Ellen Block - The Language of Sand

Denny jumped at the opportunity to impress her. “I’m on it.”

“Bert, you go with them.”

“Righto,” Bert replied.

Denny and Bert , Abigail thought. Talk about a dream team.

“Thanks, guys,” she said, trying to sound enthusiastic. It took effort.

News of the hurricane had shaken loose the townsfolk of Chapel Isle. The square was bustling the way Abigail imagined it did during the summer season. Drivers were cruising for parking spots, and pedestrians were rushing from place to place, weaving through the stopped cars, carrying grocery bags. Abigail didn’t mind leaving the chaos behind for the calm of the lighthouse.

Denny and Bert followed her home in Denny’s truck. When they arrived, the two men were staring at the lawn as though it were a mirage.

“How’d you cut all this grass?” Denny asked her in awe.

“With a lawn mower.”

“The whole place?” Bert said. “By yourself?”

The men were flabbergasted. It was as if Abigail had moved a mountain with a shovel.

“I knew Merle’d been meaning to get around to cutting it himself,” Bert told her. “It was the getting-around-to-it part that gummed him up.”

“Guys, I didn’t cut the lawn with a pair of scissors. It’s only grass.”

“But it’s a ton of grass,” Denny exclaimed. “Where’d you get the new mower?”

“New? I used the hand mower from the shed.”

Bert tsk-tsk ed. “The blades on that thing wouldn’t cut butter.”

The sprawling property was larger than she’d realized. Abigail hadn’t been aware of how much grass she’d cut. Upon closer examination, it was a considerable amount. What bothered her was that, according to her science expert, the mower shouldn’t have been able to cut the lawn at all. Then why had it worked?

“Makes the lighthouse look a lot nicer,” Denny acknowledged.

“Could do with some new paint,” Bert added.

“Fix the shutters.”

“Front steps are a wreck. Maybe get ’em relaid.”

“Put in a new handrail.”

“Guys,” Abigail butted in. “There’s a lot wrong with this lighthouse. What we need to focus on is what we can make right before the hurricane hits.”

She led them inside, and both men stopped dead at the threshold.

“This is amazing,” Denny gushed. “It’s like a magazine.”

“When’d you do this?” Bert asked. “Does Lottie know?”

“I don’t want to let Lottie in on the refurbishments quite yet. Catch my drift, fellas?”

“I won’t say a word.”

“Bert?”

“Me too. I won’t tell.”

“Good. Then let’s find the plywood Merle was talking about.”

They toted the boards up from the basement. Abigail was grateful they were light. Her knees cracked as she climbed the stairs.

You’re getting as creaky as this house.

One flight of steps and she had to take a break. Bert needed one as well. He took a box from his pocket and showed it to Abigail. “Merle gave me some nails.”

“Bert, what don’t you have in those pockets of yours?”

“Let’s see, I—”

Foreseeing the list might be lengthy, she said, “Why don’t you tell me while we install the plywood.”

The sheets had been cut to slot into the window frames because nails couldn’t be driven into the brick exterior. Bert handed the nails to Abigail, who passed them to Denny, who knocked them into the casings using Abigail’s hammer. Without a ladder, they could reach only the lower windows.

Bert pulled at his lip. “The second floor has to be covered too. If any of the glass breaks, the wind will change the pressure inside the house and blow out the rest of the windows, boarded or not.”

“We definitely wouldn’t want that.” There was that we again. Abigail quickly corrected herself. “I mean, Lottie and me. Lottie wouldn’t want that either.”

“I’ll go get a ladder from my place. Be right back.” Denny drove off before Abigail could argue, leaving her alone with Bert.

“Want to hear what’s in my pockets now?”

On the scale of things she didn’t want to do, that fell someplace in the middle. “Why not?”

Fatigued, Abigail rested on the front steps. The news of Hank’s death, Nat’s arrest, and the pending hurricane were taking a toll. Bert joined her on the stoop and systematically emptied his pockets.

“There’s quarters, of course. And my wallet. And my keys. And some mints. And there’s my pocket watch.” He displayed a gold watch with ornate engraving and a roped fob.

“Bert, this is beautiful. Where did you get it?”

“My father. It was my grandfather’s. See? That’s his name there on the inside. Elias Van Dorst. It was his, then it was my father’s, and now it’s mine,” he said, as if the order was paramount.

Bert’s story tugged at her. The pocket watch had been handed down from generation to generation, a gift of history, of family. Abigail hadn’t had anything similar to pass on to Justin, even if he were alive. After she and Paul had taken him for his first haircut, Abigail considered saving a lock of Justin’s hair. He had curls like his father’s, only lighter, closer to her color. He’d cried as he sat in the barber’s booster seat with the hairstylist gently nipping the scissors around his head. Justin held his arms out to her, begging to be rescued; she and Paul had tried to soothe him, Abigail insisting he was safe and Paul assuring him the hair would grow back. She’d thought her son was frightened of the scissors and the experience. But what if Paul was right? What if Justin was frightened that cutting his hair meant it was gone forever? Even a toddler could fear loss. That was how hardwired the feeling was. Maybe, Abigail thought, it was because the heart knew what the mind couldn’t: that loss was the inverse of love and that it was especially hard to get over.

Sadly, Abigail had no mementos of her family, save the scant trinkets left at her parents’ house—a broken piece of a plastic toy and Paul’s ratchet set he’d let her father borrow. Nothing precious. Nothing sentimental. She regretted not being more sentimental, not stashing more keepsakes. There were so many criticisms Abigail could have heaped upon herself. She should have been a better wife, a better mother, a better person. At the bottom of that mound of should haves was the reality that no matter what she should have done, she did the best she could.

“Bert, can I ask you a question?”

“’Course.”

“You’re a man of science, a man of logic—why do you believe in…?” She motioned toward the lamp room.

He thought for a second. “Even though the atom was first proposed by a Greek philosopher in 500 B.C., it wasn’t until 1857 that a scientist identified what he called a ‘negative corpuscle,’ an electron, the first atomic particle. That’s a fancy way of getting to the point, which is that there are a lot of things we can’t see, but they’re there. So many things we can’t taste or touch or hear, but they’re there. Since I was a kid, folks have claimed they’ve seen the ghost of Mr. Jasper. I don’t know anybody personally who has. Can’t say for certain anybody does. That’s how a story becomes a story. People talking about something until what may be fiction becomes fact. Even if nobody ever does see Mr. Jasper, that doesn’t mean he isn’t here.”

“I did something,” Abigail admitted. “I moved the oil pail in the lamp room. It was a test to determine if it would move back by itself. Not very scientific, huh?”

“Did it move?”

“I’ve been too nervous to look.”