The Lamplighter of Still Harbor

At the edge of a small harbor, where the water lay flat as a poured thing, there lived an old man whose job was to light the lamps. Not the bright lamps of the town behind him, but the low amber lamps that stood along the quiet dock, one every twenty paces, each on its own iron post gone soft with green.

He was not in a hurry. He had never once been in a hurry.

Every evening he took his long brass rod, with its little flame guarded inside a glass hood, and he walked the dock from the first lamp to the last. He lifted the rod. He touched the wick. And the lamp came awake with a small, round glow, the way an animal opens one eye and decides it is safe to keep sleeping.

Lamp by lamp, the harbor grew warm.

There was a cat who walked with him. A grey cat with one white foot, who belonged to no one and therefore, in the way of such cats, belonged to the whole harbor. She did not meow. She simply appeared at the first lamp each dusk and fell in beside his heels, her tail up like a small mast.

"Well," the old man said to her, as he said every evening, "shall we wake them up, then."

It was not a question. The cat already knew.

Lamp by lamp, the harbor grew warm.

The first lamp lit the coil of an old rope, gone silver with salt. The second lamp lit a wooden bench where fishermen had sat for a hundred years, worn smooth as a river stone. The third lamp lit a puddle left by the afternoon rain, and in the puddle, upside down and perfect, floated the whole evening sky.

The cat stopped at the puddle. She looked down at the little sky held there. She lifted her white foot, thought better of it, and set it back on the dry stone.

The old man smiled and did not say anything at all.

At the middle of the dock stood the fourth lamp, and this was his favorite, though he would never have said so, because it seemed unkind to the others. This lamp looked out past the harbor mouth to the open dark water, where the town could not follow. When he lit it, the flame threw a long gold ribbon across the sea, wobbling and mending itself, wobbling and mending, a road made entirely of light that led nowhere and needed to lead nowhere.

The cat sat down beside this lamp. She always did. She curled her tail around her white foot and watched the gold ribbon breathe on the water.

Lamp by lamp, the harbor had grown warm.

There were only two lamps left now, at the far end of the dock, and the old man walked toward them slowly, feeling the boards give the smallest amount beneath his boots, feeling the evening lay itself across his shoulders like a blanket taken warm from a line.

The fifth lamp lit the mooring post, its top rubbed round by a thousand ropes.

The sixth lamp — the last lamp — lit nothing much at all, only the empty end of the dock and the wide, dark, patient water beyond it. But that was the point of the last lamp. It did not need something to shine on. It only needed to be lit, so that anyone out on the black water, rowing home late, would see the whole gentle string of them and know exactly where the land held out its hands.

The old man lowered his brass rod. He drew the little guarded flame back inside its glass and blew it out with one soft breath.

The cat leaned against his ankle, a small warm weight.

He turned and looked back down the dock at what he had done — the six low amber lights standing in their long row, each one holding its own small circle of gold, and the puddle-sky, and the gold road on the water mending itself over and over in the dark.

He did not think about tomorrow. Tomorrow would ask nothing of him that today had not already taught.

The cat yawned, a tiny pink yawn, and pressed closer.

Lamp by lamp, the harbor was warm, and the old man leaned on his cool brass rod and let the leaning hold him. The gold ribbon breathed on the water, slow and slower. The last lamp glowed at the edge of everything, steady, keeping its patient light for whoever might be coming home. And the grey cat closed her eyes against his boot, and the water folded softly over the water, and the harbor kept them both, warm, warm, and still.