Ashes (30 page)

Usually, I turned back when the lighthouse
window was clearly visible, though on foggy mornings I might not
see the towering structure until I was nearly upon it. On those
days, a single bright lantern would burn in the uppermost window,
serving as a guide for ships that might be daring the narrow
passage. I was a ship myself, a vessel with an empty hull, as lost
as any rudderless cutter.

On the day I died, I decided to keep walking,
though the tide had run out and my parents would be waiting for me
to sweep sand from the floors, cook mackerel, and air the mildewed
blankets. I loathed the smell of fish. It permeated the walls, and
driftwood smoke would leak through the fireplace stones and sting
my eyes. That morning, I couldn’t bear the claustrophobic cottage.
The day was warm and pleasant, with only a few thin strips of
clouds in the blue sky. My feet carried me farther along the shore
than I had been in years, to the north, toward the lighthouse that
had been built before my birth. My passion for solitude could
scarcely have been more gratified.

My father told me strange tales surrounding
the lighthouse—how men who kept the light burning through the dark
hours somehow lost some of their own light, so that when their year
of duty was over, their eyes were dry and hollow, their faces
lacking in emotion, their tongues slow to speak. Through the years,
several ships had run aground in the shallows, while others had
cracked their spines on the rocky outcroppings to the west. Perhaps
the memories of those failures haunted the lighthouse keepers,
though not every man had witnessed a tragedy. Perhaps it was merely
the lengthy solitude that turned them into dull, haggard
beasts.

The lighthouse towered before me that day,
bright as sand as it stretched higher and higher into the sky with
my every step. It was capped with copper that had long ago turned
dull green. The masonry that from a distance had seemed solid
revealed itself to be covered with spidery cracks, iron bands
girding the base. As I grew nearer, I detected rust on the hardware
of the single oaken door set in the rounded base of the
structure.

The door had a large metal knocker in the
center. The keyhole in the door handle was like the black eye of a
dead shark. Sand skirled in the breeze around the base of the door,
and cool, fetid air oozed from the cracks between the oak planks. I
touched the wood, wondering about the man behind. I tapped the door
and a hollow echo sounded inside.

In the little fishing village where my
parents were born, two miles from the lighthouse, the people often
spoke of lighthouse keepers who were only seen in daylight, on
those rare occasions when they replenished supplies. The keepers
were an odd lot, unkempt and wild-eyed, given to excess whiskey.
The keeper position rotated by the calendar year, though sometimes
stories emerged of those who had been unable to endure the
loneliness and turned up raving in the streets, shouting about
shipwrecks and sea monsters and Neptune with a forked trident
riding in on the backs of deformed porpoises.

I thought perhaps one of those madmen was
inside that morning, high above me, far removed from the smell of
mackerel. What strange tales he might share. And I, at eighteen,
was as much at a loss for company as any man who had ever consigned
himself to that upper chamber. I lifted the knocker and brought it
down hard against the strike plate. The only sound in reply was the
reverberation inside the base of the lighthouse, the whispering of
the surf, and the distant cry of a gull.

I knocked again, looking back toward the
point where my parents’ house lay. Desperation fueled my hand as I
worked the iron ring. I think I even started to weep, but I can’t
be sure, because the sea air was salty and that was centuries ago.
But at last there came a turning in the works of the door, and it
creaked open.

I found myself facing a man of dark
countenance, with black, haunted eyes and a large, pale forehead.
He was perhaps twenty, though his eyes looked far older than that,
as if he had witnessed tragedies in abundance. His hair was swept
away from his brow in a wild manner, like a tangled tuft of sea
oats. He wore a vest and a white shirt, both stained and rumpled.
The smell of drink hung about him like a mist.

“
Do you know how many steps
I had to climb?” he said.

I gave him my sweetest smile, though I’d had
little practice in that art. Despite his grave expression, he was
handsome.

“
I live around the point,” I
said, “Since we’re neighbors—“

“
I have no need of
neighbors,” he said. “I wish to be alone.” But I caught him staring
past my shoulder at the shoreline. The beach was empty, for the
coral was sharp and discouraged bathers, and the currents here were
too rough for putting out fishing boats.

“
I was wondering if I could
see the view from up there,” I said, leaning my head back to look
at the windows far above. “I’ve lived here all my life but I
scarcely know what the place looks like.”

“
I have my duties,” he said.
“I’ve no time for guided tours.”

“
Please, sir, I will only be
a moment. Just one look. And I came all this way.” I smoothed the
lap of my dress, a gesture I had seen women use in church when
speaking to men they wished to flatter.

He seemed to reflect for an instant, and his
eyes grew softer. “Hmm. You remind me of someone I once knew.
Perhaps I can spare some time. But you must promise to be careful.
These stairs are wretched.”

“
I will take care, sir.” As
I followed him inside, I couldn’t help smiling a little. Perhaps I
had an untapped gift for getting my way. It is something I have
perfected over the years. Something I grew better at after I
died.

The base of the lighthouse was hollow, with a
well perhaps forty feet deep. The metal stairs wound up into the
gloom, and I could see why he thought them treacherous. He had left
an oil lantern by the foot of the stairs, and carried it while he
returned to close the door. The lantern threw long, flickering
shadows up the curved wall of the lighthouse.

“
Come along,” he said,
offering his hand as he mounted the stairs.

“
I think I shall hold the
rail,” I said, believing myself coy.

He held the lantern below his face, and in
his position above me, the flame made the dark creases in his face
even more somber. “Very well. Let me know if you tire.”

We navigated upwards, his shoes thundering on
the narrow metal steps. I followed close behind, watching my feet.
He turned once to check on me, and seemed satisfied that I could
keep my balance. We were perhaps halfway up when he paused,
breathing hard. I was in better shape due to the great distances I
had to walk to the village. He held the lantern high, and I glanced
down at the great black space below. I gasped despite myself, and a
smile came to his lips. It wasn’t a cruel smile, but a playful
one.

“
It’s difficult the first
few times, but it gets easier,” he said.

“
You haven’t told me your
name,” I said.

“
Poe,” he said. “From
Baltimore. And yours?”

I wasn’t prepared to tell him yet. I was
still wary of what the villagers might think if he went around
reporting that I had visited him alone. Word would also get back to
my parents, and while I resented their control of me, I still loved
them and wished them no additional worries on my behalf.

“
Mary,” I said, the first
name that came to mind. Only later, after my death, would he know
my true name.

“
Mary. One of my
favorites.”

We continued our climb and eventually reached
a small trap door at the top. While I didn’t count them that
morning, in subsequent years I have made note of each step. There
are 136, all of them narrow and slow and worn by thousands of
footsteps. Not mine, though. Since that morning, I don’t use them.
Now, I float.

He went first, then helped me up with a
strong hand. Poe’s watch chamber was sparsely furnished. A table
and a chair were on one end of the round room, a logbook of some
type on the table, a quill pen and inkwell beside it. Papers were
piled beneath the logbook, and a collapsed telescope lay across the
open pages of the book. A bunk sat low to the floor at the other
end of the room, a walnut trunk at its foot, presumably to contain
his clothes. A cabinet stood near the trunk, filled with bread,
dried meat and fish, apples, and several rows of corked bottles
filled with amber liquid. A chamber pot, covered indiscreetly with
a board, was off to the side. Empty bottles were scattered beneath
the bunk, and the cramped room had the same spirited aroma that
surrounded the man, combined with the cloying stench of the chamber
pot.

Poe waved one florid hand to the three
windows facing the seaside. “There’s your view,” he said, then sat
in the chair by the logbook.

The flat, gray water stretched for miles, the
horizon farther than I had ever seen it. The ocean seemed to curve,
and distant full-sheeted masts protruded from the water like tiny
clusters of white flowers. The shoreline stretched in either
direction, the north sweeping more gently, the south broken by
crags and cays. The natural breakwater of which ships’ captains
were afraid was black and sharp, gleaming like wet teeth. I took in
the view for some minutes, not remarking.

“
One gets bored with it
after a while,” Poe said. He uncorked one of the bottles and poured
some of the liquor into a glass. He drank without offering me
any.

“
Are you not a lover of the
sea?” I said. “I would have thought someone taking a post such as
this—”

“—
must be as mad as a
hatter,” he said, looking glumly into his glass. “Four months here,
and I’ve barely even started.”

“
I don’t understand,” I
said.

He gestured toward the papers on the table.
“My work.”

“
You keep a record of the
currents, tides, and ships?”

“
Not that work. I meant my
writing.”

“
You are a writer,
then?”

“
Yes. I used to be a
newspaper reporter. But I’m driven to write of false things. I
thought with a change of scenery, and blessed isolation . .
.”

“
You have plenty of both
here, I imagine. I know something of isolation myself.”

He gave a grim smile, as if his loneliness
were the deepest in all the world and weighed most heavily on his
shoulders. He drank more liquor, in gulps instead of sips, and
refilled his glass. My legs were trembling from the long climb, but
the only place to sit was his bed. I had never been in a man’s
bed.

“
Isolation is the devil’s
tool,” Poe said. “I want to concentrate on my work, but one hears
things in this damnable cylinder. The rush of high tide sounds like
voices in the chamber below, like the soft cries of those who have
been pulled under the water. Think of all those ships lying on the
ocean floor yonder, and the white bones of those who went down with
them. Where do you suppose they go?”

For the first time, I had an inkling of the
man’s instability. His brooding good looks became sharper and
fiercer, his eyes flashing with a morose anger. Beyond the windows,
the clouds had gathered and grown darker as if to match Poe’s mood.
A squall was pushing in from the sea, and the cutters spread across
the sea had taken down their sails as the wind increased.

“
A storm is blowing in,” I
said. “Shouldn’t you light the lamps?”

He said nothing, just wiped at his chin.

“
The current shifts here
with these spring storms,” I said. “Surely you were told that by
your employer.”

“
Damned De Grat. He should
have known I could never tolerate this place—or my own company—for
an entire year.”

Wanting to pull him from his mood, not yet
ready to trouble him to lead me back down the stairs, I asked what
he was writing.

“
It’s about a
shipwreck.”

“
Shipwreck?”

“
A ghost ship. With a morbid
crew.”

I laughed. “One hears plenty of those tales.
I found a paper in a corked bottle once, washed up on the
beach.”

His eyebrows arched. “What did it say?”

“
The water had gotten to
it.”

“
It always does,” he said,
with the air of one who had floated many futile
messages.

“
Can I hear the
story?”

“
It’s no good,” he said. He
tapped the rumpled pages beneath the logbook. “This may be the last
thing I ever write.”

“
Have you been published?” I
asked.

A smile slithered across his moist lips.
“Some poems.”

“
Please, read me
one.”

“
It’s not fit for ladies,”
he said, and I wondered how much of his gallantry was due to
drunkenness. He closed the logbook and passed it to me. I opened it
to the first page. I’d had some schooling in the village, but could
read little. He had started entries on January first. His
handwriting was florid and bold, the words scrawled with an
intensity that matched his features.

He took it from me. “’January two,’” he read.
“‘I have passed this day in a species of ecstasy that I find
impossible to describe. My passion for solitude could scarcely have
been more thoroughly gratified. I do not say satisfied; for I
believe I should never be satiated with such delight as I have
experienced today. The wind lulled about daybreak, and by the
afternoon the sea had gone down materially. Nothing to be seen,
with the telescope even, but ocean and sky, with an occasional
gull.’”