The Lighthouse

And then he thought: I’m going to be blind pretty soon. And the loneliness struck him-a wave of it sudden and fierce, making him feel almost agoraphobic. All at once the sky and the sea seemed immense, the sense of desolation greater than he’d ever imagined it, the voices of the wheeling gulls like shrieks of despair. Cape Despair. A place of lost hopes and hollow desires. The edge of nowhere. One short step from the abyss, the consuming darkness.

He turned, feeling dizzy, and went back to the house, sat down in the living room. His head ached, but it was not another of the bulging headaches-he hadn’t had another of those. But he’d had more frequent spells of failing vision, distortion of the form and size of objects, a narrowing of his visual field. Happening fast now. How much time did he have left?

Fear gnawed at him, but it was a different kind of fear than the one he’d been living with the past two days, even the past few months. Not fear of the unknown-fear of the alone. This lighthouse, the stand he’d made against Mitch Novotny and the other people of Hilliard… none of that meant anything, really, not even as a symbol. Staying here like this was not only foolish, it was meaningless. Polishing the lenses, rebuilding the diaphone, painting the catwalk, trying to do something about the well, all the frantic activity of the past couple of days… meaningless.

The room, the entire lighthouse, felt strange to him now-a vast echoing chamber of loneliness. Why had he sent Alix away? Why had he thought he needed some time alone? Being alone was the thing that frightened him most, the thing that had kept him from confiding in her. The ordeal of telling her the truth, facing the consequences, couldn’t be any greater than the ordeal of the past two days, the past two weeks.

You can’t put it off any longer, he thought, and he was standing beside the phone, reaching down for the receiver, when he realized that he didn’t want to put it off; that no matter what Alix’s response, the truth was something he could no longer deal with alone.

Alix

The afternoon was thick with fog-not the unleavened gray mist that often hung over the coastline, but an opaque white curtain that shifted and billowed before a strong Pacific wind. The offshore rocks were shrouded, as were the hills to the east. The broken lines centering Highway 1 seemed to leap up suddenly, giving little or no warning of curves, and the edges of the pavement bled off into nothingness. When she came to the first exit for Hilliard she turned automatically, even though the route would take her through the village; it was shorter than continuing down the highway and then doubling back on the county road, and she was eager to get to the lighthouse, to see Jan and hear what it was he had to say to her.

The trailer park on its little hill to her left as she entered Hilliard was a blurred scattering of lonely ill-assorted shapes. It made her feel cold in spite of the warmth inside the station wagon. She thought of how depressing life must be inside one of those boxes, with only the thin walls as protection against the elements. And then, with a twinge of pain, she thought of the Bametts, Della and Hod and their other children, alone with their loss; and of Mandy, who would never return to even that poor shelter.

The cannery loomed on her right, pinpoints of light shining along the clumsy line of its roof. Then the road curved, and she was on the main street. The fluorescent interior of the marine supply glowed through the fog, making the windows look like giant TV screens. The green neon sign of the Seafood Grotto was muted and hazed. The street was empty of pedestrians, and most of the buildings had a closed-up, deserted look.

Just past the general store, however, a line of cars was moving slowly, some of their taillights flashing left-turn signals onto the sidestreet that climbed the hillside toward the church. Alix put her foot on the brake to keep from overtaking them. The lead car made the turn across the road, its headlamps probing the mist and quickly becoming dissipated in whiteness. It was a large boxy vehicle, black with ornate chrome trim; shirred white curtains masked the windows of its elongated rear compartment.

It was a hearse. She’d come up behind Mandy Barnett’s funeral cortege.

Other cars followed the hearse, their headlights making the same slow arc: a ten-year-old Cadillac sedan, presumably belonging to the undertaker and containing the bereaved family; a beat-up Volkswagen van; an equally battered pickup truck; three old cars of nondescript make. It was a poor showing, undoubtedly a poor funeral-as poor as the brief life of Mandy Barnett. Again Alix felt a wrench of pity for the girl, and blinked at the wetness that came to her eyes.