Boy, did those words shortly become prophetic. I don’t remember much about what came next. I just did as Waltham had advised. I thought about how I got here and how it had affected me. Below, the lines of villagers holding their torches stood silent and still as the breeze blew their flames back and forth. I don’t really know how long I talked, but when I finished, the crowd roared with approval and began to sing the Keed song.
I put the mike back to my mouth and joined in the chorus. At that moment, the sky was ignited by a blinding flash of light. “Oh, shit,” I thought. “All of this is true.”
Another beam of light cut a bright silver hole in the sky, briefly illuminating the top of the crater and the summit of Poodi in the distance. Immediately I turned to see that the light was coming from the tower room. I knew at first sight that the source, which had been concealed earlier beneath the canvas cover, was a Fresnel lens.
Waltham walked out next to me and waved to the crowd. I followed his lead and waved too. “Excellent speech, Mr. Messenger. Look how happy they are.”
“That is a Fresnel lens!” I shouted.
“Yes, I told you that part was true. Wave to the crowd.” I was still waving, but my mind was elsewhere. I was very confused. I had found the soul of the light, but I hadn’t found anything I could take home.
“But it is your light. Not mine,” I said somewhat accusingly to Waltham. “I could never take that lens from you for Cayo Loco.”
“And I could never let you have our sacred beacon,” Waltham calmly replied.
“So what’s the fucking point?” I blurted out.
Waltham gave me a serious look, and then that devilish smile spread across his face. “There is a spare bulb,” he said.
Well, my message seemed to have worked. The party continued into the wee hours, but I had turned in my dance card. As strange as it may seem, I was actually back on the track of my self-appointed mission of scouring the Pacific for a Fresnel lens.
Waltham and I walked out of the crater, and as we topped the hill, I could hear the strains of Artie Shaw’s “Begin the Beguine” blaring from the speakers at the base. Small silhouettes and shadows of dancers jitterbugged up and down the grass strip.
As we made our way down the mountain trail, Waltham filled in the blanks of the story for me. Somewhere around the end of the winter of 1942, after several weeks of delivering mail, transporting military big shots to R & R locations, and doing goodwill trips for local island chiefs, Captain Keed had received new orders. He was to enlist the aid of his guerrilla fighters on Dalvalo, who were to join a Navy frogman team. All of them, under Keed’s direction, were flown up to the Santa Cruz Islands, where they were to capture and incapacitate a pair of lighthouses that marked the channel through the islands. They had specific orders not to destroy the lights themselves but to dismantle them and load them aboard a waiting transport, which would take them back to Espíritu Santo.
The mission started out badly, as weather had moved in, and Keed was forced to make a dangerous night landing in the ocean. But the landing and the mission were successful. Both lighthouses were secured with a minimum of casualties, and the first lens was loaded aboard a waiting PT boat that sped away to the safety of Espíritu Santo.
However, as the second light was being loaded onto a much slower transport, a Japanese patrol boat spotted them. Keed again took off at night and circled the ship as the gunners tried to cover the transport’s escape. The Japanese eventually gave up the chase, but the transport had been hit badly. Keed and his crew managed to rendezvous with the transport in the Torres Islands, where they beached the sinking ship. Somehow the guerrillas got the lens off the ship and hid it in an island cave.
In the meantime, things were heating up in the Solomons as the battle for Guadalcanal began, and the missing lens fell off the radar screen of the Allied forces. At the end of the war, the lens that had made it back to Espíritu Santo was just another item among tons of planes, tanks, vehicles, guns, ammo, and other war surplus that was simply left behind when the Americans took off for the land of the free.
Captain Keed found the Santo Fresnel lens in a warehouse full of surplus he had bought. His original idea was to go back to Torres and find the missing lens and then construct a pair of matching lighthouses at the entrance to the lagoon at Huakelle, but then he and his plane disappeared. Waltham’s father, who had spent every minute of the rescue mission looking for his friend without any results, took it upon himself to use the one lens to build a monument to Keed, and that is how the Keed cult came into existence. The light at Sacola was intended to guide Captain Keed home.
As Waltham finished the story, we arrived at the trailhead, where Waltham’s Jeep was parked. I stopped, turned around, and looked back up at the mountain path as I thought about what had transpired up there. It had been off the radar screen of just about everybody on earth. Dawn had broken, beautiful and clear, and the twin volcanic peaks of Poodi and Kami framed the morning view perfectly.
“So the other light that was hidden in the Torres Islands is the spare bulb,” I said.
“Exactly!” Waltham told me.
“And is it still there?”
“Not exactly,” he said. “But I think I can lead you to it. You did fulfill your part of the deal. Now it is time for me to do the same. Let’s take a ride.”
We drove through the silent morning back to the deserted village of Huakelle. Waltham stopped the Jeep in front of the main Quonset hut and went inside. He came back with the folded American flag and two bowls filled with Cap’n Crunch cereal. He and I raised the flag on the bamboo pole and then had breakfast.
“I have arranged for you to get back to your plane. A friend of mine has a small amphibian he operates out of Villa. He is due here in an hour, and he will take you back to Santo. It would be good for you and us if you kept this visit a secret.”
“Roger that,” I said.
We finished our cereal as the parrots squawked and flew between the palm fronds above our heads. “Now let’s find that spare bulb,” Waltham said, and we walked back to the hut.
Once inside, Waltham went immediately to the storage racks at the rear of the building and rummaged through stacks of boxes, crates, and trunks. He had disappeared into the clutter, but I finally heard him call out, “Give me a hand with this, Captain.”
We wrestled a rusty old government-issue file cabinet down from the shelf and placed it on the table in front of the photo of Captain Keed. There, Waltham produced a key ring with several hundred keys attached, and somehow he instantly found the one that opened the padlock. Both his hands went into the open drawer, and he thumbed through the file folders. Then he extracted an old, mildew-covered manila folder and handed it to me.
“I think this might interest you.”
Inside the file was a stack of yellowed papers that looked like shipping bills of lading and several photographs with the words TORRES ISLANDS, ’42 scribbled on the back. The photos on top were of a group of islanders and soldiers in frogmen gear, all armed but smiling. They were holding captured swords and guns. The rest of the pictures had no date, but they were from a different, and later, time period. They showed a group of men moving an unmistakable Fresnel lens out of a cave and onto a flatbed truck. The final shot showed the lens being hoisted into a crate at a dock with a ship in the background.
“It’s the spare bulb,” I said excitedly.
I stared at the photos, still not believing that I had stumbled upon not one bull’s-eye lens but two. I noticed that one of the white men who appeared in several of the loading photos was standing on the bridge of the ship with the captain.
“See the man next to the captain on the bridge?” Waltham asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“His name is—or was—Ian Saxon. He was an ex-Aussie Navy man who ran coastal freighters out of Melbourne. He’s the one who finally recovered the lens from Torres Island. Only thing is, the day before the ship sailed, old Ian choked on an egg roll in a Chinese restaurant an
d went toes up at dinner. The ship and the lens sailed for Melbourne the next day without him, and that is the last I ever heard of it.”
“Well, that is not quite like having a spare bulb!”
“Hold on, junior. Those pictures are nice, but I think the pages will be more—pardon the pun—enlightening,” Waltham said with that now-familiar sly smile of his.
I dropped the photos and pulled the papers out of the file folder.
“Check out that shipping invoice from the steamship company, and look at the signature of the captain at the bottom.”
“Holy shit!” I yelled.
“Name ring a bell?”
“Singer!” I shouted in total amazement. “His name was Singer! Captain Stanley Singer!”
“Looks like lighthouses are in your family blood.”
Half an hour later, the familiar sound of an airplane engine came from the north. It was my ride. The Cessna 185 on floats made an arcing turn to parallel the shore and touched down out of the swell at the mouth of the river. It was obvious he had done the landing a few times before.
I smiled as I watched the landing. I don’t get to see many of my own, and I thought to myself, “This is why we fly these things, because they can get to places like Dalvalo.”
Waltham rowed me out to where the pilot anchored the plane. It had been a hell of a couple of days. I remembered that opening line from Star Trek: “To boldly go where no one has gone before.” I thought I had just done that.
Waltham greeted the pilot and introduced me. Then we ferried my gear from the dugout to the aft compartment of the plane.
“The flight is on me and the happy citizens of Dalvalo, who were inspired by your message. We will be praying that you find your light. I expect an invitation to the lighting up of that lighthouse of yours, and I warn you, so will Parfait.”
“If I find the other Mr. Singer and the light, I will send you a ticket,” I said.
“Be careful about promises like that. We Keedos can turn anything into religion,” he said. “Seriously, though, I thank you on behalf of my people for your understanding of our struggle to hang on. I know our way of life doesn’t scratch the surface in this high-tech world, but I believe it is worth saving. I would rather we believe in Captain Keed and his return than see them all turn into a generation of fry cooks for expanding fast-food restaurants.”
With that, he pulled a weathered old baseball cap out of his knapsack. It was sealed in a plastic bag. On the front of the cap was written VP 23, and there was a patch of a PBY sewn above the bill.
“It belonged to Captain Keed,” Waltham said. “It is a gift from all your friends on Dalvalo. Think of us when you wear it, and if you run into our leader in your travels, tell him to get his ass back here. We are still waiting.” Waltham gave me a huge hug and stepped back into the dugout.
“Permission for a fly over Sacola,” I said as I changed hats and put on my new prized possession. I snapped my right hand up to the brim.
“Permission granted,” Waltham said and returned the salute.
We taxied down the shore, turned back, and took off above Waltham. I watched him wave from his dugout as we climbed toward the volcano. The morning clouds were just beginning to form, but the rim of the crater was clearly visible, as was the procession of villagers walking, antlike, down the path and back to Huakelle. They all stopped and waved as we flew over.
At the top of the mountain, the pilot lined up the runway and made a low approach about twenty feet off the ground until he was abeam of the tower. Then he pulled back on the stick and climbed. As I looked out the window of the plane, I saw the bull’s-eye lens in the tower had been covered up with the canvas again. The high priests patrolled the catwalk, and I thought to myself, “One down, and one to go.”
Well, Tully, by the time you finish this epic, I will be in Australia. Don’t worry about my dream of getting The Flying Pearl to Hong Kong. That city isn’t going anywhere for a while. No, I am headed to Melbourne, where I know a man named Captain Stanley Singer brought a bull’s-eye lens ashore. I intend to find him or his family and the soul of Cleopatra’s light. It looks like you just might get a light in that tower of yours.
Your man in the Pacific,
Willie
38
From a Distance
From a distance, things appear to be what they are not. Our planet looks to be a calm, blue jewel floating in space, but on the surface, there are wars, riots, and rock concerts. A splash in the ocean becomes the tail of a giant sperm whale. The reflection of the sun on a desert sandpile looks like a pristine lake. From a distance, a tiny speck of coral becomes a 150-foot lighthouse tower with a shortwave antenna stretched across the top. Cayo Loco is a good place to be these days, considering everything else.
Tango music spills out of my old Hallicrafter and echoes across the sand dunes, as the sea oats seem to sway to the beat. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the singer is Carlos Gardel, coming to me from a station in Ecuador, the land of volcanoes and Grandma Ghost. I am sitting atop a sand dune, staring at the nearly completed renovation of the Cayo Loco Light. We are in the cleanup stage now, and when I look at the piles of debris that will soon be removed, I think of my memories that have also piled up.
It is a beautiful day here in the southern Bahamas and hard to believe that it is the middle of winter. A gentle breeze blows from the southeast. There is not a cloud in the sky, and it is so clear that I can almost make out the coastline of Great Inagua, thirty miles to the south. I watch the silhouette of a sail slip over the horizon, which reminds me of one of the countless adventures I have had since I left Belize.
It seems like yesterday that Diver Pinder and I were standing in knee-deep water, completing the final wall of our conch-and-grouper pen that Diver had named the Cayo Loco Fish Market. Diver is Solomon’s son. He had been working as a flats guide and a teacher over on Crooked Island, but when his father told him about what we were doing at Cayo Loco, he arrived one morning with a boatload of friends and a pile of tools. He told me his real name was Solomon Pinder III, but that got too confusing. So since he had started swimming underwater at the age of two months, his mother had changed his name to Diver. It made sense to me.
“Looks like you could use a little help,” Diver had said as he viewed the work site. “This was my grandfather’s light, you know.” And that is how we became friends. With Diver’s help, I was finally starting to make a dent in the monumental task ahead of me. Meanwhile, Cleopatra and Solomon had taken the Lucretia to Corpus Christi, Texas, to check out stories of a lens that had been hidden on a cattle ranch during the Civil War. I was finally feeling comfortable in my new surroundings, safe from Thelma and the Stiltons, and I was happy as a clam just working my ass off, organizing a workforce with the help of Diver.
We were putting the finishing touches on the Cayo Loco Fish Market and were just about to stop for lunch when the unmistakable sound of radial engines and the unforgettable pink fuselage announced the arrival of Sammy Raye to Cayo Loco.
It turned out that Sammy Raye wasn’t on board, but Drake, the pilot, delivered the news to me: Thelma Barston was dead. My first thought was that I would be a suspect in her murder, but then Drake added a sentence that nearly flattened me like a tidal wave. “All the charges against you have been dropped.”
He went on to explain the bizarre series of events that had followed my disappearance. It seems that after the Stiltons returned to Wyoming without me, Thelma came unglued. The way Drake told it, Thelma had decided to run as a born-again, right-wing conservative for the seat in Congress left vacant when Zachary Scott Stilton, the corrupt uncle of Waldo and Wilton, decided to retire. Sammy Raye’s investigation of the not-so-public side of Thelma had turned up the news that she had a very kinky S and M thing going on with a Lithuanian movie director in Miami. It seems her choice of entertainment was to be saddled and ridden like a pony by her boyfriend. There were videos. They included scenes of Thelma prancing around with a bi
t in her mouth wearing leather gear and being urged on with a few swats from a riding crop. That was a little much for a congressional candidate. Sammy Raye subtly got word to Thelma that if she didn’t drop the charges against me, the video would find its way into the hands of a reporter he knew at the Miami Herald. I guess that message sent Thelma into a complete hysterical rage, and apparently she jumped on her snowmobile and roared off into the mountains. A few of my pink flamingos were still up there where my Airstream used to be, and I guess she let loose with the double-barreled shotgun she had taken with her.
Drake told me that the park ranger who found her said the gunshots triggered a small avalanche, and it roared down the mountain and turned Thelma Barston into an instant Popsicle. Dawn got her inheritance and called Bucky at the lodge to let him know that I was a free man.
Drake handed me an envelope that Sammy Raye had told him to deliver to me. Inside was all the paperwork that concerned my case, with a big rubber stamp across each page that read CASE DISMISSED. It felt wonderful not to have to live under the constant legal radar, but the funny thing was this: I didn’t want to go anywhere. Cayo Loco was now my home, and restoring the lighthouse was my job.
Not long after word of my freedom arrived, so did my horse and Ix-Nay with a new version of the Bariellete. Captain Kirk had provided transport for horse and boat along with my art collection, my wardrobe (a box of shorts, flip-flops, and T-shirts), and my trusty Hallicrafter radio. The new skiff was amazing. It was a perfect replica of the original, right down to the Mayan gods on the bow. Ix-Nay told me he had let Sammy Raye make a mold of the boat, and then Sammy Raye made one copy for himself and one for me at a boatyard in Key West. Mr. Twain seemed to rediscover his life as a horse on the island—I just let him run wild for a few weeks after his arrival before I built him a corral and stall under the lighthouse. Ix-Nay liked the place and the purpose of our work so much that he wanted to stay awhile. Six months after I had first set foot on Cayo Loco, things were shaping up.