Verse by Verse

Sarah took the pry bar from the desk and began loosening the top of the crate. Experience told her to work from the front seam. She worked her way around the box, inch by inch, until the nails were fully withdrawn. With a final screech, the lid came free and the scent of the sea filled the small room.

This was the best part of Sarah’s day. Not packing a box, not shipping it over to the Lighthouse Department, but receiving the box back.

Books. Since the end of the Great War, Sarah packed books for the keepers in the lighthouses along the coast. Many were remote and the men lived alone or with their families. They were so desperate for reading material they’d read technical manuals over and over until they’d memorized them. The boxes were their fragile connection to the world.

She took a book from the top of the crate. The Call of the Wild, popular with the keepers. She flipped through its pages, taking in the scent of salt and paper and something more unnamed. When she held it to her chest, she imagined its story, but more someone reading its story. A chill went through her.

“Sarah, how’s that box coming? I have two more out here,” Mariellen called from the next room. She was Sarah’s boss and head of the box program for the Newfoundland Department of Education in St. John’s.

“Fine. Just emptying this one.” Sarah wouldn’t be rushed.

She began taking books one at a time from the box. The wear on the books betrayed which were favorites, those read by many, or perhaps read by one several times. The wear would show on the spine and pages would often show folds and dogears. Sometimes a forgotten bookmark. Sometimes a section of the book would show discoloration from less than clean fingers holding a page. Sarah treasured these because they revealed passages that entertained or intrigued the men.

Novels. Mysteries. Adventure. That’s what the men loved. Jack London was a favorite. Also Hammett and Burroughs. Even more, they loved the pulp magazines that seemed everywhere. Now, a decade after the Great War, she almost believed they would eclipse the great literature that lined the walls of her office. So Sarah would make it a point to insert a few classic novels and some poetry. These went untouched.

She was halfway to the bottom of the box and still hadn’t found the poetry volume she’d included in this one. Not a favorable sign. The books at the bottom often remained unread.

When she finally saw it, the hairs on the nape of her neck stood on end. On examination, the book looked new. Longfellow’s Poems. No bookmarks. No folded pages. She fanned through the book with her thumb and a faint moldy odor brushed her face.

But her eye caught something. The fore-edge was thumbed dark in one section. She riffled to the spot. Some writing. She flipped through the pages again, this time more slowly. And there. The Rainy Day. Someone had circled the second verse.

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.

In the margin, someone had penciled a few words. But the strokes were primitive and broad, not florid. Sarah carried the book to her desk and set it under her lamp.

Alone with my mouldering past.

Sarah opened her drawer, about to grab her rubber eraser, but caught herself. The connection was powerful, and with someone she had never met. Of course, she’d read the poem herself many times. She imagined what his past might be: a death, a failure. Something that might drive him to a life of solitude. And it took little effort to imagine what he might look like, this man alone with his past on some remote rock off the coast.

No, she wouldn’t erase the note. Marginalia sometimes turned up in the box books. In fact, it was Sarah’s job to erase them. Still, she paused.

After Sarah packed the boxes, she would send them over to the Militia Building. From there, the Lighthouse Department would send them to the lighthouse stations by any means necessary, rail, road, often by water.

This one was marked simply with an H. Box H.

“What are you doing?”

Sarah startled. Mariellen had returned. Sarah hadn’t seen her come in.

“Nothing. I like to check the books for damage before I re-shelve them.” Sarah surprised herself at how easily the lie came from her mouth. She never checked for damage.

“Remember, two more boxes.”

“I’ll get them done before I leave.” She snapped the volume shut.

Mariellen looked around the room, at the half-emptied box, and back at Sarah. Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t get too involved. Just get it empty and get it filled.”

“Where do the boxes go?” Sarah asked.

“You know. They’re sent to the lighthouse stations.”

“No. I mean, which ones specifically?”

“Why are you asking?”

Sarah took a breath. “I’m just curious. I want to pick just the right books.”

Mariellen sighed. “The Department of Marine and Fisheries distributes the boxes. What have you found?”

“Nothing,” she said quickly.

Mariellen removed the glasses that perched on the tip of her nose. “Most of these men are married with families.”

Sarah’s heart pounded in her ears. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

After she left, Sarah took out the book and opened to the poem. She touched the penciled words. Alone. It sang in her head. Of course, alone. They’re keepers.

But something moved in her, and she would never understand what caused her to take her pencil and write two words beneath it.

You’re not.

✧ ✧ ✧

Five weeks later, the crates returned to Sarah’s office. She sat for the longest time, staring at the H box, the one with the Longfellow book, afraid of what she might find. Indeed, she left the crate on her worktable for two hours while she tried to distract herself with the routine of her day: filing forms, re-shelving books. She worried about the box’s growing power over her and hoped that by ignoring its presence, she might break its spell.

But after lunch, she lost her will and pried the box open. After all, she was providing service to the man, giving him company in his loneliness.

Sarah had to unpack almost the entire box before she saw the volume. She grabbed it from its place in the furthest corner of the box and fanned through its pages until she landed on the poem.

And in the margin beneath her words he’d written his reply,

You don’t know me. Who are you?

Of course, she didn’t know him. So strange he’d write that of all things.

Sarah sat down at her desk with the book, clasping it between her hands as one would hold a sacred text. So, is that it? Perhaps Mariellen was right. She was getting too involved.

This man, his words were a dismissal.

She read them again. What is it to know someone? Their name, their face, their countenance. Their character, their life. No, this was an invitation.

Sarah opened the bottom drawer of her desk. And there, a slim volume, well softened by her hands, Emily Dickinson. Her personal copy, a gift from her father when she finished school. She was never given a more apt present, and such incongruity; her father could barely read.

She flipped to the page marked with a frayed black ribbon. Yes, this was it.

I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody too?
Then there’s a pair of us—don’t tell
They’d banish us, you know.

After circling the verse, she wrote in the margin,

Then tell me.

She bound the two books together and placed them in the deepest part of the crate, almost invisible.

✧ ✧ ✧

A month later, the box came back. She found the Dickinson volume and the poem. Her words in the margin. But nothing from him.

With a painful deliberateness, she unpacked the rest of the box and then went to sit at her desk with Dickinson. She opened it to their poem and read their words again. Mariellen was right. Forget this.

Quite by instinct, she opened to the contents at the front and fanned through its pages. Again, the notes she had penciled in the margin. But also another flash, further toward the end. When she found the page, her chest tightened.

After great pain, a formal feeling comes—
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs—
The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’
And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?

The Feet, mechanical, go round—
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought—
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone—

This is the Hour of Lead—
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow—
First—Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go—

And she experienced his pain like a phantom, knowing not its source but seeing the shadow it cast. She had read this poem of grief daily for many years, though less so now. When news came of her brother’s death in the Somme, this poem gave voice to her emotion.

Now, a decade later, this keeper experienced the same frozen grief.

He’d underlined hard and heavy, The Feet, mechanical, go round—

Next to that, he’d penciled,

Now you know me. Who are you?

But he knew, or so it felt.

✧ ✧ ✧

That night, as Sarah lay in her rented room, her encounter with the keeper persisted. Above a fish shop, the pungent smells of the day’s catch permeated the very walls. Yet tonight, she only smelled the rich, worn leather of the Dickinson volume.

How many times she lay here clutching the same book, but tonight she had a guest. This man, the lightkeeper, was likely married with children. She shouldn’t become this man’s confessor. And if Mariellen learned of their correspondence, as discreet as it was, she might lose her job.

Yet, she pictured him in his grief, stoic and immutable, carrying on with the noble work of a keeper, and perhaps he had lost a child or a wife.

The darkness in her room was never complete. Illumination from New Gower Street cast streams of light and shadow throughout her room from sundown to sunrise. She opened the book and held it in a block of light. He had written in a firm hand, for the letters were deeply engraved in the paper. She ran her fingertips over the writing, trying to discern beyond their obvious meaning. Her breath caught at the sensation.

Most surprising, the handwriting was both rude and functional. When children write, illegibility is a function of immaturity. But this wasn’t illegible; instead the effect was simple, direct. Nothing pretentious or decorative. Strong. He wasn’t striving for style, rather to drift from view so only the meaning remained.

Now you know me.

And she did. They were the same. Alone, with an insatiable emptiness that would come on as the sun set.

How might she tell him about herself without violating the rules? Mariellen was clear. She had a duty to both the Education Department and the Lighthouse Department to maintain a professional detachment. But he was a man with a loss, and it was consuming him.

Her mother called her plain, her way of saying Sarah had better prepare to support herself. So, her father saved every penny from the canning factory to send her to the Provincial Normal School to become a teacher.

Once her brother was killed, she lost any desire to teach. And once she saw the men return from Europe, scarred inside and out, she could no longer stand in front of children, reciting platitudes from a book. So, working for the Department of Education, curating the lighthouse boxes seemed a perfect fit.

But it wasn’t. Yes, there was a certain reward in selecting books for the keepers, but the stories, the poems, the words themselves had lost their power.

Until now. There was a man. And they read the words together.

Her mother was wrong.

✧ ✧ ✧

The next morning, when Mariellen was meeting privately with the Minister of Education, Sarah grabbed her coat and left down the back stairs. The walk from the Militia Building on Water Street to the Custom House on Duckworth spanned less than three blocks.

As she often did, she stopped at the Great War Memorial, dedicated back in ‘24. By serendipity, it stood in a park next to her destination. Thousands of men from the Dominion of Newfoundland had fallen. She read the plaque and ran her fingers over the words,

To the glory of God and in perpetual remembrance …

Was God honored in all that dying? And perpetual remembrance? Sarah wasn’t naïve enough to believe anything was forever, certainly not a chunk of granite and a brass plaque. It took less than a hundred years for wind and weather to wear away the stones in the cemetery. But it made his memory, her remembering, even more important. She said his name. John Fraser.

Now standing in front of the drab red brick of the Custom House, she realized her foolishness. Why would they give her any information on the keepers? Her rational self said, stop, go back before they miss you. But her real self, the one who knew Longfellow and Dickinson, dared her forward.

The woman at the desk directed her up two flights of stairs. “Third floor, past Marine and Fisheries. You’ll see the Lighthouse Department. There’s a sign on the door.”

“Thank you,” Sarah said.

“Do you have an appointment? I can ring up.”

“Sarah Fraser with the Department of Education. I just have a few questions.”

So now they will be expecting her.

Sarah’s wooden heels clopped a deafening rhythm on the slate steps. One floor. Two floors. Yes, they’d be expecting her.

In fact, when she reached the office, a rough, bearded man of about fifty stood in the doorway, frowning. “You’d be the lady from Education.”

“Yes.” Sarah stopped in the hallway, for the man seemed intent on blocking her way.

“We don’t have any business with them.”

“The book boxes. We fill them for you.”

“Mmm.”

She thought the boxes would bring some recognition, but the man’s face was intractable, as though fixed at the taste of iodine.

“Oh, the boxes. That’d be O’Shea.”

“May I see him?”

He stepped back into the office and sat at a desk by the window. “Will O’Shea. He’s in his office. End of the hall.”

She found the door open, so she rapped on the doorframe. His office wasn’t ten feet square. At her knock, O’Shea spun his chair around from his desk, which sat against the far wall. A tide of paper on the desktop looked as though it would soon swamp the man and his chair.

On the left wall hung a map of Newfoundland, its lighthouses and range lights marked with pins. On the right, two open book boxes sat in a blaze of sun cast from the window over the desk.

“Yes?” His voice was quick and sharp.

She introduced herself and stepped inside, the worn oak flooring creaking with her steps. The room had a masculine presence, books, maps, paper, the scent of the wood and leather. And a man.

There was no place for her to sit. O’Shea stood, setting his pencil down. He was missing a hand, the right sleeve pinned close. He was not tall, and he was young, not much older than herself, and handsome in the way of nobility, with clean lines and balanced features. Somehow she’d imagined all these lighthouse folks to be gruff, scarred old men like the one who met her at the door.

“Thanks for your work with our boxes.” He motioned to the crates, his hand trembling.

“Funny, I must admit I feel they’re our boxes.”

He didn’t smile. “So, you make up the boxes?”

She nodded.

He blinked several times and looked about the room, as though searching for a nonexistent seat for her, or perhaps a way to escape. But then he smiled and scratched the back of his neck. “Sorry about the office. What do you need?”

“I’m interested in who these boxes go to, I mean where they go, so I can be more specific in my selections.”

“Well, they go from here to the various stations.”

“Of course, but which?”

“Why would it matter?”

Sarah fought the urge to turn and leave, for she hadn’t prepared for resistance. “Some have families and children there. Yes?”

“That’s right.”

“If I learn about the people, I could pack more fitting books.”

He looked at her, his expression perplexed, as though she were asking him to reveal some great provincial secret. Still, his hand trembled.

This Will, he was young, but not so young, she thought. “You were in the war?”

“Yes.” He looked down at his empty shirt cuff.

“As was my brother.”

“He’s well?”

She paused. “No. He’s not.”

He looked up, their eyes meeting.

And then she changed the subject. “You open the boxes here?”

He smiled again. “Oh, yes. The keepers sometimes send their reports inside the boxes, and we send things back. They are just about watertight, so very convenient.”

“So, for example, I’m right now packing a box marked H. Where would that be going?”

He sat down, opened a drawer, and removed a brown folder. Flipping it open, he skimmed through the pages. “H is Baccalieu. Family there. Husband and wife. One grown son. Is that what you mean?”

“It is.” But it wasn’t. Sarah hoped he’d be living alone, and she chided herself for her foolishness. Of course, she would need to consider the wife in her book selections.

Her mind was so muddled she hurried out of the Custom House, past the memorial, returning to her office without a memory of the walk. She hoped she had thanked Will O’Shea, and he must have given her a polite goodbye, but she didn’t remember any words being spoken. Something had been taken from her in that cluttered office, and in its place sat an embarrassment she wished she could forget.

Back at her desk, she sat with the Dickinson volume, staring at its worn burgundy cover. She brought it to her nose and inhaled its scent again. Leather. And more, something immutable, unchanging. She opened the cover. There her father had inscribed her name. Sarah Fraser. But she’d forgotten and now someone, the lightkeeper, had learned who she was.

He and his wife must think her balmy, passing cryptic messages in books of poetry. She must stop this before she embarrasses herself, or worse. She would stop. The books were enough. Focus on selecting the right ones.

Once again, Sarah opened to his writing. The Feet, mechanical, go round— Now you know me.

Married or not, he was hurting.

She touched the words again, feeling the same connection, still there, unbroken. She closed her eyes and allowed a smile, then turned to a well-worn verse.

They dropped like flakes, they dropped like stars,
Like petals from a rose,
When suddenly across the June
A wind with fingers goes.

They perished in the seamless grass,—
No eye could find the place;
But God on his repealless list
Can summon every face.

The words still twisted her innards. And the fifth line she’d crossed out years ago, and wrote above,

He perished in the valley, Somme,—

Today, she wrote his name there,

John Fraser, 1st Newfoundland Regiment (1897-1916)

Two years older, John would tell her stories, fictions he would invent about knights and beasts and princesses. She would always ask in the end, “Did they fall in love?”

And he would say, “Don’t be silly, little Sarah, no one falls in love in a war story.”

Below her brother’s name, she penciled a simple question,

Who did you lose?

Sarah closed the book and began searching through her drawers, then the cabinet beneath the heat register. A black crepe ribbon. She’d worn it for two years after word came of her brother’s death. With her shears, she opened the rosette and pulled a length of ribbon from it. This will work. Taking the book, she wrapped it and tied it with a well-formed bow, and held it a moment, satisfied. She looked at the crate, sensing its pull.

“Sarah, the Minister increased your book allowance for the lighthouses.”

Sarah jumped. Mariellen.

“Oh, wonderful!” She dropped the book into her bottom drawer and slid it shut.

“Yes. More books for the program.” Mariellen came and stood by her desk. “What do you have there?”

“I like to read on my lunch.” Sarah was sure Mariellen saw her heart pounding inside her.

“Don’t let me interrupt.” She turned to leave, but then turned back. “The books you send, do the keepers read them?”

Sarah sat back in her chair. “Well, yes.”

“How do you know?”

Sarah looked at the H box by the wall, filled now to the top with new volumes. “I can tell when something’s been read. They leave traces: a fold, a smudge, sometimes little else. But I know.”

Mariellen looked at the shelves of books that lined the walls, as though trying to see the same. Then she said, “Very well. Sorry to interrupt.”

After she left, Sarah waited. She endured ten minutes with the Dickinson in her drawer, then could stand no more. If she waited another moment, the sensation would pass and her sensibility would return, forgetting the keeper and his grief.

Sarah reached for the drawer, but then heard Mariellen’s bright laugh from the outside office. Do something courageous, she thought, and yanked the drawer open and took the volume to the crate. She set it on top, instead of deep in the box, and nailed the lid tight.

✧ ✧ ✧

A few days later, Sarah sat on a bench overlooking the memorial. She’d brought her lunch to eat in the warm May sun. Already, gulls were forming on the lawn beyond, hoping for something to fall. Sarah didn’t mind them. Once they alighted on the grass, they were silent sentinels, somehow respectful.

She thought about the keeper, though less now, for she had decided. Perhaps they could help each other with their grief, but no more.

As she unwrapped her sandwich from its napkin, the gulls began inching closer. She recognized she shouldn’t, but still she tore off a small piece of bread and tossed it to the birds. Squawking and cawing pealed through the briny air as the gulls dashed about and fought one another for the morsel. The first to reach it seemed to almost inhale the piece, and then it was over.

“Beautiful things.”

She startled. Will O’Shea stood next to the bench, watching the fracas.

“I’d almost say the opposite,” Sarah said. “They have their moments, but today they seem set on satisfying themselves.”

“You make it sound so obvious, so clear.” He looked at her, allowing a small smile for the first time.

Sarah smiled back. “I wish things were just so clear to me.”

“See, even there. I envy your way with words.” He motioned to the bench. “May I?”

She nodded and Will sat a respectful distance from her. Now, up close, he indeed was young, but so was she.

“Do you like poetry?” He had the book.

Sarah thought for a moment, unsure why he’d asked. “Yes, I do. Very much. The words say things I feel but don’t know how to express.”

He turned his gaze away from the gulls and out to the bay.

“And you?” she asked.

“Only recently. And I agree. Some things are hard to say. But then you have a gift.”

He turned to her. “I brought this for you. You must have left it in the box.” He passed her the Dickinson volume, the ribbon still tied.

“How did you guess I’d be here?”

“I see you from my office.” He pointed to the adjoining Custom House, and she found the third-floor window. The scent of paper and wood came to her. His office.

“Sorry about the book. My mind was distracted.”

“We have to watch out for each other, no?”

They watched the gulls for a good while. They’d settled once again, yet still maintained a vigilance, their eyes watching, waiting.

“Well, I should get back. It is a pleasure seeing you, Miss Fraser.” He held out his trembling left hand.

“Sarah. And you’ll come again, maybe tomorrow?” She took his hand, just for a moment, until he nodded and left. She watched as he climbed the steps of the monument and turned toward his office. His warmth still lingered on her hand.

The memorial held its own meaning for him; Sarah sensed that. Perhaps it symbolized pride, or pain, or perhaps shame. She couldn’t be certain.

The ribbon on the book was still tied. Good. She smiled and touched the simple square knot, feeling its simplicity, its utility. But then she remembered. She’d secured it with a bow. In a flurry, she loosened the knot and opened to the poem, finding her inscription,

Who did you lose?

And beneath in the same hand, same pressure … to control the tremble,

Myself.

There was no keeper. Her poetry never made it to Baccalieu. It was him.

And now, even more precious, the words, the privacy, the sanctity of their connection seemed to her more real than anything. She was certain with the warmth on her hand.

Yes, she’d come back tomorrow, perhaps with a book he might like.

✧ ✧ ✧

As an Advance Reader for this story, you have the opportunity to tell me what you think. Please take a moment and complete the short feedback form. Your anonymous input will help me shape the next draft of this story!