The Night Mark(63)

“This is it.” Carrick pointed at the glass box. “And this is the clockwork.”

He took her by the hand and pulled her around the box. She peered in through the glass sides and saw large metal wheels and gears clicking and turning. On the side was a large handle, a crank of sorts.

“It’s really a clockwork.”

“It really is,” Carrick said. “Like a giant watch. You have to wind it.”

“What’s it for?”

“It turns the light. I have to crank it every two and a half hours or it won’t rotate and the light won’t flash. But we’re lucky here,” he said. “I heard there’s a few lights where the clockwork needs cranking every half hour.”

“Can’t they run the clockwork with an engine or something?”

“They could, but the Bureau is in no hurry to spend the money to make that happen. It’s a miracle we have the sun valve here. They’re all over Europe already.”

“Sun valve?”

“It’s up there,” he said, pointing at a shape atop the clockwork box that Faye couldn’t quite make out. “It uses sunlight to turn the beacon on and off. Sunlight warms a metal plate and the plate expands. That flips the switch off in the morning. At sunset it cools and contracts and flips the switch on. Acetylene gas powers it all night. All I have to do is replace the gas cylinders and crank the clockwork.”

“That’s amazing,” Faye said. “All that without electricity.”

“It’s quite something,” he said, a master of understatement. As he took a small oil can and rag to the crank’s handle, she studied him, trying to see something in him that wasn’t Will. He dressed differently, that was for sure. Carrick had on khaki-colored work pants, a white undershirt and suspenders. Will had never worn suspenders. If he had, she would have snapped them all the time, which would have landed her in all sorts of fun trouble. Carrick’s hands were different, too. Little white scars on his fingers and the backs of his hands spoke of a lifetime performing manual labor. His eyes were a darker brown than Will’s and his hair a shade redder. She clung to these differences, not wanting to love the man simply because he looked like Will. Maybe Faith had loved him with all her heart and Faye felt it like a sort of muscle memory. The heart was a muscle, wasn’t it? Was that why hers beat so hard around Carrick?

She watched as Carrick took a watch out of his pocket and stood at the window. He clicked a button twice, then clicked it again.

“Perfect,” he said. “Runs like clockwork.”

“You were timing the light?”

He nodded. “Have to. A second’s delay could mean life or death to a ship out there.”

“How so?” she asked.

“Every lighthouse does double duty by day or by night. The paint job is the day mark. The light pattern is—”

“The night mark,” Faye said, remembering what Ty had told her.

“That’s right. Ships out there know that seven seconds between flashes means Seaport Station. Hunting Island Light has a different night mark. That’s how you tell us apart in the dark. You see, a light’s night mark is its heartbeat. You know a man by his heart. You know a lighthouse by its beacon.”

Faye smiled at him. Impossible not to. “You have a bit of poet in you,” she said.

“You spend a lot of time alone with your thoughts up here. They can turn fanciful.”

“I know what you mean. I think I might have had a religious experience eating Dolly’s pie last night.”

“No shame in that. Dolly’s pies can save a man’s soul.”

“Count me among the saints, then,” Faye said.

“My first job was on the Boston Light, and all the wickies had to cook for each other. I saved no souls and might have damned a few stomachs.”

“Wickies? Is that what they call you?”

“Before they converted this light to acetylene, they ran it on kerosene. And most lights are still run on kerosene. Gotta trim the wicks every few hours.”

“Sounds like a lot of work.”

“It was. Fill the well, trim the wicks, clean the soot off the glass...”

“Walk up those stairs again with a fifty-pound bucket of kerosene in your hand?”

“You get used to it,” he said.

Faye walked around the room, eyeing the spyglass, the other instruments. Carrick had a book open on his desk, a large leather journal he’d apparently been writing weather reports in when she came up. She read what he wrote and smiled.

Temp at first light—78. Light wind. Clear skies. Every day here is more beautiful than the last. I am a lucky man.

“You really love it here, don’t you?” Faye asked.

He shrugged. “Aye, it’s a good job. You want to see the lantern room?”

“I’d love to. Can I?” Two nights ago in 2015, there’d been nothing in the lantern room but empty space where a light should be. But the lens wasn’t gone in 1921.

“It’s right up that ladder. I’ll open the hatch and you can peek in. But don’t look directly into the bull’s-eye of the lens. It could hurt your eyes. That light’s about fifty thousand candlepower.”

Carrick opened the hatch, and Faye climbed the short ladder from the watch room to the lantern room.