Читать книгу Point of Direction - Rachel Weaver - Страница 8

1.

WHEN HAZY outside light spills in through the heavy wooden door of the bar, we all turn. No one smiles but me. Kyle’s been out fishing for a little over a week, crewing on the Laura Ann. I leave the mugs in the soapy water and step into his arms.

“Hi,” he says in my ear, his voice filling my body with heat.

“How’d it go?” I pull back to search his face. One of his arms stays draped around my shoulders.

He glances down at me and then away, his dark hair curling wildly, and pulls a crumpled check and a bigger, folded piece of paper out of his breast pocket. He tosses them both on the bar. “Two hundred fifty-nine dollars. That’s worse than the last two trips. There’s no salmon anywhere this year.”

He peels off his thick rubber rain jacket and sits on the nearest bar stool. The wool jacket underneath has a new tear. The skin is pulled tight across his forehead.

I return behind the bar and pour him a strong Jack and Coke.

“No luck out there Kyle?” Charles asks from his usual seat at the end of the bar. He’s a regular. One of my few friends in town. His whole life has been lived against this cold gray Alaskan shore.

“No,” Kyle answers.

Charles shakes his head, a slow scratching of white whiskers against his wool collar. “Used to be wild in here when I was your age. We’d all get back, pockets full of money, lines of coke on the bar, one drunk after another ringing the bell.” He continues shaking his head. “Money to burn back then.” He takes a long swallow of gin and turns, head a little loose, toward Kyle. “You wouldn’t know anything about it.” Charles lets out a slow chuckle. He’s been at the bar most of the day.

Kyle gives me a flat look, takes a long drink of his whiskey. I go back to loading beer mugs into a dish rack. I notice again the girl at the pool table, her long black ponytail draped over her shoulder just so, and I want her to leave. The likeness bothers me. I slip my hand into the front pocket of my jeans, where I keep the phone number.

“What about something new, Anna?” Kyle asks, pulling my attention back to him.

“You want something different to drink?” He always drinks Jack and Cokes.

“No. This,” Kyle says as he slides the folded piece of paper toward me. “Let’s do it.”

I unfold the paper, notice the tape on the top from wherever he tore it down. It’s a notice from the Coast Guard. They are looking for someone to move out to the Hibler Rock Lighthouse.

I don’t know much about the lighthouse. I’d seen it on several occasions that I’d been out in the channel but had never really paid much attention to it. It was two, maybe three hours by skiff from town, in the middle of the narrow channel on a rock not much bigger than the lighthouse itself. I bring to mind the octagonal shape, white with a red roof, dwarfed by the mountains that rise on either side of the channel. I read the rest of the paper. A nine month lease.

“For one dollar?” I ask. “What’s the catch?”

Kyle’s eyes seem to clear of everything else. I see that he has already made up his mind. “We’d take over the maintenance. It’s a win win situation. The Coast Guard doesn’t have to spend the time sending guys out there to paint and maintain the light, and we get to stay out there for basically nothing.”

Charles has swiveled his stool so that he is facing us. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Are they looking for someone to live out at the lighthouse again?” He looks at me directly. “Don’t do it. Let me tell you what the catch is,” he goes on, “you’ve got to live out in the middle of the channel all winter. You two haven’t even spent a winter in town. You just go gallivanting off down south as soon as the wind picks up. It’s dangerous out there and I don’t just mean the weather.”

Kyle turns his attention back to me. “It’s nice out there. Peaceful almost. The house is in great condition, the maintenance of the light won’t be a big deal, I’ll take care of it, and whatever the stipend is, it’s got to be a hell of a lot more than that.” He swings his arm toward the crumbled check on the bar.

“I haven’t heard of anyone living out there,” I say.

“No one has,” Kyle answers. “Not for the last twenty years.”

“You seem to know a lot about the lighthouse.” Charles has narrowed his eyes, seems to be taking careful stock of Kyle, who ignores him.

I set a beer down in front of myself and another Jack and Coke in front of Kyle. “The water’s a thousand feet deep on either side, you know,” I say, leaning toward him, both elbows on the bar.

Kyle’s eyes hold mine. I feel the momentum building in him, the first pull of a tidal wave, the first hint of motion already underway. “Come on Anna, say you’ll do it.”

The beer is cold in my hand, cold down the back of my throat. I hold his gaze, something gathering at the center of me. I think of water on all sides, of myself out there. Nowhere left to run.