Lightkeeper's Wife (4 page)

***

Dusk settled over the house like a trance. Dusk fell across the fields and emptied the air of any promise save the light flashing every eight seconds, a steady pulse, as familiar to Hannah as her own breath. She kneeled down for a closer look at the sailor, then she nudged his shoulder until he opened his eyes for a moment and squinted at her.

“You're okay,” she told him. “You're at Dangerfield Light.”

He looked down the mummified length of his body, the layers of blankets and quilts.

“Your ship went aground,” she told him. “You're injured, but you're safe now.”

“You should've let me drown,” he said, his voice scraping his throat, his eyes fierce now and fixed on her.

She sat upright in her chair. “You should've let yourself drown,” she told him, startled. “When I found you, you were clinging to a spar. What's your name?”

“William Pike.” He remembered clinging to the spar, his elbows hooked over on each side, his head resting like a child's while his legs drifted. Frigid with cold, he'd stopped caring whether he lived or died. Still, he didn't let go of the spar. It was the weakness in him, clinging to life.

“You cut your head. I've been changing the bandages so you don't get infected. It'll scar though. You'll be quite distinctive.”

“I've got enough scars.”

“And the name of your ship?”

“It wasn't my ship.” He held his arm over his eyes. “
Cynthia
Rose
. We went aground in the storm. The light was so close. I don't know how it happened.”

He struggled to free himself from the blankets, took a quick look around the room, and then dropped his head back onto the bedroll.

“Where are the others?” he asked.

Hannah looked into the pattern of wear on the blanket, pilled and frayed on the edges. She picked at the torn edge and thought she should mend it, but the blanket was too old for mending.

He clamped his teeth down and turned his face away from her. “They're all drowned, aren't they?”

Hannah was silent, and he turned his face toward the fire. “You're the only one I found,” she said.

He placed his hand to his forehead, as if remembering the pain. He let her hold a cup of broth to his mouth and drank a little before he slept again.

Hannah added wood to the fire, his rasping breath a lonely kind of solace as she waited for John.

William Pike pretended to sleep, but instead watched the woman mend a shirt, then get up and pace by the front window before she sat down and took up her mending again. She jabbed at the fabric, then pulled the thread taut with three sharp tugs. He kept his eyes partway open for minutes at a time. When she stood to press a damp cloth to his forehead, the gentle sound of her voice eased him as she said
fever, delirium
. The smell of chicken cooking in a pot that hung over the fire and the warmth of the room made him drowsy. When the woman found out who he was, she'd make him leave.

When he was awake, the overwhelming knowledge that he'd washed ashore with no place to go, no people, drove him to sleep again. Dreams swept through him, vivid as life. He tried to remember a time before he'd gone to sea, before the
Alice
K
and the
Intrepid
, when he'd lived in Worcester and known his family. The last William heard about his own mother was that she worked as a laundress. His father had died in prison, where he was incarcerated for embezzling funds from his biggest client, a textile manufacturer who found him out when they hired another firm to audit the accounts. The lightkeeper's wife tugged the blankets tight around his neck, and as she leaned over him, he felt her breath on his face. Her careful attention frightened him in its intimacy. He couldn't move. She sat again in her chair and sighed, leaned back as if waiting for a cup of tea, but there was no one here to bring her one. He didn't deserve her kindness, born as he was from criminal blood and grown into the same stuff or worse. His father had always been setting up investment schemes that never paid out, or finding himself with another windfall that he couldn't explain. The man was a thief and a liar, and he died in jail.
And
now
look
at
me. No different. I turned out just like him.
But it wasn't until he'd gone to sea that he discovered his ruinous potential.

In his fevered state, he tried not to think about Annie, but she taunted him back to the ship
Intrepid
, where his misadventure had begun. He remembered the first signs of her pregnancy, her heightened sense of smell, or rather, her limited tolerance for foul odors, such as the fish guts flung into a bucket when one of the sailors caught and filleted dinner, or the stench of the men, or the putrid stink that rose from the livestock pen. He wanted to forget how the smell of Annie's own husband, who'd taken care to bathe in lavender and oil his skin, turned her stomach so that she heaved over the rail.

The lightkeeper's wife pressed her palm to his forehead, and for a moment she pulled him from the events that had led him to her house. Why she took him in he didn't understand, but she wasn't the only woman who'd shown him kindness on his way north. There had been women in Jamaica, women he'd never speak of, but Annie was the beginning, and when the lighthouse keeper left him alone, his mind drifted back to that ship.

***

It had only taken a few days for Annie to realize that her belly's bloating was not due to illness. She was with child, and when the blood didn't come, she told Daniel.

“A son,” he said. “Wonderful.”

“Or a little girl,” Annie corrected.

“Ten fingers and ten toes, that's all I care about,” Daniel assured her, patting her tenderly on the back. “You stay down here and rest. Are you warm enough?”

“It's stifling in here,” she said.

“Would you like a cool cloth?”

“Oh, Daniel. You have better things to do. Send your cabin boy.”

“I'll find you a nurse in the next port.”

“The cabin boy will do for now.”

Annie rolled to face the beadboard wall, counting the lines of white slats with her finger. Boy. Girl. Boy. Girl. Let's try it again. Boy. Girl. Boy. There was no telling the sex of the baby, and her mind filled with images of cherubic faces and big ears, or wide black eyes like her father. Would her child have Daniel's sparrow-hawk nose? Annie's blue-gray eyes? The possibilities ranged from the beautiful to the terrible, but the question that persisted was
who
are
you?
She dreamed of names—Adam, Jacob, or Elliot if it was a boy; Katy, Margaret, or Abigail if it was a girl—as if assigning this unformed creature a name would help her know him or her any better.

She hadn't wanted to get pregnant. Every time Daniel climbed on top of her, she resisted, physically willing her body not to conceive. She had no sexual desire for her husband and no longing for a child. When the baby started growing, her body grew strange and round, swelling into a monstrous shape that she did not recognize as her own. She felt overtaken by this thing growing inside her. Her muscles grew soft, her thighs softer. Then the baby kicked and the promise of a child surprised her. Someone to care for and fill the hours with this unexpected love. She would guard her baby against loneliness. No matter what happened, she would never leave the child. No matter what, she repeated like a mantra.

When Daniel told her that he was going to leave her in Jamaica in the care of the local midwife, she thought he was joking, until his silence confirmed that he meant these cruel words.

“How can you even consider leaving me alone to have your child? They don't have real medicine or—” She hadn't been able to think of what to say or how to describe her utter sense of abandonment. “They're strangers.”

“It's perfectly safe,” he consoled her. “The midwives are very good.”

“I'm not going,” she said.

“You can't stay on the ship, Annie. None of the men are prepared to deliver a baby. It's just not possible. And this is done all the time, believe me. It's for the best.”

“Please, Daniel, don't make me go. I can't bear it.”

“I have no choice.”

“You're the captain. Of course you have a choice.”

“You need a midwife.”

“Then stay with me. Don't make me have this child alone. Can't you see how frightened I am? Can't you imagine the things that can go wrong on that island?”

The
Intrepid
sailed into Negril, and one of the crew rowed Annie into the docks. Daniel said good-bye, but she couldn't look at him. She watched neither the ship disappearing behind her, nor the shore as it approached, only her bare feet in the bilge water stretched before the sphere of her belly.

The midwife who met her at the dock carried her by horse and wagon to a small hut near the beach. It was a rickety structure with one solid wooden wall that seemed to hold the whole thing up, and the other walls built from bamboo and palm fronds. Annie stood in the doorway but didn't step inside. A small bed with a night table, a basket for her clothing, and a single chair were all the comfort she could expect. “I can't stay here.”

“I will take good care of you. You will be okay here, better than on that ship.” Ishema fluffed the pillow on the bed and folded the blanket back. “Come, lie down now, rest.” Five feet tall, a perfectly round head, and hair shorn close to her scalp, she was a sturdy woman with wide shoulders, no waistline, and flat feet that rooted her firmly to the ground.

“I'm not tired. I don't even know where I am.”

Ishema looked Annie over, assessing her strength. “We'll take a walk; you'll see where you are.” She left Annie's bags outside the cottage and led her along the beach, a scooped-out section of the island about two hundred yards wide with tall cliffs on the eastern edge. “This is the southern shore. We get the warm breezes. And these cliffs.” She waved her hand to indicate the rock walls that protected the area. “They protect us from the weather, so you are safe here.”

Daniel had told Annie that Ishema was well respected on the island and that she had delivered many sea captains' children. Once Annie settled into her temporary home, her fear began to subside. Local children ran by and stuck their heads in the window to see the white woman. Ishema's friend Therese came every day with a basket of mangoes, papayas, bananas, coconut, lime, roast chicken, or grilled fish. She wore her hair braided with multicolored shells and ceramic beads that rattled when she walked.

“Who is she?” Annie asked one evening. She and Ishema sat on woven mats outside the hut and watched the sun go down while they picked at chicken bones.

“She is my friend,” Ishema said.

The birth had been difficult, the baby girl born two months early. Seeing her daughter was like seeing God. It filled her with hope. But in the first two days, the baby developed an infection in her lungs. Ishema nursed her with island herbs, and Therese brought medicinal remedies from the village, but the little girl stopped breathing in the middle of the night.

They buried Annie's daughter in a tiny grave beneath a wooden cross that existed as a blur across her mind. Did she throw herself on the grave, or had she dreamed that? Did the baby cry during the funeral? Did Daniel know?

When Annie refused to get out of bed after five days, Ishema threatened to pour the chamber pot on her. “You're not the only one to lose your baby. There's many ladies lose their baby.”

She peeled a pineapple while she spoke. Her hands were always in motion. When Annie got up, Ishema brought in a basin and bathed her, lifted Annie's arms to scrub her armpits like she would a child's. “You stink,” she said.

Annie pulled on the light cotton shift Ishema gave her and drank the glass of water forced upon her.

“Come now, outside.”

Therese leaned against the curved trunk of a palm tree, her head tilted back in the shade of the fronds that sheltered her like an umbrella. A frayed end of rope held her braids back off her face so that they poured down her back like a dark waterfall. She followed them through the beach grass toward the village road. “You need to move your body to get your mind back,” Ishema said, tossing the words over her shoulder.

Annie felt as if she was trying to walk underwater with the tide pushing against her. When was Daniel going to get her off this godforsaken island?

In the village, small huts constructed from palm fronds and vines served as storefronts for locals who sold fruit, soup, and brooms. The huts lined the road down to the harbor, where small skiffs splayed out from the long dock like fins. Several schooners and a brig swung on their moorings. Of course none of them was
Intrepid
. It wasn't her husband she longed for but escape from this place where her baby had been buried in the ground, escape from the strange sound of these women's voices telling her the names bougainvillea, jacaranda, pimento.

“The women in Jamaica don't have husbands to do all the work for them. Sometimes the husband is useless, and these women here”—Ishema waved her stout hand along the row of huts—“they provide for their families. No husband like yours to take care of them.”

“But he left me here,” Annie said.

“He'll be back, and we'll still be here working for ourselves. You count your blessings while you have them.”

Therese stood to one side during this conversation. Somewhere along the road she'd picked up a cedar branch to use as a walking stick. Now it was propped at her left side, her long fingers wrapped intricately around the bark as if staking her claim to the soil she stood upon and to the league of women left to fend for themselves. Her lithe, strong body, upright and relaxed, seemed to embody the power of these women.

“Come now, let's go,” Ishema said, and she pushed Annie along the road. They walked past the harbor into thick woods until the path ended.

“Now what?” Annie asked.

Therese climbed, catlike, the tendons in her calves taut like an animal's as she followed the trunk of a fallen palm tree. She walked along the trunk to another tree, where she climbed down the branches to a wooden plank that led deeper into the woods.

“You go,” Ishema said, her finger poking Annie in the back. Annie stepped onto the tree trunk. As her legs found their strength, her balance came and she stepped easily onto the wooden plank. She lost herself to the rhythm of her huffing breath and the work of keeping up with Therese.

They followed a dirt path through boulders until they reached a lagoon, where light turquoise water reflected harsh light and burned the eyes. Cliffs rose a hundred feet on the western side of the lagoon. Behind a grove of coconut palms, away from the water, was a cluster of huts where women sat outside and wove blankets, mats, and baskets. Beyond the huts, closer to the water, four women were arranging and counting crates like the ones Daniel transported on his ship. As Therese led her toward a hut with a veranda and a room on each side of the front door, Annie began to sense in her reserve a leadership that came not from speaking but from knowing.

Annie sat across from her on a rattan mat backed with bright pillows while Ishema went inside to get them something to drink. She had questions but was afraid to speak.

Therese leaned back against the pillows. “So, you see. This is how our women work.”

“You give them work,” Annie said.

“We have sailors who come ashore often. They need to unload their goods, and visit with the women, and eat good food before they go back to sea.”

“You help them sell their cargo?”

Therese nodded. “These men,” she said. “They can't go to a buyer in the harbor. They need to sell through another means. Do you understand?”

“No.”

“They are robbers.”

“Pirates?”

“We break up the cargo and sell it off in pieces where it can't be traced. Coffee, spices, lumber, hemp—for everything there is a buyer.”

“And these women, they…work with the men?”

Therese lit a hand-carved pipe and puffed it out the side of her mouth. “You can't judge us. We have to survive, like you. We all make arrangements to survive.”