Dear Paulie, Oct XX
Near three weeks at the light now. We get mail delivery only every fortnight, and then only if the weather is fair, which it has not been. I assume your letter(s) will arrive in due time, but for now, it has just been myself, the light, and the strange sounds from the nearby penal colony. Howls and screams, like they are more beast than human. Whatever their crimes, it seems unjust to keep them in this way. I do not envy those poor, benighted souls.
The last man stationed here left everything from coat to coffee pot. The mate of the Dolphin, the cutter that brought me out, said he just disappeared. Drowned, no doubt, or else deserted and perished on some rock. Perhaps it is unseemly to wear a dead man’s coat, but I have pushed aside conventional norms in my attempt to keep warm. The wind cuts right through my cotton jacket.
Watching the Dolphin’s last sail disappeared, I thought of you, a continent away. It is a cursed silly thought, but I had the strangest sense that I would never see you again. I will feel, I’m sure, foolish for the somber tone of this first letter the next time we share a drink. Only a year, right?
May you be spared the ague and stay warm and dry this winter. The latter is unlikely, but I wish it for you regardless.
Yours,
Jack
Dear Paulie, Nov XX
I have made two discoveries this week. One, a sea-bitten child’s doll, waterlogged and forlorn, kept in the keeper’s quarters instead of the store room. I have moved it back into the storeroom. I wonder if it was a keepsake from the previous keeper’s child; otherwise I should not know why he kept it so close. A queer thing.
The second is more mundane: a beached whale, stuck upon the rock. The seabirds were feasting, of course, and it was fresh enough that I cut some away for myself. I have spoken to you before about my brief time aboard the whaling ship [name]. It was at the end of the time of whales, and I was too young to remember when they were plentiful, but I soon came to understand the violence of their taking. We caught only a few, but it was perhaps a few too many for myself, and certainly for the other green boys. The stink of their rotting bodies permeated the ship for months, long after the tongueing was over.
This seems a more harmless, but ultimately just as productive, event. It is a comfort to see that the kitchen here is, for now, stocked enough for a few months' meals, if I am careful. Growing up, my mother and I often had to make do with a lot less. Never a harm to supplement your stocks in times of uncertainty.
Perhaps it was this brief return to the trials of my youth that has me humming an old song my mother used to sing as she worked in her garden. Ornery old woman, who despised me much of the time, but she loved her garden. The soil, the soil / the backbreaking toil.
How goes your own toil? Has Johnson been replaced, or is he still keeper? News reaches me slowly out here, and I have yet to receive anything from you. You haven’t forgotten your friend in your doddering old age, have you?
Yours,
Jack
Dear Paulie, Nov XX
It was so good to receive your letter with the supply shipment this week. Forgive my lapse in faithfulness. I hope you will not be too busy with your new 1st man duties to keep up with your letters. Congratulations, you old salt. You’ve worked hard, and it’s beyond time for the LSS to recognize it.
And if I may be, briefly, vindicated—your news of Ed Seaward’s dismissal. About time. About damn time. Just the other day I discovered some old china plates in the storeroom, with the initials E.S. inscribed. I don’t need to tell you of the way my stomach dropped, or the hot shame that warmed my cheeks. It is perhaps absurd, to still feel the shame of that past circumstance now, so far from the Carolinas, and far beyond his reach, and yet I do still feel it—although less now, considerably less now, given your letter.
My apologies for this brief response, but the storms have kept me running up and down the tower steps for days, and I must rest.
Congratulations again. I look forward to seeing those new buttons still gleaming in eleven months’ time.
Yours,
Jack
Addendum, Nov XX,
It’s been a week since I scrawled the above, Paulie, but the supply cutter still hasn’t come, so I might as well add a bit on the empty paper. The queerest thing occurred yesterday. Crows—yes, crows, or else some other black bird that appears uncannily like them—circled the tower for hours. You couldn’t see the light through the mass of them, and I worried that the blockage would cause a wreck. As soon as the sun began to set, they departed, all at once, as if they had never been.
Queerer still, their calls sounded almost like human voices. I can easily see how men become estranged from themselves in isolation, and how stories of drowned mens’ souls in the bodies of seabirds proliferate.
If you get the chance, I would appreciate you asking your friend at the seventh LSS station–if indeed, you still meet up with him on patrols—if he might ask the university man who sometimes comes to that station about the habits of birds and light.
Dear Paulie, Dec 01
I had the dream again. Only, in the dream, instead of Johnny, it was you. With your hand just a hairsbreadth from my own. I woke up before we found the body. I’m glad. I didn’t want to see you that way.
The dream plagued me all through last night, although I had enough adventure that I should have been able to forget. The light went out early in the evening. The wick, which I had just trimmed, was suddenly all consumed, and all the replacements in the storeroom were misplaced. I must have moved them without thinking. I could see a freighter in the distance, running too-close to the shoreline. I had to compile a series of hand-lanterns, waving them frantically, before finally placing one within the tower’s lantern, so that it would be amplified by the fresnel lens. It was enough to direct the ship to safety, thank God. I managed to find another box of wicks under an empty oil drum. They were sticky, but they lit fine, and are burning still.
I don’t know what I would have done, had I been responsible for yet more death.
I hope you will forgive my saying that I miss you. This isolation takes a toll on a man, even one such as myself.
Yours,
Jack
Dear Paulie, Dec XX
Sleep has been hard to come by these past few days. It’s difficult to balance one’s sleep when one is up all night, every night, and the nights become longer and longer. Made more difficult is my own desire to see the sunlight for the few paltry hours afforded to me.
This morning, as I took my walkabout beach end of the rock, I found a green glass bottle. There was a letter inside, a set of coordinates and a sketch of a man’s face. Beardless, dark eyed, the man looked almost like myself. The coordinates match an island off the coast of Virginia, only about a day’s journey from you and number 4 LSS station.
There’s no way Seaward could still be—there’s no way. But I am uneasy.
In the storeroom, I moved a tarp, expecting to find another parcel of hardtack, but found instead two antique armchairs and an engraved writing set. All were of the finest quality, and engraved, somehow, with the initials E.S.
At the next supply drop, I mean to ask about the history of this place, particularly the names of the men stationed as, for some reason, there are no names recorded in the logbook. Not even initials. I have broken this habit, recording my name and origin, as I was instructed to do by the Lighthouse Board. If I am washed away, let these small remarks serve as a reminder that I was here, once. I was alive. I struggled, but I did my duty.
Yours,
Jack
Dear Paulie, Dec 24
Merry Christmas, Paulie. Your letter and the books—the books, Paulie!—are much welcome. More than I can express here.
It’s been a hard few weeks, I am ashamed to admit. I’ve not been sleeping, although I’ve found it difficult to get out of bed. I can’t stop thinking about the bottle I found. I will never truly escape him, will I? Every step, his will be right behind mine, even if only in my imagination. If only I knew how to throw the yoke of shame off. Instead it curdles inside me, burning a hole in my gut. I have shunned the sunlight. I have shunned my work, and in my absence, one of the panes of the glass in the lighthouse lantern shattered, and was not repaired for days. I reached the bottom of the abyss and I languished there—but no more! I have sampled all the shame has given me, and even if I cannot ever truly free myself from it, I will do right by you, and by my duty.
Today I aired out my little room, restored the glass pane, and I am even writing to you with the aforementioned writing tools. Throughout my service, my penmanship has been lackluster, to say the least—as you have often pointed out—so here, how do you like this? I have decided that by the time I see you in ten months, I will be as an ancient scribe, fine-tuning my letters.
I have been afraid of the lighthouse, Paulie, but I will not let it master me. I will return to you and to home in due time, all the better for this long, quiet reflection. The blessed, blessed books you have sent along will be good company.
Many thanks, my friend.
Yours,
Jack
Dear Paulie, Jan 13
You will not believe what I write here, but I swear to you, on the lives of all that we have saved together, that what I tell you is true. Or at least, I truly believe it to have happened. I have begun to suspect something is not altogether ‘right’ with me, out here, alone.
There has been a man here. Every evening, he walks through my kitchen, and stands at the coffee pot. Then, sharply, he looks out the window. He dashes to the door, throws it open, and, as if picked up by an invisible wave, he falls. His mouth, as he falls, is open. Like he’s screaming.
Every day, he does this. And I think of Johnny. I keep having the dream, only now, instead of Johnny, or you, I see this man. He’s a scrawny thing, with sea-green eyes, black hair—grown out long, almost like a woman’s—and his face when he falls—I can’t describe it to you. It would break your heart like it has broken mine. I can’t stop him. I can’t even speak to him. All I can do is watch.
In desperation, I had the warden of the local colony over for dinner. He sailed over in a small tender, not unlike the one the LSS has, along with his wife. They kindly brought a thin little hen, whose neck I broke for our supper. She was tender, but there was little enough of her to go around. The warden seemed to have some knowledge, or expectation, of my background, as there was no discussion as to whether I would kill and cook the thing. Well, I did, and I won’t think about it beyond that.
I think I believed that with others in the house, the man would not come. But he did. I seemed to be the only one who could see him, and when the door flew open, neither of my guests so much as stirred. They simply finished their coffee and bid me goodnight, leaving me alone with the ghosts and the light and the never ending sea.
Am I crazy, Paulie? Is this what it’s like? Everything else feels so solid, so stable, I don’t know what to think. Please write me as soon as you get this. I don’t know how much longer I can hold out against this place.
Faithfully and always yours,
Jack
Dear Paulie, Jan ?
As I still have not received a reply to my previous letter, I have no choice but to write another. I hate to consider what you must think of me now. If you were here, if you could see it too, you would understand. I have to believe that you would understand.
The weather has been worse. I have taken to puzzling over some old books in the storeroom, even though they make my head ache. I have to do something. The longer the freezing rain pours down, the more my hands hurt. They—I—never get a break. I must keep the light going all day and night until the sky lightens, which, I suspect, may never happen. All this suffering, and you can’t even
Dear Paulie, Jan ?
I’m sorry. You know how I get when I’m tired. And I am so tired. And hurting. And lonely. I’ve been smoking so much that my tobacco stores are threatening to run low. I guess after that, I’ll have to drink the coffee until it, too, runs dry.
The man who dies every evening has been speaking to me. I don’t know when the shift occurred, but he has taken to smoking with me. We sit in the lantern together and he tells me what it is like to be dead. Says I ought to know, and then looks at me. Looks at me like you do, like you can see straight through my coat, through my skin, into the core of me. He says I’m strong, but being strong isn’t enough to survive. He says that sometimes it breaks you. He says that the dead have no pride. I think that will be a welcome change for me. With pride there is shame. And I am so tired of shame. It burns me. It has been burning me.
Are you ashamed of me, Paulie?
Your friend, even now,
Jack
Dear Paulie, ?
You weren’t with us that day. I don’t remember why. The Jewel had foundered on the reef and was breaking apart in the surf. After we launched the lifeboat, I was tasked with calling out for the Jewel’s crew. I could hear them screaming for help. I directed us through the surf, through the towering waves, even when the voices had ceased. We must go out, we do not have to come back, I said to myself. Then a wave hit us all wrong, and Johnny fell out. I grabbed his hand. Then he was gone.
I should have been able to save Johnny, shouldn’t I? I had his hand in mine. I let go of it. How could I have let go of it? How could I have let him drown like that? How could I have made his mother weep the way she did? How dare I force her to bury an empty coffin?
Three times I have seen a man on the island, in the sand. He stands and watches me. I can’t make out his face. I went out to where I saw him, but could not find any trace of the human, except, as if left there for myself and myself alone, a revolver. There’s a bullet in the chamber. I have taken to keeping it beside me.
From the colony, I can hear the workers sing. Soil, soil / backbreaking toil.
I don’t think I will see you again, after all.
Yours,
Jack
Dear Paulie
I am sorry for writing you this, but I wish to leave some record, if only for the next man they send out here to die. To warn him.
Forgive my handwriting; the gun went off and caught me in the shoulder. I won’t tell you how, although I fear you might guess. Foolish of me. I cannot even die properly.
But it reminds me of the first time we met, when you pulled me, half-drowned and hurting badly, from the sea. The old Magician’s Blessing had been set alight, and in the ensuing abandon ship, a spar had caught me in the shoulder. I was sure I was going to die. Then you pulled me from the wet and I thought—oh, well, I’ll live, but at what cost? I thought I would have to give up the life I had made—clawed, scrounged, stolen—for myself.
You never told anyone my secret, though. You never thought less of me then—or if you did, you never showed it. You got me hired on at the station, and you trained me to save lives. You counseled me against cavorting with Ed Seaward and I failed to listen. I have no one but myself to blame for ending up on this cursed rock.
I never told you what actually transpired between us, and now I know I never will. I still burn at the shame of it, at the things he said about me. How he laughed. What a foolish girl, he said, and worse things. Much worse. He took everything from me, and laughed while he did, but I suppose that life was never really mine.
This one, though, this one is.
Truly, it was a kindness for the keeper to send me here, rather than dismiss me outright. I’m told I have you to thank for that. So thank you. I have tried to do some good in this world—and didn’t I? Didn’t I do my duties? Johnny, I lost, but many more I saved. Do you remember the little girl we lifted out of that sinking lifeboat? I believe that was the wreck of the Santa Rosa. She was so brave. And the crew of H.M.S. Ripper that we snatched from the jaws of death one by one. The El Vagabundo. All hands saved. The Tiger. The USS Lamplight.
I have made something of myself after all.
The light whispers as it turns. A storm is coming. And I see it on the horizon: a squall larger than anything you or I have survived before. I still have some tobacco left, and I mean to smoke all of it before I depart this world.
Don’t worry that I am alone. The dead man is with me, steadying my hand as I write. It is not so terrible, he says, and I believe him. We have grown close in our time here. It is nice to be with another person, and so I hope that you will remember our friendship fondly. I hope you will not grieve too long. When you go, I will be waiting for you, too. Don’t be frightened. I’m not.
Your friend, always,
Jack
Dearest Jack, May 12
It has been months since I received your last letter—glad you liked the books, if you’ve not received my last damn twenty letters saying so—and I am worried for your health. Please send a
[LETTER RETURNED TO SENDER. RECIPIENT DECEASED.]