Lightkeeper's Wife (15 page)

“Able-bodied sailors won't have any trouble climbing into the thing,” Hannah said.

“If the wind is too heavy, no one will be able to maneuver it,” Billy said. “If the ship is falling apart, or the masts snap, this would be far too dangerous. Anyone with serious injuries won't be able to use it. But it's better than nothing, which is what you have now. And better than you alone in the surfboat. If you want, and weather permits, you can even tow the old skiff behind you out to the wreck and carry in survivors that way as well. But there are risks.”

“Anything we can do to improve a man's chances will be good news, don't you think?”

“I built a test rig in the barn. If you want to see it—”

“I can't believe you've been hiding this.”

“I haven't been hiding it. I've been working on it.”

“So show me.”

She followed him along the passageway into the barn, which he'd transformed into a testing area. He'd rigged a rope from a cleat on the wall stud up to a ceiling beam at the loft about forty feet off the ground so that the rope triangulated the barn. A system of block and tackle hung from the rope, and Billy hooked the life ring to it. Wind rattled the roof shingles and seeped through the barn boards; rain pattered the walls.

“Show me how it works,” Hannah said, her face flushed with excitement.

“I've only tried pulling the life ring up and down from the loft with this hawser line. I've experimented with bags of grain in the seat, and I worked out a few kinks in the block and tackle.”

He showed Hannah the hawser line that drew the ring closer, and the lines that would run out to a stranded vessel, reviewing the details as if to double-check his work. While he pointed out the features of the rig, Hannah followed along lengths of rope and over pulleys to the lifesaving ring. He spoke with an authority she hadn't seen in him before, a confidence that lured her in.

“So who's going to be the first to try it?”

“It's not ready. I haven't fully tested it yet.”

“What are your concerns?”

“I don't know if the seat will hold, if the lines will run with the weight of a person pulling down on them, or if the hawser line is strong enough to pull the life ring in. What if someone climbed into this thing, and then I couldn't pull them in?”

“You could cut the line and they'd float to shore. That's the way you designed it, right?”

“I need a little more time,” Billy said, fiddling with the rope in his hands. The wind blew through cracks in the barn boards and swung the ropes overhead. Hannah unrolled her wool turtleneck up to her chin.

“Well, it's going to work, isn't it?” Hannah asked.

“Yes, soon.”

Hannah watched to see what he'd do next, but he only coiled the ropes to run free.

“Maybe we should try it out,” Hannah said, “and see how it works.”

“I'll put a big sack of grain in the seat and run it up to the loft. That'll give you a pretty good idea of what we're dealing with here.”

“A sack of grain doesn't mean anything to me. You need a person, someone with arms and legs that move, someone with real fear.”

“Where are we going to get a half-drowned, terrified sailor?”

“I'll try it myself.” Hannah's resolve steadied her as she stepped toward the life ring. “I'll get into the seat, and you can lift me just high enough so that my feet lift off the floor, to see if it holds.”

Billy nudged the life ring with his elbow where it hung from the block and tackle, then followed the rope up into the beams, making sure that the rigging was strung right and the ropes would hold. “I need to give it another couple of days, try it out with a few more bags of grain, make sure it can stand the weight.”

Hannah grabbed the hawser line and drew the life ring down to her so that the cork was near her waist.

Billy took hold of the life ring, but she yanked it back and held on to the block and tackle for balance as she climbed into the seat and pulled the ring up snug. “It'll be okay,” she said. “Now pull me up a little at a time, just enough to get me off the ground.”

“God, you are stubborn.” Billy worked the rope that dragged the block and tackle toward the loft. Hannah stood on her toes and then her toes left the floor and she was in the air, the block and tackle taking her weight. He let her dangle like that, kicking her feet and jostling her weight to be sure the rig would hold.

“It barely creaks, Billy. I knew it was solid, but I didn't know it was this solid. Now lower me down from here. I've got an idea.”

Once she was out of the contraption, she climbed the ladder to the loft. “I'll be a sailor on a sinking ship, and I've fastened the lifeline to my mast. Now you're going to send the buoy out to me, okay?”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Billy said.

Hannah tugged a thin rope that ran along the thicker lifeline and drew the life ring toward her. “That's it,” Billy said. “Keep going until you pull the rig aboard.”

Hannah sat on the edge of the loft and put her feet through the seat. The wind thrashed the side of the barn now and rain came through seams of wood. Hannah shivered as she spoke. “No drowning man is going to have the luxury of sitting down,” she said, and pulled her feet loose and stood up again. She'd have to climb into the rig where it hung over the open air, just as a stricken sailor would have to climb above the surf and step off a tilting deck into a swinging piece of cork that was the life ring. Hannah clutched the block and tackle and stuck her legs down through the canvas seat, lowered herself down until it took her weight and the only thing between her and the floor was Billy's apparatus.

Why did she trust him? How could she explain that she'd learned something about him through his drawings and his careful construction of the rig? What would John say if he saw her swinging from the beams in the barn, suspended aloft by a web of ropes constructed by a hard-drinking sailor?

Billy caught her eye and held her gaze until her fear passed. “You're sitting pretty good. I'm going to let you down slow,” Billy said. The wind scattered the hay across the floor.

Hannah didn't look down, only at Billy. All the while the air below felt like a threat, but she refused to be frightened. She let Billy's eyes hold her and keep her from looking anywhere but straight ahead along the length of rope that led to him. When her feet brushed the floor, she nearly toppled over. Billy caught her under the arms, and Hannah stood amid his working smells: the salty odor of his sweat, and coffee on his breath, and the smell that must have been just him, just Billy.

“Let's try it again.” She wanted to feel him on the other end of the rope, and the thrill of the open air beneath her as she waited to land beside him.

Her last night on the
Alice K
, the ship was at anchor in Jamaica. While the crew caroused with Therese's women, and Jack negotiated the sale of their stolen goods, Blue stole a roll of bandages from the medicine box. She knew she could only take some of her stolen gold, or the weight would drown her when she went overboard. The safest shore was a hundred yards away across a rippling surface of water. With the coins in a pillowcase, she wrapped them around her waist, then held the bundle in place with the bandage wrapped like a cumbersome belt. There was nothing in her sea chest she could bring: not her gun or machete, nor Daniel's coat, nor the drawings she'd made of the ship and the pirates themselves. She let the heavy lid drop and left the fo'c'sle for the upper deck. Spots of lantern light glowed along the shore. If she swam east, away from the village, anyone who might return to the ship from shore wouldn't cross her path.

A rope ladder hung down the railing where the pirates climbed down earlier into the women's canoes. Blue climbed down, the ship's hull a dark wall rising. She bounced on the ladder to test the weight of the gold before she lowered herself into the lagoon. With one hand grabbing the ladder, she tried to tread water. Arms working, legs kicking, she let go. She swam hard then toward the eastern shore. She'd known what to expect with Jack and the crew, and now she'd thrown her life to the wind. The gold was the only thing between her and destitution. The gold would protect her. This gave her strength as she swam against the weight of it. Every once in a while she looked up to measure her distance from shore, then she plunged again into her steady stroke.

When she reached the beach, she crawled on her stomach across the sand, the weight of the gold like a stone attached at her waist. A low barrier of bushes lifted into trees where she could walk bent over. Then the woods thickened, and she walked upright in search of shelter. A fallen tree draped with bougainvillea created a kind of tent filled with the fecund odors of rich soil, banana leaves, and flowering trees. She unwrapped the bandage at her waist and the pillowcase full of gold dropped to the ground. With a thick stick, she dug a hole and buried the gold, then covered the ground with dried palm and foliage. The sound of the pirates in the near distance felt both familiar and frightening; the strangeness of the world around her startled her in its intimacy. She slept on top of the gold, vigilant and half dreaming. Branches jabbed her in the ribs, and the damp soil soaked into her clothes until she woke shivering. What was that sound? There it was again: the clatter of the anchor chain being hauled aboard the
Alice
K
.

The sight of the sails taking shape against the orange sky as the ship steered away from the lagoon filled her with relief and sadness. Then as the
Alice
K
sailed around the outcrop of cliffs to the west, fear got the best of her and she cursed her stupidity. She'd never be safe again. Even on her own with the gold wrapped again at her waist, she would always be the pirate, Blue.

She found the path hidden under foliage and worked her way back toward the lagoon. Her body stank; her clothes, covered in dirt, stuck to her skin. On the edge of the tiny village, she squatted behind a row of azalea and watched the women cleaning up after the pirates, sweeping huts, washing clothes in wooden tubs. She stepped from behind the bushes and let the trail carry her around the lagoon. Ishema saw her first and dropped her broom on the ground. She wrapped her thick fingers around Blue's arm and dragged her forward. “You're disgusting. You stink, but you are not dead yet.”

Therese stood on her porch, the arc of her body soothing in its calm posture. Her eyes, curious and intent, asked the question without her saying a word.

“I had to leave,” Blue said, and she fell to the ground.

Therese waved to one of the women, and she brought Blue a cup of water.

“Go on. Drink it,” Ishema said.

Therese led them into her hut where the shades were drawn, the walls covered with floral tapestries. “You shouldn't have come here. You're dangerous to us now. You'll get us killed.”

“Sit,” Ishema said, pointing to the bed.

Therese opened a sea chest in the corner of the room and dropped a pile of men's clothes on the floor in front of Blue. “We can't hide you. You have to leave here,” she said. “Change.”

Blue took off her shirt and unwound the bandage around her waist. The pillowcase of gold coins fell to the floor in a dull thud. A handful of gold coins spilled onto the floor.

“What's this?” Therese asked.

“It's all I have,” Blue told her. Naked before Therese, she felt exposed beyond the fact of her skin.

“He'll kill you if he finds you,” Therese told her.

Blue let Ishema help her wash, not bothering to cover herself. “You've changed,” Ishema said, lifting Blue's arm to wash her armpit. Blue stood compliant as a child. “You've grown hard, barely any hips at all. You'll pass easy in these clothes.” Ishema wrapped a blanket around Blue and pushed her into a chair. She took care of Blue like she had when Blue lost the baby. Blue wanted her to stop and not to stop. She wanted to get off the island and feel safe again, but she felt safe in the care of these women, who knew how to take care of themselves and didn't need anyone to tell them how to live.

With Therese's unflinching gaze upon her, Blue dropped the blanket and pulled on a pair of brown twill trousers and fastened them at the waist.

Ishema unwound a skein of cotton webbing.

“You hold it tight right here,” she said, and pressed the end beneath Blue's armpit. Blue obeyed while she wrapped the bandage around her back several times to flatten her already small breasts so that the expanse of her chest and sternum, ribs and abdomen appeared as male as her trousers. She stuck her fingers beneath the cotton and tried to loosen it to make it more comfortable, but Ishema had wrapped her in tight.

“Stop fiddling. You have to get used to it,” Ishema said.

Blue pulled a white undershirt over her head and tucked it into the waist of her pants. She ran her hands over her flat breasts, feeling the folds of the bandage. She wore a linen shirt buttoned up the front, leather suspenders and a brown frock coat that didn't match the trousers but was close enough. With each piece of clothing, she felt some part of herself fall away. She'd worn men's clothes aboard the
Alice
K
, but even with her rough manners and swinging stride, she'd never thought of herself as anything but a woman. This man taking shape before her eyes had never occurred to her.

Ishema trimmed her short hair over her ears and in the back with a straight line of bangs in the front.

“Now shake my hand,” Ishema said.

Blue took Ishema's hand in her own and made a handshake.

“Firmer,” Ishema told her, “like a man.”

Blue grasped her hand with a tight hold and gave a stiff shake.

“That's it. Now walk across this room, with purpose. Think of men you've seen on deck.”

Blue followed orders. She walked, sat with her legs apart, spat on the floor, and gulped her water like a sailor, her hand around the glass as if she was about to throw it across the room.

“You're a natural,” Therese said. “Ishema will take you to the harbor, find you passage north.”

Blue studied herself in the glass, dazed by her new identity. Her short hair accentuated the hard lines of her face, carved from weight loss and work. The tailored cut of the frock coat along her sides showed the sinewy strength of a man bristling with restless energy.

“Carry yourself well,” Therese said. “Be a man.”

Ishema gave her a canvas bag for her gold, with some bread, chicken, and papaya. “Take this,” she said. “Don't be stupid. Trust no one.”

Blue followed Ishema along the dirt road into town and listened to her instructions. “Find your man's voice, a lower voice. Watch how they move, how they talk. You'll fit in.” Ishema looked around at the fruit stalls as she spoke. She bought pineapple from a vendor near the dock and then left Blue on a bench with the fruit and her bag of gold coins. “You stay here. I'll be back.”

Blue watched a group of men talking in front of the outfitter shop. One smoked a pipe with his hand cupped around the bowl and his eyes on the business of the harbor. Another blew his nose into his hand and wiped it on his pants, while he watched a round-bottomed woman walk away from the dock. He took no trouble to hide his interest. The man next to him stuck an elbow in his ribs, and they all snickered; to Blue, they were no different than the pirates.

When Ishema returned, she held a packet of papers out to Blue. “You go on that one, north, away from here. You don't look back to this place. You forget about us.”

The only way to thank Ishema was to follow her instructions. Blue walked toward the ship, the
Cynthia
Rose
. At the sight of a crewman checking passenger tickets, she hesitated. She had no gun, no machete, nothing to protect herself. The crewman was young, like Johnson, but rosy-cheeked and doughy with an extra puff of chin and a jacket that strained its buttons over his belly. Blue assumed an attitude of impatience; she took on something of her threatening glare. The young man looked over her ticket quickly and stepped aside to let her onto the ship.

Blue stood by aft cabin and searched the docks for Ishema, but she was gone.

The
Cynthia
Rose
left that afternoon. Ishema had registered Blue as William Pike of Portland, Maine, an importer and exporter of coffee, spices, and healing remedies from the islands, trading primarily out of Portland and New Bedford. Her small starboard cabin held a bunk, a small washbasin, a sea chest with a lock, and a single cabinet. She dumped the gold into the sea chest, locked it, and put the key in the bottom of her boot. The whitewashed woodwork was speckled with mildew, the oiled floorboards worn smooth from passengers who'd come before. She let herself drop onto the bunk, and she slept as if she'd been taken out of time.

When Blue woke foggy and parched, she rolled onto her feet and felt the sweltering heat in her cabin. She put on her frock coat and went up on deck for air. The island of Jamaica was no longer visible, nor any land at all. At a water bucket near the aft cabin, she took a drink. The captain, John Otis, stood by the wheel. He was nearly six feet tall with a square head and pockmarked cheeks livid red. He wore a light blue captain's uniform with red piping, silver buttons that reflected the sun in kaleidoscopic patterns.

Blue tried to avoid him by ducking behind a bulwark, but when he finished giving orders to the first mate, he made a point to introduce himself. What if her voice gave her away, or some reluctance in her demeanor? With him standing in front of her, it was too late to worry. She gave him a firm handshake and answered his questions about her business in as few words as she could conceive. He was interested in her experiences on the island and spoke to her with a respect that she hadn't experienced from a man before.
If
he
knew
I
was
a
woman, he wouldn't say a word to me, but in men's clothes I've got an opinion worth hearing.
She found a nerve in her man's voice, deeper and lower, and took great pleasure in lying to him about her buying trip and her eagerness to return to her family. Her wonderful wife, Rosemary, mother to their four children, would be waiting with dinner laid out, the children fed and gone to bed. Rosemary was lovely, in both manner and attractiveness. “And she knows how to spend my money,” Blue said. Part of her longed for Rosemary right then, for the smell of roast chicken and a table set by the fire, the rustlings of children in their beds and a quiet house. A safe life that would elude her until the day she died.

“You're a lucky man,” the captain said. “My wife died of fever some years ago. I've learned that a seaman's life is no life for a lady.”

“That's true, Captain, and women are bad luck on ships, after all. But you must miss her.”

“I have women,” he said.

At rest in the berth Therese had purchased, Blue tried to consider Therese's generosity as a sign of something good about herself, but the woman's kindness did nothing to penetrate her desolation. She couldn't shake herself loose from the knowledge of her life aboard the
Alice
K
. The farther she traveled from Jamaica, the more she felt the horror of all that she'd seen and done, as if the safety of distance allowed her to look more closely.

She stayed in her cabin most days. Even dressed in a man's attire, she was still herself. She'd constructed William Pike with such little effort and time, she worried she'd be found out. The swagger came easily and felt natural enough. Had trying to survive onboard the
Alice
K
, living among those men, made her one of them? The comfortable men's clothing was a relief, no stays or corsets. Not that she'd adhered to that over the past years. Nonetheless, strutting about in trousers and a frock coat suited her. William Pike had been waiting for her to step into those very trousers, button this linen shirt and pull on his collar. She discovered in William Pike a hidden part of herself, and only by practice and circumstance had he risen to see the light of day.

***

One evening, she was invited to join Captain Otis in his quarters for a drink. They sat in cushioned chairs and drank brandy from crystal glasses. Blue imitated the way the captain sniffed his liquor before he sipped, unlike the pirates who gulped from a tin cup. Blue realized that she'd have to remember at least a hint of the refinement of manners from her early life if she was to fit into regular society.

The captain's quarters had the curved shape of the ship's stern and were painted a deep green, slightly faded, which gave the room a rough feel. A row of daguerreotypes, likely family members, decorated one wall. Lantern light cast the room in an amber glow. The captain leaned back in his chair, swirling the liquor in his glass and staring at Blue. She sat, legs spread, feet square on the floor, and eased back into her chair.