviousness. I would never have dared to antagonize Galen to this extent.

A hand touched my shoulder, making me jump. Mick was sinking onto the couch. He pushed a glass of water toward me. I drank it down without registering much beyond the iron taste of the pipes. On the other side of the room, Forest was in midflow, pointing to Charlene’s prone form, and the window, and the sea. His reedy voice filled the small space. On her stretcher, Charlene gave a little, fluttering sigh, like a sleeper in the middle of a not unpleasant dream.

L
ATER ON
, I watched the helicopter zipping across the water. The sun was still high, pinned to the silken air like a brooch on a collar. The helicopter moved at a brisk pace. I squinted, trying to keep track of its dark frame, the whir of the rotor.

Gradually, before my eyes, the sea began to change. Something was happening far out, scarcely visible. I caught a splash of spray, a gleam of silver. Shapes were bursting through the surface and ducking under again. Eventually I realized that it was a pod of gray whales. They were passing to the east of the islands, frolicking in the deep water. In the manner of their kind, they had all come up to breathe at once. I saw a shiny torso, a fat snout. Charlene’s helicopter passed above them, and their bodies shifted in concert, fins and tails in motion, as though waving goodbye.