Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 151, Nos. 1 & 2. Whole Nos. 916 & 917, January/February 2018

The Lighthouse and the Lamp by William Dylan Powell

A winner of the Robert L. Fish Memorial Award for best short story by a new American author for his EQMM debut “Evening Gold” (2006), Houston writer William Dylan Powell has gone on to produce many more published stories, and he is working on a novel featuring the characters from the series to which this new story belongs.

Corpus Christi, Texas, 1984

I set my hardback of Life, the Universe and Everything down on the deck of David’s Fifth Margarita and clapped my hands twice. Ringo poked his head up out of his sleeping fern, yawned, and then clambered down to the galley fridge. Opening a Lone Star, he threw the cap in the trash and brought me the bottle, about a third of it foaming out.

“You’re getting better at that, buddy,” I said.

A warm breeze drifted through the boat, and I took my straw hat off for a moment — letting the sun caress my face and listening to the lapping of the water all around. Overhead I heard gulls barking, and somewhere offshore the moan of an oil tanker’s air horn. Between the hot sun and the cold beer and the gentle rocking of the boat, I’d just started slipping into napsville when I heard the thud of a car door on the beach.

I stood and stretched, noticing a sky blue Caprice Classic parked next to my Jeep. Walking up the pier, slow as winter pinesap, was a woman of at least eighty in a bright blue dress clamping a huge white summer hat to her head with one hand and holding a wicker basket in the other. She fought the wind down my private pier.

I slipped a flip-flop on my good foot and tightened my wooden leg — making my way down to give the old dear a hand.

“Hello, there!” she called from the pier. “Billy?”

The woman removed her hat to reveal a tuft of thinning white hair tied artfully in a silk handkerchief and oversized glasses that magnified her eyes comically. “Billy, is that you?”

“Is that Clarabelle Mayhew?” I shouted.

“Mind if I come aboard?” She wore a tight smile, a polite smile, but her brow was more wrinkled than her hands and she looked around as if expecting a monster to jump out at her from under the pier.

I helped her up the steps to the foredeck, where a series of chaise lounges faced the bay.

“Can I get you something to drink? A glass of water, maybe?”

Clarabelle Mayhew lived at the old lighthouse just east of me in Aransas Pass. Resident and caretaker, in fact — a strong, practical woman from West Texas I enjoyed talking to down at Benny’s Bait Shop and the St. Genevieve church on Sundays.

“Vodka,” said the woman. “If you’ve got it.” She rested the wicker basket at her feet and plopped into a chaise lounge.

Mixing her drink, I clapped my hands three times. Ringo hopped down from his fern and opened a nearby cabinet, pouring peanuts into a small bowl and setting the bowl on the table in front of Clarabelle Mayhew.

“Oh, dear,” she said, squinting through her thick glasses. “That’s quite clever.”

“Thanks,” I said, giving Ringo a worm. He sucked it into his mouth like a child eating pasta and nestled back into the leaves of his sleeping fern. “I saw a monkey in La Plata do that once and I’ve been training him ever since.”

“David’s Fifth Margarita,” she said, shielding her thick glasses from the sun and looking out over the bay. “What an interesting name for a boat. Who’s David?”

“No idea,” I said, wrapping napkins around our drinks with a pair of rubber bands and setting them on the table. “Bought it out of Houston. It’s bad luck to change a boat’s name.”

“Yes, well, as a matter of fact, it’s luck I’ve come to talk about, Billy.”

“Okay,” I said, lighting a cigaret.

Clarabelle Mayhew slugged her vodka in one long gulp — wiping her chin with her wrist. Then she let out a noise like a steam engine coming to a stop. “Have you ever made a wish, Billy?”

“Well... yeah. I guess we all have. Right? Birthday parties? Coins in fountains? That sort of thing?”

“Exactly that sort of thing,” she said, staring at me with magnified eyes big as pie plates.

“A few nights ago, I was hunting down a water leak in a storage space in the lighthouse,” Ms. Mayhew said, placing her wicker basket up on the table. “When I ran across this.”

I opened the basket. Inside was what looked like an orange vintage tea towel depicting kittens in rocking chairs sipping tea.

“Cute,” I said, not sure what else to add. “That little one is knitting his own ball of yarn.”

Clara rolled her eyes, “You sure you’re a private investigator?”

“Well, I’m not licensed if that’s what you mean.”

“This,” she said, unwrapping the towel to reveal an old-fashioned, honest-to-goodness “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” Persian oil lamp.

“Whoa!” I took my hat off and leaned in close. The color of an antique brass doorknob, the lamp looked like a caricature of a genie’s magic lamp — long and flat and ovular with a raised loopy handle and an elegant curved spout that accommodated the flame when lit. It smelled metallic, like I’d imagine an old suit of armor from the Knights of the Round Table would smell.

“Where on earth did you get that?” I asked.

“In the upstairs lighthouse storage room,” said Clarabelle. “When we had all that rain a few days back, I noticed I had a leak somewheres. The storage area one floor below the beacon room is where I keep lens cleaner, hollow wicks, fuel additives, and stuff. I was following the path of the water when I found this on top of an old broken fog-detector module, just sitting there, plain as day.”

She snatched the lamp back and wrapped it up in the tea towel, placing it gingerly back in the basket.

“You’d never noticed it before?” I asked, taking a drag off my cigaret. “It just appeared, you say?”

“Billy, I’ve lived in that lighthouse more than forty years now. Ever since I moved here from Midland. I think I’d know if I had a magic lamp in the attic.”

“Magic lamp,” I said, laughing.

“Magic lamp,” Clarabelle repeated, closing the lid of the wicker basket. “Billy, this here is a real-life wish-granting magic lamp, so help me God!”

I thought she was being funny calling it a magic lamp, but she looked serious as a fire ant — eyes wide, daring me to challenge her. I felt my smile fade. Not quite knowing how to proceed, I stalled by mixing us another round of drinks. I’d never actually considered the possibility that Clarabelle Mayhew might not be all there. And I was brainstorming ways to bring our chat to a close as I mixed two more vodkas and set them down on the table before us.

“I know this sounds crazy...” she said.

“No!” I insisted, rubbing the back of my neck. “Not crazy at all. And, well, it’s certainly a beautiful antiquity.”

Clarabelle sipped her vodka with a raised pinky finger, taking it slow this time around. Then she held up a finger, opening the wicker basket up again and coming out with a large, thick paper folded into fours. “The lamp was sitting on this when I found it.”

I took the paper from her and folded it flat along a side table, trying not to let the wind take it. It looked faded and stained, paled by age, but sturdy and thick like a fancy invitation. In dark, broad calligraphy the note read:

“Ha!” I said. “That’s fun.” I refolded the note and handed it back.

She said nothing, just stared at me with the eyes of a curious insect. Then she snatched the note back, gathered the basket, and stood with surprising speed — shuffling her way from the foredeck toward the pier.

Ringo hopped out of his fern and followed after her.

“Ms. Mayhew?” I said, following too. My peg leg knocked against the warped wood of the pier, and she mashed her hat low on her head as she marched through the wind toward her car. Sea gulls scampered away as we walked toward the beach. “Ms. Mayhew?” I called. “Did I say something to upset you?”

At her car, she put the basket with the lamp in the backseat. Then she whipped a wad of keys out of her purse and held it in front of her face — squinting to find the right one. Pausing to take a breath, she threw open the car’s trunk.

The afternoon sun caught the block of 100-dollar bills in a surreal, angelic glow. Packed and wrapped neat as an infantryman’s footlocker sat a huge block of cash that took up almost the entirety of the trunk space. The band around each pack of bills read $10,000. I started adding it in my head, then lost track.

“Well?” Ms. Mayhew said. “What do you think? Looks like magic to me.” Ringo hopped up on the bumper of the car and peeked inside.

I scanned my private beach. As usual, not a soul in sight; just the odd sandpiper or sea gull and a handful of bright purple men-of-war, washed up on the beach with their tentacles stretched in desperation. Overhead a red Coast Guard chopper flew a low approach north toward San Jose Island.

“I think you’d better get all that magic out of your car and into a bank, is what I think.”

I followed Clara Mayhew to the Bank of Texas in downtown Corpus Christi, where I helped her make a discreet deposit. Raul, the manager, was stone-faced and seemingly unimpressed when I requested that his security guard help her load and move the money inside. But he couldn’t hide the rapid pulse of the vein in his neck as she opened up the trunk of her car and revealed the money, which upon closer inspection was stacked inside four U-Haul boxes.

It was a hundred shy of one million dollars.

“I took a hundred and had breakfast at the Whataburger,” she said, “Still got ninety-seven dollars in my purse.” She patted her worn denim bag for emphasis. When she’d done with her deposit, we sat outside the bank on a wooden bench. Ringo climbed under and lay down in the shade.

For a minute, neither of us spoke; just watched two sea gulls in the parking lot fight over a French fry. “Okay, seriously,” I said, finally. “Where’d you get all that money?”

She held her hands out wide, palms up. “I done told you twice already! I wished for it, Billy. Just like the note said. I turned off the lighthouse beacon, which is a big deal actually because it’s a pain to get going again and hot as blazes in there. But I shut it off, lit the lamp and held it in front of me, faced the North Star, said my wish real loud three times, and that was it.”

“That was it?” I asked, “The money just fell out of the sky or appeared in a puff of smoke or something?”

“No, nothing happened at first. I sat there for a minute. Beans, my cat, came up there and looked out the window with me. I just sort of shrugged my shoulders and went to bed.”

“So how’d you get the money?”

“It was on my doorstep in the morning, in those boxes.”

“Okay,” I said. “So since it didn’t fall out of the sky or whatever, someone gave you the money. You just don’t know who.”

“I don’t care!” she said. “I got a magic lamp. Only reason I came to see you was on account of I didn’t want to be a little old lady alone with all that money. I sometimes get scared being all alone at my age. And let’s face it, you’re already rich. You wouldn’t steal it.”

My face grew hot. I took off my University of Texas ball cap and lit a cigarette. “But where did the money come from? I mean, what if someone wants it back?”

“It was the lamp gave it to me,” she said, her eyes daring me to prove her wrong. “And that’s not all it gave me!”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, the money was two nights ago. Last night I followed the instructions again and wished for... wished to see my sister Beatrice one last time. She died back in ’seventy-eight. Lung cancer.”

I smashed my cigaret out on the bottom of my flip-flop, blowing the last of my smoke away from us. “Did you see her again?” I asked.

“Come see for yourself.”

The speedometer in my Jeep read seventeen miles per our as I followed Clarabelle Mayhew across the Red-fish Bay Causeway. I had the top off, the sun warm on my shoulders, and Bill Anderson on the radio with “World of Make Believe.” Ringo sat on the shotgun floorboard, fur blowing in the breeze.

Under the bridge, a couple in a catamaran rode the afternoon breeze toward Hog Island. Jade green and shallow in most places, Redfish Bay was surrounded by oyster reefs and mangroves and bordered by huge patches of sea grass which lay windblown below us as if ruffled by an invisible hand.

A carload of teenagers in a Mustang honked and yelled as they blew by us at the end of the bridge, creeping down Highway 361 to the lighthouse.

Texas is about the size of Germany, but most of the coastline is relatively easy to navigate by water. So you don’t see tons of lighthouses like you do in places like Michigan, Alaska, or the Northeast. For the last one hundred years, there have been only seven.

But the lighthouse at Aransas Pass is a beaut, and one of Texas’s oldest. It’s lit for its legacy, not practicality. Predating the War Between the States, the old brown-brick tower is octagonal and squat by modern lighthouse standards. Up top, the beacon is housed in an all-glass room caged by guardrails with a small standing area around the top. In the 1860s, Confederate soldiers tried destroying the lighthouse with barrels of gunpowder, burying the giant reflector lens, so it couldn’t be used by Yankee soldiers. But they botched the job and by 1867 it was lit again. A large, yellow stilted beach house sits next to the tower.

“This isn’t the original home at this site, of course,” Clarabelle said, as she and I and Ringo stood on the porch. “The original got took many storms ago; Hurricane Celia the last back in ’seventy.”

She unlocked the front door and Ringo came face to face with an orange-and-white tabby. Clarabelle’s cat, Beans, saw Ringo and hissed, turning sideways with eyes wide as manhole covers and fur standing up like a porcupine. The cat ran into another room and we didn’t see it again the whole time we were there.

Clarabelle led me to a small breakfast area with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. “Have a seat,” she said, pouring water into a big red kettle and setting it to boil. Ringo climbed onto the table and helped himself to an apricot.

“Sorry,” I said. “I owe you an apricot. Monkeys aren’t big on manners.” I removed my ball cap.

She waved her hand dismissively and left the room. Came back with a large cardboard box and set it on the table. “That second night, last night, I must have fallen asleep around four or five in the morning. When I woke up I found this box on the doorstep.” It was a U-Haul moving box just like the first, filled with what looked like random bric-a-brac.

I reached into the box and picked up a black-and-white photograph in a cherrywood frame. The picture was of a woman of about twenty, taken just behind the girl’s shoulder as she looked back at the camera. Her face, delicate and fair, took up a third of the frame while in the background the crowd of people in cowboy hats and old-fashioned bolo ties watched a bull rider hang on for dear life at a crowded rodeo. Next to the woman was a group of high-school students, the boys in Midland High School letter jackets with bulldog patches on their chests and the girls with teased-up hair and beauty marks.

“I’d never seen that picture of her before,” Clarabelle said. “But that’s sure ’nuff my sister, Beatrice, back in high school. I asked to see her one more time, and there she was! All this other stuff was hers too.” I poked around a bit, uncovering stuffed animals, hairbrushes, makeup, a pink spiral notebook, and other effects. “Appeared this morning just out of the blue. So you see, Mr. Rascal, the lamp has to be magic.”

Ringo started to climb down into the box but I picked him up, his little paws leaving apricot stains on the cardboard. Clarabelle took the box off the table and poured us both a cup of strong black tea, watching my reaction with those saucer-sized glasses of hers. The slightest hint of a cataract was forming in one of her eyes and she seemed to be waiting for me to say something.

“Wow,” was all I had. I ran a hand through my hair and stared down into my tea.

“Wow is right. This is going to change everything for me. I’ve got money. I can do whatever I want. Just wish for whatever I want. I don’t know, maybe... go and do with friends.”

I never saw Clarabelle with any friends, which was probably why she was always at the bait shop and church — and maybe why she was so ready to believe in genies. But that wasn’t really any of my business. What was my business, now that I’d gotten involved, was the fact that somebody was messing with this poor old lady for some reason. Though, granted, most people wouldn’t mind being messed with in a million-dollar kind of way.

I sipped my tea; it smelled earthy, tasted strong and bitter. Clarabelle refilled my cup. We sat in silence for a while, she staring at the picture of her sister and me listening to the tick-tock of an old-fashioned cuckoo clock on the wall.

My head was light after the day’s sun and alcohol, and it felt good to help my brain settle with the combination of caffeine and silence. Get some bearings. Ringo climbed into the box of Clarabelle’s sister’s things and went to sleep. I gazed out the window at the grey-green Gulf and the off-white foam rolling into the beach.

Now, there clearly are no such things as genies. Right? But what harm is it that somebody’s giving little old bespectacled Clarabelle Mayhew a bunch of money and gifts? Oddly specific gifts, granted.

“You know,” I said, “my father used to say there was no such thing as a free lunch. And he was a lawyer. Those guys always stick someone else with the bill.”

Clarabelle shrugged. “Hard to complain about this kind of free lunch.”

“Okay, think about it this way,” I tried again. “Say this wasn’t a genie and it had to be someone you knew. Who could it be? If you just had to guess?”

She set the photo down and placed her hands in her lap. “That’s just it, Billy. I... I don’t have anyone. We moved here forty years ago, and we kept to ourselves. Paul died fifteen years ago of a heart attack in the night. I don’t think you ever met him; he was a machinist at Texas Petroleum. I didn’t have any family left after Beatrice and Paul had gone, and if I had they’d all be back in West Texas. I haven’t been back to Midland for forty years. There’s just... me.” She sat, blinking behind her giant glasses. Her tone wasn’t regretful but matter-of-fact.

“Can I see the lighthouse?” I asked. “You stay here,” I told Ringo, who never bothered getting up but just sat in the box licking the apricot juice off of his paws.

We stepped down the back stairs and past a flagpole where the six flags of Texas all flew — the American flag at the top — for the short walk to the light tower itself. A long, low storage building served as an adjunct to the lighthouse, and a small guesthouse was tucked into the far end of the pier.

I put my hand at the small of Ms. Mayhew’s back as she pointed her silver head into the wind and shuffled across the worn decking. The wind parted her thin white hair to reveal liver spots; the thought of this old dear climbing around a lighthouse fixing things on her own at all hours made my stomach queasy. A raised walkway connected the house and light tower, leading to a tall and narrow wooden door with a small diamond-shaped window.

The door creaked as we stepped inside, the creak echoing up the spiral staircase and sending shivers up my spine. I expected Clarabelle to climb the ancient metal stairs slowly, but she darted upwards two at a time and left me in the dust. I’m used to the old wooden leg, had grown to love it, even. But while walking with it didn’t bother me, stairs were always a bear. I stopped to rest several times, pausing to look out the small, square window halfway up. A huge blue heron loped by the window as I peeked out.

At the top of the stairs was a small hatch necessitating getting on your knees to crawl through. By the time I’d wiggled through and propped myself up on one leg, Clarabelle stood tightening a screw under a small shelf — the room’s only comforting feature. Even up here, she kept busy.

Clarabelle smiled as I made my way into the small space, setting the screwdriver down on the shelf upon which also sat a flashlight, a pair of binoculars, and a thermos. The choppy Gulf waters past the channel were dotted with boats and white-caps, and the beacon room’s floor-to-ceiling glass made for a great view.

“This is where the action is,” she said. “This here was always an American lighthouse. Them up at Bolivar and Matagorda were built by the Republic of Texas when it was its own country. But this here is one hundred percent U.S. of A.”

When I’d caught my breath, I took a minute to enjoy the view. The lighthouse was actually off of a small tributary just inland of the Lydia Ann Channel, about a half-mile with low-growing salt marsh on either side, the green reminding me of the clover-covered grass of County Cork, Ireland, when my father took me along on a business trip; I was about nine. I remembered him telling me that our warm air from the Gulf was what made Ireland’s green possible. I thought he had the answers to everything.

A pair of binoculars sat on a low ledge in the beacon room, and I scanned the area around the lighthouse itself. A man in waders gigged flounders down the beach, while farther out in the channel a tugboat pushed a pair of empty barges up toward Aransas Bay. On the channel you could see a few remote houses, generous and expensive looking, to both the north and south. An old wrecked shrimp boat to the north of the lighthouse was being swallowed by the sand — its bow lifting up and starboard as if sinking in rough waters.

“And this is where you made the wish?” I asked.

“I stood right here,” she said, taking her place in front of the light. “I just said what I wanted loud three times, and... well... voilà!”

The floor was made of thick stone, the old wood of the room freshly painted; cool and moist to the touch. There was no electricity, nowhere to hide anything or any person. Just a big light in the center, glass on the outside, and a small shelf. I looked under the shelf; two ladybugs crawled across the bottom.

I stepped out of the tiny beacon room and stood along the outer caged ledge of the upper lighthouse deck, lit a cigaret, and took another look around. Clarabelle followed, tightening the knot in the scarf around her head in the breeze; together we looked out over the water and the beach around the lighthouse. She took my hand. Patted it. Her fingers were cold and felt like worn parchment.

“You’ve been so sweet to spend the day with me,” she said. “It’s nice for me and Beans to have company for a change, but without all that money lying around I feel a lot safer. You don’t have to hang around.”

“But aren’t you curious?” I said. “I mean, you’ve just received a life-changing amount of money. Doesn’t that scare you, not knowing where it came from?” Drug dealers came to mind, but I didn’t want to scare her mentioning that.

“It came from the lamp, and that’s all I need to know.”

“I’m assuming you’re going to make another wish tonight?” I asked.

She nodded, her Coke-bottle glasses focused far away on the horizon.

“And what are you going to wish for this time?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Nope. If you say it then it won’t come true. Isn’t that the way wishes work? I didn’t tell the last two to anyone and now I don’t have to ever work a day in my life if I don’t want to.”

“Right. Well, can’t fault you there. Would you humor me in something?” I asked.

“What?”

“Can I be there when you make tonight’s wish?” I said. “I’ll leave just after midnight.”

Clarabelle took off her huge glasses and cleaned them on her dress; replaced them. “I know this seems silly, but I don’t... I don’t want anything to mess up,” she said. “I mean, really, this is the best thing that’s happened to me since I was named homecoming queen back in Midland.”

She was quiet a full minute before nodding. “If you stay down by the house while I make my wish up in the lighthouse, then okay. I’ll make up the guesthouse for you. You won’t want to drive home so late.”

“Deal,” I said, squeezing her hand as we creaked our way back down the lighthouse stairs.

When Ringo and I arrived back later that night, the tower’s light could be seen for miles, and I swore I felt the heat of its beacon even on the beach below. Clarabelle Mayhew came to the door in a gold evening dress with a bright red hibiscus blossom tucked behind her ear and held in place by her glasses. She had a formal place setting for three out in the dining room, complete with fine crystal, and we tucked into a plate of red snapper with grits and corn tortillas.

We made small talk and cracked open a bottle of sangria I’d brought. Talked about her late husband, my former life as a police officer, life on the Texas coast, President Reagan, and the space shuttle. I told her the story of my leg. Ringo looked for the cat, Beans, and stole more apricots, along with a few plums, from the bowl on Clarabelle’s breakfast table.

Before I knew it, midnight approached and Clarabelle excused herself from the table, then came back and set the lamp between us. It caught the light of the candles and shimmered like a thousand gold coins in a chest of pirate treasure. Somehow the lamp changed the feel of the room, seemed to lower the barometric pressure.

I’d filled a small crystal ashtray with butts already, and the dinner dishes, as well as three empty bottles, were gathered around us like a Thanksgiving feast. Ringo had found a potted ficus and snuggled down for a nap.

At ten till midnight, we stepped out into the Texas night under a full moon. Out in the channel an oil tanker crept toward the refineries in Corpus, and a group of yellow-crowned night herons picked shellfish out of the shallows near the old beached shrimp boat.

I asked for the keys to the guesthouse and storage shed, doing an abridged version of the room-clearing procedure I’d learned at the police academy. Nobody else on the property. She was adamant about my not being in the lighthouse when she made her next wish, so I stayed below as she made her way up the light-tower steps.

Lighting a cigaret, I paced the porch of the beach house, pulled out my binoculars, and scanned the lighthouse and surrounding beach. Clarabelle shut off the light tower and walked to the north side of the beacon. I walked down to the beach so I could see her facing north, glimpsing the dim light of the lamp and just making out the soft glow on her distant face up on high. Her lips were moving.

The windows of the distant homes up and down the channel were dark without exception. And the only lights outside of the full moon were the oil tanker sliding by in the channel and the distant flaring of an offshore oil rig — itself lit up like a magic lamp making millionaires out of random people.

I stood and smoked, listening to the crickets and bullfrogs in the marsh around the beach and the popping of the flags in the wind. Glanced at my watch: 12:01 A.M.

Looking up at the lighthouse, I saw the light of the lamp glow faintly before Clarabelle’s face in the window of the beacon house. As I stood staring, movement caught the corner of my eye.

Out by the sunken shrimp boat to the north, a group of herons took flight. I raised the binoculars. Inside the shrimp boat, a pair of eyes seemed to glow back at me in the moonlight. Looking more carefully, I realized it was another pair of binoculars.

I ran.

Well, did my best to run. Between the soggy sand, the wine, and my bum leg, it was slow going but I did my best — more like a speed limp — throwing my arms into it and breathing hard and fast. About a hundred yards out, the glowing eyes of the binoculars within the boat’s window disappeared. As I neared, a figure leapt from the boat’s cabin and towards a patch of reeds.

“Stop!” I said, trying my best for the command voice they’d taught me at the academy. The figure ignored me, moving up the beach not much faster than I — it too with a profound limp. The creature loomed huge in the moonlight, moving with the exaggerated lope of a monster from a fifties horror matinée and sporting hairy arms with a shiny bald head.

“Wait up!” I said. The beast ignored me. “I don’t think either of us is that good at running,” I panted, as the figure crept toward the reeds. Putting on a final burst of speed I pushed with all my might, feeling my good leg burn and knowing I couldn’t sustain my balance. I reached the looming figure right at the edge of the reeds and as my balance failed me, I collapsed upon it and clung to its legs like a drowning man on floating timber.

We both hit the sand with a wheezing sound, the beach never as soft as it looks when you fall right on it. I felt greasy denim and smelled aftershave and chewing tobacco. A huge hand wrapped around my face and shoved me away. The last thing I saw was a pale fist coming fast in the moonlight, a bright, white pain ushering me into nothingness.

I awoke to a screaming teakettle. My head was a jackhammer as I sat up in Clarabelle Mayhew’s front room. I lay on a long, lime-green divan with tiny yellow flowers sewn into the fabric. Ringo sat next to me, sniffing my eye. Clarabelle scurried away and came back with a cup of tea. “I put some bourbon in it,” she said. “To ease the pain a bit.”

The clock on the wall read 7:04 in the morning. Sunlight blazed through the front windows, piercing my brain. My left eye felt hot and swollen.

“What in the world happened?” she asked.

I told her about the man in the old boat, the brief chase.

“Did you find anything on your doorstep this morning?” I asked. “After you made your wish?”

“Yeah, you,” she said. “I made my wish, came downstairs, and went looking for you. About twenty minutes later the doorbell rang. I got up and you was just lyin’ there.”

“So that’s it? What did you wish for?”

Her face flushed. “Well, that’s private now, ain’t it? I’ll go get something for that eye,” she said, leaving the room. As I closed my eyes and listened to her rummage in the refrigerator, there was a knock at the door so loud I cradled my head in both hands. I couldn’t tell if it was the wine or the punch by the Creature from the Black Lagoon that tortured my cranium most.

I swung my legs off the divan and wobbled my way to the front door. When I opened it, a man the size of an oil tanker stood before me — a bouquet of flowers in one hand and a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue in the other. A gray felt cowboy hat covered his bald head.

The man handed me the whiskey, then put a fist to his chest — moving it in a circle around his heart. He wore an expensive grey Western-cut suit with a turquoise-and-silver bolo tie and stood about six foot five; even at about eighty years old. His dark, wrinkled skin looked like the leather seats in an old farm truck and an oversized hearing aid protruded from each ear.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

The man handed me the whiskey, setting the flowers down on the wooden deck. He took a small leather notepad and black Mont Blanc pen out of his inside jacket pocket. Sorry about the eye, young man, he scribbled, showing me the pad.

I’d been beat up by an old man. A very old, yet admittedly large, man. “Ah,” was all I could manage, smiling and putting my palm to my eye involuntarily. His hearing impairment would explain why the man hadn’t responded to my calling out to him. But not why he was spying on us. Or why he punched me like a drunken merchant marine.

I snatched the pad and pen from him and wrote: Were you holding a roll of quarters or something? He chuckled and held up his right hand, which sported a Texas A&M class ring. Figures.

He took the pad back and held the pen up to it so he could write something else, but then Clarabelle walked out holding a bag of frozen peas. “Try putting this on your eye...” she was saying. Then they saw each other.

She dropped the peas.

He dropped the pen and paper.

The man’s jaw set, but his bottom lip quivered. “Clara-bell,” he said, in the loud, off-tone, and asymmetrical voice of a man who could no longer hear his own words. He bent down to pick up the flowers, knees cracking along the way. Then he stood up straight, removed his hat, and handed her the flowers. “It’s been a long time,” he said in an off-key but confident voice. “I love you.”

She took the flowers and put a hand to her face, sobbing behind the thick glasses.

“You guys know each other, I take it?”

Clarabelle stepped forward and gave the big man a hug, then took off her glasses. Wiping them on her dress, she said: “He’s my third wish.”

His name was Jet Worthington. He’d gone to high school with Clarabelle in Midland, and while they never dated the two always liked each other — but the timing was never right. With his notepad, he explained how he lost his hearing and much of his mobility when a blowout preventer on a well in the Permian Basin failed and blew the whole derrick sky high.

The three of us sat on the back porch of Clarabelle’s house, sipping tea and watching a man in a catamaran zip through the channel. Ringo chased sea gulls on the beach as the man pointed north and wrote on the pad: Bought the closest house to you I could. Two down on the channel. The blue one. Couldn’t stand the thought of you being alone.

“But why all this?” asked Clarabelle.

The man raised an eyebrow and flipped the page in his notepad. You know darn well why, he scribbled, smiling. I always loved you.

Clarabelle stared, smiling at the man through her massive glasses, eyes still watery. He smiled back, setting the pen and paper down, wincing and shaking his huge hands from all the writing.

“But I haven’t seen you in forty years!” she said.

The man just shrugged, sipping his tea.

So you gave Clarabelle all that money? I wrote on his pad.

The man nodded, pointing to his mouth, and said out loud, “I’m pretty good at reading lips.”

Flipping the notepad again, he scribbled: I paid Smitty Leedel, the painter, to put the lamp up there a few weeks ago when you had him out. He laughed out loud, flipping the page. Walked to that old boat every night at midnight to see if she’d found it yet. It’s about time!

Clarabelle wasn’t laughing; she looked disappointed. “So it really wasn’t a magic lamp?”

Jet shook his head, his smile fading. He flipped the pad and wrote: Bought it in Dubai. Pawn shop. You mad?

“But why?” she said. “I mean, you know I’d be tickled to see you. Why all the fuss?”

He looked into the distance for a moment, then flipped the page and wrote: Not exactly a star quarterback these days. Felt I needed to make an entrance.

Clarabelle picked her sister’s picture up off of the table and pointed to one of the boys in letter jackets. “That’s Jet way back then,” she said, smiling.

“Where’d you get all that money?” I asked the old man. I knew I was being gauche but it was the elephant in the room. He fished a business card out of his suit pocket, flipped it on the table. “Worthington Global Petroleum,” I read out loud. “Jet Worthington, Founder and CEO.” I whistled, tucking the card into the pocket of my Hawaiian shirt.

The old man flipped the pad again, giving me a knowing smile and writing. Everybody wishes for a million dollars on their first wish, right? Arranged a trip to my bank in Houston the day before Smitty put the lamp up there. Thought the bank manager was going to cry!

You pulled a million bucks out of the bank just like that? I scribbled.

The man nodded slowly, smiling. It was good to be the king.

What about all her sister’s stuff? I wrote, pointing at the box.

“Oh, I can answer that, I’ll bet,” said Clarabelle. “Jet’s daddy owned a storage company in Midland. When Daddy died, I paid movers to put a bunch of stuff in storage there, then later gave them permission to sell the contents at auction. I’m guessing you got first dibs on the bid?”

Jet bowed his head and spread his arms wide as if receiving a standing ovation from a live audience.

“Well, I’d better get on,” I said, standing and putting on my University of Texas ball cap. Ringo stretched and hopped out of the box. Neither of them made a move to stop me. “I’m going back to the boat for a nap.” My eye pounded like a child throwing a tantrum and there was no part of me that wasn’t filled with sand. But it was a beautiful, warm day on the Texas coast.

Clarabelle Mayhew and Jet Worthington were still staring at each other, smiling and silent, as I limped down the wooden steps to the Jeep with Ringo in tow.

I cranked the engine, lit a cigaret. George Jones was on the radio with “He Stopped Loving Her Today.” I put my sunglasses on and stared up at the pale Gulf of Mexico sky. A flock of cormorants flew overhead out past the lighthouse and into the shallows of the channel for a spot of lunch. Over the bay, someone was taking a Cessna for a spin. It was a cloudless day; a warm breeze kind of day; a day to remember that sometimes good things do happen out of the blue; and wishes, every once in a while, really do come true.