Synkroniciti is excited to welcome back poet, photographer and writer Laura Rodley of Massachusetts with a captivating short story, “Vinalhaven Lighthouse,” inspired by the titular lighthouse which stands on Maine’s Atlantic coast. Sally, or Seaboard Sally as she is known to the locals, is only nineteen, the daughter of the lighthouse keeper. After her father’s untimely death while rescuing an unlucky sailor, she and her mother have been running the lighthouse. Most of the time it’s quiet.
“Other times, when I think I can’t stand the quiet, we get a storm, or someone rows out, and falls in. I rescue him. Mind you, I couldn’t do it if my mother weren’t listening, too. She hears the men crying out. I can’t tell the men’s first shrieking from the gulls. Sea water has clogged my ears, Dr. Ebert says. I hear voices as whispers.”
Sally has pulled 23 men from the freezing water and taken them back to her mother for doctoring and care. Tonight she saved two drunk fiddle players on their way home from a gig, Randy and Horace. Mother tries not to get too attached to them.
“She doesn’t like to say their names. Once they fall into the sea, they are apt to fall in again. Three people I’ve rescued fell in again, somewhere else, were not rescued. That saddens Mother no end. She calls them all laddie, even after we receive gifts of sardines, mint cordials, or their mother’s parcel-post crocheted afghans, thank-yous for saving their son’s lives.”
The ruined fiddles create an unexpected bond between the lighthouse residents and the two young men. We hope that they don’t repeat the pattern, that they will stay alive and out of the sea.
Laura creates wonderful characters full of believable contradictions: crusty Sally, who has seen more naked men than she cares to count and yet possesses a surprising innocence; her long-suffering, tough mother who possesses a gentle, soft heart; Randy and Horace, able-bodied confident men who are completely unmanned by their accident, much less hardy than the two women who hold their lives in their capable hands. Laura writes wonderful colloquial idioms which ring true and make this engaging story irresistible.
Read “Vinalhaven Lighthouse” in Synkroniciti’s “Patterns” issue, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Pushcart Prize winner Laura Rodley’s latest books are Turn Left at Normal by Big Table Press, Counter Point by Prolific Press, and Ribbons and Moths Poems for Children by Kelsay Books.