To Keep the South Manitou Light

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20 Jessie helped her mother carry the pan lids up the winding steps of the lighthouse. The curved white wall felt rough and cool as Jessie’s shoulder brushed hard against it for support and balance. The thick walls muffled the steady clang, clang of the fog bell. In the watch room, Jessie held the lamp as her mother slowly poured the oil from what looked like a long-necked brass teapot. Together they climbed the winding stairs up through the second hatch. This was as high as Jessie would go. Here she still felt enclosed and safe. She couldn’t bring herself to look at the closed door leading out onto the lower balcony that circled the top of the lighthouse. She watched her mother climb up the ladder to where, on its iron pedestal, the great lantern stood. Opening its brasshinged door, her mother set the lamp inside. Jessie could still hear her grandfather’s voice explaining the light to the rare but welcome visitors to the lighthouse: “See these prisms? They bend the beam of light, concentrating it. This lens is a Third Order Fresnel . It has a range of eighteen miles, strong enough to shine all the way across the Manitou Passage.” Granddad was proud of his light and the way he kept it. Back down in the watch room, Jessie’s mother entered the date, October 9, 1871, and the time, 12:45 p.m., in the daily log. In her beautiful slanting script she recorded, “Inspector arrives 6 21 with supplies. Smoke from Chicago and Peshtigo closing in. Fog bell started at 12:30 p.m.” For a while, Jessie and her mother stood looking out the window at the thickening haze. Sometimes they could see a bit over the lake. But just when they thought the sky might begin to clear, scarves of gray wrapped themselves around the lighthouse again. A three-masted schooner appeared out of the curtain of smoke and glided soundlessly around the point and into South Manitou Island’s safe harbor. Jessie and her mother both caught their breath at the sight of it. The Isabella, with Jessie’s father as the captain, was a schooner with three masts. When Jessie read out loud the name, “W. B. Allen,” Jessie’s mother sighed. “Let’s hope that is the first of many ships that our light and bell will guide to safety. Be thankful, Jessie, that your father is sailing on Lake Huron and not Lake Michigan. Now try to rest. Do anything you can to save your strength. The alarm will ring in two hours for you to wind the bell again.” With her strong hands, Jessie’s mother squeezed her daughter ’s shoulders and kissed her on the forehead. Jessie felt safe in this small, round, thick-walled space with her mother’s hands upon her. As she descended the curving stairway, Jessie tried to hold that feeling inside her, saying in time to the clanging of the fog bell, “Be brave, Jessie, be brave.” As she got closer and closer to the ground, she became more and more aware of how small she was, how skinny she was, and how cold and damp her hands had become. She thought of Mr. and Mrs. Hostetler on their farm on the other side of the island and of Omie wandering around probably somewhere near the dock. Only five people on South Manitou Island. Jessie wished her father were home. She wished that 22 Granddad were alive and well, smoking his pipe as he rocked in his favorite chair in the sitting room. “Helen, I do wish you were here,” she whispered. The heavy wooden door creaked as Jessie opened it. After pulling it closed, she settled herself on the stone step. The waves made a soft chh, chh, chh, chh as they curled onto the beach just yards away. Jessie stared across the channel toward the mainland she could no longer see. Somewhere over there was Leland’s gray-shingled schoolhouse. At this very minute Helen is probably helping the youngest students with their penmanship, Jessie thought. She had to admit that Helen would be a good teacher, so patient and so grown up. “I just want you to like me more,” Jessie said to the hidden mainland . “I just want you to be my friend, Helen.” How could two girls raised by the same parents...