Abby Geni - The Lightkeepers

However, they could be used as a substitute in baking. Doc Robinson gave up on gold. He voyaged to the Farallon Islands and collected a couple thousand murre eggs. Upon his return to California, he made a passel of money and retired in triumph as cakes, muffins, and soufflés once again appeared on menus.

Thus began the onslaught of the eggers. Anyone who wanted to make a few bucks followed Doc Robinson’s example, renting a boat and heading out to sea. There wasn’t enough gold to go around, but for those who were greedy and reckless enough, there were more than enough murres. The men soon took to wearing “egg shirts” with pockets stitched onto every available bit of fabric. In this garment, one person could carry two hundred eggs. The hapless birds were unable to defend themselves against these unaccustomed predators. There was no governmental oversight, no sense of environmental balance. Nobody paused to consider what would happen if the vast majority of murre eggs on the planet were harvested and consumed.

But the islands, then as now, were a dangerous place. The work was risky. The book painted the picture for me clearly: a man’s body weighted down by the uncomfortable heft of two hundred fat eggs. His balance would be affected. He might stumble on the rocks. Guano coated the pathways. Waves washed in, filling the air with spray. Bruises and broken bones were common. A certain percentage of the eggers vanished. They took a wrong turn and were claimed by the sea.

With a sigh, I put the book aside. I began the process of extricating myself from the mattress. The baby was kicking determinedly at my midriff, urging me to rise, pulling me back into the present, away from stories and shadows.

I AM STILL realizing the simple fact of my pregnancy. This idea shines in my mind at all times, throwing everything else into sharp relief. The baby’s movements are forceful now. A punch to my rib cage. A scrape down my spine. Sometimes, in a room filled with biologists, I will have the sensation of listening to music that no one else can hear. I will close my eyes, absorbed by the interior flicker and pulse of life. The sensation is so intense, so all-consuming, that I will lose track of things. The world will fall away. I will forget where I am: in the cabin, on the islands, on the surface of the earth — I might be anywhere. The universe seems to be condensed inside my body, encompassed and circumscribed by my own skin.

I have been aware, all along, of how I should feel about my situation. Ennui and despair. Confusion and fear. If Andrew had lived, I might now be planning an emergency trip to the mainland. I might be scanning the yellow pages — our beat-up, obsolete copy — looking for abortion clinics. I might be counting the minutes until the alien invader could be removed from my body.

But Andrew did not live. He drowned. The islands took him away.

And so, this does not seem like his child at all. The two things feel entirely unconnected. There was an assault, an act of violence, somewhere in the past. There is a marvel, a gift from this place, here in the present. The memory of the attack — dark and hateful — is like an old star, disintegrating, crumbling into dust, barely visible alongside a powerful new sun. As the weeks have worn on, what I have experienced, more and more strongly, is wild, wordless, unreasoning joy.

The baby will be mine — mine absolutely.

CHARLENE CAME BACK today. That is, she came and went.

The islands had not been the same without her — no swish of red hair, no musical laugh, no warm, diffident presence at the dinner table. I had missed her. I wanted to verify with my own eyes that she was all in one piece, hale and hearty, completely recovered.

Still, my enthusiasm was somewhat tempered. In truth, I was not sure why she was bothering to return. As glad as I would be to see her, her actions did not quite add up. She had said she wanted to collect her things — but Galen had offered to ship them to her. She had said she wanted to say goodbye to everyone — but she could have done this over the phone. Or not at all. I had the distinct impression that she had some other agenda. What it might be, I could not imagine.

The others showed no excitement about her visit. Perhaps they were as baffled by her behavior as I was. Lucy had been up too late the night before, catching and tagging the storm-petrels. She stomped back and forth to the kitchen to refill her coffee cup and glowered when anyone made too much noise. Forest had concocted a new scheme for calculating the total population of the rhinoceros auklets. It was hard to keep track of the exact amount of these elusive birds, since they dug deep burrows and were secretive by nature. Forest, however, had a mathematical equation and a graph paper chart. He was far more interested in visiting the study plots and trying out his new system than he was in seeing Charlene. Even Mick was all biologist that morning, scientific and detached. He sat at the table with Galen, filling out an order form for more flea collars, which we sorely needed.

In general, Galen and I have been getting along well. He has softened toward me since our midnight heart-to-heart. Recently, he even showed me his collection of seal stones. Over the years, he has amassed a pile of them in a battered plastic tub. He did not invite me inside his private museum — his bedroom. We are not yet at that level of intimacy, it seems. Instead, he hefted the bucket out into the hallway and beckoned me over to see its contents. With a welcoming smile, he urged me to pick through the rocks, which I politely did, though they were all exactly the same, black and smooth, weathered and rounded, fitting in the palm of the hand.

By noon, the biologists were all gone. Nobody else stayed to meet the helicopter. Forest went to the rhinoceros auklets, Lucy and Mick to the murre blind. One corner had come loose in a wind-storm, and they were trying to come up with a way to fix it without making undue noise and spooking the birds. (If the murres were startled, they would rise en masse. Their eggs would be undefended, and the gulls would move in for the kill. One thoughtless act by the biologists could lead to a catastrophic event.) Galen spent a while fiddling with a little green notebook, scribbling in it furtively. Then he stumped off to observe the tufted puffins — and, presumably, to avoid an encounter with the intern who I now know reminds him of his late wife.

I must have dozed off. I do nothing but sleep lately. I had settled on the couch, with a view to the east, where the helicopter would eventually appear. But the sun was in my eyes. The air vibrated with light and heat. My head grew heavy. And then someone was shaking me awake.

I caught a glimpse of hair — a sweep of rust around a freckled face.

“Hey, sleepyhead,” Charlene said.

I sat up, rubbing my eyes. The sun had moved in the sky. There was a foul taste in my mouth. Outside the window, the helicopter had appeared. Its wings were motionless. Perched on the helipad, that glass bubble glinted in the light. The pilot was visible inside, a shadowed figure hunched over a newspaper. In my sleep-addled state, this struck me as funny — like a limo driver cooling his heels in a high school parking lot, waiting for a bunch of teenagers to finish their prom.

“Come on,” Charlene said. “Help me pack.”

I followed her to the door of her little bedroom. I tried to follow her inside too, but of course there wasn’t space for me. Charlene’s room had once been a closet, and the bed — a tiny twin — allowed a gap of only a few inches on all sides. After a moment, I crawled onto the mattress. Charlene flitted around me, filling a suitcase with her pillows and teddy bear.

“You look good,” I said approvingly.