It was rumored Trudi had come to the forgotten coast after plea-bargaining a drug-trafficking charge, this more than a decade ago. But whatever her past, she had a steady hand and a level head, and going to her was better than going to the clinic another fifty miles inland, or to the medical intern who visited the village.
“I had this sliver…” Another thing about Trudi was that he could talk about the sliver. He’d tried with Charlie, but, for reasons he couldn’t quite figure out, the more he talked about it with Charlie, the more he felt like he was somehow putting it on Charlie, and he didn’t yet know how much weight Charlie could take.
Thinking about that depressed him, though, and after a while he trailed off, without having mentioned the sensation of things floating at the edge of his vision.
“You believe something bit you?”
“Maybe not a bite so much as stuck me. I had a glove on my hand, but I still shouldn’t have reached down. It might not have anything to do with how I’ve been feeling.” Yet how could he have known? The moment of sensation, non-sensation, he kept returning to.
She nodded, said, “I understand. It’s normal to worry, what with all of the mosquito- and tick-borne illnesses. So I can check your hand and arm, and take your vitals, and maybe put your fears to rest.”
She might have been a pediatrician, but she didn’t speak to him as if he were a child. She just had a way of simplifying things and getting to the point that made him grateful.
“Your kid wanders over the lighthouse quite a bit,” he said, to make conversation as he took off his shirt and she examined him.
“Yeah, I know,” she said. “I hope she’s not a problem.”
“No—she just climbs on the rocks a lot.”
“She’s a climber, all right. Gets into everything.”
“Could be dangerous.”
She gave him a sharp look. “I’d rather she go to the lighthouse and be around people I know than wander off on some trail or something.”
“Yeah, true,” he said, sorry he’d brought it up. “She’s got a talent for identifying poop.”
Trudi smiled. “She gets that from me. I taught her all about different kinds of poop.”
“If a bear craps in the woods, she knows about it.”
She laughed at that. “I think she might be a scientist when she grows up.”
“Where is she now?” He’d assumed she would have walked home right after leaving the lighthouse.
“Grocery store. That girl likes to walk everywhere. So she might as well walk down to the grocery store and get us milk and some things for dinner.” The grocery store adjacent to the village bar was pretty ad hoc, too.
“She calls me the defender of the light.” He didn’t know where that had come from, but he had liked it when she’d called him that.
“Mmm-hmm.” Back to examining him.
At the end, she said, “I can’t find any indication of anything abnormal on your arm or hand. I can’t even find a mark. But if it’s been a week it could’ve faded.”
“So, nothing?” Relieved, and glad he hadn’t gone into Bleakersville, thinking about how much time off he had coming, and how he’d prefer to spend it with Charlie. Peeling shrimp at some roadside café. Drinking beer and playing darts. Checking into a motel, careful to ask for double beds.
“Your blood pressure’s elevated and you’re running a slight fever, but that’s all. Eat less salt. Have more vegetables. See how you are in a few days.”
He felt better when he left, after having worked out a barter-and-money payment of twenty bucks and a promise to hammer down some loose boards in the deck, maybe a couple of other things.
But as he headed back to the lighthouse, reviewing the checklist for the lens in his mind, the relief that had invigorated him faded away and doubt crept in. Underlying everything was the thought that he had gone to the doctor as a kind of half measure for a larger problem, that he’d only confirmed there would be no easy diagnosis, that this wasn’t as simple as a tick bite or the flu.
Something told him to look back as he drove, toward Failure Island, which was a shadow to the west, appearing at that distance as if it were just a sharp curve to the coastline. A faint pulse of red light blinked on and off, too high to be coming from anything other than a container ship. But too irregular to be anything but handheld or jury-rigged. In the right location on the horizon to be coming from Failure Island, perhaps from the ruined lighthouse.
Blinking out a code he didn’t recognize, a message from Henry that he didn’t want to receive.
* * *
After he got back, he called Charlie but there was no answer, then remembered that Charlie’d signed up for a night shift, hunting octopus and squid and flounder—the kind of adventure Charlie liked best. So he made a quick dinner, cleaned up, and then prepped the beacon. No ship traffic was expected during the night and the weather report was for calm seas.