The Liberty Bee

Chapter One

The cool fingers of autumn streaked the bright blue October sky with swirls of white and gray – wispy peaks and valleys drawn across the sky as if by some giant hand. The old lighthouse, long abandoned, stood like a pillared-sentry, blindly guarding the rocky shoal, five hundred yards off the island cliff; still the lighthouse still rose majestically, though it was quite useless now in the age of GPS and other electronic and computerized wonders.

The grandfather and his nine-year-old grandson walked along the beach, the little boy enchanted by the waves that gently kissed the shore. An October day, like many others, was not like many others to the little boy.

They walked along the rocky beach, an autumnal sea breeze tousling the boy’s long brown hair and lent a slight briskness to the old man, but walking hand-in-hand, neither really noticed the approaching winter, nor the slanted, weakening October sun; they walked and talked, an old man and a young boy, sharing precious moments that they both would treasure.

The little boy looked out to the ocean and saw something in the water, perhaps twenty or twenty-five yards offshore. What looked like the broken mast of a schooner, brown and slime-covered, rose abjectly from the surface of the water; a long thin ghost of something once more grand and more elegant. He pointed to it – what’s that? The old man turned his eyes in the direction in which the boy’s finger pointed, though he had seen it many times before, he looked anyway. That’s what’s left of the Liberty Bee, he said, in his raspy voice.

Then, suddenly, he felt the need to tell the little boy a story. The story of the Liberty Bee. A large sycamore tree, toppled by a summer storm, lay silent and broken and dead, across the deserted, rocky beach. The old man sat down upon the remains of the dead tree that had now become bark-covered bench, and bade the boy to join him, patting the space next to him with his weathered, slightly trembling, old hand. The boy came and sat down next to his grandfather, and looked up at him quizzically.

The old man looked into the boy’s blue-green eyes, and was taken aback by the youthful innocence that sparkled in them. He felt as if he were seeing this for the very first time, yet he had seen it many times before; still, it always amazed him; it almost took his breath away.

He cleared his throat, and in his slow gentle way asked the boy if he’d like to hear a story. The boy loved the stories that his grandfather told, and excitedly told the old man he did want to hear another story and slid closer to his grandfather, so he could hear the story better, and also to fend off autumn’s chill. The old man slid his arm around the little boy and pulled him in, and looked out to the ocean, his eyes looking at nothing, but seeing everything all at once.

And so, to the sound of the waves crashing onto the beach, on a chilly, breezy, October day, the grandfather began to tell the story of the Liberty Bee.

 

— Chapter Two —

About twenty years ago, the old man said, brushing a tussle of thin white hair off his sunburned forehead, there were two men, who had been good friends since childhood and they decided to build a magnificent schooner. They wanted to build it with their own hands, with their own time, with their own sweat, from plans the two of them had drawn from childhood dreams and sail it all they way across the Atlantic to Spain, just the two of them, together, sailing a dream.

It was a dream that they had kept alive for a long, long time.

It had been a dream of theirs since they were grade-school friends: To draw the plans for a majestic schooner, build it themselves, and sail it across the ocean. And when they reached the coast of Spain, celebrating the realization of a childhood dream come true with a festive dinner, get a good night’s sleep, then board the schooner once again for the long voyage home. And when they returned home, their dream fulfilled, they would find another dream another dream, and another, until they got so old they could never dream again. They were friends and they shared dreams. This is how they had always been, and they knew they would always be dreamers – and doers too – for a dream has no value at all beyond its own gossamer evanescence – unless they made the dream come true.

After years and years of working in their spare time, many times toiling deep into the night, they finished building the schooner that began as a wispy, ethereal dream: the dream of two childhood friends.

In a world of dreams, only the ones that come true really matter.

It was a 32′ foot schooner with two tall elegant masts. The entire boat was painted white with delicate red and blue trim. They called her “The Liberty Bee” and the name was painted on the transom in elegant blue script, thinly and beautifully outlined in red.

But building the boat was only a part of the dream. The building of the schooner was the heart of the dram, but the voyage to follow, was its soul.

So, in the weeks that followed, they began the careful planning of the voyage; they planned the voyage of a lifetime.

When they were kids in grade school, their imaginations built that beautiful schooner in hours, and their voyages took them to the world’s most exotic ports in mere minutes. As children they never considered the challenges, the details, or the planning such voyages required. They never thought about navigational equipment, provisioning supplies, emergency equipment, or any other of the many smaller and more mundane details such great odysseys demand.

In reality, as adults, they realized that sailing the Atlantic Ocean on a such a beautiful, but small craft, requires dutiful and careful planning; each day may bring with it unexpected perils, both dangers from the world above, and from the world below.

So the childhood friends, now grown men, carefully planned and double-checked their plans. Making dreams come true is often harder work than many are willing to do.

It’s easy to dream big, but it is often very difficult to make such dreams come true.

 

— Chapter Three  —

She was the lighthouse keeper’s granddaughter. She had inherited the tiny island, the small clapboard house, as well as lighthouse, when he died suddenly, and without warning the day before Christmas, seven years ago. The lighthouse had stood beautifully useless for more than twenty years, a beacon to all those whose yearnings draw them back to simpler times. To the days before technology had robbed humanity of its privacy, and of its dignity.

The island was more a rock than a real island. It rose up out of the water forty to fifty feet, and it was ringed by treacherous cliffs, the edges of which would sometimes crumble and tumble into the eternal waves that continually tried to wipe away the island with its foamy teeth. There was only one way down to ocean and that was by means of a rickety four-platform stairway, which still remained and endlessly in need of paint and repair. Many times she had descended to the very small beach at the north end of the island, where grandfather had kept a small boat with a noisy outboard motor, which he used for his infrequent trips to the mainland.

The small house was attached to the lighthouse by small corridor, but the short narrow hallway’s roof had collapsed and could no longer be used as a means to get from the house to the lighthouse.

The small house was attached to the lighthouse by small corridor, but the short narrow hallway’s roof had collapsed and could no longer be used as a means to get from the house to the lighthouse. If she wanted to visit the ghosts in the lighthouse now, she had to walk outside and around to the other side – it was the only entrance to the lighthouse now. And that entrance door was heavy and the lock was rusted and barely worked; it took most of her strength to open it.

And that entrance door was heavy and the lock was rusted and barely worked; it took most of her strength to open it.

She would often stand near the base of the lighthouse, looking up, and crying at its lovely loneliness and for the haunting memories which still lived on inside.

She used to spend entire days in that lighthouse, either watching the ocean and the transient boats and ships that crossed through the narrow strait which the lighthouse had so faithfully guarded for over a half-century. She often found herself standing on the precipice of a cliff, torn between the ravaging waves crashing forty feet below, and the majestic lighthouse, which stood like an abandoned monolithic sentry. The thought of throwing herself off the cliff into the cold unrelenting promise of death that sea offered, offered only slightly less peace than her memories of spending endless hours in at the top of the lighthouse, listening to her grandfather’s real or imagined stories of the sea, or watching him polish the brass and copper housings and the multifaceted reflector of the giant light that once guided sailors safely though the narrow channel. On some days she felt as if these treasured memories of days spent with her grandfather were the only things she had worth having — until her daughter was born.

She spent her entire summers on the island growing up, and when she finished high school, she took it upon herself to move to the island so she could look after her grandfather. He was getting old and often she’d worry about him. She didn’t seem to fit in with others her age, they always seem bound to superficial, material and temporal things.

She stood on the tenuous precipice remember a night ten years ago when she had fallen in love with the grandson of one of her grandfather’s dearest friends. They had known each other since childhood, but he pursued a career as a financier and had moved to New York. She had not seen him in many years until one day, he made the trip to the island, to visit her and her grandfather. At the time both her and her grandfather were glad to see the young man, now obviously quite successful. The spent the afternoon reminiscing about days long since passed.

Then he invited them to go back with him to the mainland to have dinner at a elegant restaurant. Her grandfather graciously turned him down but encouraged her to go with the young man and enjoy a night out. She was 20 then, the young man was had just turned 23, and her grandfather often worried about her and her lack of interest in things that seemed so important to other young women. “Go on, go to the mainland, have a nice dinner, and have some fun!” he said with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, and a wry, knowing smile on his kind, weathered face.

 

—Chapter Four—

It was a bright, crisp, nearly cloudless October day, there were just a few wispy puffs of white dotting the brilliant blue of the sky. it was the picture perfect autumn day — the kind pf which calendars are made. And there was more than a gentle breeze blowing from the south, and it was stirring up some light chop in the channel. It was cool, but certainly not cold – it was an autumn day with bits of late summer stirred generously into it.

His boat was too big to navigate the rocky shoals surrounding the island, so he had come to the island on a small skiff outfitted with an outboard motor. It waited for them, its bow breaching the shore, secured with a single rope, tied to the trunk of a dead and crooked beech tree.

As the two descended the rickety, weather-worn, cantilevered stairway, she turned and waved to her grandfather, who waved back; he was still wearing that wry, knowing smile. Something was missing, she thought, as she made her way down the steps with the young man who was to be her date for the evening. She couldn’t quite figure out what was missing from her grandfather’s face, but she was sure she saw a forlorn sadness in his eyes; it was something she had not seen save for a few times before. And those were times when he recalled her grandmother – her life and her agonizing death. And he never seemed especially willing to talk about her, yet sometimes, she thought, he just couldn’t help himself. He must have had such deep, dark pain buried inside he could never get out, and it was as if he thought talking about her would somehow expunge those demons of pain, he would sit and reflect on her life. But it seemed he often dwelled much too long on her death. And when he talked about her, his bright eyes became dull and lifeless; the twinkle left them. He must have had a reason for occasionally talking about her, she thought. And the only reason that ever made sense to her was that he was trying to rid himself of the anguish and pain buried deep in his soul.

They had reached the last of the 51 tattered steps, and now stood on the rocky beach. The skiff was docked about twenty feet away. The beach was the dark brown of wet sand, and strewn with rocks of all sizes. Some had by smoothed by the waves of a thousand, or ten thousand, or a hundred thousand years, while others were jagged and sharped, rocks recently tossed up by an angry sea, or a rising tide. He took her hand and led her gingerly through the minefield of rocks, and helped her board the skiff. He gave the small boat a push away from the beach and jumped in it at the last second. He grabbed one of the two oars stowed aboard the boat and pushed the boat further out to sea. The water was still shallow enough here that the oar reached the bottom — he leveraged his strength and the oar to push the boat away from the island. Then he started the motor and turned the boat toward the mainland and the city that lie just twenty-five minutes west.

The sea was choppy and the boat, now traveling faster, skipped the waves like a smooth stone tossed skillfully across a still pond. She looked at him, sitting in the stern of the boat, his long dark hair blowing in the wind, his strong arms and hands looked manly, yet well cared for. He handled the boat with great aplomb; he was obviously no stranger to the sea. She immediately found herself liking him. He talked about his years in college and his job, but mostly he talked of his love for the sea — and especially for lighthouses and their history.

What a shame, he said, that hundreds of beautiful lighthouses stand like useless guards. They guard nothing anymore; they are just old relics, some of which are preserved only because some still love them, while the rest are being torn down to make way for who knows what. Probably new marinas or restaurants with a view of the ocean – the kind which charges too much for food, and has far too few tables with a view. As he spoke could see him get lost in his thoughts, his eyes unfocused, his breath quickening, his voice clear and comforting. He is a very handsome man, she thought, as the man continued to talk about lighthouses, the wrecks of old merchant chips and some of the historic storms which had swept the coast over the past fifty years.

One particular ship, I think it was called Serenity Bay, sunk right over there, he said, pointing toward a buoy bobbing about thirty feet off the starboard bow. She turned to look, but saw nothing but the black buoy with the number 1871 painted in peeling-white on it, and a blinking red light on its top. It marked the Marinas Shoal, she knew it well from her many trips to the mainland with her grandfather. Her grandfather had told her many times about the many ships the Marinas Shoal had claimed. When she was younger, and she and her grandfather were coming back from the mainland at night, she thought she could feel the ghosts of the sailors whose lives the shoal had claimed. She remembered how her grandfather would console her and try to calm here fears. Still the ghosts lived on, if only in her memory now.

The mainland approached, and the young man skillfully guided his skiff into the harbor, and to the dock where his 44? cabin cruiser was moored. That’s my boat, he said as he pointed to the sleek white vessel just of the bow of the skiff. He guided the skiff into the slip next to the cruiser and secured the skiff. He hoisted himself up onto the peir and extended his hand and helped her out of the boat. She was smiling and happy. It was a beautiful afternoon, and he was kind, smart and gentle. He wanted to give her a tour of his cruiser but they were running late. The had reservations at Jonathon’s Bay Harbor Inn at 7:00 and they had a lot to get done before dinner.

As they walked to the marina parking lot, hand in hand, she took in the comings and goings of people. young and old, all seemingly in a hurry to go somewhere. She couldn’t imagine living this way, always in a hurry, always going somewhere, or coming back from somewhere. She didn’t know where this night would lead her, but she hoped she would never lose her love for her quiet, simple and peaceful existence on the island, with it’s now-useless lighthouse and her grandfather who she adored.

My car’s right here, he said standing next to a sleek, white Lexus. She looked at him and then at the car and it seemed odd to her that a man whose soul seemed so tied to the sea and to the freedom the sea offered, would drive such a fancy car. He opened the door for her and she got in, immediately noticing the smell — it was a brand new car; he must have just taken delivery of it.

It was getting later in the afternoon and the October sun’s rays were slanted in their usual autumnal slant. Shadows were long and the evening was fast approaching. He backed the car out of its parking space and headed out of the marina and onto the highway He turned right and headed for his parent’s summer home which was just a five-minute drive from the marina.

He was handsome all right, and he was intelligent and friendly, but something about him didn’t seem to fit, but she wasn’t quite sure what it was. She smiled at him as he took her hand, but there was an uneasiness inside her, and she couldn’t seem to shake it.

As they approached the house, her eyes grew wide and she could couldn’t help but express her amazement at the beauty of the estate, and its manicured grounds, and the white mansion they were approaching.

He smiled and said, my parents are pretentious and showy, but not me. I enjoy the simpler things in life. We’ll go in and meet my parents and you can freshen up. We’ll have a glass of wine then go to dinner. We’ll have a great time I promise.

He parked the car, opened the door for her, and helped her out. They walked toward the house, holding hands and smiling. She was happy in the moment, and promised herself she would give the young man a chance. They had a lot in common, and there was no doubt she found him very attractive.

It would be a night to remember – a night she would never, ever forget.