The Lighthouse

Chapter 1


It will be cold, like an icy-rain running down your spine, her father had told her. He had never been there himself, but he had been told by the man who had hired him. “Waters as rough as any open sea and winters like nothing you have ever known. Up there, north, towards the top.” He showed her on the map again as if he had forgotten he had already showed her twice today, his thick finger tracing an outline around the dot that was to be home. He told her the names of the giant lakes that were like oceans, the rivers, the harbors, the bays and the islands; he finished with the names of the towns and the counties. He filled her mind with images of a hard, cold place she didn’t wish to imagine, much less live in. “No, nothing like it where we come from, land with an ocean in the middle of it. Never would have believed Brown, but he built those lighthouses, been there he has.”

Her father folded the thin paper with the map on it and tucked it back into his coat and pulled his hat low until it covered the tip of his nose. He pulled a flask from his outer pocket and took a long swallow, careful to let none see other than his daughter, Lydia. He screwed the cap back on the flask and slipped it back into the dark lining of his pocket as the train hit rough tracks and made the passengers groan and take hold of their seats. He remained unmoved by the event, Lydia, however, had taken hold of the edge of her seat and felt a fresh wave of panic slide over her.

Lydia had not traveled by train until a few days ago and now she had been on three. Their journey started on foot and they walked for nearly two days until they reached the nearest station with a coach, from there they traveled by coach for four days until they reached Boston and then she boarded her first train.

Until now, nothing had been less appealing to her than leaving home and traveling far away from everything she had known. Not for a moment did she feel at ease on the steely contraption that seemed to race along at a speed that would somehow only end in her demise. When she closed her eyes she imagined her slight frame being crushed by the screeching wheels of the machine she rode in. Her father seemed at ease, but that was of no comfort to her, for too often, her father was at ease when everything around him turned to ash.



Her father was never a cruel or unyielding man. His words had always been soft and his smiles always warm, but she had seen a change in him since the passing of her mother and siblings. His smiles were less frequent and his soft words had a sharpness to them she didn’t understand. Losing everything can break people, she knew it could happen. She had been warned by others to not let him take too much drink, to keep watch over him. The man and father he had been were slipping away and there was nothing she could do but follow him and hope.

Coal Town had been the train’s last stop early in the morning. Lydia disembarked the train as quickly as she could to find the comforts of the unmoving earth. She tried to ease her mind with a short walk, hoping to find a place to have a meal or to sit in a comfortable chair, but the town was nothing more than a water tower, a train station, a tavern and a few shacks scattered at the end of a muddy road.

Lydia returned to the train only when the whistle commanded her to do so. She reluctantly climbed the wobbling steps into the passenger car and made her way back to her seat where her father remained sleeping, his hat still covering the upper half of his broad face and only his unshaven chin shown.


The train making the usual lurches for speed and sounds of the engine straining before it found its rhythm did not wake her father or seem to distress the others as it swept Lydia and her father along to a place she did not want to go.

Slowly, almost unnoticed by the passengers, with exception to Lydia, who watched impatiently, as daylight slipped behind the tree-line giving way to the blackness of the night sky. She made a mental note to herself that another day was done and gone, only one more to go before they arrived at their destination. The night would pass for her in bits of sleep interrupted by the occasional lurch of the train crossing rough tracks or an unsettling dream of one kind or another. It was rare she found comfort in her father’s words or actions anymore, but now she would find his wide, square shoulder something of a comfort in those moments.


She closed her eyes and found her mothers sweet face waiting for her in dreams. She felt the warmness of the fire as she watched her mother baking bread on a wet autumn day. The memories of her past pulled her in and held her through the night as the train tore through the moonlit wilderness and brought her closer to her fate.