The Lighthouse. It was an old wood cabin Granddad had covered in stucco that Hartley's father had always said he would restore and never did. When the sun set over the mountains the whole building would light up, glow soft and golden like a beacon that could lead a man home, keep him from dashing himself against the rocks.
Hartley poked the air mattress with the toe of his shoe. He'd swept the rough wooden floor free of dirt and dead bugs as best he could and spread a tarp on it, but still. Air mattresses had a way of springing a leak just when you'd gotten comfortable and felt secure enough to believe you could finally rest. He laid a cheap sleeping bag atop it. It wasn't the Hilton, but it would do.
Outside, daylight lingered but crickets were already making a racket scrubbing their wings together. Some called it night music, the cacophony they made; Hartley called it a bunch of horny insects. He was a city boy at heart, always would be. Well, suburbs anyway. That's all he'd ever wanted: a nice house in the right neighborhood, new-ish cars in the garage, a family. Same thing his old man had. Same thing everyone said he was supposed to want.
White smoke from a cigarette on the card table curled through the open door. Hartley couldn't bring himself to actually smoke the damn thing and the smell was making him sick. He'd quit a ten-year habit seven years ago. Janie had been on him.
"We've got a son now," she said. "Do it for him."
He'd sacrificed cigarettes, warmed-over dreams of getting his high school band back together, the great American novel he used to believe was inside him and a million little pieces of himself daily for Hartley Junior and Janie and the family life everyone told him he was supposed to have.
Except he didn't have a family anymore. Janie up and left him for a woman she met on the internet. And don't that beat all? Don't that just take the fucking cake? He'd fought his way home from a hard day's work to find nothing but a handwritten note, discarded clothes thrown about the bedrooms and half his money missing from his bank account. Just like that, Hartley was erased from his own life.
The Lighthouse was the first place he thought of when he needed to get away from that house haunted by scented candles, throw pillows, refrigerator magnets, Thomas Kinkade paintings and LIVE LAUGH LOVE plaques hanging like desiccated corpses on the wall. He'd considered shattering it all, just leaving it smashed on the floor as if a thief had broken in, rifled through his belongings, taken everything of value and destroyed any hope for what was left. But Janie might come back and if she did, Hartley Junior could get hurt. A man protected his child. And Hartley Pierson was a man.
He would fight for HJ. Of course, he would. He would fight for custody with everything he had. He was his son, dammit! You don't take a man's son! He'd believed every word Janie had told him. She'd had that bitch in his house, eating at his table!
Hartley got up and slouched outside. His stomach felt sour and he needed fresh air. About a hundred feet behind the cabin was a sheer drop-off. Hartley walked to the edge, inhaled the clean air and closed his eyes. His mind settled on memories of standing out here as a little boy with his grandfather, his hand in the old man's, staring at the mountains and the river flowing like time beneath them. The view was breathtaking, but Hartley was always afraid of falling. He'd squeeze his grandfather's hand and Granddad would tell him that one day this property would be his and a man could never be afraid of what was his. A man had to claim it and own it.
Hartley stepped closer to the edge, took another deep breath, flung his arms wide to embrace it all and screamed, "Mine!"
The mountains echoed, "Mine! Mine. Mine, mine."
Hartley reached out, fingers splayed, to grab hold to something--anything--as the wind carried his word over the river and past the cobalt mountain peaks. Overextended, his body swayed, his ankle turned and loose rocks skittered from underneath his shoe. Arms flailing, he stumbled backward, lost his footing and fell hard on his backside. Overhead, a lone vulture called and tightened its circle, momentarily blocking the sun. Hartley scrambled to his feet and limped back to the Lighthouse.
He fingered the amber bottle of Jack Daniels he bought when he'd gone shopping for supplies. He wanted to cry and thought the JD might help. Men didn't cry. At least not a sober man. A drunk man might be forgiven for crying. A drunk man might be forgiven for a lot of things. Janie told him she loved him all those nights--years--she had lain beneath him. She'd called it love so he'd called it love and believed it like a good man was supposed to do.
The sun sagged defeated in the summer sky. Hartley slumped in a lawn chair in the Lighthouse, glaring at the labels on cans of baked beans and Vienna sausages he'd hauled up the mountain. Soon he'd be alone in the darkness and quiet. The dark would turn the dusty windowpanes into black mirrors; the quiet would thud and spatter against his memories with the finality of clods of earth upon a coffin. His own thoughts would gnaw at him until they ate him alive. Savage ghosts--bearing faces he loved--would chase him around the room, scarring him with heedless claws as they drifted forever beyond his grasp.
Outside, in the fading light, lengthening shadows menaced as the stucco walls turned from gold to rust. Fireflies, with tiny silver lights to rival the moon, dipped and sparked among the golden Senna Alata like pinpricks of hope. Inside, Hartley Pierson lit a candle and placed it in the window.
Topic: THE LIGHTHOUSE (Fourth Edit} (Read 969 times)