Lawrence's Lighthouse Dirge

Art by Mackenzie von Pingel - 2023

When night fell and the fog drifted in from the sunsetting horizon, the bayside town sank into a peaceful slumber. All entered a night of naive dreaming but one man.

One man woke as the rest rested. He began his night rather than his day. He had his twilight coffee, trimmed his disorderly beard, and lit himself a cigarette to ease his aching, aging bones.

After the hustle and bustle of harbor life came to its daily end, it was time for the Fog Collector to take his turn.

Only the glistening stars in the indigo sky watched as he left the lighthouse and trekked towards the docks. Of course, he had his machine with him, the handcrafted beauty he had perfected over sixty years of careful, dedicated work.

The machine was made up of a series of piping, tubing, and scrap metals. Its main chamber was made of a thin, durable copper plating. A dial on its back denoted that the chamber was currently empty. The pipes and tubes all converged into a main nozzle that fanned out like the end of a trumpet. The Collector held it in his hand now, making a soldier’s march to the end of the wooden, rickety docks.

He lowered a lever on the back of the chamber. A subtle hum reverberated through the machine’s piping, vibrating against the elderly Collector’s back. The end of his nozzle began to quiver as the surrounding air was sucked into the machine’s tubings, circulated in the chamber, and its excess material released out a pipe on the other end.

The Collector held out the nozzle towards the fog, and his work began. The obscuring wisps that would ordinarily impair the vision of the morning sailors succumbed to his machine, circulating in the chamber only to have lighter, harmless steam emanate from its other end.

As the chamber filled, the machine began to weigh down on the Collector’s shoulders.

Decades of aching work had made him resilient. He was a natural, comfortable; one might say this was where the old Collector felt most at peace. The satisfying hiss of thinning fog and hum of his machinery allowed a wave of calm to settle over him.

That is, until he saw the young girl on a nearby dock.

As the fog began to dissipate, falling victim to the Collector’s mechanical routine, the curtains pulled back and showed her more clearly.

She was small, probably no more than seven years old. She wore a hand-sewn nightgown, its hems and ends a bit torn and tattered. Her red-haired braids were somehow both unkempt and tidy, with its tight knots barely holding down frizzy, curly ends. They looked like a lint-trapping sweater a fisherman might wear. Her eyes--big, bold, and blue--stared right at the Collector as he worked to the rhythm of his humming machinery.

But that rhythm faltered. He noticed the girl.

She waved, and he blinked. Was she real? No one was ever up this late, much less a girl of her age.

“Helloooooo,” she called, cupping her hands to her mouth.

The Collector humored her, giving her a small smile and a nod.

“Whatcha doing?” she asked.

She began to make her way over to the Collector now, head cocked to one side. Her big, bold, blue eyes brimmed with curiosity. She was much closer, and she was very much real.

“Whatcha doing with all that fog?”

Getting a better look at her, the Collector noticed she had no front teeth. Each consonant she pronounced came with a splash of spittle.

The Collector opened his mouth to speak, to tell the young girl that she’d be much better off if she went back to bed, but felt his throat get caught. His tongue felt numb. His voice felt absent. He couldn’t speak. Why would he have to? No one had ever spoken to him, much less asked him to speak in return.

So instead of words, the Collector spoke in gestures. He pointed to his machine, then to the fog ahead. He patted the horn-like nozzle and pointed as it slurped in a satisfying wisp of fog. Then, he patted his chamber, the dial now denoting it was about halfway full, and pointed up at the lighthouse. Its shining light glinted across the ocean’s churning waves, their water carrying its beacon beyond the harbor.

“You live in there?” the girl asked.

The Collector nodded.

“That’s tall.”

The Collector smiled. He didn't do it often.

“The fog is the light?”

The Collector nodded again.

“Whoa…”

That wonder in her eyes widened the Collector’s smile.

She sat down on the edge of the dock. Her toes brushed against the water’s surface.

“I’m Judy. You have a name?”

The Collector hesitated, unsure how to answer. He supposed he could be called The Fog Collector, but wasn’t that more of a title? A fisherman wasn't named Fisherman. The cobbler wasn’t named Cobbler. And if he did have a name--one of those fancy sounding ones rather than a boring old profession--how would he tell it to her?

For the sake of simplicity, the Collector shrugged. Judy wasn’t pleased.

“No name?” she said. “Well, everyone’s got one. You should too!”

The Collector shrugged.

“Well… how bout I give you one then, huh?” Judy said.

The Collector smiled. He held out his hand: Go ahead.

“How bout…” She took a second to think, her head tilted to the side again like a puppet with no hand to control it. “Lawrence!”

The Collector shook his head, his smile as bright as ever.

“Well, you look like one!” Judy crossed her arms. “That’s your name now. Lawrence.”

The Collector, or Lawrence, shrugged. There wasn’t much he could do.

“How come I never heard of you, Lawrence?”

The Collector shrugged. It was a simple, small gesture, but it conveyed a complicated answer.

There wasn’t anything to hear about him because there wasn’t anyone to tell of him. No one spoke of the Collector. They assumed the fog disappeared because it had to, or perhaps they didn’t bother to think about it. They assumed the lighthouse remained lit because it had to, or perhaps they didn’t care enough to consider why.

The people of the bayside town were daytime folk. Lawrence was a nighttime folk. They needn’t worry what happened under the moon. Lawrence needn’t consider what occurred under the sun.

The city worked because it worked. The ships sailed because they sailed. The markets bustled because they bustled. It was as simple as that. No need to consider “why” or “how”. It just did.

“Don’t you need credit?” Judy asked. “Or coin? My daddy makes some of that when he does his cleaning.”

Lawrence smiled. No need for credit. No need for coin.

He shook his head: no.

“My mommy and daddy always argue about that kind of stuff anyway.”

Her feet dangled over the edge for a bit longer. The fog had almost dissipated, and she could see the endless waters ahead unobscured. The moon reflected off of the sparkling water. The dark waves lightened into white splashes as they hit the docks.

“Well,” she picked herself up. “G’night.”

From her nightgown’s pocket she procured a small, silver coin. She flipped it, the moonlight glinting across its face for a fraction of a second before it spun and settled at Lawrence’s feet.

“I know you don’t need it,” Judy said. “But thank you.”

It was those last two words, a simple phrase he’d seldom heard and only imagined, that caused Lawrence to smile wider than he had ever in his long, lonely life. Happiness filled his heavy heart. Tears filled his tired eyes.

He supposed it couldn’t hurt after all.

Lawrence gave Judy a small nod as she skipped away back to wherever she called home in the bayside town.

The Fog Collector finished his job, carrying his machinery back to the lighthouse. He climbed its spiral steps and attached the copper-plated chamber next to the light’s mechanism. The dial fell as the collected wisps of swirling fog emptied, and the beacon brightened.

As the sun rose that morning, our newly named Lawrence drifted off into his joyful sleep, smiling as he entered the endless world of dreams. He ended perhaps the happiest night of his life. An interaction that seems so simple to you and me was beyond monumental for a man like Lawrence.

While he would not wake at twilight, his memory would not fade, neither would the beacon of his lighthouse. For he remained locked in the heart of young Judy, the one who gave him a name, coin, and friend just before he left the docks to collect the fog amongst the stars and his light still guiding the lost to shores where they may be found.