The Promise of Light Read Online Free

arm in arm and Miss Beecham’s face all filled with love. And in the dark I saw the face of Mrs. Gifford, who lived across the road from my father. She loved my father and brought him pies. People said they should have married after my mother passed away. At first the idea made me angry, but when my eyes had cleared enough to see how lonely they were by themselves, I saw that the people were right. I didn’t know why they wouldn’t marry. Nobody else did, either, but they all had theories.
    Men and women on the island came to be known by their jobs, or by one or two things that they’d done right or wrong. They knew Monahan as the man who drove his ferry through the hurricane, and my father as the man who stood among the fires and swore at the top of his lungs as the smoke swirled all around him.
    Soon enough, I figured, I’d be known as the banker. And I hoped only as the banker. The less I gave them to talk about, the better.
    I knew all these men and women who had come to watch, but the way they gaped with their eyes as wide and unblinking as fish, made it seem as if they didn’t know me. It made me angry to have them staring. They had crept out of their beds to gawk at the fire and now at my father’s spilled blood. I thought about the blood and felt helpless. I wanted to gather it and get it back inside him, to seal his wounds without trace and for there never to have been any pain. Please, not my father, I thought. Please not him.
    Bosley stopped walking. We both turned and looked back at Melville’s. Willoughby stood on the doorstep, squinting around to see where I had gone. Some of the nightshirt gawkers pointed in my direction. “He’s all banged up and talking funny. He’s not making any sense, Benjamin. I just want you to be prepared for it is all.”
    I could barely see him in the dark. “Thanks, Bos.”
    “I hear you got a job.” He wiped at the dirt on his face.
    “They said they’d give it to me.”
    Bosley laughed; a quiet cough of breath. He didn’t look me in the eye. “I’d been hoping you were coming to work alongside your dad and me.”
    “I thought about it, Bos.” I started walking toward Melville’s house. Already the crowd’s pale faces were turning.
    Bosley walked beside me. “I guess I just thought about it more than anyone else.”
    *   *   *
    I couldn’t make out any words in the constant mutter of the people who stepped back to let me pass.
    Bosley didn’t come inside. He shoved his way back into the night.
    It was bright in Melville’s clinic. The first thing I heard when I stepped through the doorway was my father’s raging shouts. Not shouting in pain. He was howling in Irish, which I had not heard him speak for many years. The door that separated us was shut. For a moment, I stood in front of it, feeling the stares from behind. I turned and saw them, dozens of wide eyes peeking through the glass.
    Then Willoughby opened the door and pulled me inside.
    I tried to stay calm, but when I saw my father, the shock kicked at my ribs. I did not recognize his face. His forehead was blistered white through the layers of soot. The fire had taken his eyebrows and most of his hair, leaving only a brittle mess of orange crumbs, which fell across the floor as he shook his head from side to side. My father had been tied down onto the clinic table. Bandages were wrapped around his bare arms and legs.
    He kept up the talking in Irish, his voice all spit and croaking, as if he had reached the last words of an argument before it came to blows.
    Melville tried to wrap another bandage around my father’s head, but my father moved so much that Melville gave up. The bandage slipped from his hands and unrolled across the floor. Melville’s head snapped up to look at me. His eyes were gray like a sled dog’s. “We need you to give us some blood.”
    *   *   *
    I took off my shirt.
    Melville went to his closet and pulled out a tube with a needle at each end. He also removed