The Lighthouse

She moved closer to the light. It fascinated her-its size, its intricate construction. A First Order Fresnel, Jan had told her, built in Paris in 1872 by the firm founded by Augustin Fresnel some fifty years earlier. A beehive of glass prisms set in brass-more than a dozen bull’s-eyes, around which other triangular prisms were placed-it measured fourteen feet in height and six feet in diameter, and weighed better than three thousand pounds. The hand-polished prisms were capable of taking all the light that struck the inside surfaces of the glass and redirecting the rays into one flat beam that could be seen more than twenty miles at sea. The lenses were rotated by hand-wound clockworks powered by means of a descending weight. It was the clockworks, she saw, that Jan was examining with his flashlight.

The huge lens took up most of the space in the lantern room. The enclosure was decagonally shaped, each of its sides constructed of heavy iron-plate for the bottom two and a half feet, then of window glass some thirty inches by thirty-six inches set in narrow metal sashes topped by six incbes of metal. The metal parts and the floor were painted a dark red color, faded and peeling now in places; the window sashes were a dull white, as was the domed ceiling. On the north side, set into the metal a few inches above the floor, was a door that reminded Alix of an oversized pet-door. This led out onto the catwalk-a railed metal deck three feet wide and built at a slight downward angle, so as to shed rainwater. The thought of having to walk about out there, exposed and unprotected sixty feet above the ground, with that harsh wind pummeling her body, gave Alix a sharp pang of vertigo. She didn’t mind heights when she was enclosed like this, or up in an airplane; but out in the open, where one false step could send you plummeting… no, thank you.

Jan straightened up finally from behind the lens and switched off his flashlight. The twilight had begun to deepen so that shadows obscured part of his face.

She asked him, “Something wrong?”

“Clockworks don’t look good. Bonner could have at least come up here once in a while with cleaners and polishes. It’ll take me weeks to put the lens in working order.” He shook his head in annoyance.

“Aren’t there inspectors?”

“Not for out-of service lights. No one with any expertise has inspected this one in at least three years. It’s a crying shame. I told Channon that, for all the good it did.”

“Channon? Oh, the assistant to the State Parks administrator.”

“Right. He’s also on the Advisory Committee on Historic Preservation, which claims to be satisfied that the light is being maintained and cared for in an acceptable fashion. Channon’s an idealist; he’s convinced there’ll be both state and Federal funding to complete restoration by the end of next year.”

“Don’t you think he’s right?”

“No,” Jan said flatly. “I don’t.”