For a long while, they just sat together, watching. He had decided he could not talk to her about what he had seen, that pushing that onto her was wrong. The only one he could tell was Charlie. Maybe.
The crab sifted through something in the sand. The camouflaged fish risked a slow walk on stickery fins like drab half-opened fans, making for the shadow-shelter of a tiny ledge of rock. One of the starfish, as if captured via time-lapse photography, withdrew at a hypnotically slow speed into the water, until only the tips of two arms lay exposed and glistening.
Finally Gloria said, “Why are you down here and not working by the shed or in the tower?”
“I don’t feel like working today.” Images from old illuminated manuscripts, of comets hurtling through the sky, from the books in his father’s house. The reverberation and recoil of the beach exploding under his feet. The strange creatures in the sand. What message should he take from that?
“Yeah, I don’t always want to go to school,” she said. “But at least you get money.”
“I do get money, that’s true,” he said. “And they’re never going to give you money to go to school.”
“They should give me money. I have to put up with a lot.” He wondered just how much. It might well be a lot.
“School’s important,” he said, because he felt he should say it, as if Gloria’s mother stood right behind them, tapping her foot.
Gloria considered that a moment, nudged him in the ribs in a way as familiar as if they were drinking buddies down at the village bar.
“I told my mom this is a school, too, but that didn’t work.”
“What’s ‘this’?”
“The tidal pools. The forest. The trails. All of it. Most of the time it’s true I’m just goofing off, but I’m learning things, too.”
Saul could imagine how that conversation had gone. “You’re not going to get any grades here.” Warming to the idea: “Although I guess the bears might give you grades for watching out for them.”
She kind of leaned back to get a better look at him, as if reappraising him. “That’s stupid. Are you feeling okay?”
“Yeah, this whole conversation is stupid.”
“Are you still feeling different?”
“What? No. No, I’m fine, Gloria.”
They watched the fish for a bit after that. Something about their conversation, the way they’d moved too fast or been too loud, had made the fish retreat into the sand so now only its eyes looked up at them.
“There are things the lighthouse teaches me, though,” Gloria said, wrenching Saul out of his thoughts.
“To stand up straight and tall and project light out of your head toward the sea?”
She giggled at that, giving him too much credit for an answer he’d meant at least half ironically.
“No. Here’s what the lighthouse teaches me. Be quiet and let me tell you. The lighthouse teaches me to work hard, to keep my room clean, to be honest, and to be nice to people.” Then, reflecting, looking down at her feet. “My room is a mess and I lie sometimes and I’m not always nice to people, but that’s the idea.”
A little embarrassed, he said, “That fish down there sure is frightened of you.”
“Huh? It just doesn’t know me. If it knew me, that fish would shake my hand.”
“I don’t think there’s anything you could say to convince it of that. And there are all kinds of ways you could hurt it without meaning to.” Watching those unblinking blue eyes with the gold streaks—the dark vertical pupil—that seemed like a fundamental truth.
Ignoring him: “You like being a lighthouse keeper, don’t you, Saul?” Saul. That was a new thing. When had they become Saul and Gloria rather than Mr. Evans and Gloria?
“Why, do you want my job when you grow up?”
“No. I never want to be a lighthouse keeper. Shoveling and making tomatoes and climbing all the time.” Was that how it seemed he spent his time? He guessed it did.
“At least you’re honest.”
“Yep. Mom says I should be less honest.”
“There’s that, too.” His father could have been less honest, because honesty was often just a way of being cruel.
“Anyway, I can’t stay long.” There was real regret in her voice.
“A shame, given how honest you’re being.”
“I know, right? But I gotta go. Mom’s going to come by in the car soon. We’re driving into town to meet my dad.”
“Oh, he’s picking you up for the holidays?” So this was the day.
A shadow had passed over the tidal pool again and all he could see were their two faces, peering down. He could’ve passed for her father, couldn’t he? Or was he too old? But such thoughts were a form of weakness.