The Lighthouse

Alix

Her first look at the lighthouse was from a distance of almost a mile.

They jounced through a copse of pine and Douglas fir, and immediately the rutted blacktop road sloped upward to a rise. Off to the right, the land bellied out to a distant headland; beyond that she could see the ocean again, the treacherous black rocks that jutted above its surface. Back the way they’d come, the shoreline curved and gentled and formed the southern boundary of Hilliard Bay.

She didn’t see the lighthouse when they first topped the rise; she had scrunched around a little and was looking back to the north, to where buildings and fishing boats were outlined along the shore of the bay. The distance and the steely afternoon light gave them an odd, unreal look, like miniatures set out on a giant bas-relief map. But then Jan said, “Look!” and swung the station wagon off onto the verge. She twisted around again to face forward. And there it was, at a long angle to the left, perched atop a second, much narrower headland.

Jan set the parking brake and got out. “Alix, come on.” He went ahead past the front of the car and stood shading his eyes from the cloudy sun-glare.

She stepped out, stretching cramped muscles; this was the first time they’d stopped since leaving the motel in Crescent City where they had spent the night. The wind was sharp here, and cold; it made the only sound except for the faint susurration of breakers. She zipped up her jacket and went to stand next to Jan, to peer with him at the lighthouse and its outbuildings. Her first thought was: God, it looks lonely. But it was just a thought; there was nothing negative in it. If anything, she was pleased. Cape Despair. The Cape Despair Light. With names like that, she had been prepared for a desolate crag topped by an Oregon lighthouse version of Wuthering Heights. No, this didn’t seem so bad at all.

She began to view it in a different perspective, through her artist’s eye. A round whitewashed tower-vaguely phallic with its rounded red dome-poking upward out of a white, red-roofed frame building. One large outbuilding and two smaller ones that were not much more than sheds. Clouds piled up behind the tower, dirty-looking, like soiled laundry. Cliffs falling away on both sides, on the south to a narrow beach so far away it seemed hazy and indistinct. A few wind-bent trees. Cypress? Probably. Patches of green grass, dun-colored rocks, gray-bright sky. There was a melancholy aspect to the whole, a kind of primitive beauty. Nice composition, too, seen from this vantage point and with those clouds bunched up behind it. On another day like this, she thought, it would be a challenge to try capturing that melancholy aspect on canvas. The idea both pleased and surprised her, she hadn’t painted anything noncommercial in years.

“Alix? You’re not disappointed?”

“Of course not,” she said. “Do I look disappointed?”

“Well. you were so quiet. What were you thinking?”

“That I might like to paint this someday, if I have time. This view of the lighthouse.”

Jan raised an eyebrow: the Alix Kingsley-Ryerson who had painted seriously was someone out of the past, someone he’d never known. But he said, “Good. That’s good,” and smiled at her, and she knew he was relieved that her first impression had been favorable. Behind his born-rimmed glasses, his eyes were bright-that electric-blue color that seemed so vivid when he was excited. They had been that way for almost a week now, ever since the packing and last-minute preparations for the move had begun. The boyish eagerness eased her mind. For much of the year he had been mired in one of his periods of depression, and more prone than ever to severe headaches-working too hard at the university for some reason known only to him. Unlike hers, his way was to bottle up things inside, so tightly sometimes-this last time-that she found it impossible to draw him out of himself. It hadn’t been until his application to the Oregon State Parks and Recreation Division had been approved that his depression started to lift. Now he seemed his old self again. The next year meant a great deal to him, more than she had imagined when he first broached the idea of an early sabbatical.

Jan was looking out toward the lighthouse again, bent forward slightly, his flaxen hair streaming out behind him. The wind was in his lighter blond beard too, ruffling it and pooching it out on the sides. Not for the first time, she thought he must have Viking blood. He was headstrong, forceful, independent, tenacious-all Viking characteristics. And he looked like a Viking; it required very little imagination to picture him at the helm of a Norse ship out of Novgorod, leaning into the wind with his hair streaming behind him that way. Jan the Bold. Of course, he was getting a little thick around the middle-the re-suh of his fondness for beer. Jan the Paunchy.

She laughed in spite of herself, and he said, “What’s funny?” with his gaze still on the Cape Despair Light.

“Nothing, really. I’ll tell you later.” She felt a surge of affection for him and thought: It’s going to be all right. She squeezed his arm. “I’m freezing. Let’s get back in the car.”

“Right.”

He got them moving again. The road dipped down through a hollow where clumps of tule grass stretched away on both sides. Odd-looking grass: hundreds of big round tufts of it, like an army of porcupines with their backs arched, their quills drooping, their heads tucked down out of sight. As if waiting for something. Night? The right time to mass an attack on the few sheep that grazed among them? Fanciful thought, Ryerson-too many children’s-book illustrations.

Once they came out of the hollow, climbing gradually again, the blacktop ended and the road degenerated into a gravel surface pocked with potholes. Jan had to slow the station wagon to a crawl. Still, there was no way to avoid all of the holes. The rough ride dislodged something in the mass of suitcases and clothing bags and cardboard boxes that jammed the back half of the station wagon; it made a clanging noise every time they rolled through one of the chucks.

The terrain had changed too, grown more barren. There were few trees this far out on the cape-just a scattering of cypress and hardy evergreens. No meadowland, as there had been for most of the previous two miles from the county road, and consequently no more sheep. There were large sections of bare ground, rocky and dun-colored; the patchy grass was thicker, and weedier, the Oregon grape and prickly broom that covered the rest of the cape grew only in isolated clumps out here. Most of the leaden sea and part of the shoreline were visible to the south, less of the sea and little of the shoreline to the north. When Alix twisted around again she could no longer see either Hilliard Bay or the tiny hamlet along its inner shore.

The lighthouse remained visible ahead of them, even though the road serpentined along the narrowing headland. She watched it grow, take on definition. Cape Despair Light. Built in 1860, when the cape bore its original name-Cap Des Peres, the Cape of the Fathers, after a pair of Basque sheepherders who had established the first homesteads on this lonely part of the Oregon coast and who each happened to have fathered eleven children. But Cape Despair was a much more appropriate name. Even after construction of the lighthouse, half a dozen ships had foundered and sunk in the savage storms that battered the cape and the rough, rock-strewn waters that lay off of it; close to a hundred men had died in those shipwrecks, forty-seven of them in 1894 when a coastal steamer ran afoul of the rocks in a dense fog. It was after that tragedy that mariners had dubbed it Cape Despair, and it was still commonly called that despite the Cap Des Peres designation on maps and in guidebooks.

They were only a few hundred yards, now, from the flattish tip of the headland on which the buildings sat. Alix leaned forward, pointing. “What’s that big outbuilding on the left?”

“Used to be housing for the maintenance crew,” Jan said. He had been here twice in the past three months for short visits. But he had known every detail of its history before that, of course; there was little about any North American lighthouse that he didn’t know. “Coast Guard built it in 1940. Garage, workshop, and storage now.”

“The other two?”

“The small one near the light is where the generator is housed. Cordwood, too. The one lower down, on the far side, is the pumphouse for the well.”

“All the comforts of home,” she said.

“It’s not so bad. The well pump is electric; runs off the generator. And there’s a phone line that got put in before the funding ran out. I told you that, didn’t I?”

“Yes. And thank God for it. We won’t feel so cut off up here if we can talk with our friends and my family once in a while.”

“Just so you don’t run up huge bills.” But his smile told her he was only teasing.

The road petered out in a gravelly, rutted clearing that was supposed to have been widened and graded into a parking area for visitors. At the far end was a gate and a whitewashed board fence that extended in a somewhat erratic line past the buildings on both sides, almost to where the cliffs began their descent to the sea. The elevation here was a hundred and twenty feet. The tower rose another sixty feet; the light, when it had been operational, could be seen from a distance of twenty miles.

Jan stopped before the closed gate. The force of the wind was considerable on the exposed headland-enough to shimmy the Ford, as heavy and laden as it was. Alix felt the chill of it when he got out to open the gate; it made her shiver. She hadn’t expected it to be this windy or this cold, not on a reasonably clear and otherwise warm late-September day. If it was like this on a good day, what would it be like during a winter storm? The thought was a little unsettling; she put it out of her mind.

Jan drove them over more rutted gravel to where an old rust-red pickup was parked near the largest of the outbuildings. The bed of the pickup was loaded with boxes, a chest of drawers, an old wheelbarrow. When he shut off the engine Alix could hear the wind skirling outside, the hissing pulse of surf against the rocks far below.

“That’s Bonner’s pickup,” Jan said. He sounded the horn a couple of times; no one appeared. “Well, where is he? Inside somewhere sulking, I suppose.”

“You can’t blame him if he is, can you? We’re taking his job away from him.”

“I don’t have much sympathy for him.”

“No?”

“No. He’s unpleasant and lazy. Look at all this. He hasn’t kept it up.”

“He’s only a caretaker, not a maintenance man…”

“Doesn’t make any difference. He’s lived out here for three years; he ought to have taken some pride in his surroundings, whether he was paid for it or not.”

“Not everybody feels about lighthouses as you do, Jan.”

“That’s no excuse either. This is an important piece of history; he should have kept it up.”

There was no arguing with him on the subject, so she let it go. But he was overreacting: the buildings didn’t look all that bad, really, at least not from the outside. They could have used a fresh coat of whitewash-and the fence needed repair-but for a coastal light that had been out of service for more than twenty years, everything was in fairly decent shape. Especially the lighthouse itself. Alix studied it through the windshield. It was a variation on the Cape Cod style of lighthouse architecture: a compact two-story rectangular frame building-the watch house-with its three-story tower rising through the center. The tower had been fashioned of bricks made from nearby clay deposits, Jan had told her, the surrounding structure from the timber that had once covered this headland. High above, a catwalk circled the outside of the glassed-in lantern room. She could just make out part of the massive Fresnel lens mounted inside, a marvelous piece of nineteenth-century engineering rendered obsolete by modem technology.

She asked Jan. “Does the light still work after all these years?”

“I’ll answer that after I’ve spent some time with it.”

“You’re not going to try operating it?”

“No,” he said, “of course not. Come on, there’s no sense in sitting here. We’ll track down Bonner ourselves.”

They found him inside the garage, in a workshop area toward the rear, packing tools into a wooden crate. “All of this stuff is mine,” he said, as if challenging Jan to call him a liar. He also said he hadn’t heard the horn, which likewise may or may not have been the truth. He was a dried-up little man somewhere in his fifties, with a bulbous head and dry brown hair combed sideways across the top. His eyes were dull and unfriendly, and so was his manner. Alix decided Jan was justified in calling him unpleasant.

“Need another hour to clear out the rest of my belongings,” Bonner said in sullen tones. “That is, if you don’t mind.”

“Why should we mind?”

“Keys on a peg inside the lighthouse door. I didn’t leave you no provisions. Didn’t see why I should.”

“We didn’t expect you to.”

“Kitchen stove’s almost out of propane. Enough for one more meal, maybe.”

“I’m not surprised,” Jan said. “Where are the empty cylinders?”

“Pantry.”

“Where do we get refills?”

“A-One Marine.”

“In Hilliard?”

“Closest place, ain’t it?” Bonner looked at Alix for the first time. “You going to live out here too, missus?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, you won’t like it.”

“No? Why not?”

“Just won’t. No place for a woman.”

“They had women lighthouse keepers at Cape Blanco a hundred years ago,” she said, quoting Jan. “Or didn’t you know that?”

Bonner grunted. “I’ll finish my packing now,” he said to Jan. “You can find your own way around; you been here before.”

It was cold in the garage; Alix felt chilled inside her light jacket. But the wind outside set her teeth to chattering. “I’m going to get something heavier,” she said. She went to the station wagon, rummaged around among the clothing bags until she found her heavy pea jacket. Jan helped her put it on.

“It’ll be warmer in the house,” he said, “even if Bonner didn’t bother to set a fire.”

“God, I hope so. It’s not always going to be this cold, is it?”

“Most of the time until March, probably. You’ll get used to it, California girl. You lived in New York and Boston, remember?”

“How could I forget?”

“Suppose we take the grand tour? When Bonner leaves we’ll unload the car; then I’ll make us hot toddies.”

“I could use the hot toddy right now.”

“Hey, where’s your pioneer spirit?”

“It froze to death about five minutes ago.”

He laughed, a sound that was lost in the shriek and bluster of the wind, and started away across an expanse of thick weedy grass. Shivering, hunched inside her pea jacket, Alix followed his broad back toward their home for the next twelve months.

Alix

The kitchen depressed her.

It was a combination of things. For one, the walls were painted a battleship gray and the plaster ceiling was so smoke-stained that it approached the same color. All that gray made it gloomy, even when the sun shone obliquely through the window over the sink. The propane stove was another problem: it was old and crochety and you couldn’t get it lighted without an effort. It was better than the one in the living room, though, the old wood-burner; that one smoked like crazy when the wind shifted and began baffling around the lighthouse tower and down into the kitchen chimney. They had had to open the first-floor doors and windows to air the place out, which of course robbed the first-floor rooms of most of their heat.

But the kitchen… it was still the worst room. The well water that came out of the taps had a brackish, mineral taste; they’d have to buy bottled water in Hilliard tomorrow. The refrigerator made funny humming, rattling noises, as if it were about to break down-or explode-at any second. As for the pantry, it wasn’t even attached to the kitchen; you had to go down three steps and through a small cloakroom to get to it, which made it inconvenient and not much good for anything except as a storeroom for bulk supplies. But at least it had an outside door, so you didn’t have to trundle the supplies through the kitchen and cloakroom.

And then there was the other well, the abandoned one under the trapdoor in the pantry floor. One of the early keepers, a man named Guthrie, had sunk the well in 1896 on open ground a short distance away from the original building; it was slightly less than twenty feet deep. When the next keeper took over in 1911 he had built the pantry as an addition and cut the trapdoor to give access to his water supply. (Jan knew all about this but had neglected to tell her beforehand.) The well had long since dried up, and once that happened it had been used as a refuse dump for a while. Jan had shone a flashlight down inside it to reveal rocks and scrap metal and God knew what else. Rats, for all she knew. She had a horror of rats.

Well, there wasn’t much she could do about the pantry-except to put up more shelves, maybe, and make sure the trapdoor stayed shut-but the kitchen itself would have to be dealt with. There was no way she was going to live here a full year surrounded by all that dingy gray. Repaint the walls, and either paint or replaster the ceiling, depending on whether or not she could get the smoke grime off. Put some color in, some of the Metropolitan Museum posters she’d brought.

…

She smiled wryly, aware of the fussy domesticity of her plans. Here they were at the beginning of their big adventure, and all she could think about was painting the kitchen.

But was it going to be an adventure? she thought wistfully. At the moment it seemed no more exciting than a child’s vacation at the seashore. Well, perhaps that was appropriate. Often when she thought about herself, she felt as if she were a mere child; felt that nothing real had ever happened to her, nothing that constituted a test of her mettle. Everything in her adult life-after a bit of initial career and romantic disappointment-had been too easy. And she herself had remained untouched by life, growing from a pleasant, smiling child into a pleasant, smiling woman with few problems.

True, Jan had remained in love with her, hadn’t tired of her or outgrown her. But sometimes she wondered just how much good she really was to him. There was a dark, brooding side to his nature that she didn’t really understand and in which she couldn’t share; there were problems he encountered with which she couldn’t help. If she had experienced more, lived more, felt more, wouldn’t she have grown in step with him? Or was she one of those people who were condemned to forever exist in the shadowland between childhood and adulthood?

Weighty questions, Ryerson, she told herself. Too weighty to be thinking about tonight. Fussy domesticity suddenly seemed a better subject, and she began to contemplate the rest of their living quarters.

They were habitable enough. No, she might as well be fair: they were more or less comfortable. Along with the kitchen, cloakroom, and pantry, the ground floor was comprised of the living room and one large bedroom. The bedroom had two good-sized windows facing seaward, and since it offered the most natural light, they had agreed she should use it as her studio. The second floor consisted of a bathroom and two bedrooms-the largest of which they would sleep in, the other use for Jan’s study. Above that, built into a bubble-like niche in the tower, was the lightroom, where the keepers had stored cleaners, polishes, and supplies for servicing the light. There was even a barrel of sand in there, for use in the event of fire.

One drawback was the small hot water heater-only thirty gallons, barely enough for one of Jan’s protracted showers-but that wouldn’t be a problem. She’d taken cold showers for years, had gotten to like them when they’d been living on the back of Beacon Hill in Boston, in a building that lacked heat of any kind, including hot water. But the main drawbacks to the rooms and their arrangement were the drab white walls, their chilliness-small propane heaters were the only source of warmth in the bedrooms-and the enclosed inner stairway that took up part of the living room and led upward to the second floor and then through the tower into the lantern room. But she felt she could live with all of these too. If the dingy white color in the bedrooms and living room became too oppressive, she could always talk Jan into helping her paint them, along with the kitchen.

She finished drying the supper dishes-she and Jan had always taken turns with the domestic chores-and glanced up at the ceiling and thought again that she would have to get out the Ajax and 409 and see how much of that accumulation of grime would come off. But not tonight. She was so tired her legs felt achey. Some preliminary cleaning; Bonner was not much of a housekeeper. Unpacking. Finding places for things, rearranging other things. Making up the four-poster bed; setting out towels. And she had only just scratched the surface. A move like this was no summer vacation lark; it was a transplanting of an entire household, the same sort of upheaval you went through when you made a permanent move.

She thought of their big mock-Tudor house in Palo Alto and wondered when she would see it again. Not until Christmas, at the earliest- if they decided to go home for the holidays. But the house was in good hands: her cousin June was dependable and conscientious-you couldn’t ask for a better house-sitter.

Alix went into the empty living room. Jan had gone upstairs after supper; she wondered what he was doing. Whatever it was, he was being quiet about it. Curiosity took her up to the second floor. In the hallway that skirted the curve of the tower wall, she called his name. But he wasn’t in their bedroom or in his new study; his answer came echoing down from above.

“Up here. In the lantern.”

She went back to the stairs. The hollow of the tower was like a speaking tube: from the lower floors you could hear clearly when someone spoke from the lantern room in a voice not much louder than normal, and the same was true vice versa. Not even the constant muttering of the wind affected the acoustics inside.

The two flights of stairs leading up to the lantern were steep, creaky, and worn to a shine in the center of each riser. Just above the second-floor landing you had to pass through a metal trapdoor, hinged open and fastened that way with a hook; the reason for the trap, Jan had said, was so that men working in the lightroom and the lantern above wouldn’t disturb their family members below. A pair of low-wattage electric bulbs, one on the wall halfway up each flight, did little to dispel the damp gloom. Climbing, she thought it was a good thing neither of them would have to do this every day-Jan especially, with the extra weight he was carrying. She wondered again if she could get him to diet while they were living here. Probably not. Well, maybe she could at least talk him into doing aerobics with her. She had started working out a couple of years ago, after her second miscarriage, and had kept it up because she knew it was good for her, kept her own weight down. And it was better than tennis or racquetball, the big “in” sports back home, neither of which she had ever been any good at. Too uncoordinated: all arms and legs, with an uncanny knack for stumbling over her own feet. Anyhow, lifting a book was the second most strenuous exercise Jan ever indulged in. “I’d prefer to have my heart attack screwing or reading quietly in a chair,” he’d said more than once. A sedentary Viking…

There was a three-foot-square opening in the floor of the lantern room, but no trapdoor there. Dusky light showed above it; it must be about eight, close to dark outside. She climbed through the opening. Yes, almost nightfall. Through the lantern windows she could see that the sun had set and there were hints of violent reds and purples among the clouds massed on the horizon.

Jan was on his hands and knees to one side of the massive light, using a flashlight to do something she couldn’t see. He said, “Be with you in a minute,” in a distracted voice.

She moved closer to the light. It fascinated her-its size, its intricate construction. A First Order Fresnel, Jan had told her, built in Paris in 1872 by the firm founded by Augustin Fresnel some fifty years earlier. A beehive of glass prisms set in brass-more than a dozen bull’s-eyes, around which other triangular prisms were placed-it measured fourteen feet in height and six feet in diameter, and weighed better than three thousand pounds. The hand-polished prisms were capable of taking all the light that struck the inside surfaces of the glass and redirecting the rays into one flat beam that could be seen more than twenty miles at sea. The lenses were rotated by hand-wound clockworks powered by means of a descending weight. It was the clockworks, she saw, that Jan was examining with his flashlight.

The huge lens took up most of the space in the lantern room. The enclosure was decagonally shaped, each of its sides constructed of heavy iron-plate for the bottom two and a half feet, then of window glass some thirty inches by thirty-six inches set in narrow metal sashes topped by six incbes of metal. The metal parts and the floor were painted a dark red color, faded and peeling now in places; the window sashes were a dull white, as was the domed ceiling. On the north side, set into the metal a few inches above the floor, was a door that reminded Alix of an oversized pet-door. This led out onto the catwalk-a railed metal deck three feet wide and built at a slight downward angle, so as to shed rainwater. The thought of having to walk about out there, exposed and unprotected sixty feet above the ground, with that harsh wind pummeling her body, gave Alix a sharp pang of vertigo. She didn’t mind heights when she was enclosed like this, or up in an airplane; but out in the open, where one false step could send you plummeting… no, thank you.

Jan straightened up finally from behind the lens and switched off his flashlight. The twilight had begun to deepen so that shadows obscured part of his face.

She asked him, “Something wrong?”

“Clockworks don’t look good. Bonner could have at least come up here once in a while with cleaners and polishes. It’ll take me weeks to put the lens in working order.” He shook his head in annoyance.

“Aren’t there inspectors?”

“Not for out-of service lights. No one with any expertise has inspected this one in at least three years. It’s a crying shame. I told Channon that, for all the good it did.”

“Channon? Oh, the assistant to the State Parks administrator.”

“Right. He’s also on the Advisory Committee on Historic Preservation, which claims to be satisfied that the light is being maintained and cared for in an acceptable fashion. Channon’s an idealist; he’s convinced there’ll be both state and Federal funding to complete restoration by the end of next year.”

“Don’t you think he’s right?”

“No,” Jan said flatly. “I don’t.”

She wasn’t sure she shared his pessimism. He was such a fanatic on the subject of lighthouses, and such an ardent conservationist, that impatience and anger at the slow-grinding wheels of bureaucracy made him cynical. Other lighthouses along the rugged four-hundred-mile Oregon coast-and along the California and Washington coasts as well-had been restored and turned into historic monuments; some of these were still working lights. There was no reason to believe the same thing wouldn’t eventually happen to the Cape Despair Light, even if the lens itself remained dark. It was a matter of funding, that was all. The National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 had saved it from deterioration and ultimate destruction when it had been abandoned by the Coast Guard in the early sixties, after more than a hundred years of continuous service. (It had been rendered more or less obsolete in the thirties, however, when a powerful radiobeacon was installed at Cape Blanco, not far down the coast-a beacon that could be picked up by ships as far as two hundred and fifty miles out to sea. The Coast Guard, which had inherited it after the U.S. Lighthouse Service was disbanded in 1939, maintained it as a standby station until the cost of manning and operating it became prohibitive.) Once the state of Oregon had assumed control of the light, a grant from the Department of the Interior’s Historic Conservation and Recreation Service, coupled with funding obtained by the State Historic Preservation Officer, had resulted in partial restoration and the appointment of a full-time caretaker. The Federal grant and most of the state funds had been exhausted three years ago, and budget cuts had prevented the acquisition of additional monies. But it was only a temporary setback. Private conservation groups within the state were working to raise funds that, they had been promised, would be matched by another Federal grant and by state allocations. Channon’s prediction that within fifteen months the necessary funds would be available to complete restoration, pave the three-mile access road, establish tourist facilities, and turn the outer reaches of the cape into a state park struck her as likely to come true.

Jan had moved over to one of the west-side windows and was rubbing his eyes-probably because they were strained from the long drive. She hoped he wasn’t having one of his headaches. She stepped up beside him and looked out to where the clouds moved restlessly across the horizon, their underbellies stained the colors of saffron and tarnished gold by the sunset’s afterglow. “Don’t worry, love,” she said, slipping her arm around his waist. “It’ll work out.”

He was silent for a moment, and she sensed a preoccupation in him. Finally he said, “I hope so.”

“Meanwhile, there’s your book. Number-one priority, remember?”

“Our book.”

That pleased her more than anything else he might have said at the moment, and she sensed he was back with her. She hugged herself closer to him. “Your brilliant prose, my stunning illustrations. How can it miss?”

He laughed softly and she felt him relax again. He began to massage the small of her back with his knuckles-a caress that never failed to excite her. “Nice up here this time of night,” he said. “Quite a view.”

“It’s beautiful.”

And it was. The colors were gone now on the horizon; the sky was gray-black where the clouds moved, a deep lavender-black in the clear patches. Far out to sea, the running lights of a small ship glistened in the twilight. Closer in, the offshore rocks, some of them as large as two-story buildings, stood above the dark, heavy sea in ominous silhouette. And down below, some two hundred feet away at the base of the headland, the wind-roiled surf churned against the shoreline rocks and sent up fans and geysers of faintly luminescent spray.

To the south, the cliffs fell away to narrow driftwood-strewn beaches and a ragged line of breakers that stretched far into the distance. The wooded slopes of the Coast Range rose to the east, like great blotches of India ink spilled in irregular patterns down the lower half of the sky. Inland to the northwest, from this height, Hilliard Bay was visible beyond the inner headland; the lights of the village bloomed in the gathering darkness.

“Beautiful,” she said again. Then she said, “Don’t stop. I like that, the way you rub my back.”

“I know.”

“Mmm, yes, that’s nice.”

“Any minute now, you’ll start purring.”

“I’m already purring.”

He turned her body against his and kissed her. He knew how to kiss, soft-mouthed, urgent and gentle at the same time; she had never known any man who kissed better than Jan. The heat that his rubbing had kindled in her grew and spread. She ran her fingernails along the side of his jaw, rotated her hips provocatively, and said, “Mm,” in her throat when she felt his arousal. It had been almost two weeks since they’d last made love, what with all the preparations for the move. Too long. Much too long.

At length he broke off the kiss. “Why don’t we go down and christen our new bed?”

“That’s a fine way to put it,” Alix said, but she took his hand and they moved across to the open trapdoor.

Downstairs, in the living room, the telephone rang.

It had a loud bell and the acoustics of the tower allowed them to hear it plainly. Jan said, “Damn. Your father, I’ll bet. He always did have a fine sense of timing.”

“Could be somebody else.”

“Your father,” he said. “You’d better go answer it.”

“All right. Wait for me in the bedroom.”

“Just don’t be too long. I’m pushing forty, you know; I can’t maintain an erection as long as I used to.”

“Hah,” she said, and kissed him quickly, and hurried down the three flights of stairs to the living room. She was puffing when she picked up the receiver and said hello.

Her father’s voice said, “Alix? That you?”

“Yes, Dad, it’s me.”

“You okay? You sound out of breath.”

“I’m fine. We were up in the lantern.”

“The what?”

“The lantern. Top of the tower where the light is.”

“What were you doing up there?”

“Jan was checking the lens.”

Matthew Kingsley chuckled. He considered Jan’s enthusiasm for lighthouses-as well as his scholarly vocation-whimsical, on a par with becoming a poet or running off to join a traveling circus. In Matthew’s world, real men didn’t teach-they worked with their hands, built, accomplished tangible tasks. He himself had been a twenty-year career man in the Navy, had flown missions in the Korean War, and then had gone on to make a name-and a small fortune-in the aerospace industry. Now he was a successful politician: congressman from California’s influential Eleventh District for the past eight years, and a strong contender for the next gubernatorial nomination. Matthew seemed genuinely puzzled by his son-in-law’s passion for the classroom and books; but at the same time he was fond of Jan, so what few criticisms he voiced took the form of mild and good-natured kidding.

“Well,” he was saying, “just as long as you kids are having a good time.”

“Is that why you called-to see if we’re having fun?”

“Just wanted to make sure you’d arrived safely and are on your way to getting settled. I have a personal interest in this venture, you know.”

There was a note of pride in her father’s voice; he’d been remarkably successful in the complicated matter of getting them permission from the Oregon State Parks Department to live in the Cape Despair Light for a year. And he was genuinely pleased to have been of help; Matthew liked using his influence to help others (although he seldom used it in his own behalf).

He’d have been hurt if he knew her gratitude was mixed, that she feared his help in the matter had been obtained at some cost to her marriage. Years before, when Jan had learned-after the fact-that his father-in-law had been directly responsible for his appointment to the Stanford faculty, he’d been angry and resentful. And once that storm was over, they’d mutually decided they would never again allow Matthew to use his influence on their behalf.

Why, then, had Jan broken their vow and gone to her father behind her back to ask for this enormous favor? At first she’d thought it had to do with her own plans to enter into partnership in a Los Angeles graphic arts firm next year. Although she would be establishing the Northern California branch of the company, the work would entail a lot of traveling to L.A. She’d asked him if that was his reason, and he’d said of course it was: “You won’t have time for lighthouses after you become a big executive.” But he’d said it so readily that she wondered then if it wasn’t just a convenient excuse, if there was some other explanation for the puzzling urgency of his request to her father. When she’d tried to question Jan further, he’d become closed off and unreachable, unable or unwilling to talk to her about it.

Her father was saying something. She said, “I’m sorry. Dad, what was that?”

“I said, everything is all right, isn’t it?”

She hastened to reassure him it was, gave him a brief description of the lighthouse, and promised to call him and her mother when they were more settled. After the conversation ended, she sat on the lumpy, overstuffed couch that, along with two equally lumpy chairs and a couple of end tables, comprised the living room furniture. It was dark beyond the small windows; she peered out at the night, thinking about her family and her home, about Jan’s drop-everything need to start writing his history of lighthouses that had brought them so many miles from all that was familiar.

But she didn’t sit there for long; there was nothing to be gained by brooding. Besides, Jan was waiting upstairs. And tonight he was all she really needed.

Alix

Late the next morning, they went into Hilliard to buy supplies and propane tank refills.

It was another cold day, overcast and windy; the daylight had a dull, steel-gray quality. Alix drove, bundled up in her pea jacket, a wool scarf, and a pair of gloves. Even with all that clothing, and the Ford’s heater turned up high, she couldn’t seem to get warm. Last night hadn’t been bad, cuddled up with Jan in the big old-fashioned four-poster, but this morning… God, the watch house living quarters had been like an icebox when they woke up. The heaters did little to dispel the damp chill, and the woodstove in the living room had started smoking as soon as Jan lit the fire. And of course the stove in the kitchen had run out of propane before the coffee was even hot.

It had not been a good morning for those reasons and because Jan seemed to have lapsed into another of his depressed moods. It was odd, considering how cheerful he’d been yesterday, how exuberantly he’d made love to her last night. The only reason she could find for it was that he was suffering another of his headaches. She knew he was because of the way he moved, the pinched look of his face, the controlled wince she would catch now and then in his expression; but when she had asked him about it, he shrugged it off and refused to talk about it. He hadn’t said twenty words to her, and he sat silently now, slouched against the passenger door, rumpling his beard and wincing whenever one of the tires bounced through a pothole.

That’s what I get for marrying an academic and semi-genius, she thought, and smiled a little and then sighed. His depressions worried her, as did his headaches. For the past few years he had been seeing their friend Dave Sanderson, a neurologist on the staff at Stanford Hospital, for treatment of them. Dave had prescribed a variety of drugs-ergotamine, propranolol, codeine pain relievers, different kinds of tranquilizers-but the headaches and the depressions continued to recur. When Alix finally suggested he might want to consult somebody else, perhaps even a psychiatrist, Jan’s reaction had been negative. More than once she’d considered going to Dave herself, asking him to explain the problem to her. But Jan. if he had found out, would have considered it a breach of trust. Just as she considered his going to her father behind her back a breach of trust.

He worried her in other ways as well. While she knew that the dark side of his personality was caused by problems in his past-his mother running off when he was only a baby, the hideous murder in Wisconsin-she couldn’t believe they were the only factors that made him so often silent and unreachable.

For one thing, he’d come to terms with those problems; they’d talked them out before they were married. But still there was a part of him that he kept hidden; and even though she knew some of the difficulty was in her inability to understand it, it also seemed that he couldn’t or wouldn’t let her see that side of him, even after eleven years of marriage. A part he seemed to retreat into more and more of late, so that she seemed constantly to be reaching and tugging him back out of himself.

With the silence heavy in the car, she negotiated a turn near the rise where she and Jan had stopped for her first view of the Cape Despair Light. On the other side of the turn, she was surprised to see an old green Chevvy pulled off on the grassy verge. A youth of about twenty in a plaid shirt and jeans and a teenaged girl-no more than sixteen-were leaning against the Chevvy’s hood, staring at the station wagon as it came into view. Then they both seemed to relax and the girl waved casually; she wore a bold-figured blue-and-white Indian poncho, and her thick auburn hair was pulled back with a beaded leather headband.

Alix returned the wave as she drove past, then caught a glimpse of what the young man was holding in one cupped hand and understood the reason for their initial tension. It was a hand-rolled cigarette-marijuana, no doubt. She smiled wryly, glancing sideways at Jan.

“Oregon’s not so different from California, is it,” she said.

“What?”

“Those kids back there. Smoking dope out in the country just like they do back home.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

The silence resettled between them, remained unbroken all the way to the junction with the county road that looped off Highway 1 eight miles away, became Hilliard’s main street, then looped back out to rejoin Highway I further north. Most of the terrain here was flattish sheep graze, strewn with prickly broom, small stands of trees, and hundreds of placid black-and white-faced woolies. All the sheep, Alix supposed, belonged to the owners of the big ranch a half mile or so to the south, off the county road. There were no ranches out on the cape itself, no private dwellings of any kind; the land that didn’t belong to the one sheep rancher was controlled by the state.

A weathered metal sign, pocked with dents and holes made by kids (adults, too, for all she knew) out plinking with rifles and handguns, loomed to one side of the intersection. Alix glanced at it again as she turned north onto the country road.

Despite the rather forbidding wording, Alix thought it wouldn’t keep adventurous tourists from wandering out there for a look at the lighthouse. Most of them would come in summer, but a few would no doubt show up in the off-season months as well. A few hundred yards to the south of the turnoff was a rest area with public toilets and a pay phone; the lighthouse, clearly visible from there, would attract a fair number of those who stopped. She and Jan would just have to deal as politely as possible with any who grew bold enough to come knocking on the door asking questions.

The county road was reasonably well paved; it hooked downward toward the bay, past a weathered gray Victorian house and ramshackle garage set on a low promontory and a smaller, squarish building in the foreground near the road. The smaller building bore a sign that said Lang ‘ s Gallery and Gifts in ornate blue lettering.

Alix noted the sign with interest. She wondered who Lang was, and what sort of artwork Lang’s Gallery exhibited. When she came into the village alone she would definitely stop in and find out.

The road dropped down to parallel the shoreline at sea level, and other buildings appeared ahead, some of them flanking the road, others visible among the pines and Douglas fir that wooded the slopes rising above the village to the east. One of the latter, near the road, had a large screened front porch that bore a banner advertising antiques, driftwood, and shells for sale. Antiques, Alix thought wryly, was probably a euphemism for junk. Not that she minded junk; junkshops were a favorite haunt of hers. That was another place she would have to stop in.

They were into the village proper now-two blocks long and deserted-looking, despite the sign on the outskirts that announced Hilliard’s population at three hundred and eleven. Mike’s Bar amp; Grill. A launderette. Hazel’s Beauty Salon and Bob’s Barber Shop, two halves of the same building. Hilliard General Store. Sea Breeze Tavern. The Seafood Grotto, a smallish restaurant built out over the bay on pilings. A-1 Marine Supply. A big cannery at the north end of the harbor, with its name painted in faded black on the sloping metal roof: South Coast Fisheries, Inc. They all seemed to be made of colorless native wood and stone, or of clapboard stripped of paint by the elements and scoured to a uniformly dull gray. Even the cannery and the long pier behind it, the boat slips that stood adjacent, and the two dozen or so fishing trawlers moored there, seemed to possess the same shabby, scrubbed gray appearance. The only buildings of much color were on the hillside. One was a whitewashed church, its steeple rising above the trees; the other was what looked to be a good-sized old schoolhouse painted red, with its bell tower intact. Beyond the Sea Breeze Tavern, an unpaved road led up that way; a wooden arrow at the intersection indicated that the two structures were the Hilliard Community Church and the Hilliard Town Hall.

As she turned onto the gravel parking area in front of A-I Marine, Jan stirred and spoke for the first time in twenty minutes-an occurrence she took as a positive sign. “Not much to it, is there.”

“No. It looks kind of… I don’t know, depressed.”

“It is. Hard times around here these days.”

“How come?”

“Commercial fishing is Hilliard’s life-support,” he said, “and the main catch is salmon. Chinook and coho, the big ones. But the salmon runs have been poor the past three years; the trolling season that ended earlier this month was the worst of them.”

“Why?”

“Dry winters, dry rivers and streams. Salmon are anadromous, remember? Thousands of them couldn’t get from the sea to their spawning grounds.”

“Can’t the fishermen go after other species?”

“They do. Groundfish, mostly, but they don’t fetch the same high price. And their boats have to be re-outfitted for that kind of fishing.”

“What’re groundfish?”

“Flounder, perch, lingcod,” Jan said. “They use lines and nets to haul them up off the ocean floor.”

He opened his door and stepped out into the chill wind; she followed suit. The air had a brackish, fishy smell that was not unpleasant. Gulls wheeled out over the cannery pier and boat slips, shrieking hungrily. A few men moved around out there; a late-arriving trawler was just putting into one of the berths. Across the road, on a flattish strip of raised land, two yelling boys chased each other among six or seven dilapidated trailers-a sort of makeshift trailer park, Alix thought. Otherwise, there was no activity anywhere in the vicinity.

She unlatched the rear door and helped Jan carry the empty propane cylinders into A-1 Marine. A taciturn man in overalls traded them full tanks, charged them what Jan grumbled was too much, and didn’t offer to help them take the full tanks out to the car. Friendly natives, she thought, and the thought depressed her. The whole village depressed her in a vague sort of way. Or maybe she was just reacting-overreacting? — to Jan’s moodiness.

They left the Ford where it was and walked down past the Seafood Grotto to the general store. Its interior was cavernous; opaque globes suspended from long metal conduit cast dim light over the rows of shelves, old-fashioned meat case, dark wood checkout counter, and the partitioned-off cubicle adjacent to it, near the door, that contained a barred window and a sign reading U.S. Post Office, Hilliard, OR. The look and smell of the place caused a bittersweet wave of nostalgia to wash over Alix. Her corner deli in New York’s Greenwich Village had had the same black-and-white linoleum squares, the same aromas. Now, thousands of miles and over a dozen years away, she could still conjure up the warmth and coziness that had made Greenberg’s a haven for the twenty-three-year-old artist who had been so eager to take on life in the big city. Eager, yet secretly so afraid…

“Help you, folks?”

The gruff, mannish voice came from a woman sitting on a stool behind the grocery counter. Her hair was short and gray, in a style that Alix automatically labeled “home chop job,” and she wore a heavy red-plaid flannel workshirt. The expression on her seamed, weathered face was neither welcoming nor unfriendly.

Alix rummaged in her purse for the list she’d made the night before. “Thanks, we have quite a few things to pick up. We’re the Ryersons, the new caretakers out at the lighthouse—”

“Take your time. When you fill a basket, bring it up and leave it on the counter.”

There was a stack of vari-colored plastic baskets on the floor next to the produce section; Alix picked one up. Jan had already wandered off toward a far comer of the store that appeared to be stocked with hardware and household goods. The woman behind the counter had picked up a magazine and was leafing through it; her disinterest struck Alix as odd. She didn’t seem to care what sort of people had moved into the vicinity, had chosen to live in isolation on Cape Despair. Well, maybe she was a friend of Seth Bonner’s. That might explain it. Or maybe she was just plain disinterested-the exact opposite of the stereotypical small-town busybody.

With her list in one hand and the basket in the other, Alix went down the first aisle to the left. That was where the bottled water was; she loaded the basket with that and took it up to the counter. The older woman didn’t even glance up from her magazine. Alix was surprised, and mildly amused, to see that it was Sunset, a publication whose offices were located in Menlo Park, Palo Alto’s neighbor to the north, and for which she occasionally did freelance illustrating. Sunset was a glossy paean to the refinements of living in the western U.S.-such refinements including an indulgence in gourmet food and wine, redwood decking and hot tubs in the backyard, and spacious homes with lots of cutely concealed storage space. The magazine’s presence in this backwater store was a contradiction that pleased Alix, as life’s inconsistencies often did.

She was loading a second basket with meat and poultry when the bell above the door jingled. Alix glanced that way. The woman who came in had stringy brown hair that hung to her shoulders, wore a soiled and stained quilted coat. Despite the bulkiness of the quilting, she looked painfully thin. She went to the grocery counter and began talking to the storekeeper in low tones. Alix couldn’t make out the words, only the rhythm. The thin woman had an accent. Texas, perhaps-someplace like that. Her voice faltered and trailed off; then the storekeeper spoke in gruff tones that carried to where Alix stood.

“I told you the other day. No more credit. You and Hod are two months behind.”

“I know that, Mrs. Hilliard.” The words were soft, helpless.

A pause. Then the Hilliard woman said, “Can you give me something on account? Twenty dollars?”

“Ten is all I have…”

“Oh, hell. What do you need?”

“Milk. Bread. Eggs-a dozen.”

“All right. That all?”

“We can get by on it. And I’m grateful—”

“Just give me the ten dollars, Della.”

The thin woman, Della, fumbled in the deep pocket of her coat and produced a pair of crumpled five-dollar bills. Alix’s basket was full again, so she moved toward the counter. At close range she could see that Della’s complexion was sallow, her fingernails nicotine-stained and bitten to the quick.

Mrs. Hilliard took the two five-dollar bills, rang open the old wooden cash register, and put them away. Then she said to Della, “Go pick out your groceries. And take some oranges, too-they’re cheap, and good nourishment.”

Within a few minutes, Della had finished gathering her meager groceries and was bagging them herself, under Mrs. Hilliard’s watchful eye. When she’d finished, the storekeeper held out the copy of Sunset to her.

“I’m done with it. You want it, you can have it.”

Della started to reach for it, then withdrew her hand and put it into her coat pocket. “Thank you, Mrs. Hilliard, but I don’t think I want it.”

“I won’t charge you for it.”

“It’s not that. I’d just rather not.” Delta picked up her grocery sack and quickly left the store.

Now what was all that about? Alix wondered. The woman wasn’t averse to buying food on credit, but she wouldn’t take a free magazine…? Oh, of course-it would be painful looking at all that rich food, all that affluence, when times were bad.

Della, Alix decided, was a sensible woman.

Jan had emerged from the hardware section carrying a handful of tools, glass cleanser, and metal polish. He motioned at Alix’s list. “Help you with that?”

“Sure.”

She tore off the bottom half and handed it to him. The faintly surprised look on Mrs. Hilliard’s face made Alix smile. The woman might not be curious about their tenancy at the lighthouse, but their domestic arrangements seemed to hold a certain interest for her. Apparently the men in Hilliard didn’t share the household duties with their wives.

When the last item on the list had been crossed off, their purchases filled six large cardboard cartons. Jan took the first and went to move the car closer, while Alix counted out twenty-dollar bills into Mrs. Hilliard’s square, blunt-fingered hand. Just as she finished, the bell above the door tinkled again and two men-a lean one in a brown parka and a stockier one in a pea jacket similar to her own-came inside. A medium-sized dog-red, like an Irish setter, but obviously of mixed ancestry-followed them, circling and jumping up on its hind legs in an effort to get some attention. The men’s faces were ruddy from the cold, and they gave off a faint fishy odor. Fishermen, probably, already done with the day’s work.

“Pack of Camels, Lillian,” the lean one said.

The lines around Lillian Hilliard’s deep-set eyes had tightened. “Mitch Novotny, I told you before about that dog. Get him out of here.”

The man brushed limp brown hair off his forehead and smiled disarmingly. “Now, Lillian, Red’s not hurting anything.”

“Not yet, but any minute he’ll have that produce all over the floor. He’s too rambunctious for his own good. Yours, too.”

As if to prove her point, Red lunged against a bushel basket and sent potatoes flying in all directions.

Mitch rolled his eyes ceiling ward. “Okay, okay, you’re right as usual.” He snapped his fingers at the dog, then pointed toward the door. Red ran over there, and the stockier man held the door open so the animal could go out.

“Now, you pick up after your dog,” Mrs. Hilliard said. To the stocky man she added, “And you help him, Hod Barnett. Your wife was just in here wheedling more credit from me, so it’s the least you can do.”

The man called Hod Barnett-Della’s husband? — scowled but bent and began helping Mitch pick up the potatoes. Alix glanced at Lillian Hilliard and saw she was watching him with a smug expression that belied the compassion she had shown earlier for the woman. Probably enjoys dispensing charity because it gives her power over people, Alix thought.

When the two men were done Mitch turned back to the counter, counted out change for the cigarettes Mrs. Hilliard handed him. Then he and Hod went out past Jan, who was just returning.

Jan took the largest carton, and Alix followed him outside with a smaller one. The two fishermen were standing in the gravel parking area nearby, lighting cigarettes in cupped hands. They glanced at Jan and Alix, their expressions neither hostile nor accepting; rather, their looks were ones of apathy and indifference. The dog was once again frisking around, begging for attention, and Jan gave it a nervous look. He was afraid of dogs, the result of a childhood misadventure with a German shepherd in which he’d been painfully mauled. Where larger dogs were concerned, his fear was almost a phobia.

As Jan started to where the station wagon waited with its tailgate lowered, Mitch’s dog turned playfully and went after him, nipping at his heels. He pivoted in alarm and shook his leg, trying to push the animal away. The groceries shifted dangerously in the carton; he came near to losing his grip, staggered as he tried to maintain it. Red closed in again, teeth snapping at Jan’s calf.

Alix stifled a cry. But Mitch just laughed. “Hey, Red,” he called, “don’t bite that fella’s leg off.”

Jan half stumbled to the station wagon and thumped the carton down on the tailgate. The dog nipped at his leg again, this time catching the cloth of his jeans. Jan’s face was pale with fear. He swung around in reflex and kicked the dog solidly on its rump-not hard enough to hurt it, but hard enough to make it yip and scurry backward. It stood at a distance, tail down, eyes accusing.

“Hey,” Mitch said angrily. “What the hell’s the idea?”

Jan had leaned a hand against the Ford’s roof. He looked up, said blankly, “What?”

“I said, what’s the idea, kicking my dog?”

“It was biting me…”

“Red don’t bite. Nips a little, that’s all.”

“How was I supposed to know that?”

Mitch tossed his cigarette onto the gravel and took a step forward, his jaw set in tight lines. Hod Barnett looked uneasy now. Alix felt an uneasiness of her own, one that deepened her concern for Jan. Out of the comer of her eye, she saw that a pair of women who had been approaching the store had stopped to watch.

“You can’t just kick a man’s dog, mister.”

Jan straightened, frowning. “I told you, I had no way of knowing the dog was harmless.” He made the mistake of enunciating each word, as if speaking to one of his slower students. “Why don’t you keep him on a leash?”

“That dog never hurt nobody,” Mitch said.

There was belligerence in his voice, and Alix’s fingers tightened on the carton she was carrying. God, he seemed to want to fight! That was the last thing they needed as newcomers to Hilliard. And Jan, never a physical person, was in no shape to take on these two; he wouldn’t back down-he wasn’t a coward-and that meant he might get hurt.

She hurried to the car, set her carton down, caught hold of Jan’s arm. “Come on,” she said, “let’s get the rest of the groceries.”

“All right.”

But he hesitated, because Red was back near his master, circling again, his tail sawing the air, and both Mitch and the dog were between the station wagon and the store. Another man had joined the two women, Alix saw, drawn from Bob’s Barber Shop next door. She also saw Lillian Hilliard watching through the front window of the general store. The woman had been firm with the two fishermen earlier; why didn’t she do something to defuse this?

Mitch sat on his heels, put one hand on the dog’s collar. But his eyes were still on Jan. “You hurt my dog, damn you.”

“No I didn’t. Look at him. Does he act as if he’s hurt?”

Surprisingly, as if he felt as Alix did about avoiding a fight, Hod Barnett said, “He’s right, Mitch. Hell, Red’s not hurt.”

Mitch was silent, glaring. His hand moved protectively over the animal’s somewhat shabby coat. Alix watched him tensely-they were all watching him that way.

The frozen tableau lasted another three or four seconds. Then Mitch let go of the dog and stood up in slow movements. Some of his anger, Alix saw with relief, seemed to have dissipated.

“Yeah, all right,” he said to Jan. “But you listen, mister. Maybe where you come from it’s all right to kick another man’s dog, but not here, not in Hilliard. Don’t ever do it again, hear?”

Jan said without inflection, “I hear.”

Mitch turned abruptly and went across the street toward the Sea Breeze Tavern; Hod Barnett and the dog followed, Red now nipping at his master’s heels. The other three locals also stayed where they were, their expressions watchful, cold-accusing. Lillian Hilliard had vanished from the window of the store.

Alix let go of Jan’s arm. He bent over the tailgate and pushed the cartons inside with agitated movements that belied his calm exterior. Then he said, “I’ll get the other things,” and walked off to the store in a stiff, jerky stride.

Alix went around to the driver’s side. The three watchers moved then, too; the man returned to Bob’s Barber Shop and the women continued on to the store, their glances sweeping over the imitation-wood-paneled length of the new Ford. When they were past, one of them pointed at the rear license plate and said in a voice obviously intended to carry, “Califomians.”

Everything was said in that one contemptuous word. Some Oregonians, Alix knew, resented their neighbors to the south, looking scornfully upon the Golden State with its urban sprawl, its fast-paced and often eccentric lifestyles, its prosperity. It had never bothered her before; even the rash of bumper stickers a few years back-DON’T CALIFORMCATE OREGON-had amused her more than anything else. But this was different. This was personal.

When Jan returned with more cartons she slipped in behind the wheel, sat huddled inside her pea jacket. The overcast sky seemed even bleaker now, the village’s shabby buildings more uninviting-part of a foreign and incomprehensible landscape. And the wind, gusting in across the bay, was a bitter, icy cold.

Jan

The first lighthouse, a marvel of structural engineering not incomparable to the great pyramids, was the Pharos of Alexandria, completed under Ptolemy II in approximately 280 B.C. “Admirably constructed of white marble,” according to Strabo, it stood for two centuries near the mouth of the Nile; what finally destroyed it is a secret lost in antiquity. No accurate description or representation of the Pharos has survived these past two thousand years, although an imagined rendering appears on many Roman coins. Edrisi, the Arabian geographer, described it in 1154 as “singularly remarkable, as much because of its height as of its solidity… During the night it appears as a star, and during the day it is distinguished by the smoke.” The fact that it was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World has nowhere been disputed in

No. Too flat, too pedantic. The Pharos must have been awesome; it deserved better than this. Sparkle. Flair. Make the student-excuse me, the reader — see the sun on the white marble, the smoke from its open fire, the glow radiating out to the Mediterranean sailor in his galley.

Jan ripped the sheet of paper from his old Underwood portable, crumpled it, chucked it at the cardboard carton he was using as a waste receptacle, and inserted a fresh sheet. His fingers felt cramped; he flexed them. He still wasn’t used to working on a manual typewriter-any kind of typewriter, for that matter. He had a secretary at school; she transcribed his dictated tapes on an IBM word processor.

All right. Try it again.

In the Romance languages the word for lighthouse is pharos. a word derived from the world’s first and most remarkable safeguard for the mariner, the Pharos of Alexandria. Completed under Ptolemy II in approximately 280 B.C., this marvel of structural engineering stood sentinel at the mouth of the Nile for two centuries, by day sunstruck and wreathed in smoke from its slave-tended fire, by night sending out its beacon across the dark waters to the unwary sailor

For God’s sake, no! Childish. Like a bad freshman composition. No one would publish this sort of drivel.

The pain intensified behind his eyes.

It was no longer sharp; it had modulated into that bulging ache again, as if the pressure might pop his eyes right out, roll them down his cheeks like sunstruck white marbles. Wait it out, that was all he could do. Just when he felt he could suffer it no longer, it would subside and he would begin to feel normal again for a few days. Then it would come back, as it had tonight, after a full week of relative peace, to remind him of what the future held. Sharp and pulsing. Dull and pulsing. Savage. Nagging. Bulging. That was the worst, the bulging

Damn you! he thought suddenly, savagely, and drove the heels of his hands against his eyes. His vision blurred, shifted; he endured a panicky moment until it cleared again. Calm, he thought. Calm. He reached for his pipe, loaded it with McBaren’s, set fire to the tobacco.

On one comer of the table that served as his desk, the stack of finished manuscript pages caught his attention. He picked it up. Nineteen pages so far. Not bad, really, considering how much time in the week they’d been here he’d spent on housekeeping matters, on preparations for work on the light, on organizing his notes and research material. Introductory remarks, a prologue comprised of an edited-down version of Anderson’s taped reminiscences about his days as keeper of Washington’s Destruction Island Light, and a scant beginning for the general-history chapter. And now he could not seem to get past the Pharos of Alexandria, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

The title page seemed to stare back at him, mockingly.

He replaced the stack, got to his feet, and paced the room. The smoke from his pipe formed an undulant line, like marshy vapor, just below the low ceiling. He felt restless now, disinclined to work, disinclined to do anything and yet in need of movement, activity. After a time he stopped pacing and began to rummage manically through the file boxes of research materials he had brought from home. Photostats of old newspaper, magazine, and book articles. Books and pamphlets of utilitarian value, some of them quite rare-A. B. Johnson’s The Modern Lighthouse Service, for one, published by the U.S. Government in 1890. Annual reports of the U.S. Coast Guard. Departments of Treasury and Commerce lists of Lights and Fog-signals, 1900–1954. Lighthouse Service Bulletins, 1866–1939, and Lighthouse Board Reports, 1920–1939. Transcriptions of taped interviews with four men who had worked as lighthouse keepers in various parts of the country-one of them Anderson-and two others who had worked under George R. Putnam, U.S. Commissioner of Lighthouses in the 1930s. Copies of the Journal of American History, the New England Historical Quarterly, the Oregon Historical Quarterly, National Geo graphic, and several other publications-all with articles by him on various lighthouses and aspects of lighthouse history that he planned to incorporate into Guardians of the Night. An extra copy (why had be brought an extra copy?) of the small-press edition of his Ph. D. dissertation, Lighthouses of the Upper New England Seaboard, which in revised form would comprise from one-quarter to one-third of Guardians.

He thumbed through some of the material, but the words seemed to blur together like ink under a stream of water. He paced some more. He sat down, pulled the sheet of paper out of the Underwood’s platen, rolled in another.

The Romans built many lighthouses, none of the splendor or size of the Pharos. Beacon towers for ships, which appear to have been in use long before the Pharos was constructed, although there is no record of when such lights were first adopted, were revived by the seafaring Italian republics in the twelfth century. There were few such beacons in the world, however, when the first lighthouse in America was erected at Boston in 1715 no 1716

Bulging. Bulging.

On his feet again, pacing the room. It seemed to have contracted, the walls to have bent sharply inward. Claustrophobia-a byproduct of the pain, the tension, the restlessness. He had experienced it before; there was no use fighting it. Open space was what he needed. Fresh air, cold air.

He went out along the hall to the staircase, down into the living room. The place was still: Alix was in her studio with the door shut, working on the first of her illustrations for Guardians — the Pharos, her conception of what it must have been like. She had shown him the preliminary sketch earlier, after supper. Good, very good. So much better than the crap he’d written tonight.

In the middle of the living room, he hesitated. Alix. He felt a sudden need to go to her, talk to her, tell her what was happening to him. It was a need that came over him more and more often lately, and yet one that he could never quite act upon. In the past few years she’d changed so much. Not that he hadn’t been pleased about that. When he’d met her she had been at loose ends, not sure of who she was or what she wanted to do-needing someone like him to help give her life direction. She didn’t need him anymore; her decision to buy into the graphic arts firm next year proved that. What if she couldn’t or wouldn’t stay with a man who was totally dependent upon her?

He was afraid, and being afraid angered him and drove him deeper inside himself. He had always been self-reliant, had had to be. Wisconsin farm kids learned early on about the harsh realities of life. The early loss of his mother, the later truth about her disappearance, had taught him about pain; his father’s death while he was still at the university had left him completely on his own. He could deal with any sort of crisis alone. Even now. Especially now.

He went to the door, got it open, felt the cold sting of the wind as he walked out into the darkness. He had forgotten to put on his coat, he realized, but he did not want to go back inside yet. He moved away from the watch house, steered by the wind-across the grassy area on its inland side, around past the shed that housed the well, across humped, barren ground toward the cliffs on the north side of the headland, Wind-twisted cypress trees grew along the edge, half a dozen of them; he stopped alongside one, took hold of a low branch to steady himself against the pull of the wind.

Choppy sea, angry-looking in the dark. No lights anywhere, not even starlight. He looked down. The cliffs weren’t sheer there; the land fell away in a series of rolls and declivities to the boiling surf and the rocks fifty or sixty yards below. One of the declivities was clogged with driftwood, a whitish mass in the blackness. Bones of old ships, lost off Cape Despair. Old mariners too, perhaps. Dead things. Piles of old bones.

He listened. Blowhole down there somewhere: he could hear the whistling hiss as one of the bigger waves crashed through the cave or crack. Primitive form of fog signal, blowholes. Drill a hole through the top of the rock and mount a real whistle above it, and every time a wave struck the entrance the whistle would blow. Wheeee-oo! Wheeee-oo!

The wind had numbed his face, his hands; had caught in his shirt and was billowing it violently, threatening to tear it off his back. But his awareness of these things was peripheral: mercifully, the pain had begun to lessen. He stood quite still, his face upturned to the dark overcast sky, listening to the pound of the surf and its whistling hiss through the blowhole. Better. Not gone completely, some of the pressure still there, but better. He could think and see again with clarity.

He took several deep breaths, raked a hand through his beard, and then through his hair. Cold-now he felt it, the numbness and the chill. His teeth began an involuntary chattering. Idiotic, coming out here like this without a coat. Inviting pneumonia.

He pushed away from the cypress, hurried back to the house. Alix hadn’t realized he’d gone out; the same silence told him she was still at work in her studio. He crossed to the old wood-burner, fed several chunks of cordwood to the dying fire within, and knelt before its open door until the numbness left him and his skin tingled from the heat. The pressure behind his eyes was mostly gone now, but the restlessness was still in him, the need for movement. As soon as he was warm he stood up, began to pace the room. Back upstairs to work? No, he couldn’t face the typewriter again tonight. What then? A drive? He didn’t like to drive at night these days, but up here, as isolated as the area was, and if he was careful and didn’t stay out long…

He went into the cloakroom off the kitchen, got his overcoat, and then entered Alix’s studio. He told her he was out of tobacco and felt like a drive anyway; he couldn’t tell her the truth. It relieved him when she didn’t ask to come along. She was caught up in her sketch of the Pharos.

“What do you think?” she asked, turning her drawing board so he could see it. “Satisfactory?”

“More than that.”

She smiled, pleased. “Well, it still needs work. How’s the writing coming?”

“So-so. I can use the break.”

“You look tired, love. Maybe you should wait until tomorrow to go into the village. There might not be any place open this time of night that sells pipe tobacco.”

“No, I’m all right.”

“You sure?”

“Driving relaxes me, you know that.”

In the doorway he hesitated. The need was there again, the need to unburden himself to her. But the words he wanted to speak were walled up inside him and he didn’t have the tools to break down the wall. Might never have the tools; the truth might have to come from Dave Sanderson or one of the specialists.

How do you tell your wife you have atrophying optic nerves and there is nothing the medical profession can do about it?

How do you tell her you’re slowly and inexorably going blind?

Driving relaxes me, you know that.

But not this time. He was on the outskirts of Hilliard when it started again.

The bulging…

Alix

She set down her pen, adjusted the Tensor lamp, and looked critically at the more fully realized sketch of the Pharos on her drawing board. Not bad, really, given that she had so little factual detail to work with. Or maybe that was what made it good, the opportunity to give her imagination free rein. The image had come to her almost unbidden. Wouldn’t it be strange if the shining marble tower of her sketch actually resembled the ancient, vanished lighthouse? How did metaphysicians explain things like that? The collective unconscious? All of mankind’s knowledge stored in a pool and available to any given individual should he tap into it. Something like that. She’d have to ask Jan; he’d know.

She raised her head, looked at the slick blackness of the window behind her worktable. She couldn’t see much of the cliffs and the sea beyond, but she was aware they were there. Normally she loved the ocean, could sit and watch it for hours, even at night. But tonight the thought of it-cold and turbulent, gnawing insatiably at the rocky shore-filled her with a wrenching loneliness. She wanted warmth, cheerful sounds, companionship-none of which were available with Jan gone. The only sound was the wind, baffling around the lighthouse tower, muttering down the kitchen chimney.

She got up, switched off the light, went into the living room. Jan had apparently fed some wood to the fire before he’d gone out; it still radiated a small amount of heat and the room was somewhat smoky. She debated the two evils-cold or smoke-opted for smoke, and knelt to add a few more chunks of wood to the stove. Then she went into the kitchen, poured herself a glass of red wine.

Back in the living room, she sat on the couch and pulled her feet up, tucking them under the folds of an old afghan. The fire was burning strongly now, the room was warmer, the smoky smell was not unpleasant. She glanced at the table beside her, where the telephone sat. Too late for anyone to call now. And too late for her to call her best friend Kay or her mother or anyone else. She didn’t feel like reading. Didn’t feel like doing much of anything except sitting.

How long had Jan been gone? she wondered. She slipped her left arm from under the afghan and looked at her watch. Ten-twenty. Not that that told her anything. She’d been so absorbed in her sketch when he left that she hadn’t noticed the time.

The wind gusted sharply; smoke backed up into the room. Alix coughed, fanned it away. North wind tonight-and its gusts seemed to spiral around the lighthouse from top to bottom, bottom to top, in an unrelenting assault. It made her feel very much isolated and alone, more so at this moment than at any time since their arrival.

A bittersweet memory struggled to the surface of her consciousness. Boston, twelve years ago. Jan’s apartment on the shabby back of Beacon Hill. Winter. Ice slick on the steeply slanting sidewalks, newly fallen snow covering it deceptively. And wind, freezing wind off the Charles River that threatened to batter the flimsy building into rubble.

The apartment had been on Russell Street, in a row of tenements soon to be condemned. The buildings on either side had already been vacated, but the stubborn residents of Jan’s building had insisted on their right to stay until spring and the arrival of the wreckers. The combination of the fresh snow and the empty shells of buildings gave the area a hushed, unreal quality, muting even the wail of an ambulance on its way to nearby Massachusetts General Hospital.

She had entered the apartment as stealthily as a burglar, knowing she was an interloper and probably unwelcome. But even the most unwelcome of guests have their ways of gaining access; in her case, she’d known where Jan hid his spare key. Her Hight bag in hand, she stood in the tiny living room with its threadbare carpet, brick-and-board bookcase, Salvation Army couch and coffee table. She hadn’t packed much before leaving New York. She didn’t expect to be permitted to stay.

She went into the bedroom. It was dominated by the narrow built-in bunk that they’d often shared-never mind the discomfort-and the bunk was neatly made up. Trust Jan to rise early and perform his household chores before leaving for Boston University, where he’d taught history after receiving his Ph. D. from Harvard two years before. Setting her bag on the bed, she glanced around to see if anything had changed since the last time she was there. It didn’t appear that much had. Then, feeling like a sneak, she opened the closet door and peered inside. Jan’s clothes, nobody else’s.

Relieved, she went back through the living room and into the bathroom and kitchen that opened off its far end. Both were tidy and contained only his few possessions. He’d even washed his egg cup and spoon, which also didn’t surprise her. There was some brandy in the cupboard over the sink, kept mostly for visitors. She poured a couple of fingers into a glass, for courage, and then returned to the living room to wait. And as the wind howled and the underlying quiet assailed her, she practiced what she would say when he came home.

I will not allow you to just walk away from me without an explanation.

No, too pushy. It would only anger him.

How can you turn your back on me, push me out of your life, without telling me what’s wrong?

Too pitiful. Tears would come to her eyes, and that would force him to feel sorry for her-something she didn’t want.

Jan, let’s discuss our relationship in a straightforward, adult fashion.

God, if anyone approached her like that, she’d throw up!

I love you and I don’t want to lose you.

Better, but there was so much more that needed to be said…

She had formed no definite conclusion when, twenty minutes later, she heard Jan’s key in the lock. He came in, wrapped in his too-large tweed overcoat, blinking in surprise at the light. His eyes, behind the hom-rimmed glasses, were startled and wary until he saw her curled up on the couch; then they brightened-briefly. The sudden spark of pleasure dimmed and the comers of his mouth pulled down in what might have been displeasure and might have been resolve. He came all the way into the apartment, set his shabby briefcase on the coffee table, and struggled out of the coat (which could easily have held two of him).

“What are you doing here?” he said.

Not a promising beginning. “Obviously I came to see you.”

“I told you not to.”

“I had to come, Jan.”

His eyes shifted away from hers, to the glass on the floor beside the couch. “Well, I see you’ve made yourself at home.”

“Yes. Can I get you a brandy?” God, she sounded assured. And all the while she was like jelly inside.

His mouth twitched: the ghost of a smile. He wasn’t put off enough not to appreciate what he often referred to as her “sassiness.” He said, “No, I’ll get it. You want another?”

“Yes.” For courage.

He returned after a minute with the drinks, then went back to the kitchen and brought out a straight-backed chair. So he wasn’t even going to sit on the couch beside her. Another bad sign.

“Why are you here?” he asked again.

“Oh, Jan, you know why I’m here. Let’s not play games with each other.”

He was silent, looking down into his glass.

“I love you and I don’t want to lose you,” she said. “But I don’t know how to keep that from happening because I don’t know what’s wrong, why you’ve… changed toward me all of a sudden. Was it something I did?”

No response.

“I don’t think it was,” she said. “First you told me not to come to Boston; you were busy, you’d drive down to New York at the end of the semester. Then you had to work on an article over semester break. I offered to come up here; you didn’t think that was a good idea. Next you promised you’d meet me in Connecticut for the weekend, but you cancelled at the last minute. You haven’t written or called in the last three weeks. Jan… is there somebody else? Is that it?”

He looked up. “There’s no one but you, you know that.”

He had spoken the words softly, apologetically, but they only served to anger her. “How can you say, ‘There’s no one but you’? There isn’t even me anymore! You’ve forced me out of your life and I want to know why.”

“I’m trying to do what’s best for you—”

“What’s best for me? Don’t you think I have the right to make that decision?”

He sighed and finished the rest of his brandy. Then he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, rolled the empty glass between his big hands. He said slowly, “Look, Alix, I’m not an easy person to be around all the time. Not an easy person to be close to. I tend to brood—”

“I know that—”

“No, hear me out. This past year you’ve seen the best side of me. I’ve been happy and that’s allowed me to open up to you in a way I never have to anyone else.”

“So why should that change now?”

He went on as if he hadn’t heard her question. “What you didn’t see this past year was the other side of me. I’m prone to periods of depression-severe depression. I wouldn’t ask anyone else to suffer through one of those periods, least of all you.”

“I don’t understand. What brings on this depression?”

“I’m not sure. I mean, it isn’t as if something goes wrong at the university, or I have a bad day otherwise, and I get the blues for a while. It’s not that simple. My depression is chronic and cyclical.”

“Why? What causes it?”

“There are things in my past,” he said. He spoke even more slowly, still rolling the glass between his palms.

“What kind of things?”

When he met her gaze again his eyes, even with the protection of his glasses, revealed a vulnerability that touched her deeply. “I told you my mother died,” he said. “And it’s true; she died over ten years ago. But what I didn’t tell you was that years before that, when I was only three, she left my father and me, ran off with another man.”

“Oh, Jan, I’m sorry.”

“His name was Petersen, he worked for the creamery in Baraboo that bought most of our milk. He was from Minnesota, some town up by Duluth; that was where he and my mother went.”

“Did your father try to get her back?”

“No. He disowned her completely, would never even mention her name. I was twelve before I found out the truth. A kid on one of the neighboring farms told me. He laughed about it; I thought at the time that everyone must be laughing and I felt humiliated. Indirectly, that’s one of the reasons I became interested in lighthouses: I spent most of my time with books, after that.”

She wanted to say something comforting, but no words came to her. None except, “But that was such a long time ago…”

“No, listen. I know it’s irrational, but all my life I’ve felt that the people I cared most about were going to abandon me, just as my mother did. And they have: my father died when I was in college. The only other woman I’ve loved besides you broke off our two-week engagement to marry someone else. I can’t even keep a cat. They get sick and die or run off.”

“So you’re afraid I’ll leave you too, eventually.”

“Yes. Somehow, in some way. Tragedy of one kind or another has plagued me all my life, Alix.” He paused, looked away from her again. “I didn’t tell you about the murder, did I.”

A small chill settled between her shoulder blades; she sat up straighter. “Murder?”

“It happened during my senior year at Madison. There were several of us-all history majors-who shared a house near campus. Outcasts who couldn’t afford a fraternity or couldn’t get into one. In a way we formed a fraternity of our own. We had parties, of course. And there was a regular crowd of people who would come-most of them outcasts, too, I suppose.

“One Saturday night in October, one of the regular girls brought a friend to the party. Sandy. Sandy Ralston. She wasn’t an outcast; she was blond and quite beautiful. We all took a turn at trying to impress her. Maybe one of us or someone else at the party succeeded; maybe not. There were a lot of people there-loud music, plenty of beer. Everyone was at least a little drunk, and afterwards no one could remember when Sandy left, or with whom.”

“She was the one who was murdered?”

“Yes. She didn’t come home that night-she roomed with another coed-and when she still hadn’t returned or called by noon the next day, the roommate got worried and called the police. A search was organized; most of the fellows in my house joined in. She had been raped and strangled and her body left in a wooded area only a few blocks away.” He was silent for a moment, and when he spoke again his voice was raw with emotion. “I was the one who found her.”

“How awful for you!” She reached over, put her hand on his arm. Almost convulsively, he set down his glass and twined her fingers with his.

“We were all suspects, of course, everyone who’d been at the party. We were questioned over and over again. None of us remembered much about that night-it was all a blur. At first we talked about it, but it wasn’t long before things got strained among us. We began to look at one another differently. Could one of us have strangled Sandy Ralston? Rob had been dancing with her about ten. Kevin kept bringing her beers. She talked to Neal for a while. And so forth. After a while, along with wondering if one of your friends was a murderer and a rapist, you began to wonder what each of them was thinking about you.”

Jan’s fingers were gripping hers so hard he was hurting her. She pulled her hand free, as gently as she could. “Did they… did they ever find out who did kill her?”

“Yes. Inside of two weeks they arrested the fellow who had the room next to mine-Ed Finlayson. He claimed he didn’t do it, but they had a strong circumstantial case and eventually he was convicted and sent to state prison. All of us in the house wanted to believe in Ed’s innocence, but at the same time it was a relief to think the murder was solved; even before the trial we had more or less abandoned him. I didn’t even go to visit him in jail.”

He paused, and then said softly, “I’m not proud of the way I abandoned Ed. And I’ve often wondered if he wasn’t telling the truth. The others must have felt the same way, because by the end of the term our group had disbanded and we’d all gone our separate ways. Ashamed to face one another as well as Ed, I suppose.”

She came off the couch, knelt beside him, held his hand in both of hers. “Jan, you were young then. And afraid. It’s hard to do the right thing when you’re inexperienced and frightened.”

He nodded slowly, looking down at their clasped hands. “I know, and the incident in itself isn’t important. It’s that it’s part of a pattern in my life: people going away, people dying. And me letting down the people I care about, too. If I let you into my life, I’m afraid the same sort of thing will happen. And I couldn’t face that…”

He had always seemed so strong and self-sufficient; now that he needed her, she felt totally ineffectual. Every phrase that came to her mind seemed trite: It will be all right. Maybe you should see someone, get some counseling. I won’t leave you, I won’t go away, I promise you I won’t.

And then something warm and wet touched the back of her hand. A tear. And when she glanced up at his face, others had squeezed out from under his glasses and were sliding down over his cheeks. Silently, very silently, he was crying.

His tears washed away her inadequacies. The pain was no longer only his, but a wrenching emotion she shared with him. She reached up, removed his glasses, set them aside. Then she pulled him off the chair, into a kneeling embrace with her face close to his, and held him until their tears mixed together in one healing, strengthening flow.

“I love you,” she said. “That’s all that matters. I love you, I love you.”

It was later that night, after they’d made love, that Jan had asked her to marry him.

Now she sat staring at the still-smoking woodstove, her wine untouched beside her. She had no regrets about marrying Jan. Good God, no. By and large they’d been happy. His periods of depression had been relatively few, and certainly no tragedy had befallen her or anyone close to them in the past eleven years.

Oh, there had been difficult times, but they were the kind that surfaced in most young marriages. When they’d been in such dire financial straits in Boston because funding had been cut back and Jan was on half salary and she could find no work. And later, when he’d been humiliated after discovering her father had finagled his position at Stanford for him. Her two miscarriages, and the realization they’d never have a child of their own. The formalized ordeal of his application for tenure.

But through it all there had been love to anchor them, love and Jan’s steadiness-a calm, often wryly humorous strength that had helped them weather the very worst of it. It was what Alix loved most about him, beyond his good looks, his quick intelligence, or his confident sexuality. It was a strength that came of self-knowing, an acceptance of what he was, his good points as well as his limitations. Other people whom Alix cared for and admired had the same quality-her father, her mother, her friend Kay-and she sensed that over the years she had developed a measure of it herself. She had even coined a term for it: character. A simple word that said much about an infinitely complex and desirable quality.

The strength was still there in Jan, but lately the ability to laugh at himself seemed to be vanishing. It hadn’t been long, only these past few months, when the depression had returned with such frequency and Jan had been subject to moody silences and brief rages. Only these past several months that he had begun a frantic work schedule, begun acting in other ways that puzzled and concerned her.

She consulted her watch again. Quarter of eleven. Where was he? Well, Hilliard was a place where everything but the taverns probably shut down with the setting sun, even on a Friday night, and taverns might not stock pipe tobacco; it wouldn’t be unlike him to have gone as far as Bandon, especially if he planned to start work early in the morning. Jan always worked better when he could smoke his pipe.

Restlessly, still fighting off the loneliness, she went upstairs to see what he’d accomplished tonight. She was eager to get on with her sketches, and if she read his pages now they might give her an idea for the next in the series of drawings. In his study she sat down and picked up the typescript that lay beside the old Underwood portable in a neat pile. But as she did, she noticed something on the desk next to Jan’s pipe rack: his oilskin tobacco pouch. Frowning, she reached out and felt it. Half full. Now why had he told her he was going out for tobacco when he still had plenty here?

Why had he lied to her?

Hod Barnett

Hod was shooting pool in the Sea Breeze with Adam Reese. Mitch was supposed to be there too-the three of them had taken to chalking up every Friday night-but he must have got hung up at home or something because he hadn’t come in yet. Didn’t look like he was going to, either. It was after ten o’clock.

They were playing Eight Ball, nickel a ball, dime on the eight, and Adam was winning. He kept hopping around the table, right foot, left foot, hippity-hop like a damn rabbit; he made Hod nervous. Little guy, not much meat on his bones, looked like a stiff wind would blow him halfway to Coos Bay-but Christ, he had more energy than anybody Hod had ever known. Never sat still a minute. Worked harder than two men, always off doing something, hippity goddamn hop.

Hod watched him move around the table, left foot, right foot, lining up a shot. “Three ball, side pocket,” Adam said, and stroked, and the three dropped clean. He hopped around on the other side of the table and stopped long enough to drink some of his beer. That was another thing about Adam: his capacity for suds. Hod had seen him put down close to a dozen bottles of Henry’s without getting a heat on and without having to piss. Little guy like that, it just wasn’t natural he could hold twelve bottles of Henry’s without having to take a leak at least once.

He came hopping over to where Hod was, lined up another shot, said, “Four ball, corner pocket, kiss off the six,” and stroked and made that one clean, too. Then he said, “So how about it, Hod?” in a low voice so the other three customers and Barney Nevers behind the plank couldn’t hear. “What do you say?”

Hod knew what he was talking about; they’d been talking about it the past hour, off and on. “Hell, I don’t know. It’s a hell of a fine if you get caught. I can’t afford a fine like that. And you can’t pay it, they put your ass in jail.”

“They got to catch you first,” Adam said. “Nobody’s caught me, have they?”

“First time for everything.”

“Shit, Hod, I’m trying to do you a favor here.”

“Sure, I know. I appreciate it, don’t think I don’t.”

“You got a family to feed. Wife and kids like venison, don’t they?”

“You know they do.”

“Well, then? We go out around two, maybe three o’clock, out on the cape. No game wardens around there at that hour.”

“Not so far, maybe.”

“I never saw one yet. Come on, Hod, what do you say?”

“Take your shot, that’s what I say.”

“Hod…”

“I’m still thinking on it, all right?”

Adam shrugged and hopped around, lining up his next shot. Hod watched him and did think on it, and it still made him nervous. He had nothing against jacklighting deer, not on principle. These were lean times and a man had a right to eat, a right to feed his family the best way he could, and to hell with a lot of stupid-ass laws. He’d bought a side of venison from Adam once, traded him ten pounds of fresh sablefish fillets for some venison steaks another time; he didn’t mind doing business that way. But going out himself, running the risk of getting caught, getting fined… he just didn’t like the idea of it. What would Della and the kids do if he wound up in jail? Go on welfare? He had them to think of, four other mouths to feed beside his own. Four for now, anyway; Mandy probably wouldn’t be around much longer, the way she was carrying on now that she’d quit school. Get herself knocked up by that long-haired jerk from Bandon she kept sneaking off with, that was what would happen to her. What could he do about it? She wouldn’t listen to him or Della, you smacked her one and she just looked at you. He knew that look, he’d seen it often enough before. The old fuck-you look…

“…shot, Hod.”

“What?”

“I said it’s your shot. You dreaming or what?”

“Thinking. I told you I was thinking, didn’t I?”

He lined up on the fourteen ball, an easy cut into the side pocket-and missed it. Shit. How could he miss a shot like that? Nervous, that was how. Adam hippity-hopping around like Bugs Bunny, all this talk about jacklighting deer, it was a wonder he didn’t miss every time.

He had left Adam wide open; he saw that and knew it was over. Adam tapped in the six, tapped in the seven with just enough English to give him position, and then tapped in the eight. “My game,” he said, grinning. “Beer’s on you, too, right?”

“Yeah, right.” They’d had a beer side bet on this one and Adam always seemed to win when they had a side bet. Not that Hod figured he was being hustled; Adam wasn’t that good. Just lucky. That was why he’d been able to go out jacklighting and not get caught. Pure luck. Hod didn’t have that kind of luck; first time he went out, game warden would be hiding in the bushes ten feet away when he fired his first round.

There were two stripes still on the table, his last two balls. He gave Adam twenty cents-five for each of the stripes, ten for the eight ball-and went to the bar and called to Barney Nevers for two more Henry’s. Two stools down from where he stood, Seth Bonner was nursing a highball; old Seth must have come in while they were playing the last game.

“Hey, Seth,” he said, “how’s it going?”

“Hell of a question to ask a man just lost his job.”

“Tough about that,” Hod said sympathetically.

“People from California,” Bonner said. “Goddamn college professor. Mr. Jan Ryerson, he says the first time he come around. What kind of name is that for a man? Jan?”

“Man can’t help the name he’s given.”

“Comes all the way up here, takes my job away from me, and for what? Write some damn book. Bookwriter with a name like that, he’s probly queer.”

“Not with a wife like he’s got. She’s a looker, Seth.”

“Don’t mean nothing,” Bonner said. “Lots of ’em go both ways, down there in California. Besides, he probly married her for her money. Her father’s some big mucky-muck politician. That’s how they got hold of the lighthouse.”

Hod shook his head, paid Barney for the two Henry’s, and carried them back to the pool table. Queer-that was a laugh. What did Bonner know about queers? Or anything else, for that matter? He was half cracked, and living alone out at the lighthouse the past three years had only widened the crack. Maybe it was a good thing those people had come up from California. Now Seth had a decent place to live and his sister Emma to take care of him, whether he liked it or not.

Another thing, too. Hod remembered the way that big blond Ryerson had kicked Red the other day, and how he hadn’t backed down from Mitch afterward. Never mind that he was a college professor; he had guts. Probably tough when push came to shove-that quiet type could fool you. Mitch must have sensed the same thing, because he hadn’t tried to push it with Ryerson, hadn’t said much about the incident afterward. Queer? Not that one. No way.

Adam was still hopping around, right foot, left foot, cradling his cue stick across his body like it was that Springfield 30.06 he kept in his van. “Losers rack,” he said, and Hod said, “Yeah, yeah,” and fished the balls out of the return slot and racked them for Adam’s break.

That was when Mitch came in.

Hod knew right away something was wrong. It was the way Mitch moved, hard and angry, and the way he was banging his fisted hands against his thighs. One long look at his face, when he got close enough, and Hod could tell that whatever it was, it was bad. Real bad.

And it was. “Red’s dead,” Mitch said.

“Dead? Christ, Mitch, what—?”

“Run down in the road not far from my place. An hour ago.”

“Chasing cars again?”

“No. Wasn’t any accident.”

Adam said, “It wasn’t? What was it?”

“Murder, that’s what it was. Son of a bitch ran him down deliberate.”

Hod said, “Jesus, who did?”

“That bastard from California, the one out at the lighthouse. Ryerson.”

“How do you know? You see it happen?”

“Enough of it. I was just coming out of the house, getting ready to come over here.” Mitch slammed his hands against his thighs in a hard, steady rhythm. “Red screamed,” he said. “When Ryerson hit him.. he screamed. You ever hear a dog scream?”

“No,” Hod said. His throat felt tight.

“Just like a woman. Knocked him into them bushes alongside the road, screaming all the way. Big car like that… he never had a chance.”

“That new Ford wagon?”

“That’s the one,” Mitch said. “No other like that around here. It was Ryerson, all right.”

“He didn’t stop?” Adam asked.

“Didn’t even slow down. I told you, he done it on purpose. Saw Red out running the way he liked to do, swerved over, and picked him off like a jackrabbit. Poor old dog was dead when I got to him, head all bashed in. Poor old dog. He never hurt nobody in his whole life.”

Hod said, “But why? Why would Ryerson do a thing like that?”

“Red nipping at him last week; words we had over it. He seen in his headlights it was the same dog and let him have it.”

“That’s no damn reason…”

“Not for you and me, it sin’t.”

Mitch hadn’t been trying to keep his voice down; everybody else in the Sea Breeze had heard him too. Seth Bonner got off his stool and came over halfway and said, “Plain dirt meanness, that’s what it was. Looked at me once like he wanted to kill me, too. Crazy California queer. We don’t want his kind around here!”

He was getting himself worked up, but Mitch wasn’t paying any attention to him. Nobody was except Barney Nevers. Barney said, “Pipe down, Seth, will you?”

“Don’t have to do what you tell me,” Bonner said.

“You want me to ring up Emma?”

Old Seth said, “Wouldn’t do that,” but he went back to his stool and sat down.

Adam said, “What’d you do, Mitch? Go after him?”

“No. Too late for that.”

“What, then?”

“Took Red up to the house and called the sheriff.”

“What’d he say?” Hod asked.

“Said there wasn’t much he could do. Said I didn’t see the whole thing, said it was dark and easy to make a mistake about intent. Said Ryerson could claim he didn’t know he hit Red and that was why he didn’t stop, and you couldn’t prove otherwise.” Mitch whacked his thighs again and his next words came out bitter. “Said it just ain’t much of a crime to hit-and-run a dog.”

“You could swear out a complaint anyway,” Barney Nevers said from behind the plank. “Malicious mischief or something.”

“Sheriff said that too.”

“You going to do it?” Hod asked.

“No. No damn point in it. Law ain’t worth a shit when it comes to this kind of thing.” Mitch sat heavily against one corner of the pool table. “Hod,” he said, “get me a drink, will you? Double shot of sour mash.”

“Sure. Sure thing, Mitch.”

Hod went to the bar, paid Barney Nevers for a double Jack Daniel’s-cost him his last dollar but the hell with that-and brought it back. Mitch drank it off neat. Then he made the shot glass disappear inside his big fist; squeezed on it, real tight, like he was trying to break it. His face had a funny dark look, a look Hod had never seen before.

“That son of a bitch,” Mitch said. His voice was funny and dark like this face. “He ain’t going to get away with murdering Red.”

Adam was cradling his cue stick again, rifle-like. He asked, “What’re you gonna do, Mitch?”

“I don’t know yet,” Mitch said. “But I’ll do something, you mark me plain on that. Ryerson just ain’t going to get away with it.”

Alix

Lang’s Gallery and Gifts housed one of the worst collections of pseudo-art Alix had ever seen.

The space itself was pleasant: a large rectangular room with white walls and polished wood floors. Natural light poured in through a huge central skylight. But the cool simplicity of the place was spoiled by the objects offered for sale.

To the left of the front door was a three-foot-high raised platform, also painted white, displaying a group of driftwood birds. Each was composed of a single piece of wood, perched on spindly coathanger legs. Beady eyes, which were actually bits of broken glass, stared blankly. The beaks were made of bluish-black mussel shells; the wings of seagull feathers, several of which made the birds look as if they were molting. Alix shook her head and turned to the right, where a similar platform held a collection of items made from shells. Some of these weren’t bad: simple, gracefully formed nautiluses and conches-undoubtedly ordered from a supplier rather than plucked from the hazardous local beaches-mounted on plain wooden bases. Others, however, were standard tourist fare: coasters and trays with shells laminated under plastic; abalone-shell ashtrays; oven-proof dishes made from what a clam had once called home. A larger, taller central platform directly under the skylight held other grotesqueries: driftwood lamps with hideous pleated shades; ceramic sea lions and brass whales; redwood burl clocks. Above all this, suspended from hooks around the edges of the skylight, were garishly glazed pottery windchimes. The breeze that had followed Alix inside caught them, making them clank and jangle.

The place was deserted. But after a few seconds, a slender, wiry woman with long dark hair pulled back in a severe knot appeared in an open doorway behind the sales desk. “Be with you shortly,” she called.

“Don’t hurry. I just want to browse.”

Alix moved to the wall at the left as the woman disappeared again and examined the paintings there. They were of different types: standard seascapes, poorly done, almost of a paint-by-the-numbers quality; cutesy depictions of birds, seals, and sea lions that imparted almost human qualities to the creatures; photographs of the neon-light school, sentimental iridescent scenes of lovers wandering the shoreline. But interspersed among these were occasionally startling canvases, abstract oils that were close to being good-good enough to make her stop in front of one and then another.

True primary colors. Crisp lines. Hard-edged forms. Slick, sophisticated Cubism, reminiscent of the work of American abstractionists of the twenties. Too slick, though. And there was something else wrong with them too…

She moved on to a third canvas, a study in red, yellow, and blue, with occasional stiff intrusions of black and white. Something disturbing about this one, too. But what? On the surface, sterility. Too strict an adherence to color and form. Didn’t express anything. But underneath… yes, strong emotion tightly reined. It made her wonder what the work would be like if he-she? — really let go.

Alix leaned forward to read the small signature at the bottom of the canvas: C. Lang. Lang’s Gallery and Gifts. Most likely the work of the owner. She wondered if the dark-haired woman who was working in back-she could hear vague sounds coming through the open doorway-was C. Lang, or merely an employee. It would be interesting to find out-to perhaps talk shop with someone who had at least a measure of talent.

She owed herself some pleasure this morning, which was the reason she’d stopped here in the first place. She’d been on her way into Hilliard with a load of dirty laundry when she’d spotted the gallery and decided to stop in and put off her chores a little longer. Not that anything she experienced today would be truly pleasurable; she was tired and had one of those scratchy headaches that come from a restless night. Jan had not returned until almost midnight, long after she had crawled into the four-poster; and when he’d come in he had tiptoed around, obviously thinking her asleep and trying not to wake her. If she could have asked him why he’d lied to her, perhaps found out that he’d simply overlooked the half-full tobacco pouch, then she might have rested better. But somehow she had preferred uncertainty to the prospect of a long middle-of-the-night confrontation. And now she was paying for it with a headache.

Ignoring the pain, she stepped back and studied the canvas from a different angle. No, it wasn’t really good, but she had to admire the artist’s raw talent. She herself had that talent, a compulsion to translate her perceptions and thoughts into lines, shapes, and colors. Once, when she’d first moved to New York after graduating from Stanford, she’d thought she might become a serious painter. But there had been a semi-famous painter (married) under whom she had studied (in more ways than one). He had claimed to understand and appreciate her talent, but what she had taken for professional ardor had in reality been simple middle-aged desperation and need for sexual reassurance. When their affair had ended (back to wife, reassured), she had emerged wiser and a touch cynical. She had set aside her dreams of serious work, studied and learned the craft of a commercial artist. She was good at it, too, she’d always known that, even if it had taken her a long time to become established.

The years they’d spent on the East Coast had been lean ones professionally. Jobs were few, commissions for free-lancers even scarcer. But once they’d returned to California, her career had taken an upward turn. Over the years she’d done whimsical watercolors and bold sketches for children’s books; botanically accurate pastels of regional plants and trees for a series of textbooks; pen-and-ink drawings for a special edition of a Jack London novel; illustrations for trade magazines and house organs. Once she’d even illustrated a crochet book-endless diagrams of wool being manipulated with a hook, until she could have crocheted an afghan in her sleep. And next there would be the partnership in the design firm, and the new challenges that would bring. But first there were the drawings for Jan’s book-a challenge also, if not a particularly difficult one. What appealed to her about the project was the chance for the two of them to work together, bringing one of Jan’s dreams to fruition. They’d never had anything they could work together on before…

Alix turned as the dark-haired woman reappeared and came around the sales desk. She was about forty, handsome in a strong-featured way, and the lines of her face spoke more of worldly experience than of age. In spite of her wiry appearance, she had large breasts and gracefully curved hips that were evident even though she wore a loose brown tunic top. Alix noted her full figure with a certain envy; she’d always wished she’d been better endowed.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” the woman said. “I was wrapping a painting for shipment. A couple from Washington bought it this morning, for their daughter.”

“Sounds as if business is good.”

“Not really. Even the summer is slow. Trouble is, I’m too far off Highway One.” The woman shrugged and then smiled. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“Yes and no. I’m not a customer. Actually, I’m one of your new neighbors. My name’s Alix Ryerson; my husband Jan and I moved into the lighthouse last week.”

“Oh, of course. You’re from California, aren’t you?”

“Palo Alto. My husband teaches at Stanford.”

“Stanford,” the woman said. She sounded impressed. “Well… don’t you find living conditions out on the cape awfully primitive? I mean, compared to what you’re used to.” “No, it’s surprisingly comfortable. Not an interior decorator’s dream-challenge is more like it-but quite liveable.” “I’m surprised, what with old Seth Bonner living there the past three years. Nothing against Seth,” she added at Alix’s inquiring look. “He’s all right once you get used to him. But he’s mildly retarded and I wouldn’t guess much of a housekeeper. But I’m being rude. My name’s Cassie Lang, I’m the owner of this place.”

Alix clasped the hand extended to her and found it strong, almost sandpapery in texture. “Nice to meet you.”

“Same here.” Cassie seemed to mean it, which was a relief. “Look, why don’t we have a cup of coffee? Or tea, if you’d prefer?”

“Coffee sounds good.”

“I have a pot going in back. We can sit and talk back there, if you like.”

“Fine.”

Cassie led the way through a door behind the sales counter, into a narrow back room half-full of shelves piled with cardboard cartons. A worktable cluttered with tools, pieces of driftwood, and other items took up most of the remaining floor space; but at the back, next to a window that gave a good view of the nearby Victorian house and garage and the bay beyond, was a table supporting a Mr. Coffee. A yellow paisley armchair flanked the table and matching curtains were hung in the window. Cassie motioned for her to sit, then bustled around collecting cups, inspecting them for cleanliness, pouring and serving.

Alix asked, “You are the C. Lang who did the paintings out front?”

Cassie set her cup down and pulled a swivel chair, the kind secretaries use for typing, over from the worktable. Her expression was guarded as she said, “Yes, they’re mine.”

“I found them very interesting. They grab your attention.” Alix paused, then decided to lie for kindness’ sake. “I like them.”

Cassie relaxed and smiled, pleased. Like many artists of modest talent, she had probably been hurt many times by casual and thoughtless criticism. “Thank you. They’re the main reason this gallery exists. All the rest of the stuff-well, you’ve seen it.”

“Where do you get your seascapes?”

“A fellow up the coast. He turns them out to order.”

“And the shell things?”

“Most are from a mail-order house in Portland. The nicer ones come from Florida.” She gestured at the worktable. “I do the driftwood birds myself. They’re awful, but easy to make; and they sell better than anything else I stock.”

Alix shook her head sympathetically and sipped her coffee. Her headache had lessened, and she felt warmed by both the hot drink and the company. “You’re somewhat isolated here,” she said. “Do you live alone?”

“Yes.”

“Doesn’t it worry you sometimes?”

“Not really. I have a handgun and I’m a good shot.”

“Oh. I’m afraid of guns myself.”

“I grew up handling them. My father belonged to the NRA.” Fortunately for Alix-who was pro-gun control-Cassie did not want to discuss the subject any further. She said, “But tell me about you. Are you interested in art?”

“Actually, I’m an artist myself.”

“You are? For heaven’s sake!” The woman seemed genuinely pleased. “What kind of work do you do?”

Alix told her, describing some of her more interesting projects and mentioning both her sketches for Jan’s book and her future business venture. When she had finished, Cassie looked so impressed and wistful that she quickly said, “But that’s enough about me. Tell me how you came to start this gallery. Have you always lived in Hilliard?”

The other woman looked startled, almost shocked. “Oh no! I was born in Eugene, lived there most of my life.”

“When did you move here?”

A certain reticence had come into Cassie’s expression, a kind of closing off. “Only a year ago. I… I was divorced, and I’d always liked this part of the coast. Hilliard seemed like a good place to start over.” She smiled wryly. “Too bad I didn’t know about the lack of tourist trade.”

“You’re making ends meet, though?”

“Just barely. I own the house and the gallery outright-I bought them with my divorce settlement. And it doesn’t cost much to live here.”

“Have you made many friends among the locals?”

“Acquaintences, yes. I know almost everyone in the village. But no, I’m not friends with anyone.”

“Are they such hard people to know?”

“Oh yes. Hard to know, hard to talk to. Particularly when you don’t have much in common with them-and I don’t. Hilliard’s a cultural wasteland. High culture to the people here is watching the Super Bowl on the widescreen TV at the Sea Breeze Tavern.”

“I’d gathered as much.” Alix looked down into her coffee cup, thinking of her last visit to Hilliard. “Tell me, do you know a couple of local fishermen named Mitch Novotny and Hod Barnett?”

“Yes. Why?”

It didn’t seem as though Cassie had heard about Jan’s run-in with Novotny, and Alix didn’t care to enlighten her. “My husband and I saw them at the general store last week,” she said. “I’ve been curious about them.”

“Oh. Well, Mitch’s family has been in Hilliard for generations, and as far as I know they’ve all been fishermen. It’s a funny thing about villages like this.”

“What is?”

“People just keep on doing the same things, generation after generation,” Cassie said. “I don’t suppose Mitch’s way of life is much different than his father’s or grandfather’s, except now they have TV. And higher taxes, of course.”

“Is the same true of Hod Barnett?”

“No. He moved here several years ago from Coos Bay, I gather. He owned his own boat for a while but lost it just after I moved into town; couldn’t make the mortgage payments. Now he works as a deck-hand for Mitch, not that that makes him a living wage. Mitch can barely make ends meet himself. The fishing all along the coast has been poor the past three seasons.”

“Yes, that’s what my husband told me.”

“Hod lives in a little trailer in that encampment on the north end with his wife and three kids. Must be awful to have to live like that. There are no utility hookups, and they have to haul water from a central faucet. Adam Reese has made some improvements since he moved in, most of them for free, but the conditions are still primitive.”

“Adam Reese?”

“The local handyman. Lillian Hilliard has him building shelves in her storeroom these days; she’s the only one in the village with any money. You’ve met her, I’m sure?”

“Yes,” Alix said.

“I guess you could say Lillian epitomizes the spirit of Hilliard-if it has any. She’s the last living member of the founding family, and so proud of it that when she married she insisted on keeping the family name. There’s a consensus in the village that the husband-Ben Gates, I think his name was-died young because it was the path of least resistance, certainly easier than standing up to Lillian. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was true.”

“She does seem to rule that store with an iron hand.”

Cassie smiled, not warmly. “Oh, she does. Collects gossip, dispenses charity-when she feels like it-and pronounces judgment on everything that goes on in town. If there’s ever anything you need to know about anyone in Hilliard, just see Lillian.”

Alix nodded, vaguely uncomfortable, thinking that Cassie-given the chance-might rival Lillian Hilliard in the gossip department. She hoped she hadn’t been too candid about herself, imparted too many personal details to a virtual stranger.

She finished her coffee and then looked at her watch. “Oh, it’s getting late. I’ve got to get moving-laundry day.”

“Please stay. Have another cup of coffee—”

“I’d love to, but I do have to go. Perhaps we can get together soon, though. Have you ever been to the lighthouse?”

“Out near it, but never inside.”

“I’ll show you around, then, if you’d like to come out.”

Cassie smiled. “I’m already looking forward to it.”

As she got into the station wagon, Alix realized her headache was gone. It had been more from tension than from anything else-a tension that probably stemmed from too much worry and introspection. Inconsequential chatter-and even gossip-over coffee had proved good for her, and she resolved to call Cassie soon and reemphasize her invitation to visit the lighthouse.

Alix

She lifted her sopping laundry from the washing machine and dropped it into the wire cart, then pushed it toward the dryer and began unloading. The Hilliard Launderette was completely deserted. Two of the other dryers were in operation, wisking a bright assortment of clothing round and round, but the owner of that laundry was mercifully absent. Alix was grateful for the solitude, glad there were no villagers to cast curious glances at her, the stranger from California.

She set the dryer in motion and sat down with the paperback novel she’d brought along. It was one of those thick imperiled-children sagas that were so much in vogue, and had begun to bore her after the first chapter. Now she set it aside and merely sat, watching the clothes whirl hypnotically, still feeling warmed by her visit with Cassie Lang.

The visit had brought a sense of normalcy into her day; it was much the same sort of thing she would have done at home. There she often met with other free-lancers for morning coffee; at noon there were luncheons with clients; and in late afternoon it was not uncommon for someone to stop by for a glass of wine. Perhaps a friendship with Cassie would provide a needed balance to her life here in Hilliard…

The door opened, letting in a gust of cold air, and Alix glanced up. Della Barnett came in and walked to one of the still-turning machines. The woman wore the same soiled quilted coat she’d had on in the store the week before, and her hair, if possible, looked even more greasy and stringy. An auburn-haired teenaged girl in a bold-figured blue-and-white poncho and jeans followed behind her, Alix recognized her as the one she’d seen smoking grass on the road to the lighthouse that first morning they’d driven into Hilliard. Della’s daughter? The girl was attractive; when she shed the last of her baby fat, she might even be pretty. Hard to believe Della and Hod Barnett could have produced her.

The girl saw Alix and her blue eyes registered recognition. She glanced at Della, then looked back at Alix. Fear molded her expression briefly; then it modulated into a look of defiance and challenge that seemed to say, “I don’t care if you know I was smoking dope that day. Go ahead and tell my mother if you want to. I’ll just call you a liar.”

Della had opened the dryer door, she felt the laundry inside, then shut the door again and went to sit on one of the chairs at the end of the row. The girl wandered around the room, being very casual and aloof and humming a rock tune under her breath. Every now and then she would glance slyly at Alix. Della sat staring straight ahead, puffing on a filter-tipped cigarette; Alix might not have been there, as far as she was concerned.

After a minute or so Della said in an irritated Southern twang, “Mandy, for heaven’s sake sit down. You’re making me nervous.”

The girl sighed elaborately but went to sit beside her mother. “Isn’t it time for that stuff to be dry?”

“Soon.”

“Why does the damn dryer always have to take so long?”

“Don’t swear. You know I don’t like that.”

“Oh, all right.” Mandy sat fidgeting for half a minute; then she was on her feet again. “I’m going to the store for a Coke.”

“No you’re not,” Della said. “We can’t afford for you to be buying Cokes all the time.”

“Oh, Mom…”

“No Coke.”

Mandy stamped her foot in a little-girl gesture. Her Indian headband had a cluster of bead-tipped leather thongs at the back and they clicked together with the movement. When her mother merely looked at her, unperturbed by her little tantrum, she glared back and then began pacing as before. And casting the same sly looks at Alix as before.

Alix managed to absorb herself in part of a chapter. Then she realized Mandy had come over near where she was sitting; she looked up, saw the girl watching her.

“You’re the lady from the lighthouse,” Mandy said.

“Yes, that’s right.”

“You going to live out there long?”

“For the next year.”

“That long? I sure don’t envy you.”

“No? Why not?”

Della had got up and was at her dryer again. “Mandy,” she said, “stop bothering the lady and get over here and help me. Laundry’s dry now.”

The girl went reluctantly, began stuffing clothing into pillow cases her mother held open. When they were finished, Della started away with the two heavy cases; Mandy stopped her and relieved her of both, saying, “No, Mom, let me take them. You’ll hurt your back again.”

Not a bad kid underneath it all, Alix thought. At least she looks out for her mother.

Della went out. Mandy followed, but paused in the open doorway and said over her shoulder to Alix, “I don’t envy you for a lot of reasons. I wouldn’t want to be married to a dog murderer.”

“A what? ”

“A dog murderer. After last night, you people aren’t going to be—”

“Mandy!” Della called from outside.

The girl shrugged and was gone without another word.

Alix sat openmouthed. By the time she had recovered from her surprise and hurried outside, they were pulling away in an old Nash Rambler, Della at the wheel. Neither mother nor daughter looked back.

Feeling a little stunned, Alix went back inside the launderette. Dog murderer. What did that mean? It hadn’t sounded like a joke or some sly teenager’s game; Mandy had been serious. Something must have happened last night, something involving Jan and a dog… Mitch Novotny’s dog?

Oh God, she thought.

She caught up her pea jacket from where it lay on one of the chairs, shrugged into it, grabbed her purse. Ignoring her laundry, she hurried out again into the wind-chilled street. The Hilliard General Store was opposite the launderette on a slight diagonal; according to Cassie, if anyone would know exactly what had happened last night, it would be Lillian Hilliard.

Alix barely noticed the rush of warm air and homey smells that greeted her when she stepped inside. Mrs. Hilliard was in her accustomed place behind the grocery counter; opposite her stood a tall, thin man in a brown overcoat and a short, wiry man in workclothes. They had been talking, but they all stopped when they saw her. Both men gave her their full attention-more attention than anyone in the village except Cassie Lang and Mandy had displayed thus far.

Alix stopped a few feet away, near the post-office cubicle. For a time none of them moved; the silence that followed the tinkling of the entrance bell struck her as heavy and a little tense. The short man was the first to move and speak; he swung around to face Lillian Hilliard again and said, “So what should I do about the shelves?”

“Well, Adam, if you can’t fit six in, I’ll have to settle for five.”

Adam was holding a hammer in his right hand; now he began to slap it against the opposite palm, shifting his weight as he did so from his left foot to his right, his right foot to his left. He had longish blond hair and a wispy mustache, and was wearing a toolbelt around his waist. “I didn’t say I couldn’t fit six. I just meant I’ll have to do ’em closer together.”

“Won’t do. They have to hold tall packages.”

“Okay, then. Five it is.” He started toward the back of the store in a peculiar hopping gait. When he reached the end of the canned-food aisle he turned, gave Alix another long speculative look.

The tall man pulled a knitted cap from the pocket of his overcoat and put it on over his pale thinning hair. Still peering at Alix through his wire-rimmed glasses, he said, “You must be Mrs. Ryerson, our new neighbor out at the light.”

Such a direct overture from anyone in the village was surprising. “Yes, I am.”

The man extended a slender, well-manicured hand. “I’m Harvey Olsen, minister of the Community Church. Welcome to Hilliard.”

“Thank you, Reverend… it is Reverend?”

“Yes. The ministry is Methodist, but we like to think of ourselves as nondenominational. So we can better serve the community, we encourage parishioners of all faiths to participate. But please call me Harvey-everyone does.”

“Well, thank you… Harvey.”

He continued to peer at her; behind his glasses, his eyes were as pale as his hair. “I hope we’ll be seeing you and your husband at services soon,” he said.

This was absurd. She had come in here to find out if there was any truth to Mandy’s claim that Jan was a dog murderer, and here she was being urged to attend Sunday church services. For a moment she was at a loss for words. Neither she nor Jan was particularly religious, although she had been raised Episcopalian, he Lutheran. Still, she didn’t want to offend the one person aside from Cassie Lang who had tried to make her feel welcome in Hilliard.

She finally managed to say, “I hope so too.”

Harvey Olsen nodded, smiled, and then picked up a sack of groceries and a copy of the Portland Oregonian that was lying on the counter. To Lillian Hilliard he said, “You’ll be chairing the ladies’ organizing committee for the fall bazaar tonight?”

“I will. Someone’s got to keep those hens in line so it doesn’t turn into one big coffee klatch.”

The minister smiled again, vaguely this time, lifted a hand to Alix, and went out.

Now that she was alone with Alix, Mrs. Hilliard assumed an odd, guarded expression. “Help you with something?”

“Yes.” But she didn’t know where to start.

The storekeeper plucked a wilted celery leaf off the counter, then reached underneath for a rag and began wiping the worn wooden surface. From the back of the store came the staccato sound of hammering.

“Well?”

“Mrs. Hilliard… did something happen in the village last night? Something involving my husband and a dog?”

“Mean you don’t know about that?”

“No. I wouldn’t ask you if I knew, would I? All I know is what Mandy Barnett said at the launderette.”

“What was that?”

She didn’t want to repeat it. “Mrs. Hilliard, will you please tell me—”

“Lord knows I didn’t like that dog,” the storekeeper said. “Mitch was always bringing him in here and he was always upsetting something. But Mitch was fond of Red, treated him like one of his kids-better, some might say.”

“It’s dead? Mitch Novotny’s dog?”

“Run down in the road right out front of the Novotny house. Run down on purpose, according to what Mitch says.”

Alix suddenly felt sick to her stomach.

“Didn’t stop, didn’t even slow down,” Lillian Hilliard said. “Pretty cold-hearted, you ask me.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Well, Mitch wouldn’t lie. I’ll say that for him.”

“Then he must have made a mistake. How could he be sure it was my husband?”

“Wasn’t any mistake. That big new car of yours is the only one like it around here. And Mitch says he saw it happen.”

Alix stood still, her hands clenched, fingernails biting into her palms. It just wasn’t possible. Jan was a gentle man, he had often spoken out against blood sports and other cruelties to animals…

Mrs. Hilliard said, “Seems to me if it was just an accident, he’d have stopped afterward. And told you about it after he got home. Now wouldn’t you say?”

She didn’t know what to say. She just shook her head. Not a word to her last night; and this morning, he’d gotten up before she had and locked himself in his study and started working as if nothing had happened. Working hard: she’d heard the steady beat of the typewriter keys and hadn’t wanted to disturb him; had left him a note saying she was going into the village to do the laundry.

The storekeeper bunched up her rag and tossed it back under the counter. “Maybe you better go back to the lighthouse and ask him about it,” she said almost gently. Her expression now was one of pity. “Maybe he’s got an explanation that’ll satisfy everybody.”

“Yes. Yes, I’m sure he does.”

Numbly, she turned her back on the other woman’s pity and left the store. The station wagon was parked nose-in to one side of the launderette; she crossed the street and walked around to the front of the car. She hadn’t looked at it up close this morning, hadn’t had any reason to. Now she did.

The bumper was dented, scratched. And there was a thin smear of something on it that might have been blood.

Alix

Jan was at his worktable, aligning the stack of manuscript pages next to his typewriter, when she came into the study. His fingers moved quickly- tap, tap, tap — bringing the papers into neat order. When he heard her he looked around. His color wasn’t good, his face pale and pinched, but he seemed in reasonably good spirits.

“There you are,” he said. “I’ve just finished the introductory chapter on lighthouse history and I want you to—”

“Jan, we have to talk. Right now.”

He frowned. “What’s wrong?”

On the drive back to the lighthouse she had decided on an indirect approach, one that wouldn’t be too accusing or threatening. Give Jan the opportunity to tell her what had happened. “Last night,” she said, “you told me you were going out for tobacco.”

“Yes?”

“But you’re not out of tobacco. There’s a half-full pouch on your desk. Why did you lie to me?”

He let out his breath in a tired sigh. “Alix, I’m sorry. I had one of my headaches and I thought a drive would relax me. But I wanted to be alone, and I didn’t feel like explaining. I didn’t want to upset you while you were working.”

She felt her anger rising; forced it down. She was determined to handle this in a way that would damage them the least. “Jan, why didn’t you tell me about the dog?”

“What dog?”

“Mitch Novotny’s dog-Red. Everyone in the village is talking about it.”

“Still? My God, that was over a week ago.”

“They’re not talking about last week, they’re talking about what happened last night!”

For a moment Jan seemed honestly bewildered; then an uneasiness-and something that might have been fear-crawled into his eyes. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said.

Alix sat heavily on the extra chair, a mate to the lumpy ones in the living room. “Someone ran down and killed Mitch Novotny’s dog last night. He claims it was you. And that you did it deliberately because you didn’t stop, didn’t even slow down.”

“Oh, God. ”

Now Jan looked ill. He shook his head, winced, pressed thumb and forefinger against his eye sockets.

“You did run down that dog, didn’t you?”

“I… don’t know.”

“What?”

“I don’t know!”

“My God, how can you not know? Even if you didn’t see it, you’d have to have felt the impact. Or heard it. The front bumper is dented, there’s blood on it…”

He got convulsively to his feet, went to the window, stood staring out. “The headache wasn’t so bad when I left here,” he said in a low, pained voice. “But it’d worsened by the time I got to the village, got so bad I could barely see. I turned around, drove back a ways, and then I couldn’t see at all and I stopped-somewhere out on the cape-and just sat there, a long time, until it eased enough so that I could make it back here. I was afraid of hitting something or somebody, that’s why I stopped. I… I didn’t know I’d already hit the dog.”

Conflicting emotions moved through her: relief, concern, fear, even a small doubt. She stood and went to him, caught one of his arms and turned him gently until he was facing her. The deep pain etched in his face was frightening.

She said, “Jan, those headaches of yours seem to be getting worse, more intense. They worry me. You’ve got to do something about them. Call Dave Sanderson or something…”

“I’ve already called him. He gave me a referral to a doctor in Portland. I’ll be seeing him on Tuesday.”

“I’ll go to Portland with you—”

“No, somebody has to stay here and take care of things.”

“I don’t like the idea of you driving all that way alone, not after last night.”

“I won’t drive if a headache starts.”

“Promise me that? Never again?”

“I promise. God, do you think I want to hit anything else with the car? Just the thought of that poor dog…” He shuddered. “Novotny must be pretty upset, must think I’m some kind of criminal. Everyone else in Hilliard, too.”

“They’ll get over it when they hear the truth.”

“Will they?”

“Maybe if you call Novotny and apologize, explain what happened.. maybe he’ll listen.”

“It’s worth a try. But I remember when Thud was killed-the driver of the car that hit him apologized and we still suffered for weeks.”

Alix remembered too-all too well. Thud had been their big, solid yellow cat, named for the noise he made when lesser cats would have jumped off the furniture soundlessly. Years later she still felt his loss, still expected at odd moments to find him lurking in the kitchen next to his food bowl, or to hear him thudding through the house.

Jan forced a smile that was meant to be reassuring, squeezed her hand; but the fear still crouched in his eyes. She wondered if her own fear showed in her eyes, too, for him to see. His explanation hadn’t quite banished it, and neither had her sense of relief.

What if his headaches were no longer just the product of tension? What if something was seriously wrong with him?

Jan

Sitting morosely in front of the old wood-burner in the living room, he could hear Alix moving around the kitchen. She was making a lot of noise-thumps, bumps, clatters. Working off her anxiety at the same time. That was a trait he had always admired in her. Whenever she was upset or angry, she found some sort of physical labor to engage in; attacked it with a determination that bordered on the obsessive. And when the job was done, or when she had exhausted herself, her emotions were back in sync again. No grudge-holder, she. She could forgive anything in less than twenty-four hours.

Almost anything.

His pipe had gone out; he relighted it. He watched his hand as he did so, watched it tremble. An indicator of how overwrought he was today. How afraid.

The pain had been bad last night-that awful bulging. But that wasn’t the worst part. He’d lied to Alix about the worst part, his second lie to her in two days, because the truth was too painful. And the truth was, he didn’t remember the drive into the village proper, what had happened there or afterward, nor most of the drive back here. His memory ended with the bulging as he neared the county road, picked up again as he jounced along the cape road a half mile or so from the lighthouse.

Blackout. More than two hours of lost time. That sort of thing had never happened to him before… or had it? It could have; that was what made it so terrifying. You blacked out, you did things during that blank time, and then afterward you not only couldn’t remember what those things were, it was possible you didn’t even realize you’d had a blackout.

But no, this was the first time-it had to be. It was all somehow connected to the atrophying of his optic nerves, his imminent blindness, even though Dave Sanderson had been carefully noncommital when he’d called Dave earlier and told him about the blackout (but not the details of it, not that he’d been out driving and killed a dog).

“Blackouts aren’t common with the type of eye disease you have,” Dave had said. “But that doesn’t mean they can’t happen or won’t happen again. Your condition is rare; we just don’t know enough about it. I think you ought to see another ophthalmologist, find out if the degenerative process has speeded up any, or if there are any new complications. There’s a good one in Portland; I’ll call him for you right away.”

Then Dave had paused. And then he’d asked, “Have you told Alix yet?”

“No.”

“When are you planning to?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet.”

“Doesn’t she suspect you’re having vision problems?”

“Not yet, no.”

“She will before much longer. Jan, I really think you’re making a mistake by not confiding in her. She’s your wife, she has a right to know. Why do you insist on hiding the truth from her?”

Because I’m afraid, he’d thought. Damn you, I’m afraid!

He’d gotten in touch with the Portland ophthalmologist, Dr. Philip R. Meade, and made an appointment for early Tuesday afternoon. And he didn’t want to go, because he was afraid Meade might tell him the degeneration was accelerating and he would be blind sooner than the year or two the others had projected; afraid he wouldn’t be able to stay here the full term, wouldn’t be able to finish his book; afraid he would experience more blackouts. Afraid of everything these days, that was Professor Jan Ryerson, eminent authority on beacons in the night.

Abruptly he stood, went to the stove, added fresh lengths of cordwood to the blaze inside. His pipe had gone out again; he laid it in the ashtray alongside the telephone, reclaimed his chair. God, he thought then, that poor dog. But it’s not possible I deliberately ran it down last night, even in a blackout state. Novotny’s wrong. It had to have been a freak accident.

Try calling again, he told himself. Whoever had been occupying the Novotny line the past hour-he had called three times in those thirty minutes, busy signal each time-had to hang up sooner or later.

Sooner the line was clear this time. Three rings, four. And then a man’s voice said, “Hello?”

“Mitchell Novotny, please.”

“You’re talking to him. Who’s this?”

“Jan Ryerson. Out at the lighthouse.”

Silence for several seconds. Then, coldly and flatly, “What the hell do you want?”

“To tell you how sorry I am about your dog.”

“Yeah? Then what’d you run him down for?”

“I didn’t, not deliberately—”

“I seen you do it.”

“No, you’re mistaken. It was an accident. I don’t remember seeing the dog; I didn’t know until just a little while ago that I’d hit anything.”

“You trying to tell me you didn’t hear him scream?”

Jan winced. “I’m sorry, Mr. Novotny. Believe me, I—”

“Bullshit,” Novotny said. “You didn’t stop. You didn’t even slow down.”

“I had a headache, a bad headache. It’s a chronic condition—”

“That’s no damn excuse.”

“I know that. I know I shouldn’t have been out driving. I’m not trying to excuse myself, I’m only trying to tell you how badly I feel about the accident.”

“Sure you do.”

“Worse than you can imagine. I’d like to make it up to you somehow, if you’ll let me. Perhaps buy you another dog, any kind you—”

Novotny hung up on him.

Jan sat holding the receiver for a time before he cradled it. Then he got up again, went into the kitchen. Alix, wearing a pair of old jeans and one of his old shirts, her hair tied back with a scarf, was up on a stepladder scouring the smoke-grimed ceiling with abrasive cleaner and a sponge. Her face was flushed and shiny with perspiration.

“I talked to Mitch Novotny,” he said.

She stopped her scrubbing and looked down at him. “What did he say?”

“He doesn’t believe me that it was an accident. He hung up when I offered to buy him a new dog.”

“Maybe you should try talking to him in person.”

He nodded. “But not today. After he’s had a chance to cool down.”

“Whatever you think best.”

She returned to her cleaning, still with that vehement determination. He watched for half a minute, wondering if he should offer to help. No. Any other time she would have been pleased if he had, but not now. She needed to be alone a while longer, needed to finish regrouping.

He left her and climbed the stairs to the second floor. The idea of physical labor, the kind Alix was doing which didn’t require thinking, appealed to him too; perhaps it would help him regroup. He continued up to the lightroom. In one corner was the lighthouse’s diaphone, removed from its mounting halfway down the westernmost cliff wall when the Coast Guard abandoned the station in 1962. The air compressor that had operated it was also there, along with most of its four-inch air line.

Diaphones fascinated him; he intended to do a full chapter on them in Guardians of the Night. Large or small, they produced an amazing amount of noise and vibration-one high-pitched note that could be heard during most kinds of weather for a distance of seven miles, one low-pitched note, or “grunt,” that could be heard much farther away. The volume of compressed air that passed through the instrument, even at a pressure of thirty pounds, was so enormous that the actual operating time of the diaphone was seldom more than eight seconds per minute. He had had the pleasure (if you could call it that) of standing within fifty feet of the big diaphone at the Point Reyes Light-house, near San Francisco, when it was in operation; any closer than that and it would have damaged his eardrums. He had literally been able to feel the noise and vibration all over his skin.

He assembled his tools and began to dismantle this one, taking time and care so as not to damage its working parts. Inside the cylinder, the brass reed-shaped somewhat like an automobile piston-that was the diaphone’s heart looked to be free of corrosion, and it moved freely enough when he tested it. When you pumped compressed air past the reed, it vibrated back and forth in short strokes, rather than rotating as the reeds in the air sirens that had preceded diaphones as the preemptory fog-signal had; that produced the high-pitched note. You got the grunt by rapidly diminishing the quantity of air being fed to the reed.

He cleaned the reed and the other interior parts, reassembled the instrument, and cleaned and polished the outer brass casing. Then he examined the compressor and its air line. The line looked to be in reasonably good condition, considering its age; the compressor was dusty and needed cleaning, but he thought it would probably work well enough. He tinkered with it for a time, confirming his suspicion-and then found himself wondering if the diaphone would actually work after all these years. If he could make it work. Mount it outside somewhere away from the lighthouse, run the lines, see what happened. A test, an experiment-why not?

The thought intrigued him. A-1 Marine in Hilliard would probably have compressed air tanks. Better yet, he could pick them up while he was in Portland next week.

There was nothing more to occupy his attention in the lightroom; he went from there into his study. He felt somewhat better now. His labor with the diaphone and the prospect of operating it had temporarily crowded the death of Novotny’s dog, all his other fears, into the back of his mind. More work on the book? Yes, while he was still in a productive mood. He sat down before the Underwood, loaded and fired another of his pipes, and plunged into work without any of his usual mild procrastinations.

Lighthouse construction. Basic design of the modem light-house originated by John Smeaton in 1757-famous Eddystone Light in the English Channel near the town of Plymouth (where tallow candles served to light its beacon for more than fifty years). Stone tower in place of wood. Huge blocks of granite weighing upwards of a ton each, cut so that they interlocked-not only on the flat first course but from one course to the next above. This pattern of construction used as a model for future lighthouses worldwide…

It went well. Eight and a half pages. And all of the material, he felt, incisive and informative without being dry or pedantic. He lost all track of time, so that when Alix appeared at his side, startling him slightly, to announce that dinner was ready, he said, “Dinner? My God, is it that late?”

“Almost eight.”

He glanced over at the window. Dusk had fallen without his having noticed it. He rolled his head, stretching the tightened muscles in his neck and shoulders. After a moment Alix moved over behind him and began to massage the tight area, her thumbs kneading along his fourth cervical vertebra. That, and the weariness that had replaced the anxiety and anger in her expression, told him that it was all right between them again. At least for now.

He said, “Wasn’t it my turn to cook tonight?”

“I came up earlier, but you were so involved I decided not to disturb you.”

“Thanks. I’ll take mess duties tomorrow and Monday.”

They went downstairs. Pan-fried chicken, asparagus, a small salad. Beck’s for him, white wine for her. He ate with some appetite; Alix picked at her food. They made small talk at first-neutral topics. Then he told her about the diaphone, and they discussed her next illustration (the Eddystone Light), and after that they were no longer awkward with each other. They cleaned up the dishes together, went upstairs, she read his pages, they went to bed. And during all of it he felt almost relaxed, normal, as if nothing ugly had happened last night, as if their life together weren’t about to change so radically that neither of them would ever be the same again.

But the feeling of normalcy was an illusion, a lie erected by his mental defenses. It was his body that told the truth. He had the desire to make love, once they were in bed, and Alix was willing, but there was no physical response in his loins; it was as if he had gone dead from the waist down. Alix’s touch, always electric, did nothing for him. He had never had this kind of failure, no failure at all except for the one time he’d gotten a little too high on champagne punch at the faculty New Year’s Eve party.

“It’s okay,” she murmured against his ear, “don’t worry about it,” but it wasn’t okay. It was another thing that frightened him. What if this wasn’t just an isolated instance? What if he became permanently impotent as well as permanently blind? Pain, deterioration both physical and mental-unmanned in every way.

What if I did hit that dog on purpose? I don’t remember, I don’t remember…

He held her tight and began to stroke her slowly, gently, concentrating his caresses on her clitoris, concentrating his thoughts on her instead of himself. In the dark she whispered, “You don’t have to,” and he thought, Yes I do, and said, “I want to,” and after a while she came shuddering against him, with her face turned sideways against his chest. And even her orgasm did nothing to arouse him. Nothing at all.

Her face still pressed to his chest, she whispered, “Oh, Jan, I love you.”

“I love you too,” he said, and thought: That’s enough, isn’t it? Even at the end, when the darkness comes, it’ll be enough.

He went to sleep holding her, loving her, and not believing any of it.

Jan

The first rifle shots woke him immediately.

He sat up in bed, groggy at first, but as always when he was jerked out of sleep the disorientation passed in a few seconds and he was alert. Next to him Alix stirred, came half-awake, mumbled something incoherent. He looked past the shape of her, at the red numerals on the Sony digital clock radio. 3:18.

He had no idea at first what the noises were, didn’t identify them as gunshots until something made a metallic spanging sound outside-close outside, on the lighthouse grounds-and then he heard the hollow echo of the third shot. He thought: Jesus! and swung his legs out of bed, fumbled with hands and feet for his slippers. He was aware, now, that the room was not fully dark, that there was whitish moonlight coming through the window.

Glass shattered, faintly but unmistakably. And the reverberation of the fourth shot rolled like a small thunderclap, died away into a heavy silence.

Alix was awake now, sitting up; her voice reached out for him, frightened and confused, as he stood and groped for his robe. “Jan, what is it? What’s happening?”

“I don’t know. Stay here, I’ll find out.”

He ran out into the hall, pulling the robe around him, and half-stumbled down the stairs into the living room. The windows, like the one in the bedroom, faced seaward; there was nothing for him to see in that direction. The kitchen, then. He ran in there, leaned up to peer through the curtained window above the sink. The moonlight was bright out on the grounds: the cloud cover had broken up sometime earlier, leaving the sky clear and hazed with stars. The patch of grass that separated the lighthouse from the garage had a whitish cast, as if it had been dusted with talcum powder; the walls of the garage, the fence farther down, showed faintly luminous. He could see beyond the gate, all the way along the rutted cape road to where it jogged inland and disappeared into a hollow.

Nothing moved anywhere.

No sounds, either-no more shots. Just that intense silence, like a noise in his ears pitched too high for him to hear.

The breaking glass, he thought then. Window in the garage? But the station wagon caught and held his attention. It was parked thirty yards away, at the edge of the grass, swung around at an angle to the north; he could see that the front end was listing his way, that the left front tire was flat.

He swung away from the sink, hurried up the steps into the cloakroom for his coat, came back down and through the kitchen to the front door. Alix was standing at the foot of the stairs, clutching her old quilted housecoat around her. She had turned on the lights; they revealed the pallor of her face-the same color as the moonshine outside.

“Jan, those were shots. Was somebody—?”

“They shot the car,” he said grimly.

“What? They what?”

His head had begun to ache; he could feel the pressure starting to build again behind his eyes. “I’m going out there,” he said. “You stay here.”

“Jan, don’t—”

“Lock the door after me. Watch through the kitchen window.”

“No, wait…”

But he didn’t wait; he opened the door and walked outside.

The wind had died down to a murmurous breeze; it occurred to him peripherally that that was why he had been able to hear the shots so clearly, the ricochet and the breaking glass. But it was still cold, not much above forty degrees. There was a crystal-like quality to the air, so that every object stood out in sharp relief.

He stopped five feet from the door, holding his coat bunched shut at his throat. Still nothing moving. The only sound was the gentled-down coupling of surf and rocks at the base of the cliffs. After a moment he began walking again. There was an awareness in him that he made a perfect target out here in the moonlight, that if they were still nearby they could shoot him as easily as they had shot the car. He fought down an impulse to turn back, kept moving forward instead at a slow walk. Never show fear. Never let anyone see how afraid you might be.

When he reached the Ford he saw that the right headlight had been blown out. That explained the breaking glass. He moved around the front of the car to determine if there had been any other damage. Furrow along one fender where the one bullet had ricocheted; that was all.

He turned to look back at the lighthouse. He couldn’t see Alix’s face behind the kitchen window but he was sure she was there. He lifted his hands, gestured to her that everything was all right. And it was-for now. They were gone, long gone, like the cowards they were.

He walked back across the grass at the same slow, measured pace. Alix had the door open for him; he entered and shut it and threw the bolt.

“One flat tire and one broken headlight,” he said. “I’ll put the spare on in the morning. Get the damage fixed while I’m in Portland. ”

She gripped both his arms. “Jan, you shouldn’t have gone out there. Suppose—”

“They’re gone, don’t worry.”

“We’d better call the sheriff.”

“In the morning. There’s nothing anybody can do tonight.”

“But who were they? Who’d do a thing like that?”

“Kids,” he said. “Just kids.”

But he was thinking: Mitch Novotny, that’s who.

Mitch Novotny

After church on Sunday morning, Mitch went down to the boat slips to do some work on the Spindrift. It was a nice day, clear, ten degrees warmer now that the clouds had blown inland, and Marie had wanted to drive down the coast to Port Orford, where her sister lived. Sister knew somebody who had setter pups for sale, she said. But he wasn’t in the mood for a drive or looking at any damn setter pups. It was too soon; Red was still on his mind. Red, and that asshole out at the lighthouse. He’d snapped at her some, made her cry-Christ, you looked cross-eyed at a pregnant woman and she was like as not to bust out in tears. (Number three on the way, due in two months. He could barely provide for the five of them now; how the hell was he going to provide for a sixth? Should have had himself fixed, that was what he should have done. But Marie wouldn’t hear of it. Wasn’t natural, she said. Natural. Shit. She didn’t have to earn the money to pay the bills, did she?)

So then he’d left and come down here where it was quiet, where a man could have a little peace of a Sunday morning. Who could blame him? Marie bawling, her mother crooning to her and glaring at him like he was some kind of ogre-dried-up old bitch, he didn’t know why he let her keep on living with them; he should have sent her packing a long time ago-Tommy and Nita glued to the TV, sound up loud as hell so you couldn’t hear yourself think, some silly-ass cartoon show. Madhouse, that was what it was up there half the time. Damn madhouse.

He finished hosing down the worn decking, shut off the pump, and watched the last of the water run out through the scuppers. Thirty-two years old, the Spindrift, almost as old as him; his father had bought her new in Coos Bay. Good worker in her day, but out-of-date now and starting to rot. Outriggers too small, hydraulic winch too undependable. Old Jimmy diesel had developed problems, too; if it broke down so he couldn’t fix it, what would he do then? Bank in Bandon had already turned him down for a loan. Hang on, that was all he could do. Bust his ass hauling rockfish off the in-shore reefs-too many fishermen and not enough fish, except for perch and you couldn’t even make grocery money off perch. Yeah, and pray the goddamn salmon started running right again next season, a big run that fetched high prices from the cannery; then he could pay off enough of his debts to float a loan for an overhaul on the Spindrift, if not for a new boat altogether. New boat. Jesus, one of those fiberglass jobs with good refrigeration, an automatic depth-finder, maybe even a Loran navigation system and a hydraulic winch with an automatic trigger that pulled in a fish as soon as it hit the line-that was what he wanted, what he dreamed of owning. Never get it, though. All his life he’d had shitty luck, never got anything he really wanted. Born to lose, that was him. Just like the song.

He started to haul up the engine housing for a look at the Jimmy. What stopped him was somebody legging along the board float toward his slip. He straightened-and then he recognized who it was and he could feel his gut tighten up. Ryerson. Now what the hell? he thought. More crap about buying him a new dog?

Ryerson came down to the Spindrift ’s aft gunwale and stopped there, a couple of feet from where Mitch was standing. Mitch didn’t move. Bastard’s hairy face was set tight, white around the nostrils, and his back was board-stiff. Pissed off about something. What did he have to be pissed off about? “You and I need to talk, Mr. Novotny.”

“We got nothing to talk about,” Mitch said. “Unless you come to admit you ran Red down on purpose.”

“It was an accident, I told you that. And I’m sorry it happened. But that doesn’t mean I’ll put up with any retaliation on your part. I want that understood right now.”

“You don’t make any sense, Ryerson. Go on back to the lighthouse, why don’t you? Leave me the hell alone.” Mitch put his back to the bastard and yanked up the engine housing.

Behind him Ryerson said, quiet, “You’ll talk to me now, or you’ll talk to the sheriff later.”

Mitch faced him again. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know what it means, Mr. Novotny. Your little shooting spree last night.”

“Shooting spree?”

“You’re good with that rifle of yours-one smashed headlight, one ruptured tire, and some minor damage to one fender. By my estimate the repairs will cost at least two hundred dollars.”

“You’re crazy,” Mitch said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m willing to pay for the repairs myself, because of the accident with your dog. But if anything like last night happens again, I won’t put up with it. Do you understand?”

Mitch stared at him in disbelief and gathering anger. “I don’t understand none of this.”

“I mean what I say, Mr. Novotny. Stay away from the Cape Despair Light. No more nocturnal target practice, no more harassment. I called the sheriff this morning and told him about the shooting. I didn’t give him your name but if there’s any more trouble I will give it to him. I’ll swear out a complaint against you and have you arrested.”

Mitch had no words now; they were choked up in his throat. But Ryerson nodded as if he’d said something that had no answer, matched Mitch’s stare for a few seconds, then turned his back and stalked off. Mitch watched him go. He was so worked up inside, his hands started to shake when he lit a cigarette.

It took him a while to get his thoughts clear. All that shit about a shooting spree last night-crazy talk. Or was it? No, maybe not. Maybe somebody actually did shoot up his car. And Ryerson thought it was him, on account of Red. But who’d do a thing like that? Hell, nobody, not even kids with hot pants, went all the way out to the lighthouse at night Nobody except Adam Reese.

Out there on the cape lots of nights late, Adam was, looking to jacklight deer with that 30.06 of his.

Aloud, Mitch said, “Ah, for Christ’s sake.” He tossed his cigarette into the bay, coiled up the hose, put his tools away, and climbed off onto the float. He went straight from the cannery pier across the highway and up the hill to the trailer encampment.

First trailer he came to was Hod’s. Run-down old white thing with a green lattice border around the bottom and a cheap canvas awning rigged on one side-hell of a place for a man to have to live with a wife and three kids. He felt for Hod, losing his boat the way he had; but he felt for himself, too, and more. Six mouths to feed in another couple of months, not just five. And now this Ryerson coming around and threatening to have him arrested for something he hadn’t done. Jesus Christ!

Hod’s two boys, Tad and Jason, were tossing a half-flat football back and forth in the weeds out back. In front his oldest, Mandy, was sitting in the sun in a canvas-backed chair with her Sunday dress hiked up so far on her thighs you could damn near see her twat. She didn’t pull it down when he came by, either. Pretty little tease. Get herself knocked up for sure one of these days, just like Hod was always predicting.

“If you’re looking for my dad, Mr. Novotny, he’s back at Adam’s trailer.”

“Looking for Adam, thanks.”

“Sure is a nice day, isn’t it?”

“If you don’t catch a draft.”

She knew what he meant; she grinned at him bold as hell. Good thing he was Hod’s friend. Good thing he wasn’t the kind to chase around after tail, young or old… even with Marie all swollen the way she was and not wanting him to touch her in the last couple of months. A man could get himself in a lot of bad trouble over one like Mandy Barnett.

He went on past the other trailers, to the small humped old house trailer that Adam lived in. Adam had built a workshed on one side of it and a kind of covered areaway made out of wood and tin that connected it with the trailer. There was a table under the areaway, and some chairs, and Hod and Adam were sitting there with bottles of Henry’s, playing cribbage and listening to the 49er game on the radio.

Adam said, “Hey, Mitch. You want to sit in on a little crib?”

“No.”

“Beating me as usual,” Hod complained. “’Niners are winning, though. How about a beer?”

“No.” Mitch’s hands were steady now; the walk up here had put him back in control again. He said, “Ryerson just showed up down at the Spindrift. Says somebody shot up his car with a rifle last night. Did two hundred dollars’ worth of damage.”

Hod said, “The hell!” Adam didn’t say anything; he had his eyes on the cards he was shuffling.

“Accused me of it,” Mitch told them. “Said if it ever happened again he’d call in the sheriff and have me arrested.”

“You do it, Mitch?” Hod asked. “Shoot up his car?”

“Hell no, I didn’t do it.” He said his next words to Hod, too, but he was looking at Adam. “You go out on the cape last night with Adam? After deer?”

“No. Overcast breaking up and all that moonlight… just didn’t seem like a good idea.”

“How about you, Adam? You go out?”

Adam popped the cards down on the table, got up in that bouncy way of his. “I went out. No damn deer, though.”

“What’d you take? That thirty-ought-six of yours? The one with the scope sight?”

Adam hopped around a little, let out a breath, and then said, “All right, Mitch, I done it. I put a couple of rounds in Ryerson’s car.”

“Well what the hell for?”

“I didn’t plan it. It was just there wasn’t any deer and it got me frustrated. I was out near the lighthouse, nobody around, that big Ford station wagon sitting there in the moonlight… hell, I don’t know. I remembered what you said Friday night and it just seemed like the thing to do.”

“What I said?”

“About not letting Ryerson get away with murdering Red. About making him pay for it.”

“I didn’t mean by shooting up his goddamn car!”

“What’d you mean, then?”

“I don’t know, not yet. But nothing like that.”

“Hell, Mitch, I’m sorry. I only meant it as a favor to you. I liked Red too, you know that.”

“Yeah.”

“I just never figured he’d come down on you for it.”

“Suppose he changes his mind, decides to sic the sheriff on me? Or tries to sue me for the damages? What then, Adam?”

Adam was silent for a couple of seconds. Then he said, “That ain’t going to happen. None of it.”

“Oh it ain’t?”

“No. Ryerson can’t do nothing to you for what happened to his car, any more’n you can do anything to him for killing Red. Not legally. He’s got no proof who fired those rounds last night. If there was anything he could do, it’d have been the sheriff talking to you this morning, not him.”

“Maybe,” Mitch said, but he wasn’t so sure.

“If he did swear out a complaint against you,” Hod said, “you could do the same thing to him, couldn’t you?” He’d been watching with round eyes and looking nervous. Hod was always nervous when things shifted off an even keel. “On account of Red, I mean?”

“No. I already told you the sheriff said I couldn’t.”

“Well, couldn’t you sue him for false arrest or something? You could get Gus Brooks, up in Bandon. He’s the best lawyer on the coast.”

“Hod, you talk like a man with a paper asshole. I can’t afford to hire Gus Brooks or any other goddamn lawyer. I can’t afford to get arrested or go to court or miss any damn time at all out on the boat. I can’t hardly make ends meet as it is.”

“Ryerson don’t have time for it either,” Adam said. “He’s out there writing some book-got a year to do it and no more. He ain’t going to make trouble no matter what happens. Putting the sheriff or some lawyer on you don’t buy him nothing but headaches he don’t want.”

Mitch didn’t say anything. He was still mad as hell, but now he didn’t know who he was mad at. Yes he did: it wasn’t Adam, it was Ryerson more than ever. Adam was his friend; Ryerson was a damn radical from California who’d murdered Red just because Red nipped him a little. Adam was stupid sometimes and didn’t use good sense; Ryerson was a dog-murdering son of a bitch.

“Whole damn year of him out at the light,” Mitch said finally. “Sitting out there all high and mighty, killing a man’s dog when he feels like it, threatening people. It ain’t right.”

“No,” Hod said, “but what’s there to do about it?”

“Plenty.”

“Like what?”

“Like send him to hell back to California. Pry his ass out of the lighthouse before this year’s out.”

“You mean force him to leave?”

“Isn’t that what I just said?”

“How you going to do that without him running to the law?”

“There are ways,” Adam said. He looked relieved that Mitch wasn’t pissed at him anymore. “Ain’t there, Mitch?”

“Yeah,” Mitch said. “There are ways.”

Alix

Jan left for Portland at eight o’clock Tuesday morning. Even though there had been no repetition of the shooting incident, no trouble of any kind, he’d seemed reluctant to leave her alone at the lighthouse. It had crossed her mind that in spite of what he claimed, he didn’t really believe it was kids who had been responsible, that he thought it had something to do with the accidental death of Mitch Novotny’s dog and was afraid of further reprisals. But when she voiced the thought to him, he had only repeated what the county sheriff had told him: This was the country; youngsters were made familiar with firearms at an early age, and unfortunately they sometimes misused their weapons by plinking at signs, buildings, even automobiles, in much the same way their urban counterparts spray-painted walls and subway cars. She preferred that explanation herself, rather than believe it was malicious mischief on the part of a grown man or men who ought to know better, and had let the matter drop. She wasn’t afraid to stay alone. And she had enough on her mind as it was-those headaches of Jan’s above all-without cluttering it even more with vague fears that their neighbors were out to get them.

After Jan was gone, she tackled the kitchen again. She’d started painting it on Sunday, and had finished it yesterday with Jan’s help. All that remained to be done was some touching-up work and a general cleanup; then, this afternoon, she could get back to work on her preliminary sketch of the Eddystone Light.

By noon she had managed to scrape off most of the paint that had slopped over onto the window, counters, and floor. There were a few stubborn spots but they would come out with turpentine. She set down the single-edged razor she’d been using and surveyed the room with satisfaction. The white semi-gloss enamel had brightened the space considerably; the kitchen even smelled clean and fresh. Now turpentine-and then she would be done.

She went through the little cloakroom-still gray and dingy, but she didn’t intend to expend any energies on it-and into the pantry, where the painting supplies were. The pantry was good-sized; the staples they had purchased in Hilliard, plus the few supplies they’d brought from home, barely filled its shelves. Obviously, lightkeepers had had to keep much more on hand in the days before the modern automobile made trips into the village both simple and convenient.

She was reaching down for a can of turpentine when she thought she heard a noise. She froze, listening. There was nothing to hear. You’re getting jumpy, Ryerson, she thought. Imagining things. But then she remembered the old well, the one under the trapdoor in the pantry floor. Just thinking of it gave her the creeps. Which was silly, of course; but she couldn’t help disliking that dark, dank cavity filled with God knew what kind of refuse. And-rats, too? Rats would make a rustling sound.

She looked down at the metal ring that served as the handle for the door. She ought to check. If there were rats down there she’d have to buy poison, get rid of them. She wasn’t about to live with disease-carrying rodents just a few feet away from their stored food.

Decisively, fighting off a shudder, she bent and grasped the ring and pulled upward. The door yielded, creaking. It was heavy; she drew it up halfway, warily, ready to let it fall again if anything came scurrying out of the darkness. But nothing did. She eased it back as far as it would go on its hinges, left it canted there at an angle to the floor and the well opening it revealed.

The air that rose up from inside the cut-out space was musty, like an old cellar that has gone too long unused. She took their big Eveready flashlight from where it sat on a nearby shelf and shone it down inside the well. Nothing moved in the sweep of light; thank God for that. The cavity was about three feet in diameter, at least a dozen feet deep, with rusted metal rungs mortared into the stone walls. The debris at the bottom was mounded unevenly: unrecognizable metal shapes, some broken china, pieces of dusty glass, a dented tea kettle, even an old (twenties?) automobile hubcap. But no rats. Not even droppings indicating their presence.

Reassured, she shut off the flashlight and lowered the trapdoor. Dusted off her hands, got the turpentine, and started back toward the kitchen with it. But at the entrance to the cloakroom something made her turn and glance back at the trapdoor. It was irrational, but she wished the damned well wasn’t there. Or at least that she didn’t have to be reminded it was every time she entered the pantry.

Then she remembered seeing some carpet remnants out in the garage, leftovers from the carpeting in the living room. One of the bigger pieces ought to cover the trapdoor. And they could use it as a mat to wipe off their shoes when they came in through the pantry in wet weather.

An hour later the trapdoor was not only carpet-covered, but she had tacked the remnant down at its four corners to make sure it stayed in place. She had also finished cleaning up the kitchen, had polished her blue enamel cookware and hung it on the new hooks on the wall, and was feeling rather pleased with herself. Hungry, too. A tuna sandwich, she thought, and maybe a glass of wine.

She was mixing up the tuna at the drainboard when she saw, through the window, that she was about to have company. Mandy Barnett, of all people, had just come through the gate and was walking toward the lighthouse.

Frowning, Alix put the tuna salad into the refrigerator, went into the living room, and opened the door just before Mandy reached it. The girl was dressed in the same Indian-style poncho, jeans, and beaded leather headband; she grinned at Alix and said, “I didn’t see the car and I was afraid you wouldn’t be home.”

“Well, this is a surprise. How did you get all the way out here?”

“A guy I know brought me. He’s waiting down the road.”

“The boy in the green Chevvy?”

“That’s right. Aren’t you going to ask me in?”

Alix hesitated; but she was curious about why the girl was here. “All right, come ahead.”

Inside, Mandy said, “It’s not too bad here.”

“We like it.”

“Nicer than where I live, that’s for sure. You know the trailers up on the north end of town?”

“Yes.”

“My mom, dad, two brothers, and me live in one of them. We don’t even have running water.”

Alix didn’t know what to say, so she kept silent.

“We take turns hauling water from the faucet,” Mandy said. “I sleep on the couch. Last week we had egg sandwiches for supper four days.”

“Mandy, why are you telling me all this?”

“I just want you to know where I’m coming from.” The girl began to pace around the room the way she had at the launderette, examining things and humming a vaguely recognizable rock tune. The lyrics, Alix recalled, had something to do with wanting to “get it on all night.” At Mandy’s age she wouldn’t have even considered getting it on all night, much less sung about it. Mandy was obviously much more precocious; she had a tough, put-on assurance that might have been amusing if she hadn’t been so serious.

She said, “Suppose you tell me why you’re here.”

Mandy stopped pacing. “I wanted to talk. You’re from California, right? Someplace near San Francisco?”

“Yes.”

“Nice there.”

“Yes.”

“What do you think of Hilliard?”

Alix debated an answer, but took too long for Mandy’s liking; the girl answered her own question.

“Well, I hate it!”

The outburst cracked her tough-girl veneer. Alix took advantage of it and asked her, “Why, Mandy?”

“It’s ugly and cold, and everybody’s poor. There’s nothing to do but go to church or to the fucking Bingo games at the community center. I hate living in that trailer. We used to rent a house, but when my dad lost his boat we couldn’t even afford that. My mother used to have a dream that someday we’d own our own house, somewhere nice like Bandon or Coos Bay, but that’ll never happen. She doesn’t dream about anything anymore.”

“Don’t you have friends in the village? At school?”

“I dropped out this year.”

“Why?”

“Why not? Sitting in school wasn’t getting me anywhere and I had a chance to go to work at a boutique in Bandon. But that fell through. Besides, my dad’s got a high school diploma and look what it’s done for him.”

“What about your friend in the green Chevvy?”

“Him? He’s just my connection for dope. That’s about the only other thing there is to do around here-smoke dope. And get it on on weekends. But that doesn’t mean he’s my friend.” She met Alix’s eyes defiantly; the tough veneer had hardened again.

Alix kept her expression neutral. “Okay, now I know where you’re coming from. What do you want?”

“I’ve got a business proposition for you.”

“Oh? What sort of business proposition?”

“I want to get out of Hilliard. Go to California. L.A., maybe.”

“And do what? Try to get into the movies?”

“God, no! I may live in a hick town but that doesn’t mean I’m stupid. Nobody goes to Hollywood and gets rich and famous anymore; that’s a lot of shit. But I figure I could get by down there, and at least it’s sunny and warm.”

“How would you ‘get by’? By turning tricks?”

“What?”

“Prostitution, Mandy.”

“If I have to. That’s no big thing.”

Alix sighed.

“Anyway,” Mandy said, “I’ve got it figured out-the price of a bus ticket and enough money to keep me going until I can find a job or something. And what I’ve got to sell is worth just about what I’ll need.”

“Sell?”

“To you, Mrs. Ryerson.”

“Now what could you possibly have to sell to me?”

“Information. Something I heard.”

“What would that be?”

“Come on. If I told you, I wouldn’t have anything to sell.”

“Look, Mandy—”

“Five hundred dollars,” Mandy said. “Cash.”

“Five hundred-! That’s ridiculous!”

“You think so? Well, you’d better think twice, Mrs. Ryerson. What I heard could be important to you. Very important.”

The girl’s nerve was appalling. But Alix sensed a desperation underneath her hard demeanor; even though Mandy’s stance and tone of voice were aggressive, her fingers clenched and unclenched spasmodically. When she saw Alix looking at them she hid her hands in the folds of her poncho.

“Mandy,” Alix said, “do you know what the name for this sort of thing is?”

“Blackmail, so what?”

“Not blackmail. Extortion. You can be put in jail for it.”

“Don’t give me that. You’re not going to call the sheriff on me.”

“I could call your parents.”

The girl laughed. “Good luck. We’re so poor, we don’t even have a phone.”

“You just don’t realize what you’re doing to yourself, do you? In the first place, I’m not about to give you five hundred dollars, no matter what you think. In the second place, even if you did manage to get to Los Angeles, you’d probably live to regret it. There are men down there who prey on young girls like you—”

“Stop talking down to me! I know all about pimps and pushers, I know all I need to know. I’m not some stupid hick kid you can feel sorry for!”

Mandy’s face had reddened with this new outburst; for a moment Alix thought she was going to stamp her foot as she had in the launderette when her mother told her she couldn’t have a Coke. Instead, she spun away and stormed across the room to the door.

“Mandy—”

“No, you listen to me, Mrs. Ryerson. If you don’t get that money for me you’ll be sorry, you and your husband both. Real sorry.” And then she was gone, slamming the door behind her.

Alix went into the kitchen, stood uneasily watching the girl half-walk, half-run down to the gate. What could Mandy have heard that would lead her to hatch such a fantastic extortion scheme? What sort of “information” was worth five hundred dollars, even in her immature mind?

If you don’t get that money for me you’ll be sorry, you and your husband both. Real sorry.

What could she possibly know?

Jan

It was late Wednesday afternoon when he finally left Portland.

He had intended to leave much earlier, around two, but the garage where he’d taken the Ford to have the damage repaired had failed miserably in their promise to have the car ready by one; he’d spent most of the afternoon wandering through secondhand bookshops, looking for (and not finding) unfamiliar lighthouse material, and it was almost four by the time he finally ransomed the station wagon. Then he stopped at a place on S.E. 3rd that sold and serviced air compressors and picked up a tank for the one that operated the diaphone. It was rush hour by the time he finished there; it took him almost an hour to get out of the city and ten miles down Highway 5.

Freeway driving usually relaxed him, but not this evening. He felt tired, tense, grouchy, and the monotonous flow of miles did nothing to ease any of those feelings. He kept fiddling with the radio-not looking for anything but noise, yet not satisfied with call-in shows, news programs, or music of any kind. None of it kept him from thinking.

Yesterday’s examination by Dr. Philip R. Meade was one of the things that kept replaying in his mind, the primary thing. According to Meade, his condition-atrophying optic nerves in both eyes, aggravated by a form of “systemic choroiditis,” or disease of the middle layer of tissue deep inside the eye-had not advanced to any marked degree. But neither had it improved, of course. Prognosis: still negative. Meade had administered a cortisone treatment, even though the last ophthalmologist he’d consulted in California had told him the condition had advanced beyond the help of such treatments. The good doctor had also administered bland professional sympathies, the usual recommendations as to what the patient should and shouldn’t do, and a stronger codeine prescription to relieve the pain of his headaches.

Jan had asked him about blackouts, if they could become a symptom of his condition; he was careful not to admit that he had already had one, saying only that he “understood” they might be a by-product of intense eye-related headaches. Meade said blackouts were possible-given the rarity and seriousness of Jan’s particular eye disorder, many symptomatic complications were possible-but his professional opinion was that Mr. Ryerson need have no fear of “memory impairment,” especially if he avoided undue stress.

So much for Dr. Philip R. Meade.

He drove straight down Highway 5, mile after mile, mile after mile. And many more miles to go before I sleep. Traffic was thinning out, at least, now that rush hour was over, he could drive at a steady sixty-five, ten above the speed limit, but nobody observed the speed limit on Highway 5. Salem, Albany, Eugene, coming up on Cottage Grove. Coming up on nightfall, too, and still a hundred and fifty miles left to drive. Maybe he should stop for the night in Cottage Grove, or on down the road in Roseburg. Pack it in early, get an early start in the morning. No, he didn’t want to spend another night in a motel. Four strange walls, closed in and alone, and worse when he shut off the light. The dark. It was like being a child again-afraid of the dark.

Country-and-western music blaring at him from the radio. “She Got the Gold Mine, I Got the Shaft.” For God’s sake. Was that supposed to be amusing? He rotated the knob, found a classical station. Something heavy, ponderous-Bach fugue? Terrific, just what he needed. The knob again. Sports-talk program out of Eugene, somebody complaining about the Oregon Ducks football team being perennial losers and poor competition for Pac-10 powerhouses like USC and UCLA. Fine, good. Complain away, my friend, all your worries should be confined to ducks, Oregon or otherwise.

Pretty country on both sides of Cottage Grove, mountains rising, farms tucked away in the folds of the hills. But he couldn’t enjoy it. Roseburg next-and full dark when he got there. He turned off on Highway 42, the two-lane state road that connected Roseburg with Coos Bay on the coast. Sixty miles to Coquille, then a dozen miles on winding Highway 42-S to Bandon, then another twenty miles or so from there to Cape Despair. Close to a hundred miles altogether, part of it mountain driving, and already he felt fatigued and gritty-eyed.

Headache starting up, too. Just a small one, but he kept monitoring it, gauging its intensity, trying by force of will to prevent it from worsening. If it did get worse, if the bulging started, then he’d have to stop somewhere for the night. No more driving when he was suffering that way. Too dangerous-and he’d promised Alix.

Better take a rest stop soon, get some coffee and something to eat; no food since a small breakfast, and his stomach had set up an insistent growling. Call Alix, too. Eight-thirty now; she’d be wondering why he wasn’t already back. Worrying, and he didn’t want her to worry.

A truck stop’s neon sign swam up out of the night ahead, blue and red and yellow; the colors looked watery at the edges. He pulled into the parking lot, drove past a couple of drawn-up semis, and found a place to park. At the upper end of the lot, where another driveway connected with the main road, two kids were trying to thumb a ride. They never learn, he thought. Don’t they know it’s dangerous to hitchhike these days? Don’t they care? No, it wasn’t that. It was just that they were young, and when you’re young you never think about death, you never think it’ll happen to you.

The diner was half full, hot and noisy, the air thick with the smell of fried food. There was an empty stool at the far end of the counter; he sat down and, without looking at a menu, told a waitress he’d have coffee and a burger, no fries. A corridor ran past the kitchen nearby, to the restrooms in back. He went along it, found a telephone on the wall between the restroom doors, found some change in his pocket, and called the lighthouse number collect.

The line hummed seven times, eight, making him nervous, before Alix answered and accepted the call. “Where are you?” she asked. Relief was plain in her voice. “I was starting to worry.”

“Diner outside Roseburg. I got a late start.”

“I wish you’d called earlier.”

“I should have, I’m sorry.”

“… How do you feel?”

“Not too bad. A little tired, that’s all.”

“You’re not having one of your headaches?”

“No. Don’t wony.”

“It’s still a long drive from Roseburg, isn’t it? Are you sure you’re not too tired…?”

“Positive. I should be in by eleven.”

“Well, if you’re sure…”

“I’m sure,” he said. “Everything all right there? You took a long time answering.”

“I was working on the Eddystone sketch.”

“No problems or anything?”

“Jan, you asked me that this morning when you called. And last night. Do you expect something else to happen?”

“No, no. I guess I’m still a little spooked after Saturday night, that’s all. I’ll see you around eleven.”

“All right. Take care.”

“I will.”

He went back to the counter, sat down, drank coffee while he waited for his hamburger. Why didn’t he tell her the truth about Saturday night? Didn’t want to frighten her. Not that there was anything to be afraid of now; it was finished. Wasn’t it? Yes, he’d handled Novotny just right on Sunday-forceful, without being belligerent or unreasonable.

Still. He’d feel better once he was back at the Cape Despair Light with Alix. He hadn’t liked the idea of leaving her alone; he wouldn’t do it again.

But will she leave me alone when she finds out?

He couldn’t get the possibility out of his mind. In his more optimistic moments he believed the fear was irrational; they’d been together so many years, been through so much together, and nothing had yet weakened the bond between them. And yet the fear was still there. And the fear kept him from telling her what he faced, what they both faced, in the very near future. So many people had left him in his life, some of them for reasons beyond his comprehension; was it really so irrational to think she would too? That graphic design company meant so much to her… no way could she undertake a job like that, with all its travel and other demands, when she had a blind husband to look out for. How could he even expect her to? He couldn’t; he wasn’t that selfish. Yes, he was. He didn’t want to lose her, and he wouldn’t, but he was terrified he would. Irrational…

His headache was just a little worse now.

He pressed both eye sockets with thumb and forefinger. Food might ease it. If not, one of the codeine capsules nestling in his coat pocket. Meade had warned him against taking the medicine while he was driving, but if he took just one, with plenty of coffee…

His hamburger arrived. Tasteless, but he ate all of it, even ate the orange slice that came with it. And he was still hungry. He ordered a slice of cherry pie a la mode and ate that and drank three more cups of coffee.

None of it did his head much good. The pressure remained-constant, but muted and tolerable. All he had to do was hold it at this level and he wouldn’t have any difficulty driving; his thoughts were still perfectly clear. He shook out one of the codeine capsules, swallowed it with the last of his coffee. His nerves felt jangly from all the caffeine, but at least that would help keep him alert. He paid for his meal, left a tip, went out to the station wagon.

The hitchhikers were gone; he wondered vaguely who had picked them up. He wouldn’t have, even if they’d still been there. Bad idea, picking up hitchhikers; dangerous on both sides.

He began to drive again. Radio blaring rock music, all dissonance and shrieks that scraped like a file across his nerve ends. He spun the knob, found a station that was playing excerpts from old comedy albums. One of Shelley Berman’s routines, the one about fear of flying. Bill Cosby telling a Fat Albert story. Newhart on merchandising the Wright Brothers. Jonathan Winters spoofing old horror movies. He laughed a couple of times; most of the material was still funny and it felt good to laugh. The codeine had muted the pressure behind his eyes.

The road climbed up over Camas Mountain, down through the village of Camas Valley. Not much traffic; dark night-cloudy again, no moon. Mort Sahl clip on the radio now; he had never liked Mort Sahl. Sharp twists and turns in the road, climbing again into the Klamath Mountains. Concentrate on the white line. Headlights coming at him, blinding for an instant, gone. Tom Lehrer next, one of his favorites. “They’re Rioting in Africa.” God, how that song brought back memories. His college days. Madison, the protest marches, the parties The murder. Sandy Ralston. Ed Finlayson-guilty or innocent? He spun the knob again, quickly. Something loud, something fast and catchy. Static instead. Not many stations coming through up here. Damn, there must be something… there. One of those “Golden Oldies” stations. The Beatles doing “Yellow Submarine.” Silly song. Did we really get excited over songs like that?

Headlights coming at him, blinding, gone. Twists and turns, twists and turns. Town of Remote, aptly named. Headlights, blinding, gone. Climbing again, damn switchbacks all through here, right and left, left and right, back and forth. Headlights behind him this time, coming fast, some damn fool tailgating him on the sharp turns. Get off my ass, you fool, what’s the matter with you? And then suddenly swerving around him on a half-blind turn, so that he had to jam on his brakes and veer over; taillights shining bloodily in the dark-and gone. Gone.

But the pain wasn’t gone, it was still there. Worse than before.

Credence Clearwater Revival doing “Lodi.”

Headlights, blinding, gone.

Town of Myrtle Point. Splashes of neon against the dark. Gone.

The Animals. “House of the Rising Sun.”

Twisting, turning.

Hurting.

How far now? Almost to Coquille. Forty miles.

Hang on.

The Beatles. “Paperback Writer.”

Coquille. 42-S. Twisting and turning, turning and twisting. Dark, no lights anywhere. Dark.

Eyes burning so bad they were leaking water.

“To Know Him Is to Love Him.” The Teddy Bears. My God. The Teddy Bears, what kind of name was that…?

Headlights, blinding, gone.

Shouldn’t keep driving, headache getting worse, vision starting to blur a little. The dog, Novotny’s dog-don’t want anything like that to happen again. Can’t risk another blackout, another accident.

Was it an accident?

Almost to Bandon. Not much farther. Twenty miles “Twenty-Six Miles Across the Sea.”

So dark out there…

Somebody up ahead, walking along the road.

Out here at this time of night? Another hitchhiker? Mindless. Don’t they realize how dangerous it is?

This fucking pain Don’t they realize Bulging.

Oh God, better pull over Bulging.

Bulging.

Dark.

Alix

It had been almost three A.M. when Jan finally got home.

She had been frantic by then, still up and debating whether or not to call the state troopers, and when she’d heard the car she had rushed outside to meet him. Was he all right? Where had he been? He hadn’t had another accident, had he?

He had seemed exhausted, a little disoriented; but he’d answered her questions, at least, given her some measure of relief. No, he hadn’t had an accident, it was nothing like that. One of his headaches had come on suddenly outside Bandon. He’d pulled off on the side of the road, taken a codeine tablet for the pain, and the next thing he knew it had been two A.M. The codeine must have knocked him out. The headache had been gone when he’d awakened and he’d driven the rest of the way without incident.

Well, what about the headaches? she’d asked him. What had the specialist said?

Nothing more than what Dave Sanderson had already told him, Jan said. He was to avoid stress, take codeine when necessary. According to the doctor, it wasn’t a serious problem.

Then he had gone straight up to bed, and by the time she’d put out the lights and followed him, he’d fallen asleep. But there had been very little sleep for her-just a couple of hours of fitful dozing near dawn. Most of the time she’d lain awake, staring into the darkness.

And now that she was up and dressed and in desperate need of a cup of coffee, she’d discovered that they were out of coffee. She stood in the kitchen peering into the big ceramic jar where they kept the beans, wondering how she could have forgotten to replenish them. Was there any instant in the pantry? Yes, but she didn’t want instant, she wanted real coffee. She had hardly slept all night, she felt like hell, she deserved real coffee. At the very least.

What time did the Hilliard General Store open? Eight, wasn’t it? Earlier than most of its type, but then Hilliard was a fishing village and fishermen and their families got up early.

She rummaged in the drawer under the drainboard and found the pad she kept there for grocery lists. No sense going all the way into the village just for coffee. They were out or almost out of other things as well. Orange juice, Ry-Krisp, beer. Was there any margarine left? No. Low on mustard, tuna, cheese… anything else? Eggs, better get some eggs. Now what about dinner tonight? Chicken? Fish? Hamburgers?

She realized her hand was shaking and set the pencil down. The house was silent, almost hushed-at least to her ears. Jan would sleep for hours; she knew his sleeping habits well enough to predict that. Best to keep busy with mundane chores like shopping until she could talk to him again about last night.

She gripped the pencil again. Make it hamburger for tonight. And fresh vegetables. They could use some milk, too, and Diet Pepsi for her…

Five minutes later she scribbled a note to Jan, on the chance he might awaken before she got back, and left it on the kitchen table. Then she bundled herself into scarf, cap, and pea jacket, and left the lighthouse. The fine weather of the past few days was gone, replaced by a heavy, lowering overcast that promised rain before midday. As she walked to the car she glanced up at the menacing gray-black clouds-and shivered. Better hurry. It looked like a full-fledged storm was brewing, and she didn’t want to get caught in it when it broke.

The station wagon was angled in near the garage, even though Jan had insisted after the shooting incident that it always be put inside. When she reached it she hesitated, then went around to the front and examined the bumper, grill, headlights, fenders. He had had the previous damage repaired in Portland; there was no new damage, not even a scratch. That made her feel better. It wasn’t that she doubted his word; it was just that he had been so disoriented when he came home, so strange…

She got into the Ford, started the engine, sat there waiting for it to warm up. Had Jan always acted strangely when he was suffering one of his headaches? When he was mired in one of his depressions? A few days ago her answer would have been an unqualified no, but now she wasn’t so sure. When you lived in a given situation you tended to normalize it no matter how odd it might seem to an outsider. And the illusion of normalcy was easy to sustain when you were in familiar surroundings, going about your day-to-day business. But if you removed yourself from those surroundings, set yourself down somewhere totally different, you saw things from another perspective. What she was seeing now was more than a little unsettling.

The engine was warm. She reminded herself of her earlier resolve: stick to mundane chores-and mundane thoughts-for the time being. She let out a sigh, put the car in gear, turned it around, and drove down through the open gate onto the cape road.

The ominous clouds followed her, putting intermittent drops of rain on the windshield-more a mist, really, that didn’t require the use of the wipers yet. To the south the barren rocks and beaches looked cold, forbidding; the rough sea made her think of the shipwrecks off Cape Despair, and of all the lives that had been lost off the perilous coast. She entered a dark copse of fir trees, with its thick ferny groundcover, and thought of the evil forests of Grimm’s fairy tales. Not a good morning for her to be out. Not a good morning for her to be alone at all.

In the open fields beyond, the sheep seemed to huddle together in little flocks; even their thick coats were not enough protection against the icy wind. If it hadn’t been for the sheep, she could have imagined herself alone in a wilderness hundreds of miles from the nearest human being. It was that desolate out, that empty.

But it was only an illusion, and it was shattered moments later when she came around a bend in the road past another stand of trees. A hundred yards ahead, near a gully flanked by clumps of prickly broom that cut a jagged line through the south-side sheep graze, several vehicles were drawn up along the road and a small knot of men stood near a flattened section of fence. Alix braked automatically, frowning in surprise and bewilderment. The vehicles were two state police cars, a Curry County sheriffs cruiser, a farm truck, and an ambulance. Most of the men wore uniforms of one kind or another.

They all looked her way as she approached, and one of them-dressed in the state troopers’ smoke-gray outfit and broad-brimmed hat-detached himself from the rest and moved onto the road, holding up his gloved hand for her to stop. She obeyed. Rolled down the window as he came ahead to her side of the car. The wind that blew in was cold and misty and smelled of ozone.

The trooper bent down to look at her and glance around the car. She asked him, “What’s the trouble, officer?”

“May I see your identification, please?”

She reached for her purse, handed him her driver’s license. He studied it solemnly.

“California,” he said. “Mind telling me what you’re doing out here?”

“I live at the lighthouse.”

“That so? Your license gives your address as Palo Alto.”

“Yes. But we’re staying here for a year.”

“We?”

“My husband and I. He’s writing a book on lighthouses. Officer, what—?”

“Did you travel this road last night?”

“No. ”

“Did your husband?”

“I… well, yes, he did, he was up in Portland—”

“Where is he now?”

“At the lighthouse. He’s sleeping, he didn’t get home until late.”

“How late?”

“Around three o’clock.”

“I see. And you were at the lighthouse alone until then?”

“Yes.”

“No visitors?”

“No.”

“Did you happen to notice anything out of the ordinary?”

“No, nothing.” She was alarmed now; fear, like a small wormlike thing, crawled through her. “Officer, can’t you please tell me what’s happened?”

He didn’t answer for a moment. He had averted his face and was watching two white-uniformed men carry something black over the flattened section of fence and into the gully. Something that looked like a black plastic bag. When he returned his attention to her his face had set into grim lines.

“Young girl-apparently a hitchhiker-was murdered last night. Strangled and her body dumped here.” Beneath the wide brim of his hat, his eyes were hard and angry. “Looks like the work of a psycho,” he said.