Story Excerpts

Part of the iceberg, the part facing Briggs and the lighthouse, was wedge-shaped.  It made the entire mass look like an ocean liner drifting down from the Arctic, but then on the morning of the fourth day the wedge itself broke off, creating a surge that rolled all the way to Attu Island and washed the shore like an unexpected tide. After that Briggs thought the berg resembled a wedding cake. He estimated its course from the gallery deck of the lighthouse and wondered if he should log it as a navigation hazard. Not that it would last much longer as it drifted south.  Still, that was the job. Keep the light on. Keep the logbook up to date. And keep the U.S. Navy safe. All one of him.

With the entire Pacific to his south and most of the Bering Sea between him and the mainland, Briggs on most days felt like a cartoon character washed up on a one-tree island. He did however have a shortwave radio and a contact at Attu Station some thirty-five miles across a low mountain range. Plenty of company if you forgot that you and your spindly lighthouse and your pathetic radio shack were 1,300 miles from Anchorage. Or if you didn’t call to mind that on your first day’s deployment you’d been dropped off by a Lieutenant Talbot who didn’t leave the deck of the supply packet when he issued orders. “There you go, Riggs. Up in the watch room is a set of the finest binoculars made and in the tank over there, five hundred gallons of kerosene. Keep the light on, and let us know if Hirohito shows up.”

“It’s Briggs, sir.”

“There’s an M-1 in the shack and a couple hundred rounds. Check in with Attu Station as soon as you get stowed away. Call sign Magic Blue. You’ll be relieved in twenty-eight days.”

“And if the Japanese do show up?” Briggs asked.

The lieutenant shrugged. “Shoot ’em. But give us a call first. Admiral Nimitz will want to know if they’re headed to downtown Seattle.” Talbot paused to appreciate his own wit, gave it a half smile, and then stepped away from the gunwale without returning a salute.

Since that afternoon Briggs had rotated on and off the island four times, trading places with another loser named Madden who wrote crazy shit in the logbook about ghost ships and “aerial phenomena” that he’d seen on nights when the Aurora was swirling. All Briggs knew for certain was that his counterpart never cleaned the Fresnel lens the way every keeper was supposed to do. He’d left Madden a note once that said “Clean the goddam lens” but found it still taped to the base plate on his next rotation. After that they communicated by logbook only.

Back in the remote and horizonless present, Briggs made his way from the gallery deck into the watch room and leaned into the bridge binoculars, the same kind that guys on deepwater ships called Big Eyes. He adjusted the stanchion and centered his field of vision on the berg just as another chunk of it collapsed and made a soundless splash. The range finder put the main mass at about 15,000 yards, a little over eight and a half miles. He could see a few jagged crevices in the outer wall but hardly anything else. For his first entry on the new page of his log he penned, in an elegant cursive, “7 January 1943. 0930. Sea ice. Lat. 52.86 N. Range 15,000. No vessels.” But he did not include the detail that most drew his attention. Movement on the upper plateau.

It could have been snow crystals lifted by the wind.  Or just a trick of the light, because you got a lot of odd refraction with the snow and ice. The white-on-white stuff. But it just as well could have been a bear. He’d seen a few—the polar bears were good swimmers–sometimes paddling from one ice floe to another in search of seals. Although this one had seemed to be standing more upright like a grizzly and lumbering toward a low, snowy mound a little farther away. Hard to tell at this distance. So probably just a weird play of light. Briggs went back down to the shack and checked in with Attu Station. Then he stripped the rifle for the hundredth time, cleaning and oiling it. Later he loaded a few extra clips while letting his mind imagine bear hunting on the arctic ice. It beat cleaning a Fresnel lens.