January 19 finally arrived. Paper lanterns hung all around the lighthouse parapet. More were hung from the pin oak and juniper trees and on the Keeper’s pizer. A wooden stage, built out of planks from the wreck of the Beaufort fishing boat Loggerhead, was at the base of the light and decorated with the hand-painted insignia of the old Lighthouse Service. The Loggerhead’s flotsam had come washing up not more than a hundred yards south of the lighthouse, which made it easy for the volunteer carpenters to build the stage. No one thought much about the coincidence. It was expected that the sea would provide for the celebration. A band played, Ready on the fiddle, Bobby on the banjo, Again on the harmonica, Once on the washboard, and Millie on the jug.
It was a glorious night, the skies clear, the Milky Way like a silver river meandering across the heavens. The moon was a bright yellow crescent, looking so close that a long-armed man might think to touch it. There was a breeze from the southwest, but just enough to rustle the needles on the juniper trees and waft along the delicious aroma of the big tuna slow-roasting over an open pit of charcoal. A long table, also built from Loggerhead planks, was laden with hush puppies, oysters, clams, slaw, and gallons of punch. More than a few bottles of hooch, both legal and illegal, were making their way into the punch. Everybody was getting happier by the minute. Off the coast, in the darkness, lights moved steadily past, the great ships carrying their cargoes north and south, unaware of the celebration of the sweeping beam that was keeping them safely away from Bar Shoals.
Josh stood on the beach and worried over the running lights of the ships passing by. Dosie strolled up to join him. She was wearing a flower-patterned, ankle-length, silk-and-nylon frock with a pin-tucked bodice that showed her off in spectacular fashion. She was carrying a glass of punch. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Ships are dying out there, Dosie. Up north.”
“Can you do anything about it?”
“No.”
“Then have a drink. Try to enjoy yourself for an evening. This is a celebration of your family as much as the lighthouse.”
Josh had a flask filled with Mount Gay in his leather jacket. He pulled it out and took a hit. “Did you miss me while I was out patrolling?”
“Not a bit. I told you I don’t need you.”
He smiled. “Why don’t we go inside the lighthouse and you can show me how much you don’t need me? There’s a lock on the lantern room, you know.”
“Can you turn the light off, too?”
“Why would I want to do that? I’d love to see you lit up by eighty thousand candlepower.”
“You really know how to sweet-talk a girl, don’t you?”
“It’s part of our training. Semper Paratus is our motto, you know. That means—”
“ ‘Always ready.’ You told me that at the Hammerhead, remember? You Coast Guard boys need to get another line. Anyway, I made an A in Latin. But don’t get yourself all pumped up, mister. I’m just here to celebrate the lighthouse, not the lighthouse keeper’s son.”
“Did I tell you how great you look tonight?”
“No, but I’m listening.”
“You’re gorgeous. I love that dress.”
“All the ladies tonight are knockouts,” Dosie replied. “All the orders to Sears Roebuck came in just in time. I noticed Amy Guthrie even wearing white pumps.”
“They’re all jealous of you.”
“Not Willow. Now, there’s a pretty girl.”
“Pretty but not right.”
Dosie’s smile faded. “You know what she told me the other day when I was in to see Doc?”
“Why were you in to see Doc?”
Dosie snickered. “I’m not pregnant, if that’s what you’re worrying about.”
“Not a bit,” he lied. “I just hope you’re not sick.”
“I’m not sick. I just went in with Herman to get his stitches out. Do you want to hear what Willow said?”
“If I said I didn’t, I bet you’d still tell me.”
“You’re right. Do you remember she said I ought to protect the sand?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, this time she said I would find him in the sand.”
“Him who?”
Dosie finished her punch and borrowed Josh’s flask. She took a long drain. “My, that’ll put hair on your chest.”
“I sure hope not, in your case. Him who?”
Dosie whistled out a breath. “You know Willow. That’s all she said.”
Josh and Dosie fell silent and watched for a little while longer the shipping lights sliding past. Then Josh said, “We’ll be fighting soon, and just out there.”
Dosie was a little drunk. She shrugged, then put her arm around Josh’s waist. “That’s what you’ve been training for, I guess,” she said. “Give ’em hell.”
“I guess I might,” he said, oddly encouraged even though he still didn’t have any depth charges or ammunition for the machine gun.
“You know,” Dosie said, “if you had something with a picture of a Trojan warrior in your pants pocket, I might consider seeing if that lock on the lantern room works.”
“Who told you?”
“Mrs. Mallory saw her mister slipping you certain supplies.”
“You women think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?”
“No. We know we are. Eighty thousand candlepower, you say? That would shine right through your clothes, I’ll bet.”
Josh grinned and draped his arm around her shoulders while she leaned in tight. “It might, but if it doesn’t work, I have another solution.”
“You have a dirty mind, Josh Thurlow,” Dosie said. “It’s one of the things I like about you.”
Preacher was first up on the stage to give the invocation. He had managed to get a snootful of the doctored punch and some folks would later say that it made him a bit resentful as a result. He’d also been spending a lot of time out on the Stream aboard this workboat or that and had developed a great empathy for the hardships of fishermen. A bandage on his thumb indicated a recent accident that probably wasn’t helping his attitude. Whatever the reason, his invocation was a bit testy.
“Dear Lord,” Preacher said, “on this island, we are ever mindful of your miracles because they are always near us. We go out each day and dodge your storms and try to make a living, hard as it is at times. We fish for your fish and You knock us around to make us earn them. Your clams we go stomping for and sometimes you have a stingray throw a barb in our legs. We catch Your crabs and they pinch us.”
Preacher continued, “We thank You for all of it, don’t think we don’t, the days of clear skies that you occasionally give us and the days of storms that are Your usual. All of it fits within Your plan, yea, we know that well enough, though we might not understand any of it, including that sometimes an unworthy preacher hits his thumb with a hammer while trying to patch up Your church. All is according to Your design, I’m sure, and we humbly accept it, I swear we do.
“But we ask You, dear Lord, to bless this assembly as we celebrate something we did pretty much by ourselves some fifty years ago by the piling up of bricks to make a light that shines across Your tossing seas and Your awful shoals. All we wanted to do was keep those ships out there safe. That’s not too much to ask, is it, Lord? I hope You don’t think so. So bless us, dear Lord, and stave off the other things You like to test us with, at least for this evening. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.”
Somebody helped Preacher off the stage and the church choir came up and Queenie O’Neal came out and stood in front of them. “Next thing we’re going to do is sing the national anthem,” she said.
The choir began to sing. Everybody joined in except for the little boys and girls who were mindlessly playing tag on the fringes of the crowd. Josh and Dosie sneaked back during the anthem, having finished their tour of the lighthouse cupola. Josh climbed up onstage and sat beside his father.
After the choir filed off the stage, Captain Potts, the commander of the Coast Guard patrol boat squadron in Morehead City, stood up and gave his speech. Captain Potts was a spiffy little officer who strutted around like a banty rooster. He had an elfin face that, under the dim glow of the lanterns, made him look thirty years younger than he was, which was forty-four. He extolled the virtues of the Lighthouse Service and all the good work it had done before being absorbed by the Coast Guard, which, according to him, had been a good thing because there was no better service than his.
“Now we are here to celebrate the Lighthouse Service’s finest moment,” Captain Potts said from his boy’s face. “That was when it built this grand edifice behind us, the Killakeet Lighthouse. The Killakeet Lighthouse has a magnificent record of service.” Then Captain Potts went on a lot longer, into the history of the lighthouse and a lot more besides. The crowd became a little restless. He sensed it and ended his speech by saying, “But what do I know? I’m just a dit-dot begomer.” Because of his last reference, he got not only tremendous applause but a chorus of agreement.
Captain Potts sat down and Keeper Jack stood up. “Fellow Killakeeters,” he said. “I am honored by all of you today, especially my good friend Captain Potts, who is not a begomer or scarcely a dit-dot, either. We agree with him on how important it is to protect this coast, and to rescue those who find misfortune along it, and to maintain all the equipment necessary to keep the lanes open and the ships moving so that disasters can be avoided.
“You know the history of the Thurlows. We’ve been on this island for two hundred years and maybe more. We were wreckers at first, like most of your families were, and were considered outlaws. But when the Lighthouse Service came, it changed us. It made us into better people by offering us a chance to serve, and by God, we’ve served ever since.
“My family are the keepers of the light on this island. But every man, woman, and child who lives on Killakeet is a keeper of the light, too. You keep the light when you’re at sea in your workboats, watching what’s going on and reporting what you’ve seen. You keep the light when you look out your windows while you’re washing the dishes or when you’re hanging out the laundry and take note of what’s happening in our front yard, which is the ocean. This light”—the Keeper raised his arm in the direction of the lighthouse— “as magnificent as it is, is merely a symbol of the greater light, the light of the people of Killakeet . . .”
Phimble appeared out of the darkness, crept up to the back of the stage, and tugged on the cuff of Josh’s pants. Josh looked down between his knees. “Whatever do you want, Eureka?”
“Sir, something to see.”
Josh slipped off the stage and followed the bosun to the lighthouse and up the spiral staircase, emerging on the parapet. Phimble didn’t have to tell Josh where to look. There was what appeared to be a fire on the sea. While his father was talking about everybody on Killakeet watching the ocean, only a Hatterasser had actually been on the job.
Josh looked down at the glowing lanterns, the people clustered around the stage. There was applause at something the Keeper had just said. At sea, the fire suddenly flared, followed by a long rumble.
“She’s been hit again,” Phimble said.
At what sounded like a thunderclap, Keeper Jack stopped talking and everyone stood still for a moment, then moved toward the beach. A fire seaward burned bright, then was seemingly quenched, only to brighten again. Preacher stumbled through the crowd and fell to his knees. The flames jumped before his eyes and he called out in a wailing voice: “ ‘And I stood up upon this sand, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea. And all the world worshiped the beast, saying, Who is able to make war with him?’ ”
While everybody looked at Preacher in shocked silence, he tore open his shirt as if daring the beast to plunge its fangs in his chest. “The revealed truth,” he said, then pitched face-first into the sand.