At last I hefted myself upright. Gritting my teeth, I climbed the stairs once more. The rain was louder here, booming on the roof. In the distance, thunder growled. I could not hear the gulls or the murres, any of the usual suspects. The storm had wiped out all traces of animal life, for the moment, anyway.
It took all the courage I had to enter the bedroom that Forest and Mick had shared. Inside, I stood frozen, stunned at my own daring. I breathed in the combined musk of two athletic, unshowered bodies — Mick’s smell had not yet evaporated. I glanced around at the ceiling fan and the frayed, threadbare rug. Forest’s dresser was tidy. He evidently preferred not to use a pillow; his bed looked odd, empty at the top, like something that might have belonged to the Headless Horseman. His clothes were hung crisply in the closet. There was an echo of Galen’s neatness in the way the papers on the desk were all lined up at right angles, the thumbtacks and pencils stowed in specific little jars. I peeked into the trunk at the foot of the bed — more papers, a few years’ worth of documentation about sharks. There were sketches, photographs, and meticulous notes. Somehow, Forest had managed to take the greatest and most ferocious predator on earth and render it boring. I would not have been able to sit there and read through those files, not for love or money.
After some searching, I found my own camera, with the images of Mick and Forest’s rendezvous stowed on the memory card. It was hidden at the bottom of the closet now. I turned it over in my fingers. The pictures were not mine anymore — if they had ever been. I tucked the camera away again, out of sight.
Then I gazed across the room at Mick’s things. The bed was exactly as he had left it the morning he had died: a heap of pillows, the blanket trailing onto the floor. I was sure that if I opened his dresser, I would see shirts and socks crammed in there willy-nilly. His books had been shoved roughly onto the shelves — backward, upside down. Muddy boots under the bed. A closet with sweaters piled on the floor, hangers unused. Mick’s energy was captured there, the impression of a body in motion, a large, generous personality, too full of enthusiasm to bother with petty matters like tidying up. I got to my feet and headed across the neutral zone. I knew I did not have long. The others would be back soon, wet, weary, and hungry for lunch. There was something I wanted to do before they returned.
In Mick’s nightstand, I found a leather bracelet. He had owned a few, with varying degrees of masculinity (some braided, some chunky, some ringed with metal studs). He had alternated them according to his mood. This one was stiff with sweat, the mahogany hue weathered to a pale brown. I pocketed it. I was hunting for small items that Forest would not miss. I found a T-shirt in Mick’s drawer: my favorite, a bright orange thing that was emblematic of his luminescent temperament. I stole a postcard he had begun to write to someone but had never finished — a chatty note about the whales, ending in midsentence. The important thing was that it was in his own handwriting. I was moving fast now, a dervish, disarranging the books and upsetting the papers on the desk. I took Mick’s baseball cap. I found a tiny rubber chicken in the corner of a dresser drawer, a miniature bit of hilarity, and I swiped that too. I grabbed a book about sea lions, highlighted and marked with Mick’s script.
Right then, there was a sound from downstairs. A door slammed. Voices rang up the steps. I jumped in alarm, like the thief I was. I hurried down the hall to my bedroom with my stolen goods clutched under my arm.
I WILL TELL people that Mick was the father of my baby. When my twin aunts ask — when my own father asks — when my son himself is old enough to ask — I will lie. Mick gave me this gift, and I will grab it with both hands.
I will spin a beautiful story. I will begin, always, with the eggers and the lightkeepers. I will not, perhaps, relate this tale as well as Galen (and his book) did, but I will do well enough. I will describe the way lightkeepers inhabited the islands. They left the sharks, the whales, the seals, and the birds alone. They sought peace, an income, and a home. They built a strange little community on a godforsaken rock, where they protected one another, raised their children, and thrived.
Then there were the eggers, who came to the islands with a different agenda. They decimated the murre population with abandon. (Even now, the birds have not fully recovered.) Not content with causing an environmental catastrophe, the eggers brought weapons to the archipelago. They died in battles with other eggers. They died in caves, poisoned by the fumes rising from the guano. They died by tumbling into the sea, overburdened by the weight of too many eggs.
When I tell people about the father of my baby, I will say this: There are two kinds of people in the word. There are eggers and lightkeepers. The former are driven by acquisition and avarice. The latter are driven by curiosity and caution. Eggers take what they can, consequences be damned. Lightkeepers take what they need, nothing more. Eggers want to have. Lightkeepers want to be.
I will tell people that my son’s father was a lightkeeper. I will share my memories. I have so many memories. The walks Mick and I took. The hours we spent together — him reading, me dozing with my feet in his lap. His terrifying attempts at cooking. His sweeping gestures, those massive arms zooming perilously through the air. I will describe Mick’s head-thrown-back guffaw. I will imitate the athletic bounce of his stride. I will tell stories of his hilarious clumsiness, machinery coming apart in his hands, tools crumbling into pieces. I will describe, too, his limitless capacity for kindness. In this way, I will be able to keep him with me. The ordinary ebb and flow of life on the islands, so unremarked and unremarkable, will crystallize, through telling and retelling, into stories — and will pass, over the years, into legend.
My photographs will stand as illustrations. Mick on board the Janus. Mick in the kitchen, frowning at a box of macaroni and cheese. Mick making a silly face to get me to laugh. It is a bit unsettling to think that these snapshots will enhance and inform my deception. I have always thought of photography as truth-gathering. I have imagined my pictures to be immutable and honest, as sure as the ground beneath my feet. But now I see that truth and photography are fundamentally at odds. A snapshot is a two-dimensional representation, like a painting or a sketch, carefully prepared, framed, and cropped. It is the world represented by the mind of an artist, rather than the world as it actually is. The photographer can cherry-pick what will be included in a collection of images; they can be selected or omitted with purpose, then assembled and arranged so that, as a whole, they might suggest any story at all.
My beloved work will strengthen the lie I must tell. I can include a snapshot of Mick blowing me an ironic kiss. I can exclude the picture of him doing the same to Lucy so she would not feel left out. I will keep the images of him writing in the daily log, standing in the lighthouse, operating the crane to pull up the Billy Pugh, cooking dinner, pointing ecstatically at an elephant seal, snoring on the couch, and roaring with laughter. I will throw away the snapshot of him waltzing around the living room with Charlene, singing at the top of his lungs. I will include my favorite picture of Mick — eyes aglow, smiling lovingly at the camera. I will exclude the following shot, which shows that Forest was there too, standing behind me all along.