The Keeper of Dawn (30 page)

Had he really been there? I couldn’t quite remember. The
island had a way of making you forget. It had all started that first day at the
parent reception.

There’s no record of him boarding the ferry. You’re sure
he’s coming, right?

I ain’t your father, kid. But I will take your picture. Wanna
make the headlines?

“Jacob, it’s okay.”

Of course it was okay. Father was home at that very moment. He
hadn’t called or visited because he needed me to be strong for the family. And
when I returned for Thanksgiving, it would be just like before. We would have a
long talk after dinner while Mother played one of her melodies on the piano. His
tone would become serious, even lecturing, as the topic of conversation turned
to school and how my grades needed improving.

How I wanted to hear those words!

I want to hear about Judge Hawthorne. I want to know why he
doesn’t call on Sunday night …

… never once got a call from home…

… whenever someone spends a lot of time with their
grandparents, there’s always a problem at home. Every time.

“It’s okay. You can say it.”

Mother hadn’t sent me to Wellington. She had been against it
from the very beginning, believing I was too young to leave home. But Father
had insisted. He had been angry with me because I had visited Grandpa against
his wishes. He had sent me away to prevent me from following in David’s
footsteps.

This was the truth, I swear.

Jacob, darling, certainly you know that it’s not possible
for him to be here. This was all a mistake. I thought it would help to send you
to Wellington. You would have what you couldn’t at home.

But why would I have made any of this up? What purpose would
it serve?

Who better to blame than my old man? I needed him more
than I thought. I needed that touch of evil in my life. Nothing made sense
without it.

Have you ever lost something so dear to you, that you
would do anything to get it back?

I locked eyes with Mr. O’Leary, intent on keeping the chorus
of voices out of my head.

But David’s words came back to me, from around the world.

The funeral is at Pine Crest Cemetery. You remember how
to get there?

Why would he have asked me that? Grandma Hawthorne had died
before I was born, and I had never visited her grave. Then how had I known
where Grandpa would be buried?

And why were there three tombstones, Jacob?

I had been there before, not so long ago. Yes, I remembered
now. I remembered it being overcast and dreary. I could see my breath in the
air, and a strong wind cut across the hill, making the cold more bitter. And it
had been
me
sitting before the casket, receiving a rose after the
service. And when David hadn’t come back, hadn’t come walking over the hill at
the last moment, I lost all hope that he would ever come home again.

“It’s okay, Jacob.”

But Father was still alive! It was only a dream that he had
gone into the woods behind our house on that cold winter morning, a dark figure
disappearing in a flurry of white. He was still alive and he still needed me to
succeed, to succeed where David had failed.

I should have still been sleeping, but the way Father stood
watching me from the hallway had awoken me. I couldn’t fall back asleep,
staring for some time at the exposed beams of the ceiling. I got up just after
he left the house. It was so cold following his tracks through the snow.

He still needed me. He needed me now more than ever.

The noise that came ringing through the trees and sent the
crows flying into the air sounded nothing at all like a gunshot. I had never
run so fast in my life. But if I had only been a little quicker … if I had only
called out to him as I watched him leave the house. But the snow had been so
deep, nearly up to my knees. If he had only known I was behind him, following
his footprints through the snow, then it would have turned out okay. It would
have all been so much better. But I was too late. And when I finally caught up
to him—all that snow, stained red, melting in the cold winter air.

The past is a nice place to visit, but it’s not somewhere
I’d ever want to live.

I no longer clung to the railing, but was somehow in Mr.
O’Leary’s arms.

“He’s dead,” I said, my voice choked with tears. “My father …
is dead. It happened last winter. He went off into the woods and … and …”

“It’s okay,” Mr. O’Leary kept repeating. “It’s going to be
okay.”

I closed my eyes. I was only aware of the nearness of Mr.
O’Leary, his soothing words that I struggled to understand, and that horrible
scene in the woods that now lay frozen in my mind. The very image that I had
forced myself to forget returned with such clarity that it became an
unshakeable bedrock of truth.

“I found him lying in the snow,” I said finally. “He … he …”

“It’s okay.”

“He killed himself!”

I hid my face in Mr. O’Leary’s shoulder. My words burrowed
beneath my grief and humiliated me. When I finally pulled away, I blinked away
the last of my tears. We were both quiet for some time. The wind had picked up,
and the sun was half-gone, an orange disc sliding into the ocean.

“My father is dead,” I said without emotion.

Mr. O’Leary stood with his head bowed. My admission failed
to elicit a response. Even he, the eloquent orator who had won over the most
obstinate student, seemed resigned to the fact that anything he could have said
would have fallen short.

I turned to the courtyard. Though the catwalk blocked most
of the view, I could see the edge of the fountain, and the dinner lights of the
cafeteria turning on.

“The reason I came up here was to read a letter from my
grandpa. I didn’t get it until after the funeral. I’ve kept putting it off.”

“There’s no better time than the present,” Mr. O’Leary said.
“I’ll give you some privacy.”

When the catwalk door clanged shut behind him, I reached
into my jacket and pulled out a half-opened envelope. I passed it beneath my
nose.

“Musty, from Brooklyn.”

Without further delay, I opened the letter.

Frustrated! Frustrated! The neighbors blasted their music
till all hours last night. I even called the police, though it did little good.
Silence is such a rare commodity these days. It seems that something is always
ringing or rattling. Slept until 8 AM, which I haven’t done in years.

Spoke with your brother the other day (he is persistent with
that telephone!) He called from somewhere in Africa. Who knows where he’ll call
from next. Maybe the moon (collect, of course).

I sat in
our
chair while eating breakfast this morning.
Nearly fell face first into my cereal! Have you thought any more about that
day? You’ll be happy to hear that I’ve talked myself into buying a new fan. As
you know, it’s long overdue.

I’ve spent the better part of today going down memory lane,
looking through albums of when your grandma was still alive. Remind me to get
them out when you’re over next. She was one of those rare individuals who could
always make you smile, even in the worst of circumstances. Shortly before the
cancer took her, she told me that she believed when a person dies, their spirit
comes to inhabit the place where they spent the happiest days of their life. She
told me that if she had any choice in the matter, she would choose the back
bedroom to “haunt.” This was your father and Uncle Larry’s bedroom when they
were growing up, and, as you know, where she kept her bonsai. That room was
where her children were, in one form or another, and it came to contain her
fondest memories over the years. Perhaps she told me this just to cheer me up,
but after her death, it helped to think of her being in the room with me while
I tended to her trees.

Over the summer, I couldn’t help but notice how we no longer
discuss your father. It is a topic that causes both of us a great deal of pain,
and will always do so. Death can be very difficult to accept, whether you’re
young or old. So allow me the liberty of writing what has gone unsaid.

Your father once told me that his most cherished memories
were of when he and your mother vacationed on Raker Island. Though they were
already married, he said that it was there where they fell in love. And this
coming from a man who, as you know, rarely spoke of his feelings. When I first
heard you were going to school there, I recalled what your grandma told me, and
then I thought of how few coincidences there truly are in this world.

Thanksgiving will be upon us soon. Until our next visit.

Grandpa

I would read the letter three more times by the end of the
night. When I returned it to my jacket, my hand reached for Father’s picture,
but I stopped upon feeling the edge of the photograph. I had looked at it
enough to remember every detail, every facet of the expression of a young man
falling in love.

Feeling the cold onset of dusk, I looked at the island one
final time. When I reached for the stairwell door, a quick movement caught my
eye. Above me, in the window of the lantern room, a face flashed in the final
glare of the sun and was gone.

When the boy at the prow of the boat dipped his outstretched
hand into the water, a band of sunburned skin protruded from his shirt collar. He
remained like this, with one hand gripping the silver railing for balance and
the other passing through the kicked up water, his laughter rising above the
wind. When the engine revved, the boat’s nose lifted in the air, and the boy
shifted forward as if leaning into the neck of a galloping stallion.

The boat passed the cruisers and sailboats along the pier,
veering south into open water. As the excitement of getting started wore off,
the boy settled into a more comfortable position, resting his elbows on his
crossed legs. The only time he broke his stare from the empty horizon was to
glance behind him, not because the diminishing shoreline held any interest, but
because it was the only way to measure the distance traveled. The boy’s
vigilant watch was tested when a dolphin leapt from the water on the starboard
side. It was while he searched for a second sighting that a smudge of land took
shape on the horizon.

“Josh!” I shouted over the wind, lifting a hand from the
steering wheel to redirect the boy’s attention.

Josh faced straight ahead, the dolphin forgotten. Tyler, who
until then had remained in the back, rushed forward. The island’s appearance
seemed to have sparked something in him, for he shouted enthusiastically to
Josh, who slid over to make room for him. Tyler then lay flat on his stomach,
spreading his arms out like he was flying low across the water.

It had been twenty-five years since I had last seen Raker
Island. It was smaller than I remembered, or perhaps the ocean had eroded its
shore, for my memories had made a mountain out of this lonely hilltop jutting
from the sea. I kept expecting it to grow larger, to rise higher from the water
the closer we came, but I could already see the pier extending from the rocky
beach, and make out the individual pines from the green blur of a distant
forest.

The grove of pines that overlooked the beach was covered in
a blanket of vines, reducing the trees into anonymous bulges. The branches
themselves were lost amid a complicated network of spiraling shoots and
tendrils. But there was a certain predatory beauty in this display of nature
that brought the otherwise disharmonious parts of the landscape together under
a single guise. Pale flowers sprung up from the undergrowth, giving the scene a
dash of the exotic.

“There, Dad!” Josh shouted, pointing toward the pier.

When I downshifted, the tip of the boat dipped down, causing
Tyler to retract his arms, apparently no longer convinced he could fly at such
a slow speed. When the wind died and then switched directions, coming at us
from behind, I noticed Josh’s hair had begun to darken, just as mine had at his
age. Soon he would be a sandy blond, one step away from my own light brown.

“Not yet, Josh,” I said when he grabbed the pier line and
prepared to jump. “We’ll go a little closer.”

He looked at the pier, then at the shore. “Won’t it be too
shallow?”

“We’ll be okay.”

The pier, built for a ferry, was nearly a hundred feet in
length, with the majority of its planks either missing or half-rotted away. I
waited until we were within twenty feet of shore before nudging the Bayliner
against the pier. On the other side was a maroon speedboat that hardly looked
big enough to navigate the Atlantic’s waves. As Josh and I secured the lines,
Tyler looked at his surroundings in disbelief that we were actually here.

“Is that it?” he asked, pointing to the distant silhouette
atop the island.

“The one and only,” I confirmed, pulling the end of the
clove hitch tight.

“I thought there were two towers.”

Preoccupied with docking, I had failed to notice that Raker
Lighthouse alone looked over the island. The clock tower had fallen.

Didn’t I tell you? Nothing on this island lasts for long.

“There used to be. Here, have a look,” I said, handing Tyler
my binoculars. “Keep an eye out for loose boards,” I warned Josh as he ran
across the pier.

“It’s safe, Dad,” he called back over his shoulder.

I, too, crossed the pier, the planks groaning beneath my
weight. A single vine dipped toward the water, and as if finally coming into
contact with a surface it couldn’t spread across, lifted up and wrapped itself
around one of the planks.

The agitated call of a gull perched along the water’s edge
welcomed us ashore.

“What’s he waiting for?” Josh asked.

Tyler hadn’t budged. He stood peering through the
binoculars, examining the island at every angle.

“There’s no rush,” I said. “Remember what I told you?”

“I know, I know. Give him space.”

With the binoculars dangling from his neck, Tyler finally
got out of the boat and crossed the pier, his high-tops scraping the planks. When
his feet touched the gravelly beach, he looked like he had just stepped onto
sacred ground.

“He’s not here,” he said, giving the beach a quick
examination.

I looked to where the road emerged from the pines. “We’re
early. He’ll be here.”

“Are you sure someone actually
lives
out here?” Josh
asked.

“Don’t worry, he’ll be here.”

The boys passed the time by exploring the beach. Josh
initially kept his distance from Tyler, as he often did around strangers, but
it wasn’t long before he either forgot his shyness or decided that my advice to
give Tyler space didn’t apply here. Josh looked drawn to the water’s edge
simply because it was there, while Tyler combed over it in search of something.
What he found was a clam, and when he tried to pull its shell apart (perhaps
not realizing that he held a living organism in his hands), the clam shot a
stream of water at him. He yelled in surprise, dropping it to the ground. Josh
laughed good-naturedly as Tyler picked the clam back up by his fingertips,
examined it for a moment, then flung it into the water.

I caught myself thinking how different they were—just like
their fathers. Tyler was eleven, two years Josh’s senior, but he acted older
than his years, which I couldn’t say surprised me. But what I wasn’t prepared
for was his seriousness. I kept looking for a glimpse of that rebellious
adolescent spirit, but either he was too young or, more likely, it was there
all along, I was just too old to notice. In a moment of acknowledged hypocrisy,
I gave thanks that my son and Tyler were not friends. But seeing them walk the
beach together made me realize I had been right to bring them here. Both my
wife and Sarah, Tyler’s mother, had wanted to come along, but I had talked them
out of it. Though I hadn’t been able to explain it to their satisfaction, some
element of this place would have been lost if they were here now, warning Josh
and Tyler to be careful. Mothers didn’t belong here. Raker Island was meant
only for boys.

The sound of an approaching vehicle drew my attention to the
road. A gray Jeep came into view and pulled beside the pier. I couldn’t help
but smile as the driver climbed out.

“You’ve changed a bit,” Max said, shaking my hand.

“You haven’t,” I replied.

Though he had to be well over sixty, Max still had a full
head of hair, and shaking his hand was still like putting your hand in a vice. The
only noticeable change was that his red hair was streaked with gray, and he had
grown a full beard. It took a moment to find his toothpick amidst all the hair.

“It’s the salt in the air,” he said. “It preserves.”

When the boys joined us, Josh looked at Max with a mixture
of fear and awe, as he had heard his share of stories involving Raker Island’s
reclusive owner. Tyler was more skeptical, as if questioning my judgment in
allowing this rugged hermit to be our guide.

“Pleasure,” Max said as I made the introductions, and
judging by the boys’ reactions, he didn’t hold back one bit on his handshake.

“Looks like your pier has seen better days,” I commented.

“Don’t have much use for it these days,” Max said with a
wave of his hand. “Just supplies once a month.” Then, without saying another
word, he turned and climbed back into the Jeep. When he squinted through the
dirty windshield and saw that we hadn’t moved, he said, “You comin’ or not?”

The island’s only road, once a narrow passage through the
encroaching undergrowth, was now nothing more than tire ruts, a groove that the
Jeep’s wheels slotted into with the precision of a train straddling its tracks.
Along especially sharp curves, fenceless lines of knotted posts were strung
through the prairie grass like coarse knuckles, the metal cable that had once
linked them into a guardrail having long since fallen away. When we passed
beneath the pines, it was like the sun had slipped behind a cloud, with the
interwoven vines blotting out the sky. Seated in the backseat, the boys had to
duck out of the way of branches and low-hanging creepers, not to mention the
assortment of fishing poles propped between them. Max sat behind the wheel,
oblivious to the underbrush that swatted the windshield. When we started up the
switchbacks, the foliage hugged the remnants of the road so tightly it was difficult
to catch more than a glimpse of what lay ahead.

Though it was early summer, it still felt like spring on the
island. The air was dry and buoyant, with soft breezes passing through the
treetops. A cloud of blue butterflies hung momentarily over tulip blossoms
before dispersing like smoke over a campfire, drifting through the air to
settle over a bush of dark red berries. In the distance, a weeping willow
dipped its branches into the reflective waters of a pond.

Time had made me a stranger here. An entire generation separated
me from this place. There were reminders of it everywhere: the fact that I
could only recognize a handful of landmarks; there in the backseat, where my
son’s face hung in my vision; but especially knowing what had happened to each
of us since going our separate ways.

I had returned home after the spring semester to finish my
final two years at Homestead. Wellington had also left Raker Island, retreating
to its old campus at Eastbridge amidst a flurry of bad publicity. The school
returned to its roots in an attempt to distance itself from the 1980 Senatorial
Debate debacle. Despite the odds, Wellington survived, though not without
undergoing change. These days the student body was forty percent female, school
uniforms were a thing of the past, and the fencing team practiced in an actual
gymnasium. I doubted that I would find much of my old school in Eastbridge. All
that remained of that tumultuous year of my life was here on this island,
buried beneath two-and-a-half decades of neglect.

College, a career, marriage and children had kept me busy,
though I never stopped wondering what had become of my old friends. The
newspaper—the headlines—had been our link, and it was there that I expected to
hear from them. Groomed for greatness, they would certainly make themselves
known, and it would be like sitting around the cafeteria table again, seeing
those same familiar names in print. FORSYTHE RUNS FOR OFFICE; GENERAL VAN BELLE
ACCOMPANIES 256
^th
INFANTRY OVERSEAS; MAYHEW CARRIES SENTINEL TO
HIGHER GROUND.

But no such headlines were printed. At first this concerned
me, like we had failed at some unspoken task. But as the years passed, I found
comfort in knowing that our names had been kept from the public eye. As long as
I didn’t read about them, I could go on assuming they were living regular
lives, similar to my own.

That changed three months ago when I received a phone call
from Roland. His voice, which had deepened only slightly, brought me back to
the night of the debate. Despite the late hour, we talked at great length, and
by the end of the conversation, I was caught up on all that had happened
beneath the headlines.

After a record-setting wrestling career in the Ivy League,
Derek had gone to work for his father at Sentinel, where he now headed up the
marketing division. When his father passed away, Zack, the same brother who had
attempted to shoot the talkative macaws, took over the family business. Apparently
he focused his aggression on the competition these days, as Sentinel’s business
was thriving. With a wife and two daughters, Derek was living the American
dream, though he had chosen to live it in Boston instead of Greenwich.

After the inevitable fallout with his father, Roland had
joined the military, though not in the way General Van Belle had envisioned. Roland
graduated from Maryland Bible College and Seminary to become an ordained
minister. He now served as a chaplain for the Armed Forces. Whenever a soldier
was killed in combat, Roland was sent to console the soldier’s loved ones. Roland
had spent his boyhood among these same families, and he chose to continue to
share their sacrifice in his own humble way.

Roland spoke mostly of Chris, and even as a grown man he
couldn’t keep the pride from his voice. Their friendship had never ended. If
anything, it had grown stronger. After serving six months in a juvenile
detention center, Chris had enlisted in the Air Force. A brief stint of flying
fighter jets in the 82
^nd
Airborne ended in a dishonorable discharge,
the details of which Roland didn’t disclose. What followed were some “uncertain
years” that I had always feared Chris would fall into and never find his way
out. But his desire to fly eventually led him to Georgetown University Hospital
in D.C., where he piloted the trauma center’s helicopter. It was also were he
met Sarah Higgins, a resident nurse in the E.R. They were married three months
later. Roland was his best man.

“This place is huge!” Tyler said as we pulled up to the
hotel.

“It’s just like the pictures,” Josh said, jumping out of the
Jeep. “Only a thousand times bigger!”