“I wasn’t sure. What do you and the Crawleys know of Indians?”
I wanted to retort that I doubted he knew any more than I, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak as arrogantly as he. “We had Indians in Wisconsin.”
“Not wild ones.”
“Helen’s not exactly wild, either.” I used her name, reminding him that I knew her better.
“That’s not really her name,” he said.
Standing there with Oskar, staring at the accoutrements of her life, felt all at once like an intrusion, and I stepped back. “I’m not sure—” I began. “Oskar! Stop!”
He’d walked into the cave.
I was sincerely shocked. Although the place had no real door, even the children had known to hang back. How dare he breach her walls? Instinctively, I looked over my shoulders, right and then left. Was she watching him? Us?
“Oskar, come out!”
“Just a moment.” His boots trampled the sealskin.
“You shouldn’t be in there.”
“Why not?”
“It’s her home. You’re trespassing.”
“I’m not hurting anything.”
But he was fingering everything. Not only fingering but palming. I saw him slip something into his pocket.
“You can’t take that!” I plunged into the cave myself, the sealskin on the soles of my bare feet as soft as my mother’s blue velvet drapes. Already he’d lifted another item, a string of rocks, green like Chinese jade. I grabbed his wrist, and he turned on me.
“These are important artifacts,” he said.
“No! These are hers!”
He didn’t answer, but he must have heard the shrill horror in my voice, because he looked startled, as if I’d woken him from a dream. “You’re right. Of course you’re right. We shouldn’t disturb her things.” He let me take his arm and lead him back through the entrance until we were standing outside again. He looked about uncertainly, chastened by what he’d done but unwilling to leave the spot. “I tell you what we’ll do. We’ll just sit here outside the door, and you draw everything you can see. A sketch of the whole and then studies of some of the more detailed items. That would be all right, wouldn’t it? Look at those baskets, for instance. See how fine the weave is?” He pointed to a large round one near the entrance. “This jagged pattern—I bet it’s unique to her tribe. I wonder if it’s meant to symbolize water.”
Although I was still angry with Oskar, I felt more comfortable now that we were outside the cave, and I didn’t see how sketching was any different from staring, which I’d indulged in often enough. I began the project grudgingly, grumbling at the hardness of my rocky seat, the inadequacy of the light, and the difficulty of the angle, but once I began to sketch, the hours became among the best I had ever spent with Oskar. We reveled in the spectacle before us and felt transported by it, as if we were again viewing the panorama of Athens. As my drawing grew, Oskar studied it in relation to the scene, praising my use of perspective and pointing out details he thought should be emphasized—the texture of the baskets, the arrangement of what appeared to be fishhooks in a length of leather on the wall. He guided me to look so closely and methodically that I noticed details I’d overlooked on my own. While most of the baskets, for instance, had a dark design worked on a light background, on a few this pattern was reversed, as if she’d been trying an experiment or, as Oskar suggested, sometimes had access to different materials. He encouraged me to include every facet of every object, but he stopped me when I began to pencil in the pyramid of canned goods.
“Leave those out,” he said. “They shouldn’t be there.”
“But they are there,” I insisted stubbornly.
I could tell she treasured the cans and had arranged them with care. I had a notion that they, along with the neatly folded Lighthouse Service blanket, might be as important to her as the blue velvet drapes were to my mother and the wooden teeth were to Euphemia. It felt wrong to eliminate them.
“They’re imposed on her,” Oskar said. “They’re not authentic.”
I obeyed his wishes—after all, the drawing had been his idea—though I marked the placement of these objects in my mind, planning to do another copy for myself.
From time to time, Oskar moved around, studying the evidence of Helen’s life outside the cave. He pressed his fingertips against the fish scales that dusted the rocks, and when he held up his hand, his skin glittered as if covered in sequins.
“Are these from fish she eats?” he asked. “Or are they here for some other purpose? How does she catch them? Does she use those hooks, or does she have nets?”
“She spears them,” I said, experiencing a little flush of pleasure at being the one who knew.
We went on in this way for some hours, until I began to worry that the tide would be closing our route home, and I shut the logbook.
“Now, Oskar.” I’d decided to try wheedling, as if he were a little boy. “Before we go, I must be sure you’ve put everything back. She’ll miss her things if we take them.”
“I’m not going to take anything. I’m only borrowing. And it’s only this.” He held up a small piece of bone the color of oatmeal, one end sharply pointed, the other with a small hole drilled through. A needle. “I just want something to study at my leisure, so I can take measurements and make some notes when I have time to think. And you’ll draw it. This”—he swept his hand grandly across the entrance to the cave—“should be the subject of your catalog. When we’re finished, we’ll bring it back. Of course.”
I thought of the way she’d laughed with her toes in my shoe, and of the pendant she’d left for me. I convinced myself that she wouldn’t object to our borrowing such a small item. Probably she wouldn’t even notice it was missing.
∗ ∗ ∗
We returned in the same tedious manner in which we’d come, although Oskar planted his stick with energy, exhilarated despite his pain, whereas I dragged my feet, drained by the tension of the day.
There was no time for a proper sleep before his shift, and he didn’t attempt it. Instead, he sat at the kitchen table and began to study the needle with such thoroughness that it might have been a relic of Christ.
Later, when he’d gone to tend the light, I looked at the pages he’d covered with coded notes. What could he have found to say about that bit of bone to fill a page with such a turmoil of symbols?
I was meticulous with my drawings. I did one close view to show texture and one with a ruler beside it to indicate size. I passed a thread through the eye and pushed the point into some material and drew the whole to indicate how the thing might be used. I tried to show the needle’s slightness and the spots where it had been worn down by fingers. In the morning, I set the children some compositions so I could complete my work.
“I’ve done every possible rendering,” I said, handing Oskar the book at dinner that evening. “So we can take it back.”
“Yes,” he said absently, turning the pages. “These are very good.”
“I’ll cancel school for tomorrow morning, then, and we can take it back,” I repeated.
We were eating oxtail stew again, and he paused to work a bone from his mouth before answering. “I’m going tonight.”
“Tonight? It’ll be dark soon. And what about your shift?”
“I thought you’d cover that. You don’t mind, do you?”
I didn’t want him to go alone. “Why risk your neck in the dark? This is as foolish as going in the middle of a rainstorm. Why not wait until tomorrow?”
“Because I think night is the best time to catch her there, and I want to see her. She obviously keeps away from the place during the day.” He cracked a square of pilot bread over the remains of his stew and stirred it vigorously in the gravy. “Don’t worry; I’m not going to go in the dark. I’m going to start immediately after I eat, give myself plenty of time to find a good place to hide. I’ll wait. Sooner or later, I bet she shows.”
I could tell that it was a good plan by the degre
e to which it dismayed me. “She obviously doesn’t want you to see her. Maybe she’s afraid of you. As she was of Archie. You don’t want to frighten her.”
“That’s silly. She has nothing to fear from me. I’m not going to hurt her.”
I tried a different tack. “I’m very tired. I don’t think I can manage your shift tonight.”
He shrugged. “We’ll have to hope for the best, then. What are the chances that a ship will need our signal on this particular night?”
I stared at him. “You wouldn’t leave the light without a keeper!”
“I think the important point,” he said, spooning up the last of his stew with gusto, “is that you wouldn’t.”
CHAPTER 31
I WENT TO THE lighthouse at the proper time and did Oskar’s duty with the oil and the scissors. If anyone had seen him go, I was to say he was exercising his leg by walking on the sand. It was an unbelievable story, but as he said, it was his business what he did as long as the light was tended.
When I’d finished my tasks, I was too anxious to sit down to the usual mending. I’d brought a book; that couldn’t hold me to the chair, either. Soon enough, I allowed myself to go up the stairs and then onto the catwalk, careful to avoid exposing my unprotected eyes to the beam as it swung over me. I stood for a long while staring north, trying to bore through the blackness to discover what Oskar was doing. Of course, I could see nothing. By now he would be squeezed into some hole in the rocks.
The night was extremely still, without wind or bird cry. Far below, the water rocked gently in its bed. If it had not been for the steady hiccup of the light, I might have imagined myself in the womb.
And then I heard a small stone roll across the face of the rock, just below where I stood. It gathered speed and knocked against other rocks until, with a crack, it fell silent. At first I didn’t grope for explanation. After all, rocks must often spontaneously dislodge from their seats. Indeed, such phenomena must have been happening for millennia, as evidenced by the jagged black teeth at the foot of the morro. Then another stone began to roll some yards farther to the south, and I heard a sort of scrabbling. Something large was moving below me. My heart beat with a sudden, painful force, and I let out a small, distinct gasp. The scrabbling stopped.
I’d clearly frightened whatever animal had come to this place. I recalled Jane telling me there were no predators on the rock except eagles. Could it be an eagle? Or was it Archie Johnston going to visit his child’s grave? Would he move so surreptitiously? Bravely, I hung over the rail as far as I dared, my loose hair streaming around my face like a waterfall.
“Trudy?” Euphemia’s voice came not from beneath me but from the bridge that connected the top of the light to the level where our houses stood. “What’s the matter?” She came on, her footsteps louder when they left the wooden bridge and landed on the metal catwalk. “Why’re you here? Leg paining him?”
I held my finger to my lips, but she couldn’t see that in the dark. “Shhh,” I said. “I hear something.” I pointed over the rail.
“It’s probably a possum. Or a fox.” She pulled open the door to the tower. “Come in.”
The beam passed over me in a brilliant bath of light, and I had to close my eyes quickly to avoid burning them. “Jane said there were no foxes.”
“Trudy, come in now!”
I disobeyed. I turned back to the rail and jackknifed my body over it again. When the light swept past, I spotted the cairn and possibly something else, though I couldn’t make it out behind the flash of brightness that clung to my eyes like a caul, a ghost of light blocking what was real.
“I think it’s Helen!”
I said this, but my words were overwhelmed by an enormous crash, as the window behind me shattered. I recoiled, stumbled, and fell onto the catwalk along with the glass. Instantly, Euphemia’s large hands gripped my arms. She pulled me to my feet. Pieces of glass that had stuck to my clothes and skin fell a second time to the floor and broke into smaller bits.
“Come away from here.” This time I followed helplessly.
“Why did she do that?” I held my arm close against my body, trying to keep the blood from dripping onto the stairs.
“I believe she’s unhappy sometimes,” Euphemia clanked down the steps ahead of me. “Maybe because of her baby.”
“‘Baby Johnston born and buried,’” I said, finally realizing what I should have understood for months. I couldn’t remember whose hand had written that line, although it rang of Euphemia’s efficient way with words.
“She hardly knew the child. Still, it’s a terrible loss for a mother.” She gathered a handful of what was left of my sleeve at the shoulder seam. With a sharp pull, she ripped the fabric, revealing the gashed flesh beneath.
“When did she have a baby? You said she’d gone back to the mountains. You said nothing about a baby!”
“Stand here.” She positioned me beside the pitcher and basin we kept for washing up. She wet a clean rag and began dabbing at my arm with a sureness that calmed me. “When she left, there was no baby,” she said simply, rinsing her rag and dabbing some more. “But she came back. It was a different season by then. It was June, when we get the fog. I’d had another baby by that time myself. I used to make a little nest of blankets on the floor right there.” She pointed, the bloodstained rag dangling from her hand.
The thought of a tiny Janie, snuggled in like a kitten, made me remember that my own child would have been in such a nest by now.
Euphemia bent to lift a worn shirt of Archie’s from the mending basket and pressed it against my arm. “Sit down and hold this awhile.
“All of a sudden, here she was one night, right here in the boiler room,” she went on, selecting a thin needle from her keeper. “I like to believe that she hoped to find me here, but it may have been Archie she meant to give it to, even Henry. Or maybe she didn’t care who had it just so long as it wasn’t her. Some mothers are like that.” She paused.
“I don’t understand—” I began.
“I’m telling you,” she said impatiently. “It isn’t an easy thing, you know. One, two, three.” She snapped her fingers. “This, that, and the other. There are circumstances. There are things we can only conjecture.” She turned up the flame of the lamp and passed the needle back and forth through it several times.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“She was standing at the bottom of the staircase when I came down from feeding the light, and I was so amazed that I was lucky not to drop the oil I was carrying.” Euphemia unspooled a length of black thread and bit it off. “You know, I believed for an instant that she might be a ghost or a trick of my mind. I’d thought of her so often, you see, but I’d never expected to see her again in the flesh. Her hair had grown in; her face was rounder. She didn’t appear to have suffered since she’d left. I remember feeling a good deal of relief at that.
“I was glad to see her.” She squinted, lining up the eye of her needle with her thread. “I was nervous, too. Where would I hide her? How could I spirit her away again before Archie found her? That’s what I was thinking. She had her own plans. She didn’t need me. Not to take care of her, anyway.
“Here, now,” she said. “Put your elbow there.” She nodded at the table between us.
She pulled the lamp close and then, holding the edges of my skin together with her left hand, passed the needle through with her right. I sucked in my breath and gritted my teeth at the pinch of it. I could feel the thread running through my skin. Deftly, she tied a knot and bent to bite off the thread again, her lips grazing my skin.
“She knelt right there,” she said, indicating the spot with her needle, “and she slipped her arms from the straps around her shoulders.”
I hardly felt the needle puncturing my skin, so intent was I on her story.
“I’d assumed it was bedding she carried on her back, but when she got that pack around to her knees, I saw what her burden was. Laced right into the basket was a newborn, a tiny nut
of a baby.
“It cried a little when she lifted it from its cocoon.” She poked the needle in yet again. “It was a smart little thing; it knew that release from the basket meant it would soon be fed. But she didn’t nurse it. Instead, she held it out to me. I thought she wanted me to admire it. As I said, she’d been a sort of daughter to me; it seemed the natural thing, despite unnatural circumstances. She’d wrapped it in a bit of my old red calico. Can you imagine?
“It cried more when I took it. I smelled wrong, I suppose. But by the time you’ve had four, a crying baby isn’t agitating. I tried to soothe it, jostling it on my shoulder, wrapping my arms tight around it, because I’d seen that it was used to confinement. Babies like what they know.
“I remember smiling at it—thinking what a funny-looking little moppet it was. It had a thick mat of dark hair laying at all angles, and ears poking out like the little round handles of a jug.”
She’d finished her stitches and was gazing at nothing in particular, some spot in the air, recalling, as people do, the scene in her mind’s eye. Now she looked at me, studying my face.
“And then?” I asked. It seemed to me somehow that she wasn’t telling the story in the right order. I glanced at my arm. Although I knew the stitches were necessary, the wound hurt more than before she’d applied her needle.
Euphemia wrapped her arms around herself, as if she were the babe who needed swaddling. “I looked to her. I remember I was smiling and I thought she would be pleased to see my pleasure in her child.” She shook her head. “She was gone.”
“Gone where?”
“Gone away. She left that baby. With me.”
The image of Euphemia raising a stone over the baby otter’s head thrust itself unbidden into my mind.
“I didn’t know that she meant for me to keep it. I thought she’d reappear in minutes, then by morning, then in a week or two weeks’ time. Even months and months later, I expected her at every moment, especially those times when I was alone here in the light tower.”
“Was it Archie’s child?”