The terrible part was that Sam didn’t talk. He would sit shivering on the side of the bed as Loretta helped him dress. Mechanically he took his pills and drank pineapple juice, carefully wiped his chin after he ate breakfast. In the evening when she arrived he would be standing on the porch waiting for her. He wanted to go see Anna first, and then have dinner. When they got to the hospital, Anna lay pale, her long white braids hanging down like a little girl’s. She had an IV, a catheter, oxygen. She didn’t speak, but smiled and held Sam’s hand while he told her how he had done a load of wash, watered the tomatoes, mulched the beans, washed dishes, made lemonade. He talked on to her, breathless, told her every hour of his day. When they left Loretta had to hold him tight, he stumbled and wavered as he walked. In the car going home he cried, he was so worried. But Anna came home and was fine, except that there was so much to be done in the garden. The next Sunday, after brunch, Loretta helped weed the garden, cut back blackberry vines. Loretta was worried then, what if Anna got really sick? What was she in for with this friendship? The couple’s dependence upon one another, their vulnerability saddened and moved her. Those thoughts passed through her head as she worked, but it was nice, the cool black dirt, the sun on her back. Sam, telling his stories as he weeded the adjacent row.
The next Sunday that Loretta went to their house she was late. She had been up early, there had been many things to do. She really wanted to stay home, but didn’t have the heart to call and cancel.
The front door was not unlatched, as usual, so she went to the garden, to go up the back steps. She walked into the garden to look around, it was lush with tomatoes, squash, snow peas. Drowsy bees. Anna and Sam were outside on the porch upstairs. Loretta was going to call to them but they were talking very intently.
“She’s never been late before. Maybe she won’t come.”
“Oh, she’ll come … these mornings mean so much to her.”
“Poor thing. She is so lonely. She needs us. We’re really her only family.”
“She sure enjoys my stories. Dang. I can’t think of a single one to tell her today.”
“Something will come to you….”
“Hello!” Loretta called. “Anybody home?”
Our Lighthouse
Hi! I was dreaming! But not a dream with pictures. I could smell my mother’s Swedish cookies. Right here in this room. Right here.
We lived in a lighthouse, me and my seven brothers and sisters, on the Sainte Marie River. There’s no place to put things, much less hide them, in a lighthouse, but my ma sure could hide cookies. I always found them though. Under a washtub. A loaf of banana bread in my pa’s boot!
Winters were hard, miserable when we had to move to town. To a one-room shack with a wood stove, all of us sleeping on the floor. My father worked in the train yards, when he got work. He hated it. He wasn’t a drinker, but he got mean in winter and beat all of us and my ma, just out of being worn out and cooped up, away from the river.
None of us could ever hardly wait for spring. Every day as soon as the thaws started we’d be down checking out the locks, waiting for the filthy ice to break up and the boats to go through.
Seems like we never actually saw the last ice melt. One day you’d wake up and you could smell it in the air. Spring.
That first day was always the best day of the year, better than Christmas. Packing up the dory and the rowboats. Pa would be puffing on his pipe and whistling at the same time, smacking us all on the head to hurry. Ma would just load and load the boats with gear she’d had ready for weeks, singing hymns in Swedish.
Our lighthouse stood right smack in the middle of the river. On a concrete slab over high craggy rocks. Waves crashed up over the iron door sometimes so we’d have to wait to get in. A ladder spiraled round and round, high, up to the tower where you could see the whole wide world.
Now the lighthouse wasn’t that much bigger than the shack in town. But it was cool and windows looked out onto the water and the forests on the shore. Water and birds all around. When the logs came crashing past us you could smell the sweet sap of pine, cedar. It’s the most beautiful spot in the entire U.S. of A. What am I saying? Not now, not after the iron and copper people and Union Carbide got through with it. More and more locks, and the rapids are gone. The birds too, I expect. Heck, even the lighthouse is gone. Boats run all year long.
We thought we were special. We were, in our lighthouse. Even things like going to the bathroom. No toilet or outhouse, just went right over the side. There was something nice about that, part of the river. That river was clean and clear, exact same color as a Coca-Cola bottle.
Ma and Pa worked all day. He’d be checking the five lighthouses, sanding, painting, oiling gears. Ma would cook and clean away. Everybody worked, sanding, scraping barnacles, patching. Well, I didn’t work that much, never was much for work. I’d high-tail off in a skiff to the woods where I’d lie all day in the grass, under some spruce or hemlock tree. Flowers everywhere. No, sorry, I can’t remember any names of flowers. Can’t remember a damn thing anymore. Wild clematis, moon-weed, bittersweet! Ma had made me an oil-cloth sack to keep my books in. Never took it off. Even slept in it. Every Hardy Boys and western I could get my hands on. Sure! Sure you can bring me some Zane Greys! The most beautiful title ever written was Riders of the Purple Sage.
Early evening us kids would set out in the row-boat to fire up the lamps in the smaller lighthouses, on Sugar Island, Neebish, and two other points. Ed and George and Will and me, we’d fight over who got to do it, every damn time. Ed was the oldest. He had a mean streak. He’d pull the plug in the boat and just laugh, holding it out far over the water. Rest of us would have to bail like crazy not to swamp.
He still has a mean streak. Married to a mean old woman too. Captain of one of Ford’s river boats. George is Fire Chief of Sault Sainte Marie. Oh, you know. I mean they were. They’re all dead now. Been dead for years. I’m all that’s left. Ninety-five and can’t walk, can’t even hold up my head.
I wish I could say I’d been a better son. I was always a dreamer. A reader and a lover. In love every year, ever since kindergarten. Swear I was just as in love with Martha Sorensen when I was five years as I was when I got grown. And women, they all fell for me. I was a good-looker. No, don’t you be kidding me, I’m just an old shell now. Steve McQueen? Yeah, that’s my style … you got that right.
Lucille, my wife. We met in Detroit. It was love at first sight. Never was a love, a romance, like between us two. And it just kept on. She’s starting to hate me now, I can tell. No, she isn’t patient, either. I ask for orange juice and she hollers, “Wait a minute. Don’t get your shorts in a knot!” I wish I’d die today, just die, before she stops loving me.
I was twelve when my father was killed. 1916. We were in town. Bitter, cruel winter. He was working as a brakeman for the B & O line in the middle of a blizzard. Snow and wind howling so loud he didn’t see or hear the locomotive. Ran right over him. It was terrible, terrible. You must think me a baby, bawling like this. He was a big man. Fine man.
They took up a collection for us after the funeral. We were glad because there was nothing to eat. $50. You know they say, well, money went further in those days. $50. It was nothing, for eight of us. We all just wept.
Ed and George quit school and worked on the boats. Will became a Western Union boy. My sisters did housework. I wouldn’t quit school, but delivered papers mornings and nights. Dark and cold and snow bound. I hated it.
I admit it. I was bitter. Sorry for myself. Missed the lighthouse and just plain hated being so poor. Mostly it killed my pride to look shabby, to wear cheap shoes. Anyway when I was fifteen I ran away to Detroit. Got a dishwashing job and took up with an older woman. Gloria. A looker, with green eyes. Boy did I fall for her. She was a drinker, though. Whew, that’s another story.
Soon as I could I became a bartender, and that’s what I did all my life. Liked it, too. No, never was a drinking man. No excuse for being so