The Keeper of Dawn (31 page)

Though structurally intact, the hotel’s once striking colors
had faded: the white stone walls were mottled black with moss, and the
terracotta of the archways and rooftops had flaked away. But the hotel was far
from abandoned. Island birds were everywhere, their white-striped wings
fluttering through the air. I spotted dozens of them in small nests tucked
under eaves and beneath archways. They flew out of the entryway and through
broken windows, content that this once-luxurious abode was their home. Their
chirps and squawks echoed from the high shadows of the lobby, which looked even
larger and more vacant now that all the furniture had been removed. And though
the marble tiles hadn’t aged a day, they were caked with bird droppings. The
hotel looked gutted without furniture, and the birds made it into nothing more
than an elegant, oversized barn.

Max stood in the entryway, hands on hips, surveying the vast
chamber as if ascertaining all that had fallen into disrepair. Josh spun in a
circle and stared up at the ceiling. Tyler clapped his hands, then listened to
the resulting echo and flapping of wings.

“Can we look around?” Josh asked, his shyness forcing him to
direct the question at me.

“Is it okay?” I asked Max.

“You can’t break anything that’s not already broken,” Max
replied.

“All
right
!” Josh said, and started off down one of
the halls.

Tyler turned to Max. “Why is this place so run down?” But
when Max’s eyebrow rose, he added, “I mean, what is it that you do out here?”

“You ever fish the Narragansett Bay? They’ve got northern
pike big as your arm.”

“Why don’t you catch up with Josh,” I suggested. After Tyler
had left, I shrugged. “Kids. You never know what they’ll say next.”

“They’re fine,” Max said. “To be honest, it’s kind of nice
having ‘em around.”

“Wait a minute. I seem to remember you hating kids.”

“Me?” Max looked surprised. “No, I hate
teenagers
. Kids
I enjoy.”

We walked through the lobby, past the old mailroom where a
white cat was nursing a litter of kittens, and into the vacant cafeteria. Nearly
every pane in the south window was broken. Pebbles of glass crunched beneath
our feet as we entered the courtyard. The clock tower had toppled inward,
leaving a trail of bricks all the way to the fountain. Iron Lungs lay on its
side, half-buried in brick and weed.

“She went four years ago,” Max said in the way a rancher
might reminisce about a favorite horse that had to be put down. “Happened in
the middle of the night. Sounded like an earthquake. The vibration knocked out
those windows. Had to turn the lantern on to see what happened. That’s the only
time I’ve ever turned ‘er on. Still works like new.”

Signs of disrepair were everywhere: missing tiles dotted the
rooftop; the four yards were waist-high in knapweed; windows were broken,
gutters collapsed, sidewalks cracked. Everything looked as desolate as the
lighthouse, which, still adorned in dead vines, hadn’t aged a day. From the
looks of it, Max, a man who could fix anything, hadn’t lifted a finger to
prevent the hotel’s decay.

A spotted calico came over and rubbed against Max’s leg. When
he noticed my amused expression, he said in a gruff voice, “They keep the mice
away.”

I stopped at the fountain and peered into its dry interior. The
stone frogs still lined the perimeter. The bottom was covered in leaves,
half-concealing one of the frogs that had fallen in. It wasn’t until that
moment, sifting through my memories, that I realized why Mother had never
visited. It hadn’t been out of cruelty or indifference, as I had once believed.
How could a widow be expected to return to the very place she had fallen in
love? She had done nothing more than run from his memory. How much more would
she see, I wondered, if she were to look into this same fountain?

I closed my eyes and listened to the sea breeze whistle
through the gap in the courtyard wall. There was the trilling of the island
birds, and though it was probably just my imagination, in the distance, the
sigh of waves breaking. Despite the clock tower having fallen, I heard Iron Lung’s
peal, signaling the start of class. And riding the wind, the rise and fall of
boys’ laughter.

Josh and Tyler ran past me on their way to the southwest
quad that had, for a single school year, been known as Oak Yard. They remained
on the sidewalk, not out of respect, but because the weeds convinced them to go
no farther. Invisible to the boys, an emptiness resided there. Perhaps it was
because all the oaks were gone, or perhaps because the gazebo leaned to one
side, its once-white paint peeled away to expose the brownish-gray of rotted
wood.

The boys, out of breath from running, joined me at the
fountain. They talked over each other, in a rush to relay all the places they
had been—the auditorium, the swimming pool, some of the old classrooms. Max
stood nearby, looking at his boots with a crooked smile.

Josh moved in circles, taking in his surroundings with the
expression of someone who has been told of a place a hundred times, and was
only now getting to see it for himself. “This place rocks,” he said. “I wish I
went to school here.”

“This is where Dad flew the helicopter, isn’t it, Mr.
Hawthorne?” Tyler asked. He stood on the rim of the fountain, each foot
positioned on a frog.

“Yep, this is it.”

Tyler raised his arms, perhaps for balance, but the motion reminded
me of how he had laid in the prow of the boat.

“It was at night, during a thunderstorm. Everyone was
watching from the windows,” he said, stepping from frog to frog. “It was
raining like crazy. He flew through thunder and lightning. The wind from the
helicopter was so strong it blew stuff all over the place. The gutters, the
trash cans, the rooftops. Even the oak trees!”

He completed the circle and jumped down beside me. When I
looked into his face—full of devotion—it was all I could do to keep from
reaching out to him.

“All seven ripped right out of the ground, roots and all,” I
said, which made Tyler laugh.

“You never told me that,” Josh said.

“Well, I had to save a few things until we got here, didn’t
I?”

Josh nodded, apparently convinced. Tyler yanked weeds out of
the ground and threw them into the air.

Roland had called to do more than catch up on old times. There
had been a point in our conversation when his voice changed. I had heard the
same reassuring tone before when he had talked me through the haze of
hypothermia. The change was subtle, but I guessed that this was the voice that
parents and spouses of fallen soldiers heard as they were informed of their
loved one’s fate. And suddenly, I knew why he had called.

When a drunk driver swerved into oncoming traffic on Little
Falls Parkway and caused a seven-car pileup, Chris was dispatched to the scene.
The victim was a woman, six months pregnant, on her way to a friend’s bridal
shower. She was driving an economy car half the size of the drunk driver’s
flatbed pickup. The collision’s impact sent the car’s engine through the dash
and into the cabin, severing the woman’s femoral artery. Her body, hemorrhaging
blood, induced itself into labor by the time Georgetown University Hospital’s
trauma team descended onto the freeway. Chris called in the woman’s condition
over the radio to prep the Emergency Department. But the helicopter never
reached the hospital. It crashed into left field of the Deerfield Park baseball
diamond that had just concluded that night’s Junior T-ball game. The weather
was clear; no distress message was called in over the radio. Miraculously, the
woman and her premature baby survived. Both pilots and the trauma technician
were pronounced dead at the scene. Roland’s voice choked up over the phone, and
a full minute expired before he told me where the funeral was being held.

It wasn’t until I stood beside Chris’ coffin that I felt my
grief subside. Those gathered together on that gloomy day in March had taken it
from me. It felt wrong to mourn a rebellious seventeen-year-old when a wife had
lost her husband, and a son had lost his father. The ex-Governor of Maryland
wept as his only child was lowered into the ground. Not until that moment was
all the bad blood forgotten.

There we were for this unwanted reunion—Roland, Derek and
myself—together again for the first time since the night I had escaped Raker
Island. Chris had reunited us one final time. And as if two decades of grieving
alongside families hadn’t prepared him, Roland wept openly over the loss of his
one true friend.

I had seen something haunting that day in the somber young
boy standing over his father’s grave. I felt compelled to reach out to him, to
assure him that whatever had once stood between his father and grandfather meant
nothing. After the service, I promised him that if he ever wanted to visit
Raker Island, I would take him there. Two months later Chris’ wife had called,
saying that it would mean a great deal if her son could see the place his
father had always talked about. She felt it might bring him the closure he
needed.

“Can we go in the lighthouse?” Tyler asked.

I opened my mouth to reply, but stopped, afraid of what
might come out. I wanted to tell him that I knew what it was like to grow up
without a father. More than anything, I wanted him to know that no one would
ever be able to replace him. I looked at Tyler then, and what I saw staring
back at me was discovery, for that’s what death of a loved one is: a dark,
horrible discovery that brings to light all that’s been lost. Only later do you
think of what’s left behind.

But there was a difference in our tragedies. Our fathers had
died different deaths—one in shame, the other in glory. And where I had made my
father a villain, in Tyler’s eyes, Chris would always be a hero. For that part,
at least, I envied him. He would never be exposed to a family so determined to
cover up its disgrace that it convinced itself that nothing had happened.

“Of course you can,” Max said. “In my opinion, it’s the only
thing worth seeing.”

I watched as he led them down a path through Oak Yard.

“Come on, Dad!” Josh shouted back to me.

“I’ll be up in a minute,” I said, waiting until they had
entered the lighthouse before going back the way I had come.

Memories are sharpest when one is alone, and I wandered down
deserted hallways and into empty classrooms, surprised at Wellington’s degree
of preservation. It took a keen eye, but beneath the layer of dust, many of the
rooms looked as they had on the final day of class: chalkboards still listed
exam instructions; a stack of commencement programs lay on Mrs. Lawrence’s
desk; a sign on the bulletin board displayed the ferry’s departure times. Bits
and pieces of the 1981 school year were still there, proof that Wellington had
fled Raker Island and never looked back.

When I stepped into Mr. O’Leary’s classroom, I pictured the
inquisitive history teacher leaning back in his chair, listening to a student
introduce himself. To my surprise, there was a message written on the
chalkboard in white paint.

Out, out brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more.

One final Shakespearean quote with Mr. O’Leary’s flair for
the dramatic. He couldn’t have possibly guessed that his most reluctant and
most grateful student would be reading it twenty-five years later.

Aside from these diversions, I had a destination in mind. Tucked
into the back corner of one of the hallways was the old infirmary. The beds and
medical equipment had been removed, but the walls still displayed the black and
white photographs, though several had fallen to the floor. There were the
parties and celebrations that marked the hotel’s heyday, and Max standing
beside his father at the ribbon-cutting ceremony. “PREP SCHOOL MAROONED ON
RAKER ISLAND” ran the headline of a laminated newspaper clipping on the mantle.

A nearby picture caught my eye. It was unframed and the only
colored photograph in the collection. I had to look at it a second time to be
sure it wasn’t my imagination. There we were: Chris, Roland and myself,
teenagers again, flashing undaunted smiles, our bare feet half-buried in a
sandy beach. Chris stood between us with his arms draped over our shoulders. Three
boys who would go on to live different lives; but for that brief time, were
inseparable. It was the picture Derek had taken during our first trip to the
beach. The fact that it was here, in this room, filled with so many bygone
memories, made it feel like we had become part of the island’s past.

I took out Father’s picture and placed it on the mantle next
to my own. I ran my finger along the edge that had curled with age. I allowed
myself to linger in this place where Max was still a boy, where the Hotel
Nouveau was in full swing, where I stood arm-in-arm with my friends, and where
Father smiled at the unseen beauty of his wife.

With hurried steps I returned to the courtyard, walked the
narrow path through the weeds, climbed the spiral staircase that didn’t seem
quite so high, and joined the others on the walkway.

The view was unforgettable.

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