15
Wreckers’ Cay
December 1839
The captain’s visits, which I’d once looked forward to during that terrible time after Martin vanished, were now becoming stressful. They interrupted our work on the island, and forced Andrew to remain in the playhouse, often for many hours. Much as I needed the supplies, by mid-December, I found myself dreading their delivery days. After their latest visit, I was feeling particularly high-strung from the hours of forced politeness in the captain’s company.
When they had left, I approached Andrew. “Remember when Dorothy was here, the two of you were smoking an unusual plant in one of Martin’s old clay pipes?”
He smiled. “You want to try it?”
“Well …” I hesitated. Why was I acting so coy? “Yes, perhaps. It might be nice to relax, and I don’t much approve of alcohol.”
“This is not like alcohol,” he said.
“Isn’t it just some kind of weed?”
“It is. Quite a powerful weed.”
Never having tried a cigar, I had trouble at ?rst with the technique of inhaling smoke from the plant. I choked on the ?rst few puffs, and thought the experience somewhat vile.
Andrew watched me, amused. “Take a puff and then hold it,” he suggested.
After a few more tries, I succeeded in taking in the smoke without coughing, and soon I began to sense a feeling of great calm descend over me. “Well,” I said. “That’s quite …”
He was smiling. “Nice, isn’t it?”
I nodded, inhaling again.
“Some of the slaves at the plantation in Georgia showed me how to cut it and dry it out. It grew wild there, too. We were on a tobacco plantation, so nobody noticed. We just dried it along with the regular tobacco. Soon’s I saw it growing here, I recognized it and thought it would be a good medicine to have for pain. I gave you some in your tea while you were sick.”
“You can make tea from it?”
“Oh yes, it makes a ?ne tea. You can put it in biscuits, too.”
Oddly, this notion struck me as quite funny, and I began to laugh. It occurred to me that I had not laughed like this since before I lost my baby. Then suddenly, I felt serious again. The weed had made me light-headed, and since the children were outside playing, we were in the cookhouse alone. Emboldened by the weed, I placed my hand on his, which was resting on the table. He looked up in surprise. But I felt no shame or surprise of my own. It was the ?rst time I’d ever consciously touched him.
“Andrew, I want to thank you. You saved my life here. We owe you—I owe you—a great deal.”
He shook his head. “No, you don’t. I’m just glad I could help.”
“Well, I’m grateful,” I said. I suddenly felt incredibly fatigued, and I fought the urge to nod off. “So grateful to you.”
“You’re tired,” he said. “And I think the herb has made you even drowsier. Let me help you upstairs.”
He did, and I quickly fell asleep, waking in time to make the family’s supper. I ate a little, but I had an inordinate urge to eat sweets with some tea.
During the night, I awoke several times when I noticed the lamps had been extinguished. They were immediately relit, but I had to wonder why they continued to go out, for there was little or no wind to temper the ?ame.
“I don’t think we got good oil this time,” Andrew said to me the next morning. “I got tired of running up the stairs, so I got out a blanket and slept up there. Must have relit the lamps half a dozen times. And the oil was so smoky, I had to keep washing the carbon off the lens and re?ectors to keep the light sharp. It was hard breathing up there, too.”
“That’s terrible,” I said. “It’s never happened before. They’re supposed to test the oil beforehand.”
A batch of impure oil would be a terrible problem, since the supply tender would not be back for two weeks, and I had no way of even letting the department know until the captain and Al?e returned.
To my good fortune, this was solved by a surprise visit the next day from Rebecca Flaherty, who, until recently, had tended the light at Sand Key. She had sent her family on to Key West and then had stayed behind to clear out the keeper’s house. Before joining her family, she made the rounds to bid farewell to other lighthouse keepers in the area.
Rebecca Flaherty, who was reputed to be something of a scold, was one of a very small sisterhood: widows who had inherited their husbands’ light-keeping positions in the Florida Keys. Rebecca had taken over the Sand Key light station from her late ?rst husband. When she remarried, she tended the lighthouse for another three years. Over time, she had been a continual annoyance to the Lighthouse Services, sending her frequent complaints directly to Mrs. Adams, wife of the president at that time.
“I declare, I don’t know how you manage it, Miss Emily,” she said, looking around. “Lordy, just look at this place; everything is so well kept. You really make the rest of us look ine?cient!”
Her praise embarrassed me. I almost felt like admitting the truth to make her feel better. Instead, I explained my problem about the contaminated oil and asked her to take a sample of it back to Key West for testing.
“I’d be more than happy to,” she said. “It doesn’t surprise me one whit. I’m sure the oil gets a cursory inspection, if any at all.” She seized on the opportunity to vent about the superintendent of the Lighthouse Services, Stephen Pendleton, whom she despised. I recalled how he had groped me when he came to inspect the light that ?rst time, and I wondered vaguely if she had also experienced such inappropriate behavior.
She ranted about his delay in the installation of a superior new lens at her lighthouse in Sand Key. A phenomenal new kind of lens that provided a much stronger, steadier light had recently been developed by Augustin-Jean Fresnel in France. “But Pendleton, he’s struck deals with Winslow Lewis to keep the old-fashioned ones working. Anything to save money!” she said with vehemence.
“Who will now work the light at Sand Key?” I asked.
“Josiah Peartree. That old pirate! I’m sure he’ll be over to introduce himself; you should probably lock up the silver,” she added with a wicked smile.
I’d read much about Josiah Peartree in the Key West Enquirer. He was a man of some sophistication, a wrecking captain from Rhode Island, who had at one time been arrested by Commodore Porter for his dealings with a notorious privateer, Captain Phillip Halston. The newspaper described how Halston had plied his nefarious trade along the coasts of the Keys as master of an armed Colombian schooner. Peartree had evidently facilitated his work with underhanded dealings that eliminated the need for Halston to have his wrecking cases adjudicated in court. This had done much to taint Peartree’s reputation, but nevertheless, when he was released, he moved to Key West and made new friends in high places. Widowed for a second time, he was getting on in years, and was now being given the post of lighthouse keeper at Sand Key.
“Goodness knows what kind of dishonest tricks he will be up to once he gets there,” Rebecca said.
I considered this. There were certainly ways a keeper might be corrupted. By dimming or quenching lights at the right time, he could arrange for ships to run up on the reef, to the bene?t of salvagers.
“Anyway, he’s welcome to the place,” she continued bitterly. “I’ve had quite enough of Sand Key.”
Captain Lee and Alfie Dillon arrived just a few days later with a shipment of clean oil. As they were on their way to Havana, they promised to relieve me of the defective oil on their way back, or on their next supply trip.
Andrew noticed the difference immediately. “Much better,” he said on the ?rst night after they left. “Lights up right away. No smoke.” He placed the jugs containing the inferior-quality oil outside the door of the oil-storage house so it would be easy for Al?e to haul them to the supply tender.
In previous years, Christmas had always been a beautiful time on the island. The weather, while still warm, had cooled down enough to be pleasant, and the soothing breezes of winter had chased away the still, stuffy doldrums of early autumn. It had been a di?cult year for me and the children, and facing the holiday without Martin—or the baby I had lost—was a daunting prospect. Yet, I knew that for the sake of the children, I would have to make some effort to celebrate the holiday.
Andrew sensed this. He cut down a small pine tree and we all contributed to its beauti?cation. A box in the storage shed held ornaments that Martin had painstakingly crafted years before—wooden pieces shaped like mermaids, boats, star?sh, and anchors. But when I took these out, I could only think of Martin. With tears in my eyes, I put them away, urging the children to make new decorations. This was a good decision, for they busied themselves with crafting and painting, taking their minds off their father’s absence. Andrew found seashells and sea glass worn from the pounding of the ocean on the beach, and together we all hung pinecones, painted eggshells, and cutout paper ?gures; the children threaded red berries from palm trees; and we hung cookies shaped like stars throughout the house.
On Christmas Day, we gathered around the piano. Martha and Timothy played carols, Andrew sang Christmas spirituals, and Hannah, as always, clapped enthusiastically, her eyes shining.
There were the gifts Dorothy had brought earlier: Gran had sent Martha some watercolor paints. Timothy received a spyglass, which he had always wanted. For Hannah, she had purchased a beautiful new doll with eyes that opened and closed. Hannah delightedly showed it to everyone, but I had to laugh later when I found her asleep on the sofa, cuddled with her old rag doll.
Best of all were the gifts we created for each other. Andrew gave me a sweetgrass basket. He made Timothy and Martha gris-gris bags, which they promptly put on. Martha made everyone sweetly scented pomanders from oranges she had studded with cloves and tied with pretty ribbons. Timothy had been busy carving things from wood and had sculpted a wooden ?gure of a dolphin for me and a duck decoy for Andrew. Hannah had drawn pictures for everyone; they were happy scribbles, re?ecting her sweet personality, with the sun shining and stick people smiling in a garden of green-and-red swirls.
Having been ill for so long, I’d been unable to make many gifts myself. But I had managed to crochet some hand puppets for Hannah, which delighted her. When I gave Andrew one of our used geography books, I heard him catch his breath—it was his ?rst book. To the elder children, I gave new sheet music that Dorothy had left me.
We treated ourselves to a couple of stuffed chickens for Christmas dinner, and I served cooked squash and some preserved green beans from our garden. For dessert, I made a Key lime pie, and Andrew served us slices of one of the pineapples from the garden.
“This is the nicest Christmas I ever had,” he announced with a broad smile.
I had fully expected our ?rst Christmas without Martin to be unbearably sad. But to my surprise, it was not. The children seemed to have long accepted that their father was gone. It had been seven months, after all, and we were gradually losing hope that he would ever reappear in our lives. We seldom spoke of Martin now. Andrew’s presence had made an impact on all of us: Andrew, who appeared out of nowhere at just the right time, almost as if he had been sent by Martin to replace him at the light. Out of habit, we still scanned the beach almost every day with the thought that Martin, or something belonging to him, might wash up onshore. But it did not happen, and we were spared the ordeal of having to deal with a grisly discovery.