The Watchman

                                                      The Watchman

   He had climbed only twenty of the two hundred and twenty-six stairs, but had already stopped to rest. It was a chore now, just to climb them. Fairmont Oakley was eighty-seven years old. Worse than being eighty-seven, Fairmont was alone here, and seemingly forgotten, but he was not quite done living. Not yet. Fairmont Oakley was on a mission.

   The big light was out. He had a fuse cartridge ready to hand, but he had procrastinated the climb. The last time he had gone up had been a struggle. The pains had been sharp, his fear real. He had never believed until then that he was afraid to die. It was a surprise to find that he was.

   It was coming up on fifty years now that Fairmont had kept the lighthouse on Lynnhaven Point. Fairmont’s futile attempt at a family had been short lived. The few friends he had acquired over his lifetime were long gone. Visitors were infrequent on “The Point” now-a-days. The young people didn’t see any sense in driving all the way out here to a rocky shoreline when there were better beaches closer to town. “They” thought there was nothing out here to see, but what did “they” know anyway? Not even the fishermen came this far anymore. The last to come had been a man with a fancy camera. That one had prodded around for hours, sticking his nose where it didn’t belong, until Fairmont offered him some canned meat for supper. The man left quick enough then. The memory of it brought up a chuckle from Fairmont. 

   There were two others who came out on occasion. One was the man from the Bureau of Lighthouses who came out yearly to do his inspection. That bastard always found a problem or two that quickly became pains in Fairmont’s ass. And then there was Wesley Washington, the man who carried out the weekly mail. Wesley always knocked instead of putting the mail in the box, wanting to “make sure”. Wesley said that he knocked, “just to say hello,” but Fairmont Oakley was no one’s dummy. Wesley‘s knocking was to make sure he wasn’t putting those women’s fashion catalogs into a dead man’s post box. That was the real reason why Wesley knocked.

   Fairmont was currently wondering if he would still be kicking the next time Wesley Washington knocked. Fairmont was getting strange feelings lately, and having strange thoughts. He tried to chalk them up to the canned meat, or to the cooler weather, but deep inside Fairmont suspected something worse. When he climbed the steps anymore, as he was doing now, his head became light, his vision blurred. There was even pain that last time, pain in his chest, and his neck. That had never happened before. Fairmont had always been a tough man, not especially strong per se, but tough. Hell, he was still a tough man. He was tougher than those young rowdies that hung around the docks. Those kids had learned the hard way that Fairmont’s cane wasn’t just for walking. Hell, Fairmont Oakley had survived the Frisco wharfs, he could sure handle some would-be roughnecks hanging around these outer banks.

   When he finally started climbing again he had barely made it up five of the spiraling, steel steps before the lot of them began to sway and bend in unnatural directions. Fairmont lost his hold on the rail. When he grabbed to get it back he lost his hold on the fuse box cartridge in his other hand. The damned thing clanked and clamored down the steps all the way to the bottom. Fairmont would have to go back down and start over. He felt a heaviness at the thought. The stairwell was already dim, but now the dimness held a pallor of doom. It came to him then, as he looked at the cartridge down there on the floor, that he may have been right all of these years. This smelly, mildewed stairwell might indeed be his tomb. 

   But Fairmont Oakley was nothing if not a practical man. Before the staircase could have him, he would have that light back on. Dusk had come quickly. The fog would roll in on a night like this one. Ships would plow the dark waters believing themselves clear of the point. There must be a light! He must give those ships a light.

   Fairmont made it back to the bottom quickly. To go down was nothing. He put the cartridge in his pocket this time, so as not to drop it. He started back up. The shortness of breath came sooner. The tightness stretched itself across his chest like a giant rubber band. “Come, you old Biddy!” Fairmont beseeched of his heart. “Get me up these two hundred and twenty-six stairs, and then you’ll have all the god-damned rest you‘ll ever want!”

   The stairwell had grown dark. Time was short. Fairmont pushed harder, counting as he climbed. “Sixty-six, sixty-seven.”

   He rested once more, his breathing hurried. He was cold. He wished for his sweater, but no bother. “Seventy, seventy-one.” 

   Fairmont’s wife had not taken well to the loneliness on The Point. Sarah had not proven to be a practical woman. Sarah had stood on the rocky beach, staring at the ocean’s breaks. She had spent hours watching the clouds cross the sky with her scrawny arms wrapped ’round herself to keep warm. Sarah’s was a poet’s heart. She read poems, and she wrote them in her leatherbound journal. Fairmont had never read any of her poems, but he remembered the way she spoke, the poetic style of it, not like the men of the sea that Fairmont was accoustomed to. He did miss the way Sarah spoke.

   Fairmont didn’t mind the loneliness himself. He enjoyed maintaining the house, and the gardens. He liked the extra time to piddle that the easy work afforded him. He liked things “ship shape,” and could manage that himself. When Sarah left she took nothing but her coat. Fairmont didn’t know where she went. She might have gone back to Charleston, or she might have walked out into the cold, green water and just kept walking. He had wanted to make her happy, but he never knew how to do it. Every effort failed. It made him feel guilty that he hardly missed her, but she had cried so often. Fairmont couldn’t figure out how to make her stop, and he had never been much for crying.

   ”Eighty-three, eighty-four.” Faimont was sucking wind now. His hands and knees shook with fear, and effort. He looked up. It was still a long way. He started again, suddenly afraid that he might not make it.

   ”One hundred!“ It was a milestone. Fairmont was legitimately winded now. He would have liked to sit for a minute, just to catch his breath, but he knew better. It was a trick. Death would not fool him that easily.

   ”One hundred thirty-nine, one hundred forty.” On “one hundred forty-one” the leather sole of Fairmont’s shoe slipped on the metal rung. He fell hard onto step one hundred forty-two, the metal step-tread cutting deep into both shins. The thin blood of an old man ran down his legs, soaking his unpressed cotton trousers in a sticky, quickly darkening goo. His lip quivered now, joining his hands and knees. It was too much. He was only a little over half-way up. He couldn’t do it. He would never make it.

   It came to him at that exact moment like Gabriel’s trumpet blasting to the heavens. A ship’s horn! A ship! He forgot his anguish, and started off once more. “One hundred forty-seven, one hundred forty-eight.” Fairmont recalled his days at sea as he climbed. Funny how the most frightening nights at sea were the ones spent sailing closest to shore. There was little to fear when far at sea, while a coastline held a myriad of dangers. 

   ”One hundred ninety-two, one hundred ninety-three.”

   He could see the top now. He was going to make it. The ship’s horn sounded once more. It was still far enough away for him to give it warning. There was time. He pushed harder. Fairmont Oakley kept on pushing until he broke the camel’s proverbial back. “Two hundred!” 

   Even as he counted the number off a wrenching pain slammed him down onto the steps. Harsh, cramp-like pains stretched through his torso, his extremities, his neck, nothing seemed immune. It was a pain too harsh to suffer. Fairmont’s body stretched itself out across the cold, metal stairs. He had made it so close to the top, yet was still so far away.

   Across the great expanse of black water a tiny ship crawled. A vast night sky erased the gloaming with a shadowy brush. Down on the meandering rock strewn beach wave after white-capped wave railed angrily against any and every boundary. Time neither pities, nor chooses a winner. Time watches the unfolding of events emotionlessly. Time tolerates both the practical, and the poetic without pause. Time has no stake in the game.

   It was the ship’s horn that woke him. It called him to rally. He was surprised to be alive. Rested, he climbed the remaining steps quickly. He was breathless at the top, but he was at the top. The pain found his chest again, and his arms. He ripped the cartridge from the panel box and inserted the new one from his pocket. The light powered up, its mirror slowly turning, like a merry-go-round starts slow before finding its rhythm, and meter. 

   Fairmont Oakley stood in the window. He watched the ship begin its long, slow turn away from the point. He knew from experience that it would be close, but the ship would make it. He wondered who it was aboard her that he had been given the strength to save. “It must be someone important,” he thought.

   He sat down then, under the brightly spinning halo of light. The pain was steady now. This was the end. Under the window’s stool there was something crammed between the wooden beams. He reached for it. Sarah’s Journal! Imagine, finding it here? He opened it.

   “They await the steadfast watchman, his lantern high and bright       

to shine upon their wayward souls a beacon from the night.”

   Fairmont Oakley was a practical man. He wasn’t much for poetry, or for crying, but a tear rolled down from clouded eyes that would never again close.