Dark Light

22

We crossed the porch into a chorus of wind and surf, the tree canopy writhing above us. It was a black night, but the sand trail was luminous through bare trees. The trail glowed white in the darkness as if saturated with sunlight from years in the tropics.

“I have only one flashlight. I’m sorry.” Chestra had changed into slacks, and a white blouse that snapped like a sail until she got her jacket on. She’d handed me a rain slicker as we went out the door and I was carrying it under my arm as I followed.

“Do you do this often?”

“What?”

I had to yell to be heard above the wind. “Do you…do you have some kind of shelter? Is that where we’re headed?”

“Shelter …Why?” It was impossible to hear so close to the beach, and she laughed the question away.

Chestra may have had a flashlight, but she didn’t use it. She seemed to know exactly where she wanted to be and was in a rush to get there. The storm was rolling in from the mainland—cumulus towers flickering to the east—as clouds sumped cooler air off the water, fueling volcanic updrafts with a black Gulf wind. It’s not unusual for sea and storm to interact in opposition. The woman had to lean toward the beach as she walked, one hand out to steady herself against the wind.

The trail narrowed as we crossed a dune of sea oats and cactus, trees behind us, ocean ahead. There were no stars, no horizon. The sea was a vague, unsettled darkness. Shoreline was defined by sound; whitecaps by the faint fluorescence of breakers as waves sailed shoreward, ridge after slow-rolling ridge. They made a keening hiss, accelerating as they bottom-shoaled, and then imploded—boom—before their mass was suctioned seaward, a formless volume reforming.

The rhythm was respiratory: flowing, then ebbing. Implosions were steady as heartbeats. It was as if something was alive out there, a huge and breathing darkness inhabiting a void that was the Gulf of Mexico.

“This is why I usually come in October!”

“What?”

Chestra waited for me to draw closer. “This is why I come to Sanibel during hurricane season. I have the beach to myself, and the storms are magnificent!”

We were on the beach, walking toward Sanibel Lighthouse, waves to the right, trees and a boardwalk on our left. On the horizon, storm clouds were mountainous lanterns that flared internally, discharging in random disorder. Ahead, the lighthouse turret strobed as precisely as a metronome: flash…flash—ten-second pause—flash…flash. Each frail burst was absorbed by darkness, diffused by wind.

“Do you feel that? Wait!” The woman held her hand up, and stopped. She tilted her head as if trying to identify an unfamiliar sound.

“Feel what?”

“The wind off the ocean. It’s dying.”

Darkness seemed to slow its respirations as my senses tested.

She hooked her arm into mine, a gesture so natural I didn’t notice for a moment. “The storm,” she said. “It’s nearly here.”

A squall cell moving seaward siphons air from the Gulf until just before it hits. The transition is prefaced by a momentary calm, then a gust of cold air as wind direction reverses. That period of calm is a dangerous time to linger in an open area because the storm, only minutes away, is preceded by a low-pressure wall that’s supercharged with electricity.

She was right. The sea breeze had calmed. We were standing on a base of silicone, within spray’s reach of a saltwater conductor. Hard to imagine a more precarious place. “It’s coming, all right,” I yelled. “We need to find cover.”

She was facing the storm. “Not yet. Just a little longer. Please?”

“Chessie”—a balloon of chilled air enveloped us—“this is crazy. We have to go now.”

I winced as a searing light bleached the world of color. A simultaneous explosion darkened it. A wall of wind followed, gusting cold from the east, and I felt the first fat drops of rain.

“Go ahead, Doc. I’m fine. This is what I love to do!”

In another cannon burst of electricity, I saw her face—she was smiling, skin pale as snow, and her eyes were closed.

Our arms were still linked. I tugged and stepped away, hoping she would follow. She didn’t. It was pouring now.

“Chess!”

“I’m okay. It’s what I want!”

Air molecules sizzle when torn from adhesion by electricity. Their glow is a zigzag schematic of the voltage that obliterates them. Air sizzled now as lightning bracketed us, positive and negative ions rejoining in thunderous strokes. A lightning bolt, when grounded through human tissue, is five times hotter than the surface of the sun. It cauterizes as it wounds—in one side, out another. The hole is darkened by exploded blood cells.

“We can’t stay here. I’m serious. This is insane.”

“Isn’t it! It’s exquisite!” She was laughing, her formal hairdo sodden ringlets in slow collapse.

I couldn’t leave her to the storm. A woman her age? For a moment, only a moment, I felt the same strange sense of freedom that I’d experienced during the worst of the hurricane. I was powerless against the random physics of earth and sky. Analysis was pointless, so why waste energy thinking about what might happen? A shadow vanishing into itself—that was the sensation. Release…

Above my head, there was a molecular crackle as a bolt touched the beach so near I smelled the smoke of incinerated sand. Another exploded in the canopy of a distant palm—fronds twirled like feathers through a fog of rain.

This was worse than insane, it was stupid. This wasn’t an unavoidable hurricane, it was a common squall. I squatted, swept Chestra Engle into my arms, and carried her through the rain toward Southwind.

D oc?”

Rain was rivering down the small of my back, my boat shoes were sodden. In my arms, the woman was a source of warmth, not a weight.

“Doc?”

“Chess.”

“Is…there something wrong?”

No, there was nothing wrong. Because it was the shortest distance, I’d carried her cross-country, angling into Chestra’s estate from the beach. With her still in my arms, I’d stopped just outside the picnic gazebo, the nearest structure, warm rain sluicing down. She was asking why we were standing in the rain when we could be inside. Why didn’t I carry her an additional few steps to the dry chairs that sat upon the dry floor next to the drink cart and hammock, all sheltered by the gazebo’s screens and shingled roof.

Behind us, there was a rumble of thunder…a flash. Then another. I used each micromoment of illumination to study the woman’s face. I’d been doing it since first noticing an aberration created by the brief and dazzling light—nothing else explained it. It was the illusion that Chestra’s appearance changed slightly with each incandescent blast. She’d made a remark about storms—“I get energy from them!”—that sounded offhand at the time but now seemed weirdly applicable.

“Doc? You’re a big strong guy, and I won’t pretend I don’t like being carried like some sultan’s jewel, but I think it’s time to put me down.” She laughed, and placed her palm warm against my face, tracing its shape. I’d lost my bandage in the rain, and her stroke was tender. “I promise I won’t go galloping back to the beach. Cross my heart.”

She did, touching a finger to her breast as I watched. Her white blouse was soaked, translucent in storm light, her body visible beneath. I waited for another lightning burst…then one more, my eyes now staring into hers.

The illusion wasn’t imaginary, yet it was still an illusion. Had to be an illusion. With each bloom of electricity, the woman appeared fuller, younger. I could see the way she’d looked in her fifties…now her forties. She was as beautiful as any woman in her family. Chestra was as beautiful as any woman I’d ever held.

Because of storm light? There could be no other reason. The human eye is sensitive; retina cones can numb. Stare at a star for more than a minute and it will vanish—an illusion.

Still…

No—it did make sense. Our perception of reality is visually based. Change the light and our reality is changed. We are a photosensitive species. There are certain processes in chemistry in which light alters not only the appearance of a substance but also its molecular configuration. In a laboratory, mammalian cells mutate if grown in a room with fluorescent lighting. Light absorbed through the eye affects our pineal gland’s production of serotonin. Red light penetrates more deeply into our tissues than blue light. Our DNA is coded to repair some—but not all—cellular damage caused by ultraviolet light. It’s an omission that defines the aging process more accurately than the clumsy prop we invented to measure age: time.

Illusion or reality, the storm was indifferent.

I ducked through the gazebo’s doorway, let Chestra’s feet swing to the floor, then stepped back and watched as she flipped water from her hair and hands. “My God, I haven’t had that much excitement since…since”—her voice was energized—“since…well, I think it would be indelicate for me to confess.”

“Sounds interesting.”

“Doesn’t it? I so wish it were true.”

“Don’t give up hope. I like indelicate women. Confessions, too.”

She was there again, alive behind those eyes: a younger woman inside, staring out, saying, Show me. Prove it.

I answered aloud. “Okay, I will.” I stepped closer, unsure of my own intent. I touched my fingers to Chestra’s face as gently as she’d touched mine. She held my gaze a moment longer before looking at the ground—a retreat. Or submission?

“I’m a mess, Doc. My hair, and my clothes are soaked.”

“So I see.” The blouse was pasted against her skin, and I cupped my hand around her warm ribs. “This material, when it’s wet—I like the color better.”

The color of her skin, I meant.

She did not look up as she said, “We should get back to the house, and find towels. We’ll catch our death.”

I placed an index finger beneath her chin and lifted. Her face was dark, then abruptly illuminated as lightning crackled in the treetops. For an instant, her eyes incandesced blue as a welder’s torch…then vanished into shadow as the gazebo vibrated beneath us, our ears ringing.

“My God, that was close! What a peach of a storm, though, Doc, huh?” She turned away, instantly changed, her voice friendly, conversational—herself again.

The air was a mix of ozone and smoke. I’d felt a tingling through my wet shoes. Storm light had, once again, transformed perception, and all the potential it implied.

In a similar conversational tone, I replied, “That was too close,” as I, too, attempted to return to normal. “Do you know how many people a year are killed by lightning in Florida? Chessie, it’s not safe to be on the beach when a storm is so close…”

I continued talking, listening to myself as if removed from the room. Something unexpected had happened between us. What? Why? Tomlinson’s ridiculous theory about sexuality and seesawing barometric pressure came into my head, and was dismissed just as quickly.

I’d held a woman in my arms. My body had reacted. My eyes and modern brain had cooperated by creating a preferred reality. As an explanation, it was…rational.

There are certain rare people, however, who are born with a pheromone signature so potent that, even in a crowded room, every member of the opposite sex is aware when they enter, or exit. Maybe it came down to that. Sensuality is more subtle than sexuality; beauty is more complicated than bone structure, elastic skin, and an assemblage of hydrated cells. With certain women, I realized, age did not matter. Mildred Chestra Engle was one.

“…Chess, when you feel that blast of cold air? You should head for cover fast. Weather’s volatile around salt water. When unequal pressure systems collide, it’s more like an explosion than a storm.”

Jesus, was I as stuffy and bland as I sounded?

Chestra’s smile said Yes, but it was okay. She was the good hostess once again, ever polite. She had her arms folded modestly across her chest, hiding herself, but freed a hand long enough to motion me toward the door. “I know about dangerous storms. I made you a proposition, remember? A business proposition concerning a boat that was lost in a storm a long time ago. Come on, I’ll show you.”

It was an excuse not to be alone in our sodden clothes. We both knew but played along. The gazebo was already filling with the scent of her. The September air was body-heated.

She led, I followed. I thought we were going to the house. Instead, she led me to the family cemetery where I’d first heard her voice. Chestra knelt by a marble crypt that I recognized as the grave of Nellie Kay Dorn. She used the flashlight to illuminate the headstone next to it.

“This is my godmother,” she said and placed her hand upon the stone, an affectionate, familiar gesture. I got the impression Chestra came here often.

She held the flashlight steady. In the harsh light, I read what the stonecutter had engraved:

MARLISSA ARKHAM DORN

BORN FEBRUARY 7, 1923, VARGUS, AUSTRIA

DIED OCTOBER 19, 1944,

SANIBEL ISLAND, FLORIDA

WHOM THE SEA GIVES UP, GOD EMBRACES

October 19—she’d died in the hurricane Arlis had told us about.

Chessie stood. “It’s an old line, but I mean it: Let’s get out of these wet things and into a dry martini. What a night! I’ll show you Marlissa’s picture.”

I checked my watch: 11:20.

I told her, “Just one.”