Writing was impossible; he hadn’t written anything for days now. Every time he sat down with his notes and his research material, his thoughts became disorganized, fragmented. He was capable of thinking of one perfectly good sentence, but seldom of the one that followed it in a natural progression.
Lately he’d spent most of his time either in the lightroom or up in the lantern working on the Fresnel lens. The lantern was where he’d gone after Alix left in the car. He had still been in the bathroom then, cleaning the tub and walls and floor with bottled water and disinfectants, and he’d heard the car and looked out and seen her driving away. She hadn’t even told him she was leaving. But she would be back before long; she would never leave him permanently without saying good-bye.
He worked on the glass prisms and bull’s-eyes with cleaner and soft cloth. Catadioptric prisms refract and reflect; dioptric prisms and bull’s-eye lens refract. And what exactly does this mean, professor? Thus, the lens bends and magnifies rays so as to create a single plane of brilliant light. Very good. Two cohesive sentences in a row. Too bad he wasn’t downstairs at his typewriter. But then if he were, he wouldn’t be able to think of the next sentence. He didn’t even try now.
It was cold up here, but he was sweating; a drop of perspiration rolled down his cheek, to the corner of his mouth. It tasted salty, like a tear.
He moved the lens slightly on its ball-bearing track. He had spent half a day greasing and adjusting the track, so as to once again allow the lens to move smoothly and easily. Some large Fresnels were placed on wheels, others mounted on ball-bearing track, still others floated in beds of mercury. He turned the lens a bit more, to reach the rest of the catadioptric prisms near the bottom. He was almost done with the cleaning. Another few minutes would do it. This type of lens utilizes a set flash-and-eclipse pattern, which is known as the “light characteristic”; the interval of its repetition is known as its “period.” Ah, yes. And what did the Fresnel lens say to the approaching ship? Not tonight, dear, I’m having my period.
The quality of light coming through the lantern windows brightened suddenly. He glanced up and saw a shaft of sunshine, saw pieces of blue scattered among the gray wisps outside. The fog was burning off, the sky becoming clear. He stood up, squinting against the glare. Out to sea, the sun reflected in quicksilver flashes off the ruffled water. Beautiful sight. Better enjoy it now, all simple things like this, while he still could.
He stood for a time, watching the light patterns and the restless advance-and-retreat of the surf. He wondered where Alix had gone. And wished she were here with him, up above the Mitch Novotnys of the world. And dreaded what she might have to say to him when she returned.
He knelt to work on the lens again. In order to achieve maximum visibility, each lens had to be placed at a substantial height to compensate for the curvature of the earth-a minimum of one hundred feet for a First Order Fresnel, so that the light could be seen a minimum of eighteen miles at sea. Awkward sentence. One maximum and two minimums made for a minimum of clarity and a maximum of confusion. He cleaned a lens, polished it, cleaned another and polished that. First Order Fresnels can generate 680,000 candlepower, which allows them to be seen nventy-two miles at sea. Much better. Simple, declarative, exact. Always remember the rules of good composition, professor.
He finished the last of the prisms, straightened, and moved back near the open trapdoor. The incoming sunlight made the prisms and bull’s-eyes sparkle like jewels. Magnificent creation, the Fresnel. The correct pronunciation is Fray-nell, accent on the last syllable. More beautiful to his eyes than any diamond, any precious stone.
Reluctantly he stepped through the trap opening and started down the steep, creaky stairs. Nothing more to do in the lantern, and he needed to keep busy. That was the key to maintaining control, to keeping the crippling headaches at bay. Busy, busy. Busy, busy.
He entered the lightroom. The various parts of the diaphone and its air-compressor were strewn over the workbench: he had dismantled them again yesterday, for the third time. The tanks he had picked up in Portland were there too. But he wasn’t ready to test the diaphone yet, not until he was absolutely certain the parts were clean and rust-free and in proper working order. It fretted him that the diaphone might not work after all these years because his skill as a pseudo-wickie was lacking. In the days of manned lighthouses, keepers performed many maintenance and repair duties, among them winding the clockworks, refueling lamps, and trimming wicks. It was this last-named duty that led to the generic term “wickies.”
At the workbench he picked up one of the diaphone’s internal parts, studied it for a moment. He was reaching for a screwdriver when the telephone rang downstairs.
The hair on his neck prickled; he felt himself stiffen. He stood listening to two more rings. Then, taking his time, he put the metal part down, wiped his hands on a rag, and went out and down the two flights to the living room. The bell was ringing for the eleventh or twelfth time when he picked up.
“Hello?”
“How’d you like your running water this morning? How’d it smell to you?”
“It smelled like shit. The same as you do, Novotny.”
There was a pause, brief but satisfying. Then the muffled voice said, “Listen, you asshole, there’s more we can do-plenty more. You stay in that lighthouse, you’ll get hurt. Or your wife will.”
“You can’t threaten me,” Jan said. “And you can’t drive me out of here. I’ll fight you, Novotny. With my bare hands if that’s the way you want it.”
“Try fighting with a rifle slug in the belly.” There was a click and the line went dead.
Jan put the receiver down, gently. There was a line of tension across his neck and shoulders; otherwise he felt as he had before. His head didn’t hurt at all, hadn’t hurt in such a long time now that he could almost believe the pain and the bulging and the failing vision would never plague him again, that some sort of miraculous cure had been effected.
He started back to the stairwell. From outside, the sound of a car came to him faintly. He did a slow about-face, went into the kitchen, looked through the curtains. But it wasn’t Alix. The car that had stopped out by the fence was unfamiliar-an old sedan-and so was the tall, middle-aged, dark-haired woman getting out of it. He watched the woman come resolutely through the gate and approach the watch house. Whoever she was and whatever her reason for coming here, he wanted nothing to do with her. He retreated from the window, climbed up into the tower to the lightroom.
He didn’t hear her knock and he didn’t hear her drive away; he heard nothing. He worked in a kind of vacuum, watching his hands manipulate the diaphone and compressor parts as if the fingers were the steel extremities of a machine, listening only to the random ebb and flow of his thoughts. He might have been one of the old-time lightkeepers-the last lightkeeper on the West Coast. There are 450 lighthouses still operating in the continental United States; of that number, only thirty-four are manned. None of these is on the West Coast. It will not be long before all 450 U.S. lighthouses are fully automated under the long-range Lighthouse Automation and Modernization Project (LAMP), introduced by the Coast Guard in 1968.
The last wickie. A man alone against the dark…
He had finished reassembling both the diaphone and the compressor when Alix called his name from downstairs. It startled him: he hadn’t heard the car (odd, when he’d heard the other woman’s), nor had he heard her enter the house. She was just there, calling him in a voice that echoed and re-echoed in the brick hollow of the tower.
“I’m in the lightroom. Stay there; I’ll come down.”
He did not hurry this time either-especially not this time. Wiped his hands carefully, put some of his tools away first. Steeled himself on the way downstairs, because he expected this to be the beginning of the end. Expected to see her sitting on the couch, knees together, hands folded-her I-Have-Something-Very-Important-to-Say pose. Expected her to give him an ultimatum, and then, when he rejected it, to tell him good-bye.
But he was wrong-so wrong that a few minutes later, in a sudden release of tension, he burst out laughing.
She wasn’t sitting on the couch; she was standing in front of the wood-burner, her hair wind-blown, her cheeks ruddy from the wind, smiling at him. And she didn’t give him an ultimatum. And she didn’t tell him good-bye.
All she wanted was to invite him out for dinner!