Elizabeth Gilbert - Stern Men

Inside the stable, with its stone floors and cool, empty, odorless stalls, was Cal Cooley, sitting in the middle of the floor. He was sitting on a simple stool before something enormous and was polishing the object with a rag.

“My God!” the Senator said. “Look what you’ve got!”

What Cal Cooley had was a huge piece of a lighthouse, the top piece of a lighthouse. It was, in fact, the magnificent glass-and-brass circular lens of a lighthouse. It was probably seven feet tall. Cal Cooley stood up from his stool, and he was close to seven feet tall, too. Cal Cooley had thick, combed-back blue-black hair and oversized blue-black eyes. He had a big square frame and a thick nose and a huge chin and a deep, straight line right across his forehead that made him look as if he’d run into a clothesline. He looked as if he might be part Indian. Cal Cooley had been with the Ellis family for about twenty years, but he hadn’t seemed to age a day, and it would have been difficult for a stranger to guess whether he was forty years old or sixty.

“Why, it’s my good friend the Senator,” Cal Cooley drawled.

Cal Cooley was originally from Missouri, a place he insisted on pronouncing Missourah. He had a prominent Southern accent, which-although Ruth Thomas had never been to the South-she believed he had a tendency to exaggerate. She believed, for the most part, that Cal Cooley’s whole demeanor was phony. There were many things about Cal Cooley that she hated, but she was particularly offended by his phony accent and his habit of referring to himself as Old Cal Cooley. As in “Old Cal Cooley can’t wait for spring,” or “Old Cal Cooley looks like he needs another drink.”

Ruth could not tolerate this affectation.

“And look! It’s Miss Ruth Thomas!” Cal Cooley drawled on. “She is always such an oasis to behold. And look who’s with her: a savage.”

Webster Pommeroy, muddied and silent under Cal Cooley’s gaze, stood with the elephant’s tusk in his hand. His feet shifted about quickly, nervously, as if he were preparing to race.

“I know what this is,” Senator Simon Addams said, approaching the huge and magnificent glass that Cal Cooley had been polishing. “I know exactly what this is!”

“Can you guess, my friend?” Cal Cooley asked, winking at Ruth Thomas as if they had a wonderful shared secret. She looked away. She felt her face get hot. She wondered if there was some way she could arrange her life so that she could live on Fort Niles forever without ever seeing Cal Cooley again.

“It’s the Fresnel lens from the Goat’s Rock lighthouse, isn’t it?” the Senator asked.

“Yes, it is. Exactly right. Have you ever visited it? You must have been to Goat’s Rock, eh?”

“Well, no,” the Senator admitted, flushing. “I can never go out to a place like Goat’s Rock. I don’t go on boats, you know.”

Which Cal Cooley knew perfectly well, Ruth thought.

“Is that so?” Cal asked innocently.

“I have a fear of water, you see.”

“What a terrible affliction,” Cal Cooley murmured.

Ruth wondered whether Cal Cooley had ever been severely beaten up in his life. She would have enjoyed seeing it.

“My goodness,” the Senator marveled. “My goodness. How did you ever acquire the lighthouse from Goat’s Rock? It’s a remarkable lighthouse. It’s one of the oldest lighthouses in the country.”

“Well, my friend. We bought it. Mr. Ellis has always fancied it. So we bought it.”

“But how did you get it here?”

“On a boat and then a truck.”

“But how did you get it here without anyone knowing about it?”

“Does nobody know about it?”

“It’s gorgeous.”

“I am restoring it for Mr. Ellis. I am polishing every individual inch and every single screw. I’ve already been polishing for ninety hours, I estimate. I expect that it will take me months to finish. But won’t it gleam then?”

“I didn’t know the Goat’s Rock lighthouse was for sale. I didn’t know you could buy such a thing.”

“The Coast Guard has replaced this beautiful artifact with a modern device. The new lighthouse doesn’t even need an attendant. Isn’t that remarkable? Everything is all automated. Very inexpensive to operate. The new lighthouse is completely electric and perfectly ugly.”

“This is an artifact,” the Senator said. “You’re right. Why, it’s suitable for a museum!”

“That’s right, my friend.”

Senator Simon Addams studied the Fresnel lens. It was a beautiful thing to see, all brass and glass, with beveled panes as thick as planks, layered over one another in tiers. The small section that Cal Cooley had already disassembled, polished, and reassembled was a gleam of gold and crystal. When Senator Simon Addams passed behind the lens to look at the whole thing, his image became distorted and wavy, as though seen through ice.

“I have never seen a lighthouse before,” he said. His voice was choked with emotion. “Not in person. I have never had the opportunity.”

“It’s not a lighthouse,” Cal Cooley corrected fastidiously. “It is merely the lens of a lighthouse, sir.”

Ruth rolled her eyes.

“I have never seen one. Oh, my goodness, this is such a treat for me, such a treat. Of course, I’ve seen pictures. I’ve seen pictures of this very lighthouse.”

“This is a pet project for me and Mr. Ellis. Mr. Ellis asked the state whether he could buy it, they named a price, and he accepted. And, as I say, I have been working on this for approximately ninety hours.”

“Ninety hours,” the Senator repeated, staring at the Fresnel lens as if he had been tranquilized.

“Built in 1929, by the French,” Cal said. “She weighs five thousand pounds, my friend.”

The Fresnel lens was perched on its original brass turntable, which Cal Cooley now gave a slight push. The entire lens, at that touch, began to spin with a freakish lightness-huge, silent, and exquisitely balanced.

“Two fingers,” Cal Cooley said, holding up two of his own fingers. “Two fingers is all it takes to spin that five-thousand-pound weight. Can you believe it? Have you ever seen such remarkable engineering?”

“No,” Senator Simon Addams answered. “No, I have not.”

Cal Cooley spun the Fresnel lens again. What little light was in that stable seemed to throw itself at the great spinning lens and then leap away, bursting into sparks across the walls.

“Look how it eats up the light,” Cal said. He somehow pronounced light so that it rhymed with hot.

“There was a woman on a Maine island once,” the Senator said, “who was burned to death when the sunlight went through the lens and hit her.”

“They used to cover the lenses with dark gunnysacks on sunny days,” Cal Cooley said. “Otherwise, the lenses would have set everything on fire; they’re that strong.”

“I have always loved lighthouses.”

“So have I, sir. So has Mr. Ellis.”

“During the reign of Ptolemy the Second, there was a lighthouse built in Alexandria that was regarded as one of the wonders of the ancient world. It was destroyed by an earthquake in the fourteenth century.”

“Or so history has recorded,” said Cal Cooley. “There is some debate on that.”

“The earliest lighthouses,” the Senator mused, “were built by the Libyans in Egypt.”

“I am familiar with the lighthouses of the Libyans,” said Cal Cooley, evenly.

The Goat’s Rock lighthouse antique Fresnel lens spun and spun in the vast empty stable, and the Senator stared at it, captivated. It spun more and more slowly, and quietly whispered to a stop. The Senator was silent, hypnotized.

“And what do you have?” Cal Cooley asked, finally.