The Lighthouse

He paced back and forth. Swish thud, swish thud, swish thud, swish thud. Minute by minute his matte gray beard grew longer. He felt the hairs growing on his face. His foot scraped against the floor’s rough wood grain.

The waves crashed and sang an eerie tune in the background. His bare foot shuffled and dragged and his crutch thudded its own beat as he stumbled to the small industrial kitchen. A cave in the back rounded corner of the lonely lighthouse, the kitchen felt off-limits the way 2nd base always felt off-limits with Alice. He drove her away. He knew this. He needed his gin.

His foot shuffled and his sweat pants’ left leg dangled empty from his left knee. His right ankle pained him this evening. Night. It was past 7 and it was dark. It was night. Alice knew him before the accident, before he became afraid of the dark. Before he forgot how to walk. He never danced when he had two legs. Now he missed the notion of it. Suddenly, pop!

The fuse blew again. He was shuffling to the kitchen in the back of the cylindrical lighthouse when he heard it happen. The small and short snappy burst surprised him. Scared him a little. Though not the way the snap of a stick in the jungles of Vietnam scared him. The dark scared him that way. The nightmares left him leery, jumpy, and stuttering through his thoughts, stumbling through his days. The beers got him through the hours. The pills got him through the minutes. The lost love killed him slowly. Swish thud. He groaned as he made his way slowly to the kitchen.

His father worked at the factory in town when he was young. His sister Anne dreamed of becoming a pianist, going to Julliard, playing music for her never-would-be babies. She died of polio 42 years ago. He would become the washed up kid brother, the Marine who would never amount to nothing but. The heartbroken and quiet ugly boy with only two friends who both got shredded from boot to chin strap — well, helmet, really — in that fucking jungle. That jungle killed them. It killed him, too.

The lighthouse creaked and moaned when a storm was approaching. It sounded different tonight. The sun had set hours ago, but he hadn’t noticed. What day was it? He shuffled slowly, grimacing in pain, toward the fuse box. The red switch, again. Flipped it to ‘on’. Off. On. Off. On. Off. On. The lighthouse popped from the sudden burst of energy. The glow was gentle and bright. He felt relieved, the dark receded for now. Until he closed his eyes to sleep, the dark was gone. Not the way Fort was gone, because he was gone for good. But the way a letter disappears only as long as it’s tucked safely away.

He could hear the storm brewing outside. Waves snarled and sang violently against the boulders and the sand. The clanging of the wind chimes clamored. The noise nearly drove him mad. He shuffled and grunted his way toward the counter, toward the gin. He picked the bottle up from its neck like a crying pup, swished it around a bit. Nearly empty. He drove half the contents into his bloodstream with a determination to match the storm heralding just outside his safe cylindrical tube. Frown-grimacing, he shuffled toward the cupboard. Small orange-hued semi-translucent bottles with white and yellow labels waited for his arrival. They sang louder than the smashing waves when he opened each one. One by one, he counted 4 of each of the three medications. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One…he dropped one, retrieved it. He started over. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. The last of the gin washed them all down. He chucked the glass bottle. It smashed in time with the waves.

She sang him to sleep sometimes, Alice. But not tonight. Tonight, he would be alone. He knew this. Swish thud, slowly past her picture on the tall dark bookshelf near his desk. He knew fear, real fear. He knew the fear of death. He felt it many times during the war. He vividly recalled the recurring nightmare of pissing himself while on patrol in the pitch black when that twig snapped. He remembered waking to the warmth of the wet bed. He remembered the embarrassment. Then he remembered the loneliness.

Where had she gone? He hadn’t heard her sing at night in at least a week’s span. Why did she leave him like this? His long beard tickled his chin. His heart sank. He waited. He counted and he waited.

The waves crashed more quietly now, more slowly, more gently. He hoped to see her. To hear her. He didn’t. He drifted off into darkness. For the first time since his 19th birthday, he was not afraid of the dark.