Red Sky at Morning

I first met him during one of my late-night excursions on the beach. I had been prone to insomnia since school, you see. It was why I applied for the job at Ocracoke. The calm, repetitive work that the lighthouse offered was a nice break from my symptoms, but sometimes, on grey nights when the light wouldn’t go as far, sleep eluded me. 

It was a chilly night in late summer as I recall. The sun hadn’t shone all day, leaving the sand like ice under my toes. A single moonbeam pierced the dark clouds and fell like a spotlight on a solitary man in the water. He was waist-deep in the ocean, unmoving except for his fingers which tickled the incoming tide. Since the neighboring island was a bustling port, I was used to people along the coast, but not much traffic came to this side of the channel at night. I had grown used to the beach being mine, and mine alone, during the small hours of the morning. After checking to make sure my lighthouse was still standing, I started to traverse the distance between us. 

I believe it was at this point I called out to him. My voice echoed across the dunes, yet he did not turn to look at me; he did not respond. He stood silent, fingertips still caressing the waves like an old friend. 

“Sir,” I called again. “Are you alright?” This time he turned around slowly, sleepily, and looked me in the eye. In the distance, thunder rumbled. I was directly behind him, standing on the sand. He moved faster than I could’ve in the water, but suddenly the man was right before me, barefoot with sodden breeches and a linen shirt ladened with water. 

The man’s face was all hard lines and thick eyebrows and soft eyes. His hair was a dark brown pulled back into a ponytail. His feet burrowed into the sand as we talked. 

I can’t remember exactly how the conversation went after that, but I do remember a few things. He said he was a sailor and that he couldn’t rest. We bonded over shared maladies, and when rain had started to fall lightly, I asked him up to the lighthouse. He agreed with a ghost-like smile. Thin and whispy and ephemeral, with a little flash of white and gold. We walked back to the lighthouse, side by side for most of the way. Only when I reached the door, had I realized the man was gone. 

I wrote to my mother the next day. She told me I was delusional. 

I didn’t see him again until air swirled with the crisp winds of autumn. It was late evening, and the sun had just set. Pinks and oranges of sunset giving way to the purples and blues of twilight. My rounds as keeper were almost finished. The all-seeing eye of Ocracoke would remain on for another night. I was standing on the top balcony, leaning on the railing and watching the water lap at the sand. The last kiss of daytime held back the stars for a moment longer and left the ocean an onyx void before the lighthouse’s beacon reached it. 

It was the white of his shirt that caught my eye, reflecting the light of the full moon and contrasting sharply with the dark water. A specter of light in fledging nighttime. He hadn’t changed since I saw him last. Down the wooden stairs, I went, heading to the door. But as I journeyed into the brisk night air, he was gone once again. 

I saw him fleetingly every fortnight or so. Always by the water watching the horizon. Ever still, and always gone by the time I reached the door. 

I saw him for the last time at the end of November. Winter’s grasp had taken hold of my small paradise, and ocean winds confined me inside most days. My insomnia had taken hold once more, so I grabbed my overcoat and shoes and left my lighthouse. 

The man sat on the sand under the moonlight with a faraway look to his features, bare feet in the water. Despite the cold, he was dressed the same as he always was. He hadn’t disappeared yet, and I called to him as I did all those moons ago. All he did to reply was pat the sand beside him. It seemed as though he had been out there for hours, but his cheeks were pale and bereft of the windburn which was starting to sting my face.

As I settled beside him, I asked what he was doing. I remember what he said to me vividly, for it changed my life. He said, “Hello, my friend. I’m waiting for my ship to come to port. You see, a while back, I sailed as the first mate to a foolhardy captain. One day, we were sent an omen: a sunrise as crimson as blood. ‘Rig the main,’ the captain said.” The man gave a brittle laugh. “‘We set sail in an hour.’ Later that same day, we were lashed with the storm of the century. The winds were pushing forty knots. Rain and hail assaulted the deck. The crew and I did our best, but the waves were taller than the hull and swept us off the boat. None of us could swim. And now I can’t rest till the ship comes to port.”

He pointed to a faint, greenish, ethereal light in the distance. 

I stared at him as understanding started to sink in. “How long have you been waiting,” I asked, turning back to the ocean.

“A long time.”

“And what will you do if it never comes?”

“Wait till it does.”

I looked at him once more--his shoulders stooped, arms resting on his knees, looking every bit a weary sailor--and looked back at my lighthouse, proud and strong, watching over ships in the night. 

I hadn’t used it much, but at the end of the lighthouse’s dock stood my vessel, a small dinghy which I used to cross the channel to Portsmouth. It had a patched sail, and the left shroud had been broken twice, but it cut through the water just fine. The man peered at me behind pinched eyebrows. 

I smiled at him. “Would you like to take my boat?” The man frowned. I told him he could take the dinghy and sail out to his ship so that he didn’t have to keep waiting. In answer, he gave a hesitating nod. Under Ocracoke’s light, I led the man to the boat, gave him the dock’s lantern to light the way once he left my shore, and sent him to the blurred light at the edge of the horizon. I smiled and waved and watched the boat and the man disappear into the night. 

I’ll never know if he made it to his ship, but I know now: like lighthouse, like keeper. I helped someone find there way home. 

Many years later, an old lighthouse keeper walked along the beach in the dead of night, whistling a jaunty tune. The keeper’s gaze fell upon an old glass bottle, its label decayed, lying on the sand. It was empty except for a piece of parchment rolled up inside. When the keeper opened the bottle and unrolled the parchment, it said two words in a swirling cursive hand: thank you.