*
The main duty of the Pesgawan lighthouse keeper was not, Zan found, keeping the light itself. There was no fiery beacon to stoke, or even kerosene to refill. An automated lantern and fog signal require only the barest attendance. Zan wondered why they needed any at all.
The only unbreakable commandment Mr. B. had given was that Zan keep an ancient black radio at her side at every hour. “You never know when the Coast Guard’ll need us,” he had said, his face creasing with emphasis. Her first week, she jumped at each intrusion of strange voices fuzzy with static. They never called for her.
It surprised her, how she absorbed the pattern of waves and tides into her own routine, and how that pattern could be an anchor. Each morning, after mixing mash for the goat and oatmeal for herself, she raised the flag on its pole, checked the generator and reliant instruments, and cleaned the light’s windows and lens. She sat at the keeper’s desk, listening to the buoy bells beyond the shoals. She liked best the days when they clanged in wind-chopped surf, and when spray licked every window. She knew she could be nowhere else but here.
Twice a day, Zan noted in the log whether the sun shone clear, at how many knots the wind sighed up from the sea, and the color of the water. If she’d been able to decode the previous keeper’s handwriting, perhaps she could have kept the log book filled with more official figures and observations. No one ever checked.
At first, Zan kept the goat tethered in the cottage yard. But the nanny showed no intention of wandering beyond the keeper’s corner of the island. Grazing every inch of lawn, it nibbled only a few blossoms and scrambled down the rocks to munch seaweed at low tide. Zan often turned her binoculars toward the cottage grounds to watch the goat. When the wind was right, its bell tinkled in counterpoint to the mournful buoys.
Zan found herself smiling—real, full-faced smiles—when the goat gamboled to meet her each evening. She let herself believe that the animal was glad to see her, and not just because it meant a full belly and an empty udder. Even when she made the mistake of over-milking or not moving quickly or gently enough, and the goat danced with discomfort, nothing filled the hollow in her chest quite like the little warm body breathing against her own.
A few days each week, a heavy knock at the tower’s oak door alerted Zan to a visit from Mr. B. So exacting were his inspections of her station and the grounds, she almost suggested that he needed a Navy captain’s white gloves to sweep along the interpretive plaques and navigation equipment.
“Contact from the Coast Guard?” he would invariably ask, stroking his gray mustache.
“Not since last storm.” It had surprised her then, the beep of life from the radio and a rough, distant voice asking her to confirm that she stood ready at her post in case a boat foundered off shore. She had grown used to its silence, aside from the crackle of static and occasional, faint bursts of voices not meant for her.
“Any visitors?” Mr. B’s usual second question. For her first week or two, Zan treated it as a joke. Even the summer residents who started to trickle in by mail boat or yacht to take up their perches never crossed the lighthouse bridge or alighted anywhere but the Pesgawan Town dock. But soon, in t-shirts and sweatshirts emblazoned with the names of more popular harbors and islands, another crowd entirely followed. Not in actual hordes, at first, but in couples or families they found their way to Zan.