The Liberty Bee – 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. 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.

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.