Lightkeeper's Wife (17 page)

Hannah yelled through her cupped hands. “Listen, all you there! We've only room for four or five at a time,” Hannah said. “We'll come back for the last of you.”

“Drag us behind the boat,” a thin, shivering man hollered. “I'll gladly be dragged through the water than left to sink on this barge.”

“You can't. You'll freeze,” Hannah said.

The man raised his arms up and shouted louder now, using his entire body to propel his voice across the water. “I'll take my chances. I'll not lose my life to this ship. I'd rather drown a different way if I'm to drown at all.”

“Who's the captain here?” Hannah called. Billy held the oars steady, and understanding that there was some order to Hannah's line of reasoning, she let Hannah lead the rescue.

“He's drowned.”

“All right then. You'll listen to me and obey my command, or you'll be left behind. We'll take one aboard at a time as long as we stay afloat. The rest of you we'll drag on a line with the life ring. You first, sir, you with the child. Sit right in front there.”

The man clambered down off the rail, leaving the girl to drop herself into the bow of the boat where she scrambled and tucked her small body into the curve of the stem. The man took the seat Hannah indicated and watched as the second man climbed down and sat beside him. “We're floating good,” Hannah said, “you two next.” She waved her arms to hurry them across. The short, bearded man nearly leapt into the air and landed in the stern seat, followed by another seemingly identical sailor. The last man Hannah chose was a young sailor who looked malnourished and blue around the lips. “You, come on. You two who are last, wait there while I set the lines,” and she fastened the life line off the transom so the life ring floated not more than thirty feet aft of them.

Billy noted that she'd chosen the two sturdiest men to ride in the water, figuring they had the best chances of surviving. “I want the bigger of you to lie across the top of the ring, and then the next one to lie across him. That way you won't be directly in the water.” Hannah held the life ring where the first sailor could lay himself across, and once the two were situated awkwardly upon their makeshift raft, she set them adrift behind the surfboat.

“Are you sure you're the only survivors? Have you checked belowdecks?”

The survivors nodded. As the wreck tilted in the waves, the ship's bell clanged.

“They've perished, the lot of them,” a young fellow said, his voice so despondent that Hannah took him at his word. She sat on the seat beside Billy. “It'll take both of us pulling on the oars,” she said, and Billy nodded and they set themselves to rowing. With the weight of the men, the boat sat lower in the water, and they had to work harder to make headway. They each worked an oar, matching their motion one to the other, shoulders pressing into each other, breathing synchronized. The closer they drew to shore, the more the riptide dragged the boat north of the lighthouse. The men remained quiet, shifting and grunting, whispering and pointing.

“Will we make it?” one of the men cried out.

“We gotta keep rowing through it.”

Hannah and Billy didn't speak but moved in unison, bodies pressed hard against each other on the small seat, inhaling as they pushed the oars forward, exhaling as they pulled back. The men and the child sat quietly, turning to spy the lighthouse then casting their glances down to empty, puckered hands. Their breath cast clouds that drifted over their heads. There was no talking now, just the sound of the oars in the water and the heavy breathing of Hannah and Billy as they rowed. From their perch amidships, they watched the two sailors in the water on the life ring; they waved every so often to signal their well-being.

Billy knew they cleared the riptide when the thunder of waves on the beach reached her, and they rowed south again. Near the lighthouse, the men looked to Hannah to give word before they climbed out of the boat and hurried ashore. They hovered in a tight group by the base of the stairs as if no amount of land would ever be enough. Hannah and Billy pulled in the lifeline and the last two men stumbled onto the beach shivering with cold. The young girl stood in the center of the men, her thin arms at her sides, while Hannah and Billy coiled the lines and hauled the surfboat back to the dunes. The men watched and waited, uncertain of what they were waiting for beyond some signal that they should move from their huddled position. With no words, Hannah led them up the stairs and they followed one at a time, each waiting for the next and pulling themselves up on the railing when the strength of their legs couldn't match the task. Billy lifted the small girl onto her back and carried her. “You're okay,” she said, but the girl said nothing.

***

The men skulked into the house like a pack of animals. The tallest among them had been the one to ride in the bottom of the life ring against the water. His lips were blue, his jaw hammering with cold as he removed his jacket and stood by the fire. The rest followed suit, looking into each other's faces for confirmation of their survival. How lucky they were to be in this good woman's house. In spite of their bruises and scrapes and the gash over one man's eye, they couldn't believe their luck. They were almost afraid to speak for fear of breaking their lucky streak, or so it appeared to Billy as she stoked the fire and pointed to a set of hooks where the men could hang their coats to dry.

The little girl sat on the floor against the hearth, her long limbs like crooked branches knobbed at the knees and elbows, eyes pegged on one of the sailors, fat enough to bust his jacket, his red, puffy face frothing with cold and rage.

“What are you staring at, girl?” he said, loosening the buttons at the collar.

She leaned one shoulder forward as if to protect herself, her brown eyes cast down. She looked so slight and stricken.

The doll jabbed Billy from where it was stuffed in the waist of her pants, and she held it out, but the girl only stared at it. “Is this yours?” Billy said. The girl reached for the doll and clutched it in her fist.

“Me go on drop now,” she said quietly. “Mi neva been so col.”

Hannah watched Billy navigate the room with ease, comfortable among the sailors as she handed out blankets and stuck the bellows into the fire. When Billy stood up, the candlelight cast the hollows of her cheeks in shadow and reflected in her gray eyes. Hannah was drawn to her then, to her gentle voice and lithe body moving gently among the sailors, as if any abrupt motion would only traumatize them further. Billy understood the men's distress firsthand. At the stove, she poured hot tea into cups and instructed the girl to set them on the table, but the girl shook her head no. Tears trailed down her salt-crusted cheeks.

The man who'd carried the girl from the wreck rubbed the sphere of his belly and belched into the room. “Where's the privy at? Eh?”

“Round back,” Hannah said.

The men hung about the fire, exhausted and spent, sitting on the floor with knees drawn up, bare feet blue from the cold. Those with boots pulled them off to dry on the hot bricks. One of the older sailors banged on a younger crew member's chest as he coughed, then moved on to wrap a cut hand in a makeshift bandage until Hannah came with her medicine box and settled herself among them. Those who complained she tended to first. A bandage, a splint, alcohol poured across a wound to prevent infection. It was not the time to hold back on adding a shot of whiskey to the coffee, and she left the bottle on the counter for any one of them to take a shot. Right there on the counter. Light through the bottle cast an amber shadow that Billy could taste, but she ignored it as she poured drams to warm the sailors.

Hannah passed blankets around to the men and brought the bag of hand-me-down clothes. The men sorted through the clothes for something dry to wear. Their noises stirred the room, the quiet and thankful murmuring after a rescue, all these strangers amazed at their survival, obvious in their cohesion as a crew. With the exception of miscreant sailor, they were comfortable in the proximity of each other's bodies as they huddled together and tried to find an easy position on the floor.

Billy had moved to the kitchen and was adding potatoes and carrots to a large pot of chicken soup, stretching the meal for two into one large meal for six men, a child, and themselves, until Tom showed up with a chicken, two loaves of bread, butter, and bourbon in a large basket. Hannah welcomed him with his supplies and his flashing green eyes, and Billy put him to work cutting the chicken into small pieces.

The men broke bits of bread and dunked it into the broth. They ate noisily. They didn't seem to notice anything different about Billy. She was a man among men, and they accepted her. Hannah watched Billy as she spoke to one of the sailors about the wreck, leaning into the man with an intimacy only men shared. “Many's lost,” the man said. “Can't even count 'em all yet.”

“You're here. That's all that matters,” Tom said.

“I never been so afraid. Like a little girl. I woulda cried for my mother if I thought there was a chance in hell she'd come to save me.”

“There's no shame in it,” Billy said. “You were waiting to die. Fear like that, it's natural.”

“I'll never get over it.”

“Have some soup,” Tom said. “Get yourself warmed up.”

The girl clutched the doll in one hand. She held her lips together and shook her head, refusing food. “See him dea? Look pon dat man how im pack up im mout when im a nyam.” The girl indicated the fat man who had been holding on to her at the wreck, telling Billy that he packed his mouth full when he was eating.

“You think I don't understand that darkie voodoo horseshit?” the man said, soup spilling from his mouth down his rotund belly.

Tom stood from the table and hovered over the man.

“You will not talk like that in this house,” Hannah said, her voice like a hammer thrown down. “What is your name?” she asked the girl.

“Mesha,” the girl said.

“You come sit here next to me. No one will bother you here. Not while they are in my house.”

Tom sat, his fists clenched. Billy did not take her eyes from the man, and when he met her gaze, she saw his wickedness exposed like the bottom of a board pulled from the dirt, rotten with wormholes and nothing good left to build on. This man was ruin itself. He watched her leave the table, eyeing her face, her hands. She felt his eyes on her back as she placed her bowl in the sink. He'd saved the girl, probably because he owned her. Less feeling for her than for that silver buckle on his belt, which he was about to lose. She'd see to that.

Billy woke with a start, kicked in the head by bad dreams and a flash of anger hot enough to remind her where she'd been in this world. The lighthouse beam swooped over the room. She was here in Dangerfield now, but the shipwrecked men's snores and coughing, their mutterings in sleep brought Billy belowdecks on the
Alice
K
. She strode into the living room as if across a ship's deck and kicked the fat man awake. In his sleep and confusion he swatted her away. She kicked him harder and he scrambled to his feet. “What the—?”

“Get up, follow me,” Billy said, stabbing words that held the command of her rage. She shoved him toward the passageway that led to the barn and closed the door behind them so that no one would hear. “You're a coward. I should kill you.”

The man's eyes, watery and red, stared out at her, not comprehending what he'd done to upset her. “But you just rescued me. What do you want to kill me for?”

“You took that Jamaican girl from her family. You took her from where she belonged.”

“For good money,” he said.

Billy caught her breath and reconsidered her line of reasoning. “What did she cost you? Tell me!” When the man hesitated, Billy punched him in the stomach so that he fell onto his knees, doubled over. “You were going to use her for yourself.”

Billy kicked him, throwing him back on the floor. Blood ran from his nose. “I could kill you! Go on. Get up, you worthless dog. Get out of here! You're a pig.” She spat the words at him like bullets.

“Where will I go? I've no money. I've lost everything 'cept what I got in the house,” he said, wiping the snot and blood from his nose with his filthy hand.

“Get up, get out. Now! Follow the road and I'll spare your life.”

He stared into her blue eyes with a familiarity she wanted to smack off his face. Who did he think he was looking at her like that?

“I know who you are, that lady pirate! There's a bounty on your head. They'll hang you when I come back for you, me and the men you've robbed! You think you can escape what you've done? You think you save a few poor sods and you're free? You'll never be free. You'll always be looking over your shoulder, wondering when or where that one knowing face has come to claim you. Then it will be over and I hope I'm there to see the day, you sanctimonious, no-good—”

The man's eyes bulged. He spat and drooled venom until Billy picked him up by his still-damp shirt collar and shoved him to the barn door. She slid it open enough for him to step through and then pushed him into a heap on the cold ground. “Get up, or I'll kill you!” Her hands trembled with the lightning force of her rage, and it took all of her strength not to unleash herself, wrap her hands around his throat, and squeeze the breath out of him.

“You think I'm the first you'll find along these shores who'll know you? You're on a major shipping lane.”

“Shut up,” Billy said. Maybe he was right, but she'd deal with others as she dealt with him. She could be ruthless if she had to.

The man leaned against the barn to leverage his hideous weight into a standing position and started walking in his stocking feet toward the road. Every few steps he swung his head around to see if Billy was still watching, and after a while he stopped turning and just walked.

Billy turned back toward the house and saw Hannah standing on the front porch, a blanket wrapped around her shoulder. She went back into the barn, and Hannah returned to the house, where men huddled around the fire and shifted about, hungry and adrift. Billy's violence both frightened her and put her at ease. That Billy was capable of such spitting rage on behalf of the girl. Hannah had watched her kick that man, punch him, and shove him around. Billy could've killed the man if she'd chosen to, like Tom on the beach, who'd been ready to kill to save her. She hadn't been able to hear what Billy said to the man, but he left at her command.

There were things Billy would never tell her, things she didn't need to know. Wherever Billy had been before she'd arrived at the lighthouse, whatever she'd done, she meant to undo it, that was clear.

Hannah moved among the sailors, some of whom coughed or spoke softly to one another, recounting the wreck. Their words rose like mist into the room.
Splintered
like
a
toy
boat. Nothing left to hold on to. Did you see him go under? There was men in the hold. I know it.

One of the men pulled out a chair for her. “Here you go, missus. You set yourself down.” He shivered even now in the heat of the kitchen. His hair had dried into a blond frizz, bushy eyebrows to match, and a sharp chin with barely any stubble. “Ellis here was our galley cook, and he's pretty decent, though I've never seen him at it on flat land. My name's Jody Evans.”

“One of your men is missing,” Hannah said, the image of him walking shoeless down the drive fresh in her mind.

“Hope that coot took a long walk off a short pier's what I hope,” a man called Izzy said. He was short and squat with wild black hair and a beard to match. First thing he'd done when he came inside was take off his jacket to reveal a blouse with the sleeves ripped off and arms tattooed to the shoulders, proud as a lion. He could've been trouble anywhere else, but in the wake of a wreck and the humility of being rescued, and by a woman no less, he was tame.

“He didn't seem the type to be caring for the girl.”

“If he was caring for that girl, she'd be better off drowned,” Izzy said.

“Girl looked desperate the minute she came onboard,” Ellis said. “She was afraid for her life. You could see it clear as day.”

“I used to see her and her little brother down by the docks near Montego Bay,” Jody said. “They scavenged fruit and vegetables that fell off the carts. Sometimes they dove from the pilings for coins.”

“The little buggers get rich doing that. I swear.”

“I doubt it.”

“Still.”

Their voices drifted over the room like one voice. “Her father sold soup right where our ship docked. Scrappy little guy, good for nothing. Most his teeth gone but that gold one in front.”

“Where will she go now that her keeper has gone?”

“Just another cast-off nigger child.”

“We'll take her with us. I'll get her sorted out, ma'am. Name is Joe.” He reached a large hand across to her and shook her hand firmly but not hard enough to hurt her. “She has family, as you've heard. I came to know her aboard the
Alexandria
. I hope to ship out of Boston on a southbound ship promptly. I'll see to her transit to Montego Bay.”

“You're very kind,” she said, searching beyond his sincerity for any signs of ill will, but the man was warm, genuine.

“She's a good girl. She worked in the kitchen and swept the berths for the crew. She fed the small goat and the chickens they kept onboard for food, and she played with them and loved them with the reserve of a child who knows that the chickens are grown for eating.”

“We owe you and your man our lives,” Joe said.

Hannah was relieved. They believed that Billy was a man, as she had believed. She hadn't been so naive after all. And if they hadn't believed it, what then? Rumors and scandal that could jeopardize her position at the lighthouse.

Joe sat down across from her, his arms folded like tree branches, thick and difficult to maneuver. The bones of his face were built like a wall, and his forehead rose to a sea of dark hair.

“Quite seriously, ma'am, we owe you our lives. We would've perished out there if you hadn't come along. We want to repay you somehow, with work or money or whatever it is you want.”

But she was tired and there were too many people hovering around her fire. She only wanted them out of her house. “That's very kind,” she said. “I only want your health, and your safe journey home.”

Feb 16: Winds > 30 NE, rain

Feb 17: Ship aground,
Alexandria
, 7 survivors, NE 10

Feb 18:
Alexandria
sunk, no sign left of wreck, crew to Boston, wind SW 12, two brig, one schooner

The sailors packed themselves into the wagon like chickens in a crate. Mesha sat amid their heat and comfort, an oversize wool coat fastened at her waist with her former owner's leather belt, the silver buckle glinting at her midriff. The coat sleeves frayed at the wrists, and she pulled at the loose threads with her teeth. Joe stood by the wagon and adjusted his cap in a line over his eyebrows. He shook Hannah's hand and climbed onto the seat beside Billy. He watched Hannah recede into the distance until he couldn't see her anymore. They traveled the rutted road toward the harbor. The girl whispered with one of the men and then cried halfway to the harbor, and after that it was quiet except for the wheels clamoring over rocks in the road and men coughing and spitting over the side of the wagon.

After a while, the sounds of the harbor rattled on the wind. The men moved around in the back of the wagon to get a view of the water.

“I'm de only girl,” Mesha said. “Girl. Boy. Girl. Boy.” She pointed to one of the men, then herself, then another of the men, then herself, on and on, until Izzy hushed her with an arm around her shoulders. “Whe we goin? Will dey be chilren? Why me de only one?”

The sight of masts rose above the trees, then around the next corner, sails curved like wings. “The packet's docked along the back here,” Billy said, guiding the horse through wagons and skiffs up on cradles and men milling about with duffel bags or standing around smoking their clay pipes.

When Billy brought the wagon to a halt, the stronger men climbed out and walked along the dock eyeing the packet. Billy introduced Joe to the packet captain, Henry Mechum, whom she had gotten to know during her visits to the harbor. As the men climbed aboard, Mesha cried furiously. She stood on the dock and held fast to a piling. “No. No. No.”

The men gathered around her, cooed and cajoled her. “It's okay, miss, you've seen the worst of it.”

“There's nothing wrong with being afraid,” Joe said. “We all are, but we're going to get on that boat together and sail to Boston, and when we step foot on those streets we'll all feel much better because we'll know there was no reason for us to be afraid.”

“I don't want to go. No.” The girl cast a pleading look toward Billy, who could only turn away. She'd gotten rid of the man who'd taken Mesha from her family. There was nothing else she could do for this girl. That was what she told herself as she walked off, passing a cluster of sailors standing in front of the grocery.

“G'morning,” one of them said.

Billy tipped her hat without showing her face, and the rest grunted in her direction. A flock of boys huddled over a game of marbles with the focused intent of men at the helm. Boy. Girl. Boy. Billy did not look back at the packet or listen for the girl. At the fishmonger she bought a big piece of cod, some shrimp, a strip of haddock, and a bunch of scallops. Her next stop was the bakery for bread, and then over to Millie Bragg, who worked on the cod flakes with an authority that frightened most men.

“How you doing today, Millie?”

“Same as every other day.”

Billy held out a folded wad of money that Millie stuffed into her bodice between two tremendous breasts. Their soft flesh bulged against her corset and dress so that the fabric looked about ready to burst and set loose its fearsome cargo. Millie's face was full and square, her features stacked one on top of the other like rocks.

“My oldest's fourteen now and wants to go out on a whaler. Near died when he told me that. After his father, I don't think I could live with another gone to sea.” She flipped the gutted cod and flung salt across the white meat and worked her way down the flake, her skirt hem shortened to keep the fabric from the mud and fish guts.

“It's hard to keep a man ashore in this town.”

“Well, he's just going to have to learn something else.”

“No doubt he will,” Billy said, and received the bottle that Millie had strapped under her skirt, tucking it into her jacket. “I'll be seeing you.”

“No doubt,” she said, not looking up from the flake.

Billy sat atop the wagon, the bottle a comfort against her chest. She wanted to erase the sound of Mesha's voice from her mind. The girl was everything about Jamaica and all that came after. She reached for the bottle and took a hard swig. The rum ran down her chin and she wiped it on the back of her hand and took another drink. With the horse in motion, her mind wandered and she took the long way back to the lighthouse, around the Mill Pond and up Old County Road.

***

Tom landed on the porch after the men left. He congratulated her on a successful rescue and made tea for her while she sat in front of the fire. “I'm glad you had Billy to help you,” he said.

“Yes,” Hannah said.

“But he can't stay forever, Hannah.”

Hannah drank her tea and stared into the fire. She didn't want to think about Billy leaving.

Tom placed his hand over Hannah's where it rested on the arm of her chair.

“I want us to be married, Hannah,” he said. “I'll help you with the rescues if that makes a difference. My furniture business is doing well, and I've saved money. We can live here at the lighthouse, and I'll keep my house for our retirement. We can have a good life together.” He got on one knee then, his face lit up by the fire, the ring he held flashing in the light.

“Hannah Snow, will you marry me?” he said. “I'll do everything in my power to make you happy.”

Hannah placed her tea on the table. “Stand up,” she said.

Tom remained before her on one knee. “I love you, but I can't wait any longer. I must know. Please, Hannah, be sensible.”

She placed her hands on his cheeks and kissed his forehead.