Lighthouse Keeper

Chapter Two

Lizzy Darby bit sharply into her apple and snapped it off with a satisfying sound. Her friend Sonia, seated beside her on a long bench, shooed away a particularly brave seagull who seemed to covet their midday meal. It fluttered dangerously close whenever Sonia let her guard down.

"I know it's bad luck to harm a seabird," Sonia noted with a grimace, "but why do they have to be so aggressive about wanting my food?" She flapped her outstretched arm in the direction of the reckless bird to no avail.

"They can sense you're a pushover," their friend Jane teased. "They know you'd fold in a bit of tug-of-war."

On the occasions when her parents' store wasn't overwhelmed with customers, Lizzy was able to spend the noontime hour with her two dearest friends, Sonia Abbott and Jane Sullivan. The three had been friends for as long as their memories stretched back. Lunch at the pier provided a moment to catch up while also the opportunity to unabashedly observe the men who worked the docks.

With its proximity to the ocean, Provincetown was in possession of several wharves, each bustling with activity at any hour of the day. Newly docked vessels had both crew and cargo that needed tending to. Most days the docks smelled of the sea and fresh seafood that had been caught in the harbor or from greater distances like the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. Burly stevedores rolled giant barrels packed with ice and fish down wooden gang planks or replenished the supplies of massive ships that would soon be back at sea.

Jane bit into a piece of bread paired with a hunk of hard cheese. "Who's called to port this week?"

"The Comet, the Liberty, and the Friendship," Sonia recited.

Sonia's husband, William, worked at the local Custom House. Dining room conversation in their home typically consisted of the latest ships to come to shore. It was a dizzying task of which to keep track. Provincetown was connected to the sea, and until the railroad's arrival, the mercantile world had been the city's lifeline. Without those vessels, the town would never survive as it did, dangling precariously at the end of the earth.

"Coming through!" a young man hollered.

Jane, Sonia, and Lizzy gathered their skirts around them and tucked in their shoes to avoid being run over by two longshoremen who tugged at a makeshift cart. Oversized barrels filled with molasses teetered precariously on a plank outfitted with wheels. The heavy barrels jostled and jumped as the cart rolled over the uneven boards of the wooden pier.

Lizzy's gaze followed the two dock workers down the pier as they struggled with the weight of the cargo and the awkward maneuvering of the wheeled cart. Corded muscles strained beneath sweat-stained shirts rolled up to the elbow. The men yelled and cursed with such colorful language it might make a more refined woman blush.

"See anything you like, Miss Darby?" Jane's tone was musical and teasing.

Lizzy snapped her eyes back to center. "Hardly," she huffed.

Choosing to take their lunch on the active pier had been her friends' idea. Personally, Lizzy didn't understand the appeal of watching sweaty, muscled men labor under the sun just to get a peek at a bit of chest hair or to make comments about the hidden bulge in too-tight of trousers. That kind of behavior was antithetical to the cautionary words published in the young ladies' advice manuals her mother had been leaving on her bed as soon as her body had matured enough to wear corsets and petticoats.

Lizzy didn't know where to look next for fear of Jane noticing where her gaze might linger a few seconds too long. The movement of rope slicing across her vision caught her attention, however, as a small dory arrived at the shipping wharf and its rower secured the boat to a dock piling. Lizzy could hear the soft knock of the boat bumping against the pier, followed by a limber figure climbing onto the elevated dock. A slender pair of legs seemed to swim in corduroy trousers.