had gone through, waited for the first ring, tried to imagine the bright kitchen into which it was ringing.
The fear that shot through my body was sharp and hot. By the end of the first ring, the fear had dropped into my stomach, so that I had to bend forward to accommodate it. I slid down the side of the phone booth so that I was sitting on my heels, one arm across my stomach. The phone rang a second time. Before it finished, I hung up, ran from the phone booth as if there had been bees, kept running to the side of the building where I stopped to catch my breath before I walked back to the truck.
We arrived back in Neely six weeks ago in early May on a day when the clouds hung three hundred feet above the water, swallowing all the mountains. I could not see the glaciers hanging overhead, but I could feel their presence.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Kyle squinted into the rain, everything around us some shade of gray or black. It was beautiful in a way that demanded something. A landscape that has the power to ask anyone, at any time, to measure all the hidden parts of themselves.
3.
THE SMALL Coast Guard office in Neely is made of concrete painted beige, and linoleum some long ago shade of green. We wait on metal chairs. I shift in my seat and watch the three boys, barely twenty, who all look the same, with their crew cuts and muscled chests. A phone rings. One of them answers it, speaks in a low voice. He stands and says, “Follow me.”
We step in behind him, down a short hallway of more beige concrete and green linoleum. He leads us into a small office where a man is signing papers. “So,” the man says, before he looks up, “You’re interested in Hibler Rock?”
“Yes sir,” Kyle says, holding out his hand. “Kyle McAllin.”
“Lieutenant Apdale.” He shakes Kyle’s hand and then reaches for mine.
“Anna Richard.”
“Have a seat.” He motions to two folding chairs across from his desk. “Are you familiar with Hibler Rock?”
“I’ve taken a skiff over there a couple times,” Kyle says.
The Lieutenant raises his eyebrows. “You do know there’s no trespassing on government property?”
“I didn’t take anything, I just looked around.”
The Lieutenant ignores the comment. I glance at Kyle. He’d never mentioned being on the island before. The Lieutenant focuses on me. “So you’re familiar with the remote aspect of the island?”
“Yes,” I say, hardening in response to his tone of voice.
“Are you two prepared to keep the building in the condition it’s currently in? It’s a historic landmark, in addition to being a working lighthouse.”
“I’m a carpenter,” Kyle says.
The man nods, stares at us. I want to reach for Kyle’s hand but don’t.
“I see. Do you have a boat?”
“A sixteen foot skiff.”
He nods again. “You can pull that out in the winter when the weather closes in. There’s no anchorage for anything that can’t go dry. It’s too deep.” That familiar first turn of fear happens in my chest, the feeling I get when peering up at a climb that I know is too hard. Sun in my eyes, gear clanging at my waist, and a certainty that I will fall a good distance before the rope catches me.
“You’ll be able to get around the channel in that skiff until sometime in September,” he continues. “After that, the cutter out of Juneau will make monthly food and supply drops for you on their patrols. And,” he pauses, looking from Kyle to me, “most importantly, you’ll be responsible for the light.”
I shift in my seat. Kyle nods across the narrow desk. It makes me nervous, to be the source of so much heat and light.
“What happened to the last guy that lived out there?” Kyle asks. He starts to tap his foot, and then stops. “Probably went crazy, huh?” He swallows, hard.
The Lieutenant shrugs. “That was before my time. The late 70s, I think. Heard he just disappeared. No one’s lived out there since. We offer leases every so often, but no one has taken us up on it. Until you two.” His eyes are full of his belief that we will come running back to town.
He goes on to explain that both the light and the foghorn run on electricity from an underwater line that was run out there years ago. The foghorn is turned on from the Coast Guard station in town based on the weather predictions, but he’d rather have someone out at the lighthouse to let them know if it should be on when it’s not and to anticipate problems with either system.
He leans back in his chair, makes a tent out of his fingers as he looks at us across the desk. “Why don’t you two take some time to think about it.”
Kyle looks at me. I think about moving on, and am certain I do not want to. I think about living out there, where I’ll be able to see the glacier of my nightmare, but will be separated from it. A slow quiet place where I could, with Kyle by my side, finally face it.
I turn to the Lieutenant. “We don’t need any time.”
The Lieutenant shrugs, thumbs through a lower desk drawer, pulls out a piece of paper, fills in a few lines, saying, “A nine month lease puts you two out there until…March 15.” He signs the bottom of the paper, then slides it across the desk with the pen, to us.
Kyle signs with a little more flare than usual, a heavy straight line emerging from the last letter of his name. I sign my name next to his, matching the size of the letters. I imagine the two of us all the way out there, matching the force of the wind, the depth of the water.
The Lieutenant glances at the paper and slides it to one corner of his desk. “Okay. A couple other things: We paint the building every year to keep the wood of the second story water tight, the first story is concrete. That will become your responsibility. No need to scrape, just add another layer like you would a boat. You’ll find scaffolding in the shed. You can turn on the light and the foghorn manually if the weather zips up and we haven’t turned one or the other on yet from here. You’ll see the breaker to the left of the front door. Keep up the logbook: boats passing, weather, anything unusual. It might come in handy for us at some point. And don’t go out after anyone in trouble. That’s our job. There’s a small stipend, paid monthly, to each of you. Do you have any questions?”
“No,” Kyle says and I shake my head.
“When can we expect you out at the lighthouse?”
“Right away,” Kyle says.
“Alright, I’ll have the cutter stop by on their next patrol. They check in on you and go over a few things.” He looks from me to Kyle. “I’ll need the dollar, of course.”
Kyle takes a dollar bill out of his worn and beaten wallet and slides it across the desk.
4.
BACK IN the truck, Kyle’s right hand drops into place just above my knee and slides underneath. I breathe into the comfortable pressure of his fingers on the back of my leg, the feeling of things held in place.
I study the side of Kyle’s face while he drives. When he turns to me, he has been somewhere else. I see the smile rising through the layers before it reaches the surface. “This is crazy,” he says, fingers wrapping tighter around my leg.
“Our very own lighthouse.” I shake my head and he laughs.
For the first time in days, it’s not raining. “Let’s go out to the river,” I say.
He turns left on an old logging road a few miles outside of town. As we walk down the path, used more often by bears than humans, the canopy closes in above us, changing the light from gray to greenish-gray.
Once we reach the river, I stretch out on the bank and stare up at the sky between the trees