Lewis

The day had been windy, whipping her scarf out behind her and making her wish she’d worn gloves. She hurried to get her errands done, running ahead of the cool gusts to enter stores. Finally, one long swath of air chased her back to her car and she headed home to work on the paper due for Creative Writing in three days. The paper was supposed to include the weather as an important element of the story. It was also supposed to include something from childhood; anything- a toy, a person, a pet. She’d been working on the theme for several days, and maybe that’s why her thoughts went to some old books as she drove…

At the Back of the North Wind by George McDonald was a classic, published in 1871. There were mixed themes in the book, as she recalled. Some were sad. She wasn’t interested. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame was another classic (1908). In that book, everybody apparently lived happily ever after. She was mulling over these stories and others when she pulled into her driveway. It had taken her just those few minutes to decide how she wanted to approach her own story. She had no idea what item she would include from when she was a child.

She went in the house, with the wind slamming the door behind her, and felt lost. She was thinking about those old books, full of symbolism and fantasy, but that was the problem: they were made-up stories. She had suddenly realized that she wanted to write about the wind, but a real wind, far above gale-force. It’s one Maine knows well. The coast of the state measures nearly 3,500 miles. (N.B.: Some sources calculate 5,000 miles. Either way, there’s way more Maine coastline than there are miles in this country from east to west.) It is famous for storms and wrecked ships. Historians speak of hundreds of lost vessels, especially in places like Boon Island. There’s even a book by Jeremy D’Entremont, Great Shipwrecks of the Maine Coast (2010). Of course, this sort of event is common along the coasts of the big oceans.

Some of the ships were sunk, not by weather, but by human hands. German torpedoes reached more than one vessel. The coast of Maine was actually an active front during the second world war. She thought few people were aware of that, just as even residents of the state were clueless as to what lay submerged in its waterways. This was all distracting information, because she was not supposed to be writing about shipwrecks, at least not directly. She was going to set her story in a lighthouse. There would be powerful winds, capable of sinking any craft foolish enough to be out on the water.

Maine has sixty-five lighthouses. They try to guide navigators, and technology can help them do their job, but sometimes the technology fails, as we all know…

In what direction did she want to take her story? Sometimes families lived in the lighthouse. She’d use a younger girl, the daughter of the couple that tended to the structure. The little girl would not be afraid, because she knew her parents and the solid rock walls with their firm foundation would keep her safe. She would think it was all a grand adventure. The girl would be the main character, but would the story be narrated in the first or third person? Using I or she?

She had finished supper and was sitting down to tackle the paper. In fact, she was successfully developing a plan for her protagonist when other people congregated in an area in the back if her mind. Or you might say, at the back of the wind… one of those people stood out.

What happened next led her to select a very different main character after she had been working on the paper for several days, even mapping out some dialogues to see how they sounded. For some reason she had a flash of some handwriting that had filled journals, ledgers, miniature notebooks, envelopes - anything that could accommodate handwriting. The writing itself was a flood of black ink from a fountain pen that later might be a simple blue ballpoint pen with touches of red underlining or arrows. Yet nothing she’d seen while running errands had looked like that. Nobody wrote anything by hand any more. And certainly not that much. 

The pages of maniacal writing merged with the white shirt that had moved by quickly, and she knew then that what she was seeing what had come to her through her mother. The writing belonged to her mother’s father and had been so excessive that it had been tucked into any place imaginable, by him or somebody else. His obsession - and it definitely was an obsession, OCD in bold letters - seemed to have led people to preserve all the items he covered with spidery black writing. He indicated date and place of purchase if every item. If he ordered it through a catalogue, he would indicate that as well. Letters like birds; punctuation points like wings.

Her grandfather had listed family members and birthdates (and deaths) over and over. His life was organized in a rigid manner and nobody could convince him otherwise. He was a devout Protestant and admitted no vices (except his own of smoking mini cigars of a certain label). He was diligent about writing baseball scores, inning by inning. He always had a game on the radio, listening, listening. He would have watched, but there was no television, no computer screen available.

She decided she had to write through the point of view of her grandfather. The one who had a black fountain pen and wrote every - absolutely everything - out in longhand. The one who was stiff as a board with people, tough as nails, hard as a rock. He would be able to stand up to any storm. He had organized his life and could survive anything. After all, he’d survived the death of a child, being left by his wife, the losses of close family members, had paid for a bedsit for years with his janitor’s salary. He walked to work, and other than the cigars, his only vice was photography. The latter gave him lots of things to organize and label, to while away dead time, avoid loneliness.

This was the man for the lighthouse story!

Lewis in the Lighthouse

I must get ready to visit the lighthouse. They say I’m to spend a week there to help me recover. That means I must plan, because planning won’t be possible once I’m inside. I need my fountain, the black one I got at Kresge’s. It was Saturday, June 5, I think. And my 3 x 5” notebook, but just in case I’ll want to take another one that’s bigger. I’ll be taking lots of notes.

I’ll take seven cigars, just one a day. I want the freshest ones, and fortunately they all have dates on them. 

Maybe I should take extra ink. There might be a lot of things to observe and I’ll be taking notes. Have to get it right. 

I must visit the lighthouse ahead of time, to see what’s inside and learn to work equipment, should that be necessary.

[Enters lighthouse.] [Looks around carefully.] [Door closes behind him.]

Oh! I seemed have locked myself in. Well, I’ll just sit and wait. I can take more notes. There’s a nice view from the upper level, I’m sure.

Now where was I? Ah, yes, the equipment and how to use it. Well, I think all I need to know is how to turn the beacon off and on, sound a horn, and radio if something happens, like a boat floundering near the shore. 

I probably should record measurements if the weather gets rough. What should I measure? I think wind velocity, precipitation, things like that. I ordered a manual for lighthouse-keeping and can read that. [The manual is 342 pages long, plus ample appendices. He reads and underlines half the text, inserting an occasional red asterisk.]

Then he recalls he did not put a razor and shaving cream on his list because he wasn’t planning to start his week there yet. Maybe he should have foreseen he might be locked in? He wasn’t too worried; someone would be alone soon, plus he had his pen and ink, and was wearing a freshly laundered shirt.

His hands were aching, the Parker black ink container was empty, and not a bit of blank space remained on the paper he had brought in the form of two notebooks, one large and one small. He had described every last detail of the lighthouse interior, down to the mechanism that made the tank flush. He had taken inventory of the kitchen with its supplies and utensils. He had noted whether the windows were clean. He had detected a small fissure near the door and judged it in need of repair.

He had recorded the types of materials used for the walls and flooring.  

He had made a list of the pictures on the walls with descriptions and had included anything written on the back, just in case.

He had tried to describe the clouds in meteorologically correct language. The knowledge of clouds came from a pamphlet the National Weather Service still provided to those requesting one.

Suddenly there was a rap on the door and a large figure filled much of the opening. He was smiling, and asked if Lewis was all right because he noticed a haggard look, unshaven cheeks, an overall gaunt air about him.

Lewis looked at the notebooks tossed on the only table. They were worn and creased. They were obviously well-used, because some words had even crawled out from between the covers to the outside.

“What do you mean?” He asked. “I was just here for a few minutes, taking notes, getting ready to stay a week as I’been ordered to do.”

The big man looked at him, a puzzled expression on his face.

“You’ve been here for a week. Didn’t those gale-force winds frighten you? Most people would jump outta their skins having them so close. In a lighthouse it feels like all that’s protecting you are walls made of paper. It got black as ink, too, for three-four hours. That in itself is unnerving to some folks.”

“A week?” Lewis was anxious. He must have missed recording something if it had been that long. He needed to get more paper and ink. He had to fill in the blanks.

[End of Lewis’ story]

She looks up, sees it’s nearly midnight, and wonders if her professor will like her story. If she’ll believe it. Because there really had been a Lewis.