Port Anne

As it was beginning to shake, the lighthouse let out a slow breath. Air popped between the bricks, and the glass up top asked to let go. From within its belly, Cori played a game of checkers against herself. She put on a thick, wool sweater--and then another. The chill had gotten past her skin, and she tried to make her teeth chatter along to the song in her head.

Cave senes, cavete iuvenes.

Down on the sand lay two bodies. One belonging to an old man and one belonging to a young man. These two were of no relation to each other. Cori picked a piece up off the board and examined it. Something about the color red was off to her. It might have been her eyes or the day or the storm outside. Storms had a way of changing the air quality, and once the air was different, well, nothing else was allowed to sit in place.

She got up when she smelled cinnamon. There was no cinnamon anywhere in the lighthouse. If she was smelling it, it must have been brought in by someone. The old woman picked up her knife off the table and left the game unfinished. There were two bodies down on the sand, but there was room for more. The storm would be her accomplice for any crimes tonight. Although as her mentor had often reminded her, there was no crime in defending yourself.

“And Cori,” she’d say, “A woman is always defending herself.”

After a cursory check of the entire lighthouse, she established that the cinnamon must be in her mind or carried to her by the storm. There was no trusting anything. Every sound might be a trick of the wind. Every concern magnified by the power of a dust-up right by the ocean. During the last tempest, a wave reached up nearly to the light itself. Cory had braced for extinction, but the crest hesitated, and when it did, she knew she would be alright. Men and waves have so much in common. They have to get a running start to find their power, but no matter how far back they run, they always break against the shore.

That morning, she had no intention of hurting anyone. Her only job was to board the place up as best she could and keep the light going the same way she had for forty years now. Her mentor would crow that Port Anne was the only lighthouse in the region run by a woman, but Cori didn’t really see herself as a woman anymore. She felt more like an owl crouching up on a rafter in a barn. Her roots were in the Midwest, and she only wound up by the ocean, because she’d followed a bad husband as he gambled his way up the eastern seaboard.

No storm needed to take him. He did that himself one night when he went driving after a hot streak and took a turn too fast. When they found him, half the vehicle was charred, and that’s the half he was in. The police gave her their condolences and his glasses that were found at the scene. By then, she was already living in Port Anne, and she’d seen a posting on one of the community boards about help needed at the lighthouse.

That’s how she met Ginny.

While the two didn’t exactly get along at first, Ginny soon warmed up to Cori when she learned that the farmgirl could outdrink her. That meant there was finally somebody to put Ginny to bed on the nights when she’d start singing songs about long-dead boyfriends and the girls she stole them from. Rumor in town was that the women in the lighthouse liked other women, but that wasn’t so. Ginny and Cori didn’t like women, because they didn’t like people. They managed to like each other, because that made living easier. Wasn’t that what everybody did?

One night Ginny didn’t wake up early the way she always had, and that’s how Cori became the woman in charge. She didn’t bother posting any sign looking for help, because she knew she’d be the last person to run the lighthouse. The town had already made it clear they wanted it turned into some kind of museum. That meant no keeper leaving there and no real urgency to keep the light going. Ships had all kinds of devices now to keep them from smashing themselves up on the rocks. Most of her work was ceremonial now.

Even her day-to-day activities took on that feeling. When she cracked her first egg to fry every morning, she envisioned a monk somewhere drawing in sand. It was all a ceremony.

When the two men showed up around quarter to ten, Cori knew at least one of them was going to end up on the beach. They pulled up in a car with a spare on the passenger side, and another tire wobbling so bad, she couldn’t believe they’d made it anywhere. They got out of the car and introduced themselves as lost souls looking for a place to stay before the storm hit. Cori mentioned the motel in town, but they explained to her that they didn’t have any money on them, and weren’t lighthouses supposed to be sanctuaries of some kind?

After that question, she was sure both of them would be covered in sand by the evening.

Cori led them inside and let them shower. By then, the wind was already picking up. The lighthouse swayed a little to the right when the first man came downstairs in only a towel. The second man was sitting at the table setting up the checkers board. The man in the towel was young. Cory noticed a scar just above his navel. She asked the two of them if they’d like anything to eat. They didn’t know she was offering them a final meal. The old man setting up the board told her to sit down and be quiet. He wanted her to know they had a plan.

She suspected that when she finally did die, she would regret not asking what that plan was. It might have been fun to know what the men thought they were going to pull off there in that lighthouse. When she searched the car in her raincoat, drops the size of half dollars falling on her, she found two bags of what looked to be cash. Leaving everything where it was, she went back to the lighthouse just as something struck one of the windows. Glass blossomed all over the rocks. Cori wondered which man she should drag down first. She wasn’t worried about the storm hurting her. The storm was only interested in the lighthouse. It had no truck with its keeper.

When both men were splayed out on the sand, Cori returned to her spot at the table and began to play the game the old man had set up for her. Her knife was going to be stained permanently now. For some reason, blood just never came all the way off. After her inspection, the wind kept harassing the stones all around her. Cori tried to ignore it, but that only made it louder.

She put on a pot of tea and thought about the glass that would need replacing.

There was always something that needed doing.

And always plenty of time to do it.