The Lightkeepers (4 page)

5

T
O MY SURPRISE
, it has already happened. In fact, it happened this morning: I woke at dawn, and the islands felt familiar to me.

I have had this experience on my travels before, but it never palls. In the desert it took me a while to adjust to the bone-dry air. In the tropics it took me some time to grow accustomed to the overpowering odor of the trees, the blinding showers of hot rain. I once lived in a cave, snapping photos of bats for a week. Even then I did finally adapt to the odor of guano, the
plink
of water, the way the darkness seemed to crawl toward me along the walls. The process of habituation is always the same. What was alien becomes familiar—what was strange becomes ordinary—the glimmering viscera of the world are pulled inside out.

Yet it has rarely happened as rapidly as it has here. I opened my eyes this morning and was glad to be where I am.

Then, however, I heard grunting and moaning from downstairs. At once, I threw on my jeans and dashed into the hallway. Lucy and Andrew live directly beneath me. They are the cabin’s resident couple.

I know this will intrigue you. You always used to begin your perusal of the
New York Times
with the marriage announcements. I remember it well. You believed that you could predict with great
accuracy whether each pair of newlyweds would go the distance. You included an immense variety of factors in your analysis. Whether either of them had been married before. Whether either was significantly older, better-looking, or richer than the other. Whether their body language signaled ease or awkwardness in the snapshot. I was a logic-minded child, and I did point out that you had no way to verify your guesses. You could speculate all you wanted, but we would never know for sure. Still, your faith in your prognostications remained unshaken.

I will therefore share what I have gleaned about the lovebirds of the Farallon Islands, and you can decide for yourself whether they will succeed as a twosome. Lucy and Andrew are the same age—midtwenties, almost a decade younger than me. They are oddly matched. She is the sort of woman who would seem perfectly at home in pioneer garb, churning butter. She has a round, expansive, comfortable frame, her face as pink and wholesome as an apple. She is almost beautiful. In certain lights, from the right angle, she attains a fleeting loveliness. Most of the time, however, she is sturdy, warm, and homey.

Andrew, on the other hand, is a human glacier. He is pale all over, practically an albino, from his flaxen hair to his white-blue eyes. His disposition, too, is icy. During the past month, I have yet to see him express any emotion except a kind of ironic, adolescent disdain. He always wears a crimson stocking cap with a gold phoenix emblem. He keeps the cap tugged low over his ears at all times, which adds to the impression of jaded youth. His notes in the daily log are humorous but cutting.
Important research now
shows that the ocean is evil
, he wrote one morning. And another day:
Rescue ship still hasn’t gotten my signal. Mustn’t give up hope. Which cabin mate will I eat first?
And then, just yesterday:
I know which one I will eat first.

Lucy and Andrew came to the islands together. They began dating in college. Yet their personalities, like their physiques, could not be more dissimilar. Lucy is a human dynamo, a boundless spring of energy. Every morning, she is up before dawn, on the grounds, binoculars in hand. Rain and wind do not deter her. She is the bird girl, and her knowledge is encyclopedic. Whenever a feathery shape flits across the sky, she can, without even sparing it a second glance, identify it as auklet, cormorant, gull, or puffin. She rarely sits down. Her meals are eaten as she stands at the bookcase, flipping through a reference tome or gazing out the window, her expression wistful, like a house cat wishing to be let into the garden. Still chewing, she will throw on her jacket and hurry toward Sea Pigeon Gulch.

In the evenings, we all tend to drop off early. (It is remarkable how the internal clock aligns with the circadian rhythm—if there’s absolutely nothing to do after dark.) But Lucy does not doze. She cleans. I can hear you spluttering that
of course
the woman is the one doing the mopping and sweeping. And yet, in Lucy’s case, it’s more than that. Nobody can venture outside safely at night, on the slippery shore, on the uneven slope. It is tricky in broad daylight, impossible in darkness. I learned this the hard way during my first week in this place. Trapped indoors, Lucy must do something else with her excess vitality. As she wipes down the countertops and scrubs the pots, her eyes shine with purpose.

Andrew, on the other hand, is bone-lazy. He can’t be bothered to rise before ten a.m. Out here, that is an eternity of time wasted, the entire morning gone. He is a bird specialist too—he and Lucy met in a biology seminar—but he does not walk the grounds with her. He stays inside where it’s warm, writing notes for a research paper that never seems to reach completion.

A few other details that might interest you:

       
1. Andrew and Lucy have sex every day.
Every
day, without fail, rain or shine. I sleep directly above them, and each sigh and moan passes right through my floorboards.

       
2. I don’t think I have ever seen a woman adore her man more. Her sun rises and sets on him. That kind of devotion is unsettling.

       
3. I do not like Andrew. I don’t like him at all. There is something about him that I do not understand or trust. A deadness behind the eyes.

T
HROUGHOUT THE MORNING
, I wandered the grounds. I cannot explain the joy I was feeling. Everything about the islands seemed exquisite to me. The salt-infused air. The crash of the surf. The shimmy of the mice darting across my peripheral vision. The granite that crackled and fragmented away beneath my boots.

I wanted a picture of the light on the water, broken up by islets. I had learned from my fall and injury. My camera now hung on a secure strap around my neck. I knew to stop in my tracks, plant my
feet, and check my surroundings before I succumbed to the beauty of an image. I was in the process of framing the shot—settling myself like a tripod—when I looked down and gasped.

The islands had given me a present. There, between my feet, lay a seal stone. These were rare and precious things, left on the shore by the elusive fur seals. Gastroliths, they were called. Mick had described them to me, but I had not expected to find one myself. I had not thought I was worthy of such a miracle.

I knelt down and picked it up. It felt wonderful in my hand. Perfectly round. Smooth and dense. It looked as though it had been inside a polisher. It was made of something darker and more compact than the flaky granite of the islands. The fur seals ate these stones, maybe for ballast, maybe for digestion. No one knew why. Up to ten pounds of rocks in the gut. Grinning, I turned it over in my palms.

I slipped it into the pocket of my coat. There was something reassuring about its weight, its heft. Its perfect sphericality. Its wildness. It had been carried in the belly of a seal until it was rendered flawless.

There was a noise behind me. I whirled around and saw Andrew. Crimson hat. Hands in pockets. Smirking face. He was a little too close. I hadn’t heard him until he was almost on top of me. I stood up quickly, dusting off my hands.

“You want to be careful,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

His eyes were so blue. They looked like windows, as though I were seeing through him to the sky behind.

“You don’t want to get hurt again,” he said. “A little thing like you.”

I was gripping my camera like a shield. Andrew smiled and sloped off, shoulders hunched, heading for the cabin. I watched him go with relief.

Then a hint of motion caught my eye. There was someone else outside—a shape on Lighthouse Hill. I thought it was Lucy. But the figure was gone so fast that I could have been mistaken. It could have been a trick of the light.

6

W
E ARE DEEP
into Shark Season. I came to the islands in late summer, and my arrival coincided with a vast influx of white sharks. (The
great
, I have learned, is only used by ignorant nonbiologists.) On my travels, I have encountered dreadful creatures before—leeches with a penchant for armpits, crocodiles masquerading as logs, irate lions. For nearly five months, I once lived in the rainforest; I slept in a hut and bathed with a bucket. The rules of my visits were strict: no littering, no hiking except on the designated trails, and, whatever the provocation, no destruction of any living thing. This included venomous tarantulas and foot-long centipedes. I loved that place as a photographic object, but by the end I was dying for a cup of real coffee, a change of clothes, and the feel of a stiff breeze on my skin. I found that, of all things, I missed the look of straight lines. There were none in that eruption of greenery.

But the white sharks have a lethal charm all their own.

Galen and Forest are our shark specialists. In the past month, I have learned a bit more about these two, but my initial impression of them has not changed all that much. Galen is white-haired, venerable, and never in a particularly good mood. He still strikes me as being an elderly god of the sea—possibly omnipotent, probably omniscient. He knows everything that happens here. He watches
the tides. He organizes repairs on the cabin, the boats. He can recite the history of the Farallon Islands with the scholarly air of a college professor. He has a thousand animal facts at his fingertips. Though his raison d’être is the sharks, I have seen him sitting on the porch beside Lucy, helping her to dissect the wing of a dead cormorant like a trained veterinarian. He can read the coming weather at a glance.

Forest, on the other hand, is an enigma. A dark-haired, cold-blooded naiad. Galen’s right hand. Forest eats, sleeps, and breathes work. I have yet to hold a conversation with him that has not centered on something to do with biology: the anatomy of harbor seals, the local varieties of comb jellies, or the weather patterns as related to bird migrations. The one time I dared to ask him where he’d grown up, he shot me a withering look, like a Victorian butler reprimanding an impertinent housemaid. Like the others here, he seems to have no past, or a distinct unwillingness to discuss it. Once, long ago, I read that all nuns who joined a convent were forbidden from speaking about their lives before. The Farallon Islands seem to be a religious order in their own right, with a similar vow of silence.

Galen and Forest catalog and track the population of white sharks. Throughout the autumn, the two men rise at four-thirty in the morning to start the watch. During every hour of daylight, one of them is in position in the lighthouse, keeping an eye out for blood on the water. Against every basic human instinct, they hurry toward a feeding frenzy. They board one of the boats and head out to sea, armed with video cameras, tagging equipment, and
the “dummy,” a surfboard painted like a seal to lure the sharks in closer. The two of them live to make contact with these creatures. Galen and Forest are lunatics, to put it frankly. Galen has mentioned that he dreams about the white sharks every single night. Forest sketches a shark’s silhouette—lean, rough, and spiked with fins—on any nearby surface. He does this unconsciously, doodling on the table, on a book I once left open on the couch.

At this time of year, there can be two or three kills a day. The sharks eat the seals and sea lions. There is enough prey here to sustain a massive host of predators. The birds will mark the spot like an X on a map. Watching from the lighthouse, Forest or Galen will spy a collection of gulls diving over a patch of sea. The cry will go up. Boots are thrown on—coats flung over shirts—a thunder of feet on the stairs. Forest uses a child’s scooter with streamers on the handlebars to make his downhill run from the lighthouse that much faster. One of these days he will break his neck.

There is no pier on the Farallon Islands. The tides have seen to that. Any attempts at building a dock have invariably been washed away. There is a powerful undertow. There are riptides that come and go without warning or rhythm. There are reefs and shoals. The islands are home to two small boats, both of which must be lowered into the sea by crane. They are too large to ride in the Billy Pugh, of course. Instead, they must be hooked directly to the steel cable itself.

The first is a rowboat (called the
Lunchbox
, I am sad to say, since its crew tends to feel like a tasty snack when moored next to a white shark). Then there is the
Janus
, a seventeen-foot Boston
Whaler. This is a sturdier thing, with benches and a deckhouse, as well as a railing that, to my untrained eye, appears to be for decorative purposes only. The
Janus
is equipped with a motor, which makes this boat the preferred method of transport. Both boats spend their free time resting on a mattress of rubber tires at East Landing, a thirty-foot cliff. I have seen them being lowered into the water, swinging merrily on the end of the chain, plummeting into black waves larger than themselves.

I have not yet been brave enough to venture out on Shark Watch. I have stayed safely on land. It is unnerving to think that those monsters are always out there, patrolling the dark surf. Waiting. For the most part, the white sharks remain hidden, tucked inside a wave, buried in the deep currents. Once or twice, however, I have glimpsed a dorsal fin cresting the water, as menacing as the periscope of an enemy submarine.

M
Y LOVE AFFAIR
with the islands has continued. At times I feel drugged, wandering the shoreline with a stupid grin on my face, camera aloft. Each snapshot seems like a benediction. We may never know what another person is thinking—never truly get into anyone else’s head—but photography brings us as close as anything can. When the members of an audience at an art gallery look at a picture, they can step for a moment inside the mind of the artist. Like telepathy. Like time travel. At some future date, when people gaze at my photographs of the islands, they will see what I saw. They will stand where I stood, on this granite, surrounded by this
ocean. Perhaps they will even feel some of the elation I have experienced here.

Earlier today, I found myself at North Landing, where a dozen California sea lions were lolling in the light. They maneuvered around like canine mermaids. Their bodies seemed split in two; the upper half was alert and upright—pert little ears, sharp eyes, and a snout bristling with whiskers—whereas the back half was weighted down with fat and fins, slithering across the flagstones. They toasted themselves like marshmallows, plunging into the frothy shallows to cool off.

Soon I realized that one of the creatures was injured. It did not romp and play with the others, diving and hunting fish. Instead it lay on the shore, one flipper cradled against its chest. Through my telephoto lens, I could see a deep, fresh wound. The flipper had nearly been severed from the torso. The gash was new enough that it had not yet begun to scab. Instinctively I put a hand to my rib cage, where my own flesh had been cut open a few weeks before. Probably the animal had survived a run-in with a white shark. This was surprisingly common. What the sea lions lacked in mass, they made up for in gymnastic agility. I could imagine the shark lunging forward as the sea lion pirouetted and somersaulted away. But it was clearly in bad shape now. It was weak and dazed-looking.

I knew, however, that there was nothing I could do. There would be no point in going to fetch Mick or Galen. The biologists were on the islands to observe and document. Nothing more. Noninterference was the core of their belief system. They would never intervene in the life—or death—of one of their charges. I had
received a stern lecture on this very subject from Galen a few days back. An injured animal was a specimen to be studied. Its demise was an event to be recorded for posterity. The food chain was paramount. Sympathy and affection were beside the point.

I turned away. Bending down, I took a few close-ups of shark teeth. The grounds are speckled with them; they dot the landscape like flowers in a prairie. Delicate reminders of danger. People used to believe shark teeth fell from the sky during lunar eclipses. Honestly, I am not sure myself how they travel so far inland.

After a while, I moved off to get a few candid snapshots of my human companions. They had proven to be as camera-shy as the animals. I had learned to be crafty. Crouching behind a boulder, telephoto lens in place, I saw Lucy sitting cross-legged on the shore, engaging in a debate with a puffin. She could imitate most birds’ cries well enough to cause confusion in their little minds. This one clearly thought she was another puffin encroaching on its turf. Presently another shape intruded into the frame. I adjusted the focus and saw red hair, a too-big windbreaker—Charlene.

I have not mentioned Charlene yet, since I haven’t been sure what to say. To begin with, she is young, even younger than Andrew and Lucy. Charlene is still in college. A mop of unruly red hair. Pale skin strewn with constellations of freckles. She is an intern, not a biologist. (For the record, Charlene is the only intern who has ever lasted more than a fortnight on the islands. She has been here three months already.) Her identity is effaced by her subordinate position, by the eagerness she displays whenever she is asked to help with the simplest task, from hosing down the
Janus
to itemizing the
contents of the cupboards to making coffee. I have yet to get any sense of her personality.

Now, through my lens, I watched both women get to work. They were too far away for me to catch any of their conversation. It appeared that Lucy was teaching Charlene how to tag the birds. Lucy is a master at this tricky process: capturing a feathery body, holding it firmly but gently in both hands so it cannot peck her or injure itself, and attaching the orange band. Charlene was obviously nervous, her brow furrowed with concentration. Lucy spoke soothingly, patiently, as Charlene fumbled and frowned, letting bird after bird slip through her grasp. Suddenly, both women burst into laughter. I got it on film: Charlene’s head thrown back, her hair a crimson halo, and Lucy doubled over, clutching her stomach. Their mirth scared the remaining birds into flight. The flock swirled upward, a waterfall of wings.

I found myself distracted. The problem of Lucy has occupied my mind lately. I cannot figure it out. She is the belle of the Farallon Islands, the darling of the group. I have seen her giving Charlene a neck rub or offering to do the dishes when it’s Forest’s turn because he looks tired. I have observed her sitting on the couch with Galen and delighting over a ludicrous error they have stumbled upon in a reference book—the kind of thing that would only be discernible to a pair of biologists. Lucy laughs easily and loudly. She is open, cheerful, kind.

But not with me. It has taken me a while to catch on to the reality of the situation. To be frank, I was fooled at the start by her appearance. Plump and pink, she looks like the sort of woman who
ought to be wearing an apron or kneeling in a garden, her hands deep in the earth. In her interactions with me, however, she has been odd from the beginning. Every so often, she will throw out a backhanded comment. (“Wow! That shirt is
interesting
.” “You must have great teeth, mouse girl. I can hear you chewing all over the cabin.”) Lucy will snicker when I trip on a loose floorboard or drop my spoon at the table. Withering looks. Covert eye rolls. I cannot read the riddle.

My roommates and I have the dynamic of a family, minus any semblance of warmth. We share a home. We see one another all day, every day. I must do my best with them, whether or not we get along. There is no privacy. If Mick is constipated, if Charlene has her period, if Andrew is feeling lustful, everyone knows about it. We each have our own roles. Galen: the stoic parent, ruling through benign neglect. Forest: the brainy son, forever at his books. Me: the shy stepchild, still finding her place in the pecking order. Within this group, Lucy might be the mean sister whose behavior is not obvious to her elders—who deals out punishment in pinches and slaps and then looks up innocently, saying, “Who, me?” She presents one face, hiding another, a double identity I am just beginning to perceive.